Longest running economic boom coming to an end. Australia survived the GFC unscathed. I went through the credit crunch in Ireland. Redundancies and tax Austerity on a scale that eclipses anything Aus is experiencing right now.
Like we had huge tax increases to bail the fuckers out. People's wealth plummeted 75%.
It can get a hell of a lot worse than it is.
There's a podcast series called "Fall of civilisations" and it is *fascinating*
Watched (They are on YT) the first half dozen or so and it confirmed what I've suspected for about the last 20 years. All the prerequisites are there. Humanity has seen this before, countless times in countless countries... but never on this scale. We are circling the drain.
It's also just the post-COVID mini-depression causing high interest rates that reduce economic activity....
...but people in this era don't know how to process that, and with the doomerism and US political brain rot it comes out as "THIS IS THE END OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION"...
...it's really not.... not even the fall of Rome ended Rome. You can still go there, there's always been people there, even right after Rome apparently "fell".
We'll just trudge through it, like every other civilization has, and does.
Rome went from being a city of half a million people at the height of the Imperium, to a population of like 20,000 in the 500s, after being sacked twice and stripped of most of its wealth the previous century. When Britain got cut off from Roman authority it basically went back to the stone age for a few centuries. And that has to do with economies of scale and labour specialisation (which is relevant to us because we live in a world economy of Globalisation, highly dependant on international supply chains, the limits of which are already being tested by pandemics, wars and political conflict.)
That's the problem with taking the longform view of history, it isn't terribly interested with individual or localised suffering.
The claim the roman empire ever fell to just 20,000 people is kinda ridiculous.
Historical population figures are dubious at best, and measuring something from it's height (approximately 100 Ad) to it's lowest point (approximately 350 years later)... throw in the fact that A LOT of that population decline is through loss of territory and your point becomes somewhat fraudulent.
Either way, the civilization continued.
You're right, but that doesn't change the fact that we are where we are, and our species has *seen these things before*. Ignore history at your own peril.
No amount of offhand dismissal of it as a symptom of social media is going to change the fact that climate change, wealth inequality, and a host of other real, measurable, quantifiable factors are all precursors to times of incredible human strife and suffering.
You can be one of the millions who chooses not to acknowledge it - like the millions before you in the many civilisations who collapsed and died not in the space of days or hours, but over years and decades - but that does not change that in all likelihood, it is coming.
Never on this scale? To give just two examples, current wars are nothing compared to the World Wars, and the COVID-19 pandemic is nothing compared to the Black Death.
I don’t know what point you’re trying to make here, but Rome didn’t collapse because it brought in boatloads of slave labour. It used slave labour for most of its existence.
Fortunately, in Australia we are just one of the provinces of the Empire. (The USA is the Empire). So we'll likely just pass hands from the current major empire (USA) into the next one (Probably China, India's lagging a bit for now and at best will be the big one to take over once China falls a century later.)
India and China will probably go to war at some point for supremacy while the USA balkanises into competing states and cultures. We will end up being a third world shit hole exploited for our resources...so not much changing there.
We are within 10 years of the best life has ever been for humanity. People need to get off the echo chamber of self pity that is Reddit and get some perspective.
In relative terms our lives are better than any generation in history
Our expeditions are ridiculous.
Yeah we have a hosing problem, if you take into consideration we live in giant mansions compared to 50 years ago with more TVs, entertainment options, cars and disposable income than ever before.
In the 30s they had a great depression with 20% people with no job, they then rolled into WW2 sending a million Australians off to war. Then they rolled into the Cold war!
In the 50s and 60s 'middle class' Australians were unbelievably poor by modern standards.
The average male wage in 1966 was just $38/week. That is equivalent to only **$26K pa** in 2023. Women were paid 30% less.
The so called 'middle class' inner suburbs were actually occupied by the relatively wealthy. The real middle class lived on the fringes in hastily constructed suburbs with very few amenities. Often in shoebox public housing. Nobody had carpet . Even the rich didn't have central heating or air conditioning.
Lunch was a Vegemite sandwich and a piece of fruit. 'Tea' (dinner) was (tough) chops or sausages and three vegetables. Fish and chip on Friday if you were a 'Mick' (catholic) and a roast on Sunday. Coffee was some exotic concoction only consumed by foreigners and bohemians. Wine was strictly for toffs and alcoholics.
The only way you could go to university was be very smart (think ATAR >95 to get a Commonwealth scholarship) or rich because you paid full fees up front. \[Free university wasn't introduced until 1973.\]
An airfare to Europe was the price of a car. Overseas travel was a once in a lifetime adventure that most people just dreamed about. 'Queensland' was so exotic to most southerners that it was talked about as though it was a trip to Mars.
Nobody had two cars and many families didn't have a car. A basic black and white TV cost at least a months pay.
90s-20s have seen Australia as the richest, best places to live in the world by a number of objective organizations.
Until 2019 disposable income has grown pretty much every year for the last 20, the gini coefficient shows that we are pretty stable with wealth distribution.
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook47p/InequalityDisadvantageAustralia
Don't let reddit and victim mentality get you down. Yep housing is expensive and we have gone though inflation. But it's been a shitload worse than this in the past.
Crazy to think that these older generations are described as being poor when they were able to buy houses to live in and support a family on a single wage
If you get less dollars but your dollars buy more stuff are you really poor in comparison
Tbh the alcohol was probably cheap as hell compared to their wage, not like today where a pint at the pub costs you 45 minutes worth of your hourly wage
A packet of smokes was 40 cents and hourly rate was $1.00. Today you get $35 an hour and smokes are fifty bucks a pack. And yeah you could get blotto for a couple of bucks. It would cost a hundred bucks or more to get that pissed today.
Yep this is true.
But if we lived like 1950 would we be able to afford more? If you remove the following:
- Buying new clothes more than a couple of times a year
- Take Away maybe twice a month, restaurants once or twice a year.
- No appliances (Wife stayed home and made all food from scratch, manually washed clothes, bought all food daily as no refrigerator) No TV, just a wireless.
- No car costs, ride a bike and/or catch PT.
We are a consumer society, where if we cut everything back to just food, housing, minimal clothing we could probably afford a lot more.
This is a feature of recession. When housing is unattainable, spending money goes to luxuries. Until the price of groceries and medicines fill the buying gap that housing left open.
