Australia - you're standing in it
Andy, it was always the case "that's a nice area but there's no work/how would I work there?" - now removed. Now it's 'love where you live'. I'd also say a lot of the constructed culture eg footy at the MCG (= ovals in a city suburb to train in) is being superseded by a desire for nature - being in nature (=van and surfboard and time flexibility required). We see the ocean part of this as surfers.
Great article Pops/Andy - if the left neglects its working class base while off in a quixotic struggle, someone's gonna nick them...
"And he is criticising the decision of former governments to send manufacturing jobs overseas, saying even though it's cheaper to outsource jobs to China it's done too much damage to working-class Canadians."
Seems to be a nationalist shift rather than just uniquely left.
Edit: add more quotes:
"We made a mistake in allowing ourselves to de-industrialise totally.
"Thirty years ago, the Western world's political, financial and business elite made a bet — we would allow China to have unfair access to our market while they protected their own.
"Then, China was poor, underdeveloped and largely disconnected from the world.
"Once it became a rich and prosperous country, we hoped it would turn into a good actor who would democratise, take human rights seriously, liberalise, and play by global rules.
"We all know that this has not happened.
"State-owned juggernauts, Orwellian surveillance technology, cyber theft on an industrial scale, hostage diplomacy and increasing human rights abuses within its borders, and increasingly with its wider sphere of influence."
He said he was a firm believer in capitalism and "free enterprise" because they always led to the "most-efficient outcome", but sometimes the most-efficient outcome "does not always perfectly align with our national interest".
Makes you wonder what's going on.
Are these "news agencies" asleep or under the thumb?
Talk of reversing globalisation is just hot air, there's no way anyone who's achieved a high level of office is going to seriously consider that.
Just like no one will seriously address home affordability. I mean, up to 1200% increase in house prices in the Northern Rivers in the past 20 years?
lots of talk about housing crisis in the northern rivers on the local ABC last couple days.
it's led to the interesting situation where almost all hospitality businesses can't find staff.
You simply can't afford to live here on a hospitality wage.
The US solution: using low paid immigrant labour, was favoured by some businesses but has been shut down by covid.
I expect that to open up soon, before upward pressure on wages is allowed to happen.
There'll be a riot if wealthy boomers who paid a million for a tear down have to pay more for a coffee.
AndyM, I read this one last week. Topical.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-09/why-stocks-and-housing-are-boomin...
Like many keep saying Guy, there's only so far that identity politics can get the Left.
Quixotic struggle indeed, with such an unbelievable amount of moral vanity involved.
And as I've said a few times, the right laughs so hard the tears are running down its legs.
RE prices are such that just upping and starting a new town somewhere there is no development might be the solution.
Welcome to 'Grassy Swamp'
Three cheers for a two-tiered society FR.
Keep the baristas and waiters as the serfs they were born to be.
If you're right with your talk of imported labour, we'll really see some fraying at the edges of small-town society.
Pops, correlate the SP500 with the Fed balance sheet ;)
& not just regional housing going up in big %
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/used-car-prices-surge-at-record-...
sob, that dream 17 year old Landcruiser....
VJ,
Different dynamic, but the same is happening with mountain bikes. In the MTB world it's a mix of factory closures during COVID (Shimano, who make most bike components, closed for two months and now can't catch up), irregular shipping from Asia, and huge domestic demand, mean some second-hand bikes are being sold for more than they were bought for.
It's the opposite of the old adage about driving the vehicle off the lot and it's suddenly worth 50% less.
How good is propping up a failed model Pops?
Anyway, I'm off to work to make coffees and be generally obsequious.
"Pops, correlate the SP500 with the Fed balance sheet ;)" above my paygrade VJ. I'm a complete numpty when it comes to economics/finance.
What would I find if I did that?
aspen had a similar problem -- about 25 years ago it was being written about. people who worked for a living could not afford to live in aspen or surrounds and so no workers to run thing.
outside magazine regularly reports about the problem spreading to many other mountain towns.
ah...so that's why i can't get a shimano 18 tooth freewheel cog.
Official! Libs are ruled #1 greediest most cowardly Govt in Oz History.
