According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the metric real per capita national disposable income is “considered a good measure of progress for living standards because it is an indicator of Australians’ capacity to purchase goods and services for consumption”.
So, here’s what Australia’s RDI per capita looks like since 2008 versus the United States experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s:
Yes, eight years in, we find ourselves at almost exactly the same point as the US during the Great Depression. Take that in for a moment.
Now, there is a large difference. We did not, thank God, experience the very large dip in our fortunes first, so that is a national trauma that we’ve been spared. We were also spared the large and acute hit to activity and labor markets of the Great Depression.
But our great stall in living standards is far from over. We are very likely to see no further growth in RDI per capita for almost as long again as we already have. The reason why is that the primary driver of Australia’s income depression is the falling terms of trade and they are only halfway through:
So, it is very likely that by the time the Great Australian Income Depression is over, it will have delivered a far worse hit to standards of living than the US experience of the Great Depression did from 1929 to 1945.
Moreover, here’s a chart of wider countries RDI per capita experience of the Great Depression:
Nearly all of them are similar or better than Australia’s experience at a comparable point in the business cycle.
This is not doomsaying. These are rock hard economic facts and when you accept them as true it opens up a whole new way of understanding why Australia’s political economy has disintegrated so spectacularly in the last few years.
No politician has told the truth about the above. No central banker has uttered the dark words. No bureaucrat, no banker, no corporate leader, no bank economist has broached the subject. Perhaps one or two media commentators has canvassed it in passing, only to be howled down by the thundering Pasconomic dunderheads.
What you see in the above charts is a gigantic miss on Australian expectations, an historic shunt lower in our countrymen’s well-being. Yet they are being asked to carry that burden alone. Neh, worse, if they pipe up and suggest that all is not as it should be, their heads are torn off by a Propertocratic class that is desperate to protect its investment in sentiment-driven housing assets.
That denial has bred such tortured confusion, angst and disgust in Australian households that every government at every level is at risk of being booted from power at all times.
Such is the deserved fate of a leadership class of liars, carpet baggers and utter failures.