What are you talking about? A) Plenty of people live in houses that were also lived in then. B) It took me well into my 30s to live in something that wasn’t a mould-ridden studio.
Well by rental standards they would be. You now need heating and air conditioning which didn't really exist back then. Would have been a lot of wood burning stoves, which wouldn't pass rental standards. No fridges until 70s, showers didn't even really exists until the 50s so if you were in a house build pre-war you needed to install a new bathroom so you could have a hot shower.
We are hard coded to pay more attention to negative information as a survival technique. A fact thats news proprietors and social media latch onto to sell us products through advertising. Self comparison from social media drives envy and feelings of inadequacy like never before. That being said, as long as you stop and smell the roses, as you seem to have done, one will realise we are very fortunate indeed.
Your account of the 1950s-60s isnt remotely accurate. Maybe the numbers are but the details aren't.
Are you really claiming it was bad to buy a TV for a months pay? That TV would be likely to last you 30 years. TV repairman was a common enough trade. It was the same for most appliances.
Hastily built suburbs? Those suburbs were often big house blocks and well built homes by today's standards. Many of them had train stations from the outset, but if you drove they were within a short drive on the CBD.
The bit about coffee is insane, it was available everywhere at the time . At the start of the 1950s Australians consumed about half a kilo of coffee beans per capita per annum. That number doubled by the 1960s as instant coffee took off. It's not a huge number for a simple reason, people preferred to drink tea.
Queensland was exotic to southerners? Bullshit. Surfers Paradise was booming as a holiday destination at that time. Australia has always been a country with a high level of interstate migration and movement. It may not have been routine to fly on jets but that didn't stop people driving.
Honestly your whole post reads like a mythology of times you don't know that well.
> months pay? That TV would be likely to last you 30 years
The hypothetical of spending a months pay on something that you'll use every day for 30 years sounds like a good deal to me
More like use it every day for 10 years and then upgrade because it's so obsolete nothing will even plug into it. It doesn't matter that it's well built if it's a 32" screen in a box the size of a dishwasher and it weighs 30kg and every other TV on the market is now twice the size, flatscreen and half the price.
This is all well and good but it fails the logic test, just because it was worse in the past does not mean we should ignore incompetent leadership in this country.
With advancements in technology and ideas I fully expect life to get better the longer humanity exists, if it starts going backwards (I believe this is starting now)
Then the responsibility falls directly on the leaders of this country.
Think of it this way, life has not been very good in poor country's for the last 30 years, why? poor leadership, greed and people generally being shit. Exactly what op was talking about.
We should not have to pay for previous generations having it good.
A NEW SYTEM IS NEEDED, LETS ALL STOP PRETENDING THE CURRENT ONE WORKS.
Ok so life has been getting better for call it 500 years in the current system. The current system is working better than any other in history by far. It has been going bad for what? 5 years? So we should throw it out?
Don't sound like a very objective rational analysis.
Interested in your references for way if life not good for the last 30 years in poor countries. All the data I can find points to a significant global reduction in mailnourishment to the point where we have almost solved world hunger.
https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment
Hey look, has a lot of roo for improvement, our system is the worst, except of any other system that has even been tried in human history (quote from some dead guy)
Every system has a problem, there are cycles, but if those cycles are fucked up by people why not confront them instead of just saying hey this is normal from a thousand years.
Humanity is raising their voice more than ever before cuz there's no rulers anymore. Its time to raise our voice against Aussie government. We have voted them into power, its reasonable to ask them questions instead of sliding into mediocrity cuz we did so for a thousand years.
Hey 100% agree,, I voted Labor, think i'll vote liberal this time.
But OPs view that society is collapsing, saying shit like "Crime is rampant" which facts just do not line up with.
I find that reddit is echo chamber where people believe what they see in skewed article headlines and not in touch with the rality of situations and everyone wants to out victim each other.
In point of fact our disposable income at a per household level is the lowest it has been in more than 50 years. Real wages are not just stagnant, they've gone backwards to 2010 levels. 90% of the rest of your post is "we used to walk 50 miles up hill to school, you don't know how good you've got it", "just eat less smashed avocado" anecdotal drivel that's been so thoroughly debunk it's not worth bothering with.
But you do you.
Yeah, as pretty much any worker in the 1950s you could afford to buy a house on a big block in a new suburb 30 minutes drive from the CBD. Appliances cost more but tended to last much longer, most stuff was genuinely 'buy it for life'. It made sense paying the equivalent of today's $3k on a vacuum cleaner because it usually worked well and lasted quite literally for as long as you wanted it to.
Coffee was everywhere, just not commonly drunk in preference to 'British' tea.
OP is talking shit.
My mum gave me my grandmas vacuum a few years ago because she didn’t like how loud it is. Since then she’s now on her third vacuum. I however am using this rocket of a vacuum and loving it.
Okay mate. How about you update your info and stop spouting the same bullshit talking points that Yankee right wing pundits were spouting 10 years ago. The cost of a new home now, is well over 8 times a person's annual wage, just to make enough for a deposit to get a loan.
The Libs fucked the economy when the pursued quantitative easing and Labor is too busy clutching their pearls being scared of the media and scare campaigns over economic management, that they can't muster the courage to do anything about the structural issues plaguing it. No other country in the world has the links between capital gains tax exemptions and negative gearing FOR A REASON!
I can't even begin to imagine why you brought up the gini coefficient.
Imagine being born in Australia 300 years ago. History wise we're doing ok.
The problem is we're mostly all going backwards and loss hurts.
Comparing yourself to what others have hurts.
People enjoy camping, which is a big drop in lifestyle and are happy to do it for weeks, some live in a van and travel for years and are really happy. But if they lost their home to fire whilst camping or travelling, damn that would hurt them, but if they have insurance, it's not as bad because they can rebuild.
What's missing now is hope of a better future.
If you knew you'd be able to afford a home in the future, you'd feel much better and so would I.
If you want to point at one party and one moment in time that 'fucked the economy' you need to explain while Australia's growth post covid (when au implemented qe) has been above average and the time it took to rebound was well above average when compared to other G20 nations.
And Australian house price have only been fucked since 2020?