ROBODEBT $1,231,000,000.00 settlement declared as Official #1 Oz scam.
At the last minute...another typical cowardly Lib bastard's backdown.
Please! We beg you not to expose our rorting secrets in court...
Victim's Payouts
2020- $721m
2021- $398m ( Current Claims)
Victim's Compo $112m- Suicides, Deaths, Divorces, Broken Homeless Families...
Govt Reply:
Yes! Sure, Ok! It was it was an illegal scam but it wasn't unlawful
This settlement is in no way an admission of Liability
No! Of course they don't get an Apology! [ ROBOLIB : "Does not Compute"]
Libs claim it was a Political Stunt & we should direct blame at Hawke & Keating.
Victims still want Apology & answers + Corrupted Scheme exposed.
Labor Bill Shorten, Greens, Unions, Victims are pushing for Royal Inquiry
tbb...notes
Case (1)
Maccas bullies youngest kidz to work extra shifts or lose yer job!
(Maccas) Then tells the kidz not to report more than restricted Student hrs.
[ ROBODEBT ] = maccas #1 Kidz bankroll 100% o/t Tax to the Govt...well durr!
Only Oz Lib Govt would bill the Family for maccas Child Labour Camps!
Case (2)
Disabled / Single parents are exploited, on below award wage with mean Bosses.
Each must record hours worked but are never asked actual income.
All fill out estimated income, simply dream of getting paid once in 3 months if at all.
[ ROBODEBT ] Claws extra lashings of dreamlike Award Wages from poorest.
A bit rough, as the most exploited were in pain, simply working as Govt demanded.
None ever saw a cent of Lib's Pet Robot's deluxe pay extortion demands.
Libs ask to record estimated income never actual earnings for a reason.
Never will Libs [ ROBODEBT ] hunt Bosses avoiding Newstart wages & taxes...
What's even more cruel...
If any disabled person reports being ripped off.
Libs whip disabled for more more more hours until Mutual ratio / hrs is met.
Lib's will never enforce your Boss to cough up a legal wage or back pay!
Lib's system forever penalises disabled for dobbing in their boss.
PS:
tbb was never paid for last 3 months worked.
tbb like every other Oz dad, paid off his daughter's (Macca's) [ ROBODEBT ]
All agree that greedy cowardly Lib's Bully Bosses should be outed in inquiry.
None expect or want a cent of blood money from OZ Libs #1 scum of all time.
Hey Pops, if you've done study of statistics and discovered correlations, IMO I'd expect you to find just that.
how did they deal with it Chook?
Byron has traditionally dealt with it by packing backpackers cheek by jowl into sharehousing.
but that is gone now, so much pressure on housing that even slums are worth big bucks for air bnb or rentals for city escapees.
I'd love to see a Union of Hospitality workers collude and really drive up wages.
Say yeah we'll make your fcuking coffees for $45 an hr or you can do it yr fucking self.
Pete Evans Dropped by Big W for meme with "neo nazi" symbol.
How ironic........ Big W who buy Chinese made goods while China has enslaved indigenous Uighur people into concentration labour camps Virtue signalling. Corporate hypocrisy.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-09/why-stocks-and-housing-are-boomin...
That link from before was really friggen good - printed it out so the kids can read. Well done Ian Verrender. This part in particular, it was just so painful watching our industry get eviscerated as the mining boom and 'dutch disease' went on and the RBA was like 'she'll be right'. Regarding Aussie QE:
"We've shunned the practice until now. And it has cost us dearly.
As the resources boom kicked into full swing during the noughties, the Australian dollar soared to within a whisker of $US1.10.
The economic purists down at the RBA argued at the time that the strong currency was a way of distributing the benefits of the resources boom to ordinary Australians.
Everyone could afford to buy what were once prohibitively expensive imported goods.
In any case, they argued, we were too small a nation to try and fight a currency war.
They were right.
But their inaction decimated our industries, many of which were forced to shift offshore or simply shut down.
Workers were displaced, particularly on the east coast as the economy was hollowed out.
Last Tuesday, the RBA finally pulled on the boots and ran onto a heavily tilted field.
