Australia and the West have experienced, hand over fist, improvements in GDP and living standards since we moved our manufacturing and resource extraction overseas*.
Even as the working class got sold out**, living standards improved across the board. The rich got richer and so did the middle class - with most Australians joining the middle class, during and, since the post-war era.
We were getting a good deal on our imports, taking more from poorer countries (Global South) than we gave in return, but that has been coming to an end.
The Global North (the First World) has monopolised trade with the Global South, by Capital and demand but also coercion and regime change, which ensured a good deal. But with the rise of the BRIX and China’s Belt and Road initiative, the Global South has more opportunity for equal exchange of goods and services.
While the IMF used third world debt to influence policy change, allowing Western Capital to buy up and exploit industry, Chinese banks are forgiving debts and negotiating mutually beneficial agreements (to the benefit of China).
While Western Capital built limited infrastructure to extract a specific resource, China is investing in not just general infrastructure but education and the creation of a local workforce.
The Global South are trading with each other. They have more options, trade is more competitive - we get less of a deal.
Where previously Australia could afford to give Corporations absurd profits and still have money for the people, this will be less and less possible. Australia needs to re-embrace the policies of the post-war era, which ensured a dignified life, and roll back the last 50 years of neoliberal policy built for an age which no longer exists.
* Not just in the neoliberal era, but all the way back to the start of colonial expansion.
** With manufacturing moving overseas and the denationalisation by various Liberal -and some Labor- governments.
*** consent manufacturing became harder to enforce
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization
[4] https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2377740023500173
CC SA NC
You must log in or # to comment.
Per capita gdp has been dropping for years and productivity gains has been poor in general compared to our other western peers.
The big problem is consolidation of mega corporations that suck all the profits up from smaller businesses and take those profits overseas, paying no tax here,
That, and treating housing like a commodity and not a human right. We need to build more houses and tax large multinationals fairly.
Per capita gdp has been dropping for years and productivity gains has been poor
This is because of the huge population growth due to immigration, as the government use immigrants to prop up the total GDP while ignoring the per capita gdp which is getting worse and worse as you said. The people that have lived here for generations are having less kids because they can’t afford to have them, but the people they import from the third world have no problem having 8 kids while living on government handouts, of which they get more of.
Just bring in more people to spend to prop up the house of cards seems to be their only play, and I genuinely believe they don’t have a way out of the situation. The politicians don’t care because they’re all getting filthy rich so the degradation of living standards won’t ever affect them or their families.
The per capital drops are not the fault of immigrants nor immigration. Immigration normally helps with productivity and gsp growth. As you say it’s the only thing propping up the economy.
Blaming immigrants is misguided and an easy way to foment racism, as per the march for Australia rallies today.
If immigration drops suddenly, due to policy change or otherwise, we’ll all be even worse off and could trigger an even worse recession.
The per capita drop is very much related to immigration, but the main point was that we’re expediting immigration-driven population growth just to keep overall gdp growth at any cost.
More and more immigrants are being brought in, having lots of kids, and working a bare minimum. Doing this lowers the per person gdp but increases total gdp - exactly like we’re seeing.
It’s not a coincidence that migration numbers are at all time highs at the exact same time that these gdp situations are unfolding. Immigration is being used to, among other things, keep total gdp growing so the government can say for amazing the economy is while it’s actual a complete shitshow - exactly like they’re doing.
What will get worse if we pause immigration for 5 years? Total GDP growth. That’s it. The housing market will improve (as in affordability and availability), inflation will slow. What will get worse?
Don’t give me any crap about us needing “skilled migrants” to keep our hospitals and building industries going either, cause we all know that’s a lie.
The per capita affects all aussies at all levels. Thats the problem. If it was just more poor immigrants, people would not be protesting. Immigration increases gdp, not reduces it.
Most immigrants that come are working age without kids. The pay taxes but get very little out from their taxes. Some choose to stay, if they can, and have kids, but if so, those kids are aussies, not immigrants.