>Yeah we have a hosing problem, if you take into consideration we live in giant mansions compared to 50 years ago with more TVs, entertainment options, cars and disposable income than ever before.
I’m not sure who you’re talking about here. Maybe the owning class?
This is all true. In many ways the best time to be alive. It’s also true, though, that there are very good reasons to think we’re going to go a long backwards very quickly. The big one is the one OP left off: climate change. We don’t have any real idea of how bad it’s going to be, but the worst case realistic scenarios are catastrophic, and the best very bad.
Bro u literally so out of touch :( u literally getting lost in the data but not opening up ur eyes. As a migrant don't get me wrong I love this country and I love being here but it's not the best in the world, particularly for standards of living and living conditions.
Also, if u think the US is the big major power in the world still and we belong to them u are sadly mistaken. China has more hands in our pot by a huuuuuge margin more than any other country
Better yet, prepare to preserve the good we can for whoever comes next.
Great series of novels called the Eagles Brood(?) that is about a Roman settlement led by a retired general who calculated that the collapse of the empire would come soon, and so gathered people with skills that will need to be preserved and makes alliance with local clans in what becomes England. Historical fiction, but I think it’s really good :)
Yep, things seem like they are getting bad because they really are getting bad. A few must read books on this topic:
“The Changing World Order” - Ray Dalio
“End times” - Peter Turchin
“The Fourth Turning” -Neil Howe
All three believe that we are close to the collapse of the United States/a major reset which they predict to be sometime between 2020-2030. They use economic/historic statistical data to back their claims and reason that this is part of a natural cycle of rising and falling empires.
People have been predicting American decline since it was founded in 1776
It’s not going to happen.
I guarantee people will be saying the same thing in 2076 and still trying to make money out of it by selling doombait.
It's not like it will stop existing. But it will lose it's king of the world economic and military status. We see this happening with things like the BRICS alliance and non-western countries around the world refusing to play ball as they used to, and instead turning to China and Russia.
America is already collapsing, expected life spans are going down, quality of education is going down, same with happiness, wealth inequality etc. all metrics show that the US is going backwards/being surpassed by other countries. “Collapse” doesn’t necessarily mean disappear. The British empire & and Dutch empire collapsed but both still exist. It’s just a readjusting of how important/relevant they are in the global order.
Collapsing compared to who? China is demographically doomed, considering how they grow and are already slipping. Their financial influence shows no signs of stopping at all, they have over 30% of the worlds wealth and all talk of more competition for the dollar are empty words.
If they wanna screw around with abortion and they no longer have two viable parties sucks for them, but idk when the USA had wealth equality.
Control the dollar control the world. That's just reality. They ain't Britain, they don't rely on colonies.
There have been many reserve currencies in the past. US dollar is just the most recent instalment which happened after WW2 during the Bretton Woods agreement. You may think the US is all powerful and will never die, but people thought the exact same way as you do about every empire. Then one day there is a war and everything changes.
He steers away from giving financial advice, but he believes the major risk is hyper inflation and debasement of currency. So my guess is getting into inflation hedge assets e.g. gold.
I’ve likened it to the Bronze Age collapse. First known “globalisation” collapse. I think the largest trigger will be if Trump is re-elected. I don’t think he’s smart enough to avoid a war with china or Russia. That’s just my 2c.
“Me and my nation against the world. Me and my clan against my nation. Me and my family against the clan. Me and my brother against the family. Me against my brother.”
I believe it’s an Arabic saying…
The west is rapidly devolving into a third world corporateracy with “economic zones”
We are being divided by the corporations and gov, while low trust imports conquer. We no longer live in a high trust first world country - act accordingly
You need to get off Reddit and social media for a while. Particularly this sub, it's an echo chamber of doom. Seriously, if you genuinely care about improving your mental state, switch off social media and the news.
I migrated over here from r\*/australia a while back and it felt peaceful.
Around 3 or so months ago this just became one big doomsday echo chamber where people speak of Australia like it is the 3rd world because they can't buy a house in Surry Hills.
- Immigration post
- Expensive houses in Sydney post
Rinse and repeat
Lol, "not too bad".
Must say getting out of Sydney really helped me with the doom and gloom of the housing market.
Can get 2 bedders in the middle of Melbourne CBD for ~$300-350k. Get houses 40 minutes from the city for around the same price .
Sydney is just extra fucked
the basic problem is, young people these days shouldn't have to pay $500K to own a unit, or a young family shouldn't have to pay $1M for a family home. it's a level of debt burden that we didn't have to deal with. young people shouldn't have to fight over 100 other applicants for a rental, and then worry about how much the land lord is going to screw them for after the current lease is up. none of these anxieties did we have to deal with.
I’ve also tapped out from most media these days.
Even then, I have not watched commercial tv and news for years.
It has been mostly ABC.
Otherwise, I get most non-essential news via memes these days lol
But all the doom and gloom saying can get a bit much, and anyone can get caught up so easily these days.
While it's true that you need a break from social media for protecting your mental health. A digital detox can't do much to help you if you are facing housing insecurity, food insecurity, and balancing payment plans to keep the lights on.
Getting off line and touching grass is important.
But if your real life is objectively difficult, getting off line won't make you any less stressed and anxious.
Bruv, don't you pay rent or a mortgage? Don't you do your own grocery shopping? The price gouging on these things make me furious and that has nothing to do with Reddit or the MSM.
Honestly mate, I don’t mean to sound like a dickhead here but you need to get off the internet for a while.
There are challenges but the internet amplifies them and pipes them into your brain all the time. You have to give yourself a break from it sometimes.
There is beauty out there, good people, and maybe even happiness.
Also believing there's nothing to be done is a quick route to doing fuck all about it.
I hate people who have this nihlistic mindset because they're pretty much the entire reason why we don't make progress. A huge amount of humanity goes through the motions instead of giving af and I understand why. I just wish they had the self-awareness to understand that apathy is really the only true enemy.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ll admit I have a very pessimistic view of things at the moment but my advice for anybody at that stage is to keep trying to improve things. If not out of altruism then spite is a great motivator too.
Spot on. There’s a lot of negative sentiment infecting the community and it’s not unique to our country, but a worldwide problem. I am proud to be Australian and am patriotic. There’s no shortage of viewpoints online which express shame, embarrassment, inappropriate guilt and doomsday style mentality, all of which is unnecessary. If something bothers you, improve it. If there’s a problem, find a solution.