They'll be buying government bonds with a five- to 10-year maturity specifically to weaken the Aussie dollar.
The game may be rigged.
But if everyone is doing it and you're sitting on the sidelines, you've got no chance of winning.
And if it all blows up, everyone will lose."
fr -- aspen started busing workers in and built a small amount of worker housing. but i think it was agreed that neither solved the problem. but that was all from 25 years ago.
the US situation looks different to here. from what outside said, in the US, it is dirt baggers (young adventure nuts) that make up the work force of mountain towns, not traveling backpackers. it seems the cheap immigrant labour doesn't get to those towns.
i guess once the backpackers return to australia, things will get back to normal as far as having workers is concerned. i suppose that even with the now higher property prices, people will be able to make money cramming the backpackers in.
will the backpackers return or is cheap airline travel over?
The game is rigged. the gap between the have and have not's currently taking an exponential leap. ffkn banks, RE agents, developers and their lobbyist scum mates. RE agents are the lowest of the low. LOWEST OF THE LOW. I wish there was a hell because at least I could be content that you cnuts would end up there. savers effectively now gotta pay for the privilege to stash their cash. borrowers being screamed at to over extend. taxpayers will be the ones who pay back the money printing going on. and we all know the only people who pay tax are the bottom feeders silly. fkn rigged.. supposed to be in a fkn recession and in what 3 months bank property forecasts gone from negative ~ >20% to positive >10%...
Aspen offers a limited amount of subsidised housing for workers and it gets snapped up really quickly. Even doctors get it because rent is sky high.
To ensure there's enough workers to run the ski resort, the county has a sales tax that goes towards a world class bus service ferrying people all around the valley. You can finish a late shift behind the bar, walk to the main bus stop and get a ride down the valley (where rents are cheaper) straight away.
Byron is going to have to do something similar. And the new money folk in town are going to cry about subsidised housing massively. They don't want to live next to surf instructors.
Fucking whingers will sook if they have to wait more than 3 minutes for a latte too.
Breaking, today:
https://www.afr.com/politics/nsw-s-plan-to-make-stamp-duty-optional-2020...
paywalled, but is NSW stamp duty to be optional/removed - land tax replacing it? Still looking at this, but land tax sees a yearly amount charged for the value of the house and property? Texas in the US has pretty cheap country property, average land tax per annum 1.83%.
https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/filing/states/texas-property-tax/
Not that rates will be the same, but Bangalow, what's 1.83% of 1.2Million, per annum? $21,960 per annum, lulz
Yeah, there's been some noises in that direction for a couple of months up here VJ. Last I heard they were going to give people a choice between paying stamp duty at time of purchase or paying an ongoing land tax. Is that what the article is suggesting?
Dunno, what is the stamp duty in NSW? Say 1mil property, if it's 40K then so much nicer to pay that once rather than 20K per year over multiple years.
Over time, this would get land values down *maybe*
Won’t get land Values down it’ll just entrench existing disparities.
Allegedly if you’ve already paid stamp duty you won’t have to pay the land tax.
Then again the GST was allegedly going to eradicate stamp duty altogether.
land tax pffft. nothing that airbnb can't remedy for 1-3 weeks. its a dream scenario for a poor property investor suffering from 1st home buyers worsening the housing crisis.
In other words it is an annual subscription for something you already own. The argument the NSW treasurer was putting forward was that stamp duties were an impediment to people buying and selling property. I'd say they were a bit of a hand break on property prices. Take the hand brake off and let's see what happens
an impediment to people buying and selling property.......
thats funny.
Is there anything this clown has touched that hasn't turned to absolute shit?
Carnt!
right when scumo should be taking responsibility for the Robodebt fiasco, the twat is trying to take credit for the end to Victorian lockdown by arranging photo shoots in Melbourne bars.
"Scomo gets on the beers"
FFS Australia, wake up to this absolute fraud.
Canadian farmers have the right idea:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/crude-protest-shows-up-on-google-maps-06334097...
"Despite the size of the penis, Mr Rix’s wife didn’t know about it for a year, though he admitted to CBC his wife hadn’t seen or heard much about it."