It’s not crap about us needing skilled migrants for many industries. We don’t have all the skills we need. However, those skilled workers are also the ones earning more than average, paying more taxes and increasing per capita gdp.
If we turn off the immigrant tap, our education system collapses, as it’s now dependent on exports. Our hospital system is also understaffed and underfunded, so it worsens. Our inflation is generally seen to be under control currently, although it is at risk. Prices won’t drop if inflation drops, prices drop in a recession. That’s what we will have. A housing crash is not how you make housing affordable, look at Ireland, USA, Greece. They’ve all had one, their housing is not affordable, those that couldn’t afford houses when out priced can’t afford them when there is no bank willing to lend.
What will get worse? Our economy. It’s already in recession, except for immigration. So, we will go into actual recession. Those extra numbers propping up retail, gone. Those workers doing jobs aussies won’t, like farm work. Gone, food inflation, not easing.
We don’t need lower immigration numbers. We need services for the number of people entering. New schools, new roads, new hospitals, more public transport and more medium density housing.
So, don’t blame the immigrants, they are here from the policies of both sides of our political system. Blame the libs who didn’t want to,pay for those services and just wanted cheap labor,
I see you didn’t read my last paragraph.
Just here for accuracy, paragraph 3 addresses your last paragraph and matches your tone rather elegantly.
Me: Don’t just regurgitate the old debunked lies
You: Regurgitates the old debunked lies
Also how can you say this:
We need services for the number of people entering. New schools, new roads, new hospitals, more public transport and more medium density housing.
right after saying this?
We don’t need lower immigration numbers.
We only need new schools, new hospitals, new housing, etc because of our huge immigration numbers. If you pause immigration then we can let the countries infrastructure and housing catch up to a point where it’s actually enough for the population we already have. Do you not understand how bringing in 1500 new immigrants per day when we already don’t have enough houses etc only compounds the problem? We’ve brought in nearly 2 million immigrants in the last 2 years so by your logic all these issues should be fixed, shouldn’t they? They’re the ones we need to fix the problems aren’t they? So why are the problems getting worse?
You’re including Nazi talking points after the previous comment warned you about sounding like a Nazi.
Nazi fuck, fuck off.
Dude when you call everything “Nazi” no one cares. Nothing I said is even remotely “nazi talking points”.
Also I have no idea what “warning” you’re talking about lol
it was the specific reference to established people not having as many children that is a common neo-nazi dog whistle, then you assert that immigrants are having 8 kids and living on government handouts. Anecdotally the only people I’ve ever seen having 8 kids and living of government handouts is Shazza down the road, true blue Aussie.
Ah so as expected, you just love using the buzzwords like “dogwhistle” and calling everyone you disagree with a “nazi”. Facts are facts, “home grown” Australians aren’t having as many children, and people from third world countries have more children due to things like lack of sex education, birth control access, and the need for more people to help/work. This isn’t controversial in any way, nor is it an attack on them. It’s just reality.
It is, however, an attack on our government who use these facts for their own agenda, which in this case is GDP growth and keeping the housing market booming at all costs.
Wages have dropped to one third in value in the past 50 years.
It’s wages.
If this happened quickly we would say it’s a crisis but because it’s been slow it’s been easy for employers to blame inflation for losses in living standards.
Join a union.
Meanwhile, Trump/maga are engineering a world economic crash. I suggest people cut costs, even if that means living with extended family, and save.
It’s not just wages. If you start paying everyone higher wages inflation ramps up and you’re back to square 1, only it’s now virtually impossible for costs to ever go back down because wages won’t go back down.
You can’t just put more money out there for people to spend and not cause prices of everything to increase. What you really want is for wage growth for everyone (by law, preferably) to match inflation - no more, no less - and you want inflation to be as low as possible.
Wages benefit workers. Inflation is affected by everyone’s wealth. When the rich make record profits, inflation rises and our wages fall in value. When wages are increased, inflation rises and rich people’s hoards fall in value. The key to successful economic policy is to raise wages faster than rich people’s hoards can grow, thus making wage growth the primary driver of inflation. When hoard growth is the primary driver of inflation, we get our current situation.