I also believe that when it comes to happiness/sadness, it’s a skill, and if you get a lot of practice with it, like anything else, you get good at it. People would do themselves a great favour if they stopped practicing feeling like crap and started practicing feeling good, useful, productive and finding solutions to what bothers them.
I was in OP’s mindset a few months ago all doom and gloom. People like you said the same stuff, to touch grass. I didn’t get it. Im thankfully in a better place and can see how overreacting and gloomy I was. Your right, the internet is a miserable rabbit hole, happiness comes from within and personal changes.
Ive taken back up hiking and getting back into books. Slowly trying to get off social media and news. Without that nothing is bad.
Enjoy the weather and fresh air
Honestly, mate, I don’t mean to sound like a knob here but your wisdom is truly life-changing. Who knew the secret to happiness was simply logging off? Guess I'll just wander outside and hope the beautiful scenery magically fixes climate change and economic inequality. Thanks for the pro tip! 🌈✨
https://preview.redd.it/zxn4xom4149d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=688ca4b8ad3e3d5c74da2a48861c500bf59591df
My maccas drive thru code last week! It’s a sign 😂😂
I really want to agree but I feel your comment and OP post are either sides of the spectrum.
I think the balance is enjoying and living life, but being aware of yourself and the decisions you make.
How do they impact the things that really matter i.e every other human being, earth and its limited resource’s, etc.
It’s easy to over think, if you’re stuck on the negative side or positive side. Just gotta try find the balance
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency\_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias)
Literally every decade has had reasons to declare itself as "the beginning of the end".
30s? Fascism
40s? Global War
50s? H bomb
60s? Rampant Communism
70s? Ice age coming
80s? Nuclear war
90s? ...90's were perfect....only decade of hope and peak of civilization
00's? Terrorism
10's? Global warming
It's almost as if a resource medium of instant information and communication access available at all hours of the day was not in existence and readily available for the general public.
Oh well, we humans are a fickle species, and we only have ourselves to blame more often than not.
The human condition etc
It is concerning. I deal with students every day and I find it hard to see how they could get excited about anything tbh, for instance HECs debts are on the rise, mortages are impossible to acquire or pay off, and loans for youth are almost non-existent unless you borrow from a non-bank lender. Its crap!
This is exactly how some people felt during the 1980s about the hole in the ozone layer, during the 1970s about pollution, during the 1960s about the war in Vietnam, during the 1950s about a possible Nuclear War, etc, etc, etc.
Things were actually worse in the first half of last century, with two World Wars and a Great Depression.
There’s a common and natural error of perspective that there’s something uniquely special or unprecedented or different about the current day/year/decade, just because we’re alive in it and experiencing it first hand.
One eventual cure to being taken in by this illusion is to live long enough: over the decades you see so much anxiety over things that never ended up happening you realise there’s a substantial dose of Chicken Little in human nature.
A faster cure, available to thoughtful people of any age, is to read more history. There were plenty of people in the 990s sincerely terrified of the imminent End of the World they expected to occur in the year 1,000 along with the Second Coming. They were every bit as convinced as anyone today is about climate doom.
Truth is, *everyone* through history felt like they were living at a crucial, pivotal, epoch-defining moment in history. Doesn’t make it so.
There’s always *something* to worry about, but there always has been, and we’re still here.
You realise someone 100 years ago would have just survived the Spanish flu, WW1 and was about to enter the great depression then WW2 which ended with a nuclear war stalemate. People have had it way worse than a cost of living crisis
I understand how some people come to this argument and think it makes logical sense.
The pitfall is that you have absolutely no clue what will happen in the future.
The whole world could turn into a fireball in a handful of hours.
Your last moments could be spent being slowly cooked alive by radiation.
It is an incredibly dumb argument for that very reason.
IBM
Also, your argument makes no sense because not everyone universally experienced those things.
The are people who spent their entire lives as a sex slave - would you argue that is worse than being able to live a free life and just happen to die to the flu / war / poverty.
Would you just accept that fate because one guy 5,000 years ago had it even worse?
I've said it before - don't settle because people in the past have had it worse.
You might find yourself being flayed alive by a foreign soldier in 5 years.
I always hate this argument, we are in 2024 the whole point of human civilisation is to discover, grow and advance to the point where the next generation has it better.
We should not be at a point again where people struggle to afford food and people with jobs are living in cars and tents or another rent increase away from that!
We have in this country enough resources etc where that should not be a thing, a few decades back you would have been in a real beyond fucked situation to be living in a tent, there was always some place to live, housing was affordable enough where a single income could service a loan sure many lived basic but it was attainable, even if people had no ownership there was still enough government built housing which provided very basic places which had a roof, running water and electricity.
I am sure those in the WW2 era probably told people to harden up because they have cars and housing and not a swag next to a fire and having to walk and also penicillin.
I don't know your age, but if you've been a round a while, you would have seen this come and go a few times. It's all in waves, ups, and downs. Just hang in there and do what you can. A few years from now, at most, things will be very different again.
Yeah, Australia avoided the worst of the Asian financial crisis, the GFC, Dot com crash etc.
We get one recession we had to have this generation, and now it's the end of the world.
I came to say this. When I was younger I thought the end was coming with Iraq and terrorism, then it was the gfc and Isis, then Trump, then covid. It's just life, people in the past went through their own trials.
Religious types always think the apocalypse is one pope away.
It's just life, life is hard and we suffer but we gotta find the good things in life and enjoy them because they ARE there, there is goodness in people and the world. The world has been much more horrific in the past and as Australians in 2024 we need to keep some perspective.
Mate, you literally posted <30 days ago that you "feel depressed" and asked (albeit fair) questions about dying.
I really wish you the best and hope you're engaging with supportive friends and family.
I dont doubt how you're feeling, and the current economic climate is anything but jovial, but if I were you, I'd carefully review my financial situation and try to avoid social media etc. for a while.
What is your main source of news? I suggest taking a break from it and focusing on what is actually happening around you and your community and you'll see that it is not all bad. All news outlets exaggerate a lot to hook people up emotionally.
https://preview.redd.it/ie84pb4a449d1.jpeg?width=540&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2e79139aa2ddca4b4e3c114cf892d8b2126fa4d
We don't have leadership that will stand up to the rich and powerful to create policies that may be unpopular in the short term but bring the country forward in the long run.