...and as Sean Doherty astutely observed, if SmoKo applied a version of RoboDebt to foreign corporations who default on tax payments - the same crime but the other end of town - they'd reap five times the windfall.
Is there any end to this arse-clown's shitfuckery?
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/where-the-bloody-hell-is-it-did-scott-mor...
@craig... Took the word right outta my mouth.
What a complete and utter cunning stunt
Can someone tell me why this treachery isn't public knowledge surely?
Whacking people on welfare has been an obsession for the right of politics for decades. The dole (excluding Covid supplements) hasn’t increased since Howard and he has said he deliberately didn’t increase it to force people off it. People on it are living below the poverty line. Same logic Slow-mo is using now to reduce jobseeker.
Say what you will about "hippies", truth is they figured out a way around the housing system decades ago.
It's called pooling your money and buying land as an MO (multiple occupancy). Building your neighbours houses and SHARING stuff.
Hippies..
you lost me at hippie.
Cmon Bonza, modern hippies have some cutting edge stuff going on... ever heard of perineum sunning? Just allow a little sunlight onto your gooch and feel vitality surge through the mind, body and spirit. The mental sharpness it brings will help you navigate the most complicated of cooperative real estate investments.
"Can someone tell me why this treachery isn't public knowledge surely?"
Have a read of this report from The Australia Institute and it will give a clue why no-one knows. Different saga but same players.
Public servants actively deceiving and covering up corruption
https://www.tai.org.au/content/unredacted-documents-prove-commonwealth-p...
The link is for the summary page but there is a pdf file that drills into more detail further down the page
Rex Patrick seems to be a lonely crusader in trying to flush all this stuff out into the open
Yeah Australia needs a federal ICAC with similar powers to the NSW ICAC to hold these characters to account.
This whole Covid situation plays right into Scumos hands and his ilk.
They couldn't ask for a better diversion.
I would be 100% all in for a Federal ICAC that is non-partisan, has real power, the ability to prosecute and the ability to seize assets as recompense.
These fucking pollies just seem to take the piss.
Absolutely agree, Zen
Ditto
Bravo Beijing. Not for the first time, we can rely on you to direct Australian national interest policy more than we can the local elites that you so successfully bribed for fifteen years. The Chinese embassy has leaked to Domain a list of 14 demands that need to be met to restore relations:
Beijing has issued an extraordinary attack on the Australian government, accusing it of “poisoning bilateral relations” in a deliberately leaked document that threatens to escalate tensions between the two countries.
The government document goes further than any public statements made by the Chinese Communist Party, accusing the Morrison government of attempting “to torpedo” Victoria’s Belt and Road deal, and blaming Canberra for “unfriendly or antagonistic” reports on China by independent Australian media.
“China is angry. If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy,” a Chinese government official said in a briefing with a reporter in Canberra on Tuesday.
So, in order to repair relations we will need to in reverse order:
muzzle our media;
muzzle our Parliament;
stop pushing back against agents of Chinese influence and spies;
close ASPI;
welcome Manchurian Dan and his Chinese agreements;
embrace Chinese virus propaganda;
muzzle our diplomatic corp;
endorse China’s illegal occupation of the South China Sea;
restore Huawei spyware, and
let China buy us outright.
It’s funny isn’t it? All that Bejing is demanding is a return to the way relations were governed pre-2017. What is so revealing about it is how treasonous was the path that we were on, yet back then it was virtually only MB that warning against any of it.
So, we, the Australian people owe Beijing an enormous debt of gratitude for exposing just how blinded we were by its miasma of money. Now we can see clearly and there is no going back to cordial relations with our self-appointed “enemy”.
Don’t sweat it:
Our commodities are fungible and will go elsewhere. There’ll be an adjustment period for price but that will settle down. Iron ore is immune.
The foreign student trade will stop but that will take a lot of pressure off wages and crush loading and, if it proves disruptive, the AUD will fall and we’ll take market share in other countries.
Ditto tourism.
Did we ever really want Chinese pricing Australians out of their own homes?
The terms of friendship with the CCP look a lot less appealing than being its enemy so bring on Australia’s post-China era!
From Macrobusiness
The "I can't believe it's not politics" thread.