Just to tag on to your point higher wages help to GDP and the economy as well by increasing consumption. If the top 1% are getting more money they tend to invest it in lower growth investments (safe investments and high end goods) decreasing the amount of money cycling through the economy. Where as lower incomes spend the increase wages on more goods and services from other people which puts the money back in to movement and increases the number of time the money cycles through the economy.
Where as lower incomes spend the increase wages on more goods and services from other people which puts the money back in to movement and increases the number of time the money cycles through the economy.
And cause inflation.
Japan, of course, doesn’t exist.
Tax the miners, and stop our corrupt politicians walking into fat mining jobs. We’d have everything with that one change.
Is the change in unequal exchange more impactful than Capital accumulation, etc. - I’d like to know. Either way, cost of living is not improving.
I am interested in critical response on whether the increase in productivity will balance out the equalisation of exchange.
But my, unsubstantiated, view is equalisation of trade will increase cost of living even with productivity considered.
We were getting a good deal on our imports, taking more from poorer countries (Global South) than we gave in return, but that has been coming to an end.
???
China is Australia’s largest trading partner. Trade and investment with China is central to Australia’s future prosperity. In 2023, China bought $219 billion of Australian exports, worth 32.5 percent of Australia’s total exports to the world; China is our top overseas market for agriculture, resources and services. Chinese investment in Australia reached almost $88 billion by the end of 2023.
our top exports are to china?
I am referring to unequal trade, - us getting more in return from the Global South (Asia, south america, Africa, etc.) for what we’re giving them.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59881-1
https://globalinequality.org/unequal-exchange/
This is true for our trade with China, but I am specifically speaking generally.
“China’s exchange ratio with the Global North has improved over time. During the 1990s, the exchange ratio was on average 34 to 1. In other words, for every unit of embodied labour, materials, land and energy that China imported from the Global North, they had to export 34 units to pay for it. As of 2015, the ratio had declined to 4 to 1.” https://progressive.international/wire/2025-04-18-china-unequal-exchange-and-the-present-world-historic-juncture/en
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X
Does that answer your question?
none of your links refer to Australia, they just seem to be a general vibe
And if you intensify the exploitation of your domestic resources, you undermine the ecological basis of production. Capital, therefore, requires some kind of “outside”, an external frontier, where it can exploit labour and nature with impunity, and where it can externalize social and ecological costs.
We live in Australia, we are the major exporter of resources?
Not only that but I’m not sure how well we pay Afghanistan for its resources it’ll still be a corrupt islamic shithole.
It feels real simple to be like, the south is poor because of the west, all you need to do to counter this is find a country that was poor and now isn’t anymore. Singapore, Israel, Qatar, etc
Even eastern european countries as they shake off communism and socialism and embrace capitalism have had considerable improvement in quality of life
deleted by creator
Yes, this is a Marxist analysis
oh no wonder i was so confused, I’m like the economics of this are weirdly based on vibes, poor innocent third world countries exploited by the big bad west🥴
Australia does not manufacture most of the goods we consume
Right, if anything this puts us closer to the global south than other first world nations because the majority of our exports are commodities and resources instead of global north high value manufacturing and services
I am arguing, in the medium term, we will not get as good of a deal as we have been historically
With who? Our biggest partners are China, Japan, South Korea and United States, with the exception of China which still scrapes into global south because of its currency manipulations and deliberately keeps it’s workers poor (there’s that communism 😂) … who feels like they’re getting fucked over by our trade deals? The only one I can think of is Trump who we have a negative trade balance with so we’ve not really been a focus at all.
We have a positive trade balance and mainly trade with the global north (outside of china and india), I think I’m focused on Australia because you posted in Australia, you’re focused on a grand marxist theory that explains everything and losing all the details in the picture and thinking maybe of continental europe ?
deleted by creator
The USSR took a backwards country of starving peasants and turned it into the worlds greatest superpower while defeating the Nazi’s
Worlds greatest superpower? This one?