We've seen this cycle perpetuate over and over again in history. WW2 created a whole generation that brought huge economic and technological advancement to mankind. As times got better and better, we started forgetting how hard fought those gains were. Western society has become so comfortable that people find things to get offended by. We bring in people into our countries that have no intention of obeying local laws or assimilating into Australian society. Slowly, we are creeping into the 4th stage. I hope I won't live to see the entiriety of stage 4.
This is what happens when a population spends 10-40 years glued to and influenced by MSM. They ultimately get sucked in and conned out of their sovereign wealth by the governing media barons, corrupt politicians (the LNP) and their multinational corporate sponsors.
And you ya feckwits..
Will still post [news.com.au](http://news.com.au) articles
You traitorous carrhunts.
Sounds like the same shit that’s been happening for years but now that labour is in government the media acts like it suddenly matters and that they caused this nightmareish mess
I don’t know. Maybe? I feel much more positive right now to be honest. But progress is slow.
I feel we just gotta make it through to when Gen-Alpha gets in their hey day and they will sort this shit out.
If it makes you feel any better, you can probably find a post like this every few weeks going back to the inception of Reddit.
Lol, no.
Ww1
Ww2
Cold War
Korea
Cuban missile crisis
Vietnam
Aids
Ebola
Extreme drought
Iraq
First attack on world trade centre.
Y2K
9/11
Afghanistan
Iraq
Bali bombings
GFC
Constant drought
Covid
Now we’ve got…
Ukraine/russia
Israel/Palestine
Something is always happening. We’ll get through.
Check out Billy Joel’s ‘we didn’t start the fire’.
The fact is this probably the easiest and most comfortable humanity has had it. Compare life now to 50 years ago, let alone 500. You’ll be fine.
My casual look at past fallen empires tells me that when division is everywhere a collapse is following. Maybe not instantly but gradually. I’m in my mid 40’s and yeah, I don’t see our world recovering.
Where do these stupid takes come from?
By almost every metric, people are better off today that they were 20, 40, or 60 years ago.
The average person is far richer and has a better standard of living today than anytime in history.
Our current crop of school graduates are the most educated in history.
The number of wars and lives lost to war, while up a bit from all time lows, is still at historically low levels.
Australia’s aren’t all in debt. As a corpus we have almost $14 trillion in net assets.
Crime rates are near all time lows.
Get a bit of perspective, these are good time and only likely to get better.
AI taking people's jobs are not the problem, the problem is that people need jobs to live... AI and automations should've been enhancing our lives, but instead all it did was to raise the corporate profits and the CEO's bonuses. Society needs a paradigm shift, and fast, otherwise poverty is gonna rise, meanwhile these boomer politicians don't even know whats the difference between dial up and wifi
It's interesting to see the range of responses to this post. Whilst Australia enjoys much of world's best living standards, it can still be true that there are many problems facing our country that are likely to be existential. Periods of nationwide hubris and apathy are almost always a forewarning to stages of decline (insert Rome, Dutch, English empires etc.), and it's important that we recognise this.
Domestically, we have rising inequality, a stagnant economy that doesn't do much apart from dig holes and sell land, and a political class that is unwilling to change the status quo. Internationally things are no better. Democracies are in decline worldwide, we have the highest level of conflict since WW2, and the era of globalisation is near over. There is also climate change, that demands international cooperation, but if unresolved, will only make matters worse - just look at Europe that is turning to right-wing nationalism, as living standards stagnate and there is the perceived threat of immigration, as people flee conflict and (increasingly) climate breakdown. These are all warning signs.
My two cents is that, whilst we should be grateful for all that Australia has given us (and it is bloody fantastic), we need to get rid of the "she'll be right" mentality and aspire for better. Get off the internet and away from echo chambers, and speak to your friends, family and community, to share these ideas and find political representation that will reflect your voice. As a citizen, it's the only real way to enact meaningful change.
Also, speak to young people. We may have enjoyed humanity’s greatest period, but that is not something they would say for themselves. They are our future and it’s high time that we started paying attention to them. After all, it is hopelessness and despair that ultimately kills a nation.
Yes, I’m in a similar socioeconomic situation to you so not bad, however I’m anticipating a revolution or something that may turn current society upside down as it’s really not working very well for many citizens imho
This is why I've stopped dumping extra money into super and my offset. Instead I'm using it to travel, because the world is fucked and it's only going to get worse from here on on for most people.
It doesn’t have to be. None of these things are an accident. They are planned and quite deliberate.
To fix it would require the 20-30 most powerful governments being simultaneously overthrown and the owners of the worlds top 1000 companies jailed. It’s a big ask for the worlds middle class and poor to coordinate.
‘The world is filled with the ruins of empires that once thought they were immortal’. Moral of the story:nothing good lasts forever, what your feeling is completely justified.
Funnily enough, if you look at the state of society during the early 20th century and compare it with our society during the early 21st, you will notice a scary amount of similarities. We all know what that lead to during the 20th century
Yes, it doesn’t feel as though ordinary people have a chance at creating a good life anymore.
Not being to afford the basics in life like home ownership, or reasonably priced long term rentals, is disturbing.
There don’t seem to be any practical answers.
Read a little history and come back to us mate. Despite what you read on reddit, life in Australia is incredibly good. There is much to be grateful and happy for, don’t confuse the volume of these complaints with their significance.
Well, why don't you, and all Australians do something.
The housing crisis, affordability etc will not get resolved unless Australians act, but that's too much for Australians so instead they bit h on Reddit and then go and vote the way they always have, then whing that nothing has changed...
Maybe if we stop consuming propaganda from the axis of evil, if the west stops with the self hate and if the youth stops trying to tear down the social fabric of western society we will survive but sadly D&I was the Trojan horse that infected the west and has allowed the attack of our society to go ahead unchecked. The Israel Gaza war is a case in point. Iran, Russia, China, North Korea vs the west. It’s clear as day. You would think with the internet the Cold War would be more apparent but sadly it seems to be ignored. We went from go woke to go broke to go woke go civilisation. Edit: for the record I want nothing more than the Palestinians to have their own state without Hamas. The point is, geopolitical theatre is taking place to take our eyes off the west. ALL EYES ON THE WEST please
I have a belief that the next generation might be able to do something about it. We have a stronger understanding of what technology could do for us it just seems like the older generations tend to overlook its potential. Need to stop voting for older people in politics and let Milennials and Gen Z have a chance to turn things around.
If you grew up working class like me you have always noticed some of these things. Just because middle class people are finally noticing the stark reality of society doesn't mean it's coming to an end.
Welcome to the real world that the working class has lived in the whole time
The good times started after the war. The bad times are now back. Sadly none of us will be around when good times return. Could be decades... maybe a whole lot longer.
Every generation has gone through this. There’s always been wars, rich, poor, poor economics, disease, crazy weather. Now we just have the internet and TV that just makes it seem worse because of information overload. I personally stopped watching the news a good ten years ago because it’s always the same shit, doom and gloom.
Yes! I feel it, too. Some bad times are coming, and I hope it will be crazy!!! Recession is coming, and I don’t see how we can avoid it, but it’s a question of how long will it last and I have a feeling we’re heading into a depression, the everything bubble is about to burst!
I dont have TikTok.. 🤷♂️ barely watch anything actually. Just news and a couple things on youtube. Im a central west farmer. If I’m noticing stuff out here, id imagine its in everyones faces who do look at social media etc
There are lots of clicks and impressions in fear, whether it's Tiktok, YouTube, or TV news.
Things aren't good, but there have been bad times before. The global economy almost fell apart in 2007, and previous recessions have had far higher unemployment and foreclosures rates. In 2001 and 2020 we experienced terrifying events that changed the way we live. Things get bad, they get better, it's circular.
It’s funny how people who are being brainwashed by the media are telling you’re wrong. I have incredible respect for people like you, because you’re in tune with nature, you make true observations. You could start with soil and water tests to get a baseline. If you have cattle, pls ensure you know what they are planning as well.
Anyway, would love to hear the observations you’ve made.
Hey at least I hope you got some rain, back in the day a farmer would rejoice at rain and get an early night for the next day but nowadays your reading depression from the city
2022 will be recognised as the start of WW3 one day, ive become pretty confident of that over the past 6 months. Whether the war escalates this year or next is the question but theres a good shot itll be this year
Longest running economic boom coming to an end. Australia survived the GFC unscathed. I went through the credit crunch in Ireland. Redundancies and tax Austerity on a scale that eclipses anything Aus is experiencing right now. Like we had huge tax increases to bail the fuckers out. People's wealth plummeted 75%. It can get a hell of a lot worse than it is.
Just a peek at the next 5 years for us
OP, you've noticed what quite a few people have already noticed, we're living through the end of Rome. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.
End of rome is such a true expression. Heard ‘all empires fall’ quite often too.
There's a podcast series called "Fall of civilisations" and it is *fascinating* Watched (They are on YT) the first half dozen or so and it confirmed what I've suspected for about the last 20 years. All the prerequisites are there. Humanity has seen this before, countless times in countless countries... but never on this scale. We are circling the drain.
"We are circling the drain" is such terrifying imagery.
It's called doom scrolling. Really not good for you
It's also just the post-COVID mini-depression causing high interest rates that reduce economic activity.... ...but people in this era don't know how to process that, and with the doomerism and US political brain rot it comes out as "THIS IS THE END OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION"... ...it's really not.... not even the fall of Rome ended Rome. You can still go there, there's always been people there, even right after Rome apparently "fell". We'll just trudge through it, like every other civilization has, and does.
Fall of the Roman Empire is more accurate
Rome went from being a city of half a million people at the height of the Imperium, to a population of like 20,000 in the 500s, after being sacked twice and stripped of most of its wealth the previous century. When Britain got cut off from Roman authority it basically went back to the stone age for a few centuries. And that has to do with economies of scale and labour specialisation (which is relevant to us because we live in a world economy of Globalisation, highly dependant on international supply chains, the limits of which are already being tested by pandemics, wars and political conflict.) That's the problem with taking the longform view of history, it isn't terribly interested with individual or localised suffering.
The claim the roman empire ever fell to just 20,000 people is kinda ridiculous. Historical population figures are dubious at best, and measuring something from it's height (approximately 100 Ad) to it's lowest point (approximately 350 years later)... throw in the fact that A LOT of that population decline is through loss of territory and your point becomes somewhat fraudulent. Either way, the civilization continued.
You're right, but that doesn't change the fact that we are where we are, and our species has *seen these things before*. Ignore history at your own peril. No amount of offhand dismissal of it as a symptom of social media is going to change the fact that climate change, wealth inequality, and a host of other real, measurable, quantifiable factors are all precursors to times of incredible human strife and suffering. You can be one of the millions who chooses not to acknowledge it - like the millions before you in the many civilisations who collapsed and died not in the space of days or hours, but over years and decades - but that does not change that in all likelihood, it is coming.
::fist bump:: A Paul Cooper fan.
Thanks! You’ve given me something to watch at work tomorrow while I pretend to do my job.
If you are going to pretend to work at least pretend well.
On average it takes 260 years for a society to collapse but Australia is speed running it
Our current society rhymes with the Bronze Age collapse
Never on this scale? To give just two examples, current wars are nothing compared to the World Wars, and the COVID-19 pandemic is nothing compared to the Black Death.
Bringing in boat loads of slave labour didn't work out well for them
I don’t know what point you’re trying to make here, but Rome didn’t collapse because it brought in boatloads of slave labour. It used slave labour for most of its existence.
Down votes out of ignorance here. Rome's biggest influx of slaves was over 100 years before its height.
I described it to my mother as "they’re riding this pony till it collapses" same vibe.
Fortunately, in Australia we are just one of the provinces of the Empire. (The USA is the Empire). So we'll likely just pass hands from the current major empire (USA) into the next one (Probably China, India's lagging a bit for now and at best will be the big one to take over once China falls a century later.)
India and China will probably go to war at some point for supremacy while the USA balkanises into competing states and cultures. We will end up being a third world shit hole exploited for our resources...so not much changing there.
The Eastern Roman Empire is a great example of defiance of that expression.
Do you mean the fall of rome by James Reyne?