American “Lend-Lease” support sent to the USSR not only tipped the scales in Eastern Europe but enabled the victory on the Russian Front.
Assisting the Soviet war effort American Lend-Lease eventually transferred over $11 billion dollars of goods to Soviet Russia—roughly the equivalent of $250 billion today. Those shipments included 400,000 vehicles, 14,000 aircraft, 13,000 tanks, 8,000 tractors, 4.5 million tons of food, and 2.7 million tons of petroleum products, as well as millions of blankets, uniforms, and boots, and 107,000 tons of cotton
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/lend-lease-eastern-front
I assume you’ll be the first in line to thank America :D
You also forgot to mention this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933
Major factors included the forced collectivization of agriculture as a part of the First Five-Year Plan and forced grain procurement from farmers. These factors in conjunction with a massive investment in heavy industry decreased the agricultural workforce.[11] It is estimated that 5.7[9] to 8.7[10][11] million people died from starvation across the Soviet Union.
Oopsie woopsie 😂 bloody hell that’s so bad though, so glad communism died out
I also have no idea why you’d use a failed state as an example of just how great marxism is, I guess it’s slim pickings when economic reality hits economic idealism, also funny how literally all the break away soviet states had popular revolutions away from communism and none of them have any intention of going back
It’s for the return to Australian values, the socialist ones of the post war era. An era which the baby boomers grew up in and then preceded to gut for their profit
Most Australians are doing pretty alright, in the context of the world we have a super high quality of living, we live like kings, unlimited food, entertainment, access to the worlds knowledge, we live a life unrivalled, the biggest protest we had recently was for… Palestine lol? a place a million miles away which has nothing to do with us
The biggest problem is housing which is largely because again, we live like kings, more single people living in 2 and 3 bedroom houses/apartments than ever before, many elderly and simply holed up in massive 4-5+ bedroom houses by themselves due to stamp duty making it uneconomical to downsize
You seem to be solving a problem that largely isn’t there
deleted by creator
Trade with China is essential to Australia, don’t get me wrong, the profit of the trade has, and will, change.
The cost of living won’t fall unless we have a recession, a biiiiiig one, with massive unheard of deflation of like 25-30% to get prices back to where they should be.
The government won’t let that happen though, and they’d rather create a shitload more inflation by printing money and opening the immigration floodgates even more.
unless we have a recession, a biiiiiig one, with massive unheard of deflation of like 25-30% to get prices back to where they should be.
I think you’ll find that historically recessions/depressions allow the rich to get richer, as they can buy the assets cheaply that the poor have to sell off to stay alive.
Unless you have a house, and cash and liquid assets now to let you live at least 10 years with no income, you won’t last through what you wish for.
To be fair, if you’re already on unemployment, queuing up for bread isn’t much of a change. It’s the middle class who do have to sell of their homes that lose the most. If you already have nothing to lose, then nothing changes.
the middle class who do have to sell of their homes
Exactly. So, they become poor.
I’m roughly defining anyone who ‘owns a house, and cash and liquid assets now to let you live at least 10 years with no income’ as who could survive financially, and anyone without that - welcome to the poor club.
You know who the winners are.
Why wish for that?
I don’t care if the rich get richer if that’s what it takes for the price of living to get better.
Like I said, it won’t happen anyway - the government won’t let it, and that’s why the cost of living is never going to get better.
I don’t care if the rich get richer if that’s what it takes for the price of living to get better.
Interesting. How does it help if the price of living improves, but you have no home, no job wnd you spent your assets on ‘cheap’ food and rent?
Do you think that … everyone that isn’t rich…just loses their job in a recession?
No, but I have empathy for those that will suffer the most.
I sure hope they open up immigration; there are thousands of trans people in the US who need somewhere safe to live, and we’ve boundless plains to share.
Hmu