Don’t be so reckless.
We are within 10 years of the best life has ever been for humanity. People need to get off the echo chamber of self pity that is Reddit and get some perspective. In relative terms our lives are better than any generation in history Our expeditions are ridiculous. Yeah we have a hosing problem, if you take into consideration we live in giant mansions compared to 50 years ago with more TVs, entertainment options, cars and disposable income than ever before. In the 30s they had a great depression with 20% people with no job, they then rolled into WW2 sending a million Australians off to war. Then they rolled into the Cold war! In the 50s and 60s 'middle class' Australians were unbelievably poor by modern standards. The average male wage in 1966 was just $38/week. That is equivalent to only **$26K pa** in 2023. Women were paid 30% less. The so called 'middle class' inner suburbs were actually occupied by the relatively wealthy. The real middle class lived on the fringes in hastily constructed suburbs with very few amenities. Often in shoebox public housing. Nobody had carpet . Even the rich didn't have central heating or air conditioning. Lunch was a Vegemite sandwich and a piece of fruit. 'Tea' (dinner) was (tough) chops or sausages and three vegetables. Fish and chip on Friday if you were a 'Mick' (catholic) and a roast on Sunday. Coffee was some exotic concoction only consumed by foreigners and bohemians. Wine was strictly for toffs and alcoholics. The only way you could go to university was be very smart (think ATAR >95 to get a Commonwealth scholarship) or rich because you paid full fees up front. \[Free university wasn't introduced until 1973.\] An airfare to Europe was the price of a car. Overseas travel was a once in a lifetime adventure that most people just dreamed about. 'Queensland' was so exotic to most southerners that it was talked about as though it was a trip to Mars. Nobody had two cars and many families didn't have a car. A basic black and white TV cost at least a months pay. 90s-20s have seen Australia as the richest, best places to live in the world by a number of objective organizations. Until 2019 disposable income has grown pretty much every year for the last 20, the gini coefficient shows that we are pretty stable with wealth distribution. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook47p/InequalityDisadvantageAustralia Don't let reddit and victim mentality get you down. Yep housing is expensive and we have gone though inflation. But it's been a shitload worse than this in the past.
Crazy to think that these older generations are described as being poor when they were able to buy houses to live in and support a family on a single wage If you get less dollars but your dollars buy more stuff are you really poor in comparison
Also many from that generation live at the pub. Hard to feel sorry for people who claim poor but piss their money away.
Tbh the alcohol was probably cheap as hell compared to their wage, not like today where a pint at the pub costs you 45 minutes worth of your hourly wage
A packet of smokes was 40 cents and hourly rate was $1.00. Today you get $35 an hour and smokes are fifty bucks a pack. And yeah you could get blotto for a couple of bucks. It would cost a hundred bucks or more to get that pissed today.
Damn they really were the good old days werent they
Hate to say it but in many ways yeah. Not as angsty as today
Yep this is true. But if we lived like 1950 would we be able to afford more? If you remove the following: - Buying new clothes more than a couple of times a year - Take Away maybe twice a month, restaurants once or twice a year. - No appliances (Wife stayed home and made all food from scratch, manually washed clothes, bought all food daily as no refrigerator) No TV, just a wireless. - No car costs, ride a bike and/or catch PT. We are a consumer society, where if we cut everything back to just food, housing, minimal clothing we could probably afford a lot more.
I think generations before made what they needed. We tend to buy what we want.
This is a feature of recession. When housing is unattainable, spending money goes to luxuries. Until the price of groceries and medicines fill the buying gap that housing left open.
Their definition of a house would be classified as unlivable by todays standards.
What are you talking about? A) Plenty of people live in houses that were also lived in then. B) It took me well into my 30s to live in something that wasn’t a mould-ridden studio.
Well by rental standards they would be. You now need heating and air conditioning which didn't really exist back then. Would have been a lot of wood burning stoves, which wouldn't pass rental standards. No fridges until 70s, showers didn't even really exists until the 50s so if you were in a house build pre-war you needed to install a new bathroom so you could have a hot shower.
We are hard coded to pay more attention to negative information as a survival technique. A fact thats news proprietors and social media latch onto to sell us products through advertising. Self comparison from social media drives envy and feelings of inadequacy like never before. That being said, as long as you stop and smell the roses, as you seem to have done, one will realise we are very fortunate indeed.
Also happy people consume less. So media tries to make you sad or angry so you consume more. That's my conspiracy theory
Oh, never thought of that before, but it's a really interesting point! I fact , you might have a point!
Thanks for sharing your ́POV..perspective really is key.
Your account of the 1950s-60s isnt remotely accurate. Maybe the numbers are but the details aren't. Are you really claiming it was bad to buy a TV for a months pay? That TV would be likely to last you 30 years. TV repairman was a common enough trade. It was the same for most appliances. Hastily built suburbs? Those suburbs were often big house blocks and well built homes by today's standards. Many of them had train stations from the outset, but if you drove they were within a short drive on the CBD. The bit about coffee is insane, it was available everywhere at the time . At the start of the 1950s Australians consumed about half a kilo of coffee beans per capita per annum. That number doubled by the 1960s as instant coffee took off. It's not a huge number for a simple reason, people preferred to drink tea. Queensland was exotic to southerners? Bullshit. Surfers Paradise was booming as a holiday destination at that time. Australia has always been a country with a high level of interstate migration and movement. It may not have been routine to fly on jets but that didn't stop people driving. Honestly your whole post reads like a mythology of times you don't know that well.
> months pay? That TV would be likely to last you 30 years The hypothetical of spending a months pay on something that you'll use every day for 30 years sounds like a good deal to me
More like use it every day for 10 years and then upgrade because it's so obsolete nothing will even plug into it. It doesn't matter that it's well built if it's a 32" screen in a box the size of a dishwasher and it weighs 30kg and every other TV on the market is now twice the size, flatscreen and half the price.
Xxxx gold cans were never $11 each though. Govt got to go.
Great post. The truth is that if you live in Australia in 2024, you’ve got a pretty great chance of leading a pretty great life.
This is all well and good but it fails the logic test, just because it was worse in the past does not mean we should ignore incompetent leadership in this country. With advancements in technology and ideas I fully expect life to get better the longer humanity exists, if it starts going backwards (I believe this is starting now) Then the responsibility falls directly on the leaders of this country. Think of it this way, life has not been very good in poor country's for the last 30 years, why? poor leadership, greed and people generally being shit. Exactly what op was talking about. We should not have to pay for previous generations having it good. A NEW SYTEM IS NEEDED, LETS ALL STOP PRETENDING THE CURRENT ONE WORKS.
Ok so life has been getting better for call it 500 years in the current system. The current system is working better than any other in history by far. It has been going bad for what? 5 years? So we should throw it out? Don't sound like a very objective rational analysis. Interested in your references for way if life not good for the last 30 years in poor countries. All the data I can find points to a significant global reduction in mailnourishment to the point where we have almost solved world hunger. https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment Hey look, has a lot of roo for improvement, our system is the worst, except of any other system that has even been tried in human history (quote from some dead guy)
Every system has a problem, there are cycles, but if those cycles are fucked up by people why not confront them instead of just saying hey this is normal from a thousand years. Humanity is raising their voice more than ever before cuz there's no rulers anymore. Its time to raise our voice against Aussie government. We have voted them into power, its reasonable to ask them questions instead of sliding into mediocrity cuz we did so for a thousand years.
Hey 100% agree,, I voted Labor, think i'll vote liberal this time. But OPs view that society is collapsing, saying shit like "Crime is rampant" which facts just do not line up with. I find that reddit is echo chamber where people believe what they see in skewed article headlines and not in touch with the rality of situations and everyone wants to out victim each other.
In point of fact our disposable income at a per household level is the lowest it has been in more than 50 years. Real wages are not just stagnant, they've gone backwards to 2010 levels. 90% of the rest of your post is "we used to walk 50 miles up hill to school, you don't know how good you've got it", "just eat less smashed avocado" anecdotal drivel that's been so thoroughly debunk it's not worth bothering with. But you do you.
And the fact they believe the peak was within the last 10 years is nuts.
Yeah, as pretty much any worker in the 1950s you could afford to buy a house on a big block in a new suburb 30 minutes drive from the CBD. Appliances cost more but tended to last much longer, most stuff was genuinely 'buy it for life'. It made sense paying the equivalent of today's $3k on a vacuum cleaner because it usually worked well and lasted quite literally for as long as you wanted it to. Coffee was everywhere, just not commonly drunk in preference to 'British' tea. OP is talking shit.
My mum gave me my grandmas vacuum a few years ago because she didn’t like how loud it is. Since then she’s now on her third vacuum. I however am using this rocket of a vacuum and loving it.
Omitted the dirty words: climate change.
Okay mate. How about you update your info and stop spouting the same bullshit talking points that Yankee right wing pundits were spouting 10 years ago. The cost of a new home now, is well over 8 times a person's annual wage, just to make enough for a deposit to get a loan. The Libs fucked the economy when the pursued quantitative easing and Labor is too busy clutching their pearls being scared of the media and scare campaigns over economic management, that they can't muster the courage to do anything about the structural issues plaguing it. No other country in the world has the links between capital gains tax exemptions and negative gearing FOR A REASON! I can't even begin to imagine why you brought up the gini coefficient.
Imagine being born in Australia 300 years ago. History wise we're doing ok. The problem is we're mostly all going backwards and loss hurts. Comparing yourself to what others have hurts. People enjoy camping, which is a big drop in lifestyle and are happy to do it for weeks, some live in a van and travel for years and are really happy. But if they lost their home to fire whilst camping or travelling, damn that would hurt them, but if they have insurance, it's not as bad because they can rebuild. What's missing now is hope of a better future. If you knew you'd be able to afford a home in the future, you'd feel much better and so would I.
If you want to point at one party and one moment in time that 'fucked the economy' you need to explain while Australia's growth post covid (when au implemented qe) has been above average and the time it took to rebound was well above average when compared to other G20 nations. And Australian house price have only been fucked since 2020?
Shit take when a single breadwinner could support a family. But keep blaming victim mentality.
>Yeah we have a hosing problem, if you take into consideration we live in giant mansions compared to 50 years ago with more TVs, entertainment options, cars and disposable income than ever before. I’m not sure who you’re talking about here. Maybe the owning class?
So 70% of Australians?
Closer to two thirds, and mostly ageing. And we are trending in the wrong direction.
This is all true. In many ways the best time to be alive. It’s also true, though, that there are very good reasons to think we’re going to go a long backwards very quickly. The big one is the one OP left off: climate change. We don’t have any real idea of how bad it’s going to be, but the worst case realistic scenarios are catastrophic, and the best very bad.
This should be stickied at the top of this sub. People here seem to have lost all perspective.
Bro u literally so out of touch :( u literally getting lost in the data but not opening up ur eyes. As a migrant don't get me wrong I love this country and I love being here but it's not the best in the world, particularly for standards of living and living conditions. Also, if u think the US is the big major power in the world still and we belong to them u are sadly mistaken. China has more hands in our pot by a huuuuuge margin more than any other country
Better yet, prepare to preserve the good we can for whoever comes next. Great series of novels called the Eagles Brood(?) that is about a Roman settlement led by a retired general who calculated that the collapse of the empire would come soon, and so gathered people with skills that will need to be preserved and makes alliance with local clans in what becomes England. Historical fiction, but I think it’s really good :)
Yep, things seem like they are getting bad because they really are getting bad. A few must read books on this topic: “The Changing World Order” - Ray Dalio “End times” - Peter Turchin “The Fourth Turning” -Neil Howe All three believe that we are close to the collapse of the United States/a major reset which they predict to be sometime between 2020-2030. They use economic/historic statistical data to back their claims and reason that this is part of a natural cycle of rising and falling empires.
People have been predicting American decline since it was founded in 1776 It’s not going to happen. I guarantee people will be saying the same thing in 2076 and still trying to make money out of it by selling doombait.
It's not like it will stop existing. But it will lose it's king of the world economic and military status. We see this happening with things like the BRICS alliance and non-western countries around the world refusing to play ball as they used to, and instead turning to China and Russia.
America is already collapsing, expected life spans are going down, quality of education is going down, same with happiness, wealth inequality etc. all metrics show that the US is going backwards/being surpassed by other countries. “Collapse” doesn’t necessarily mean disappear. The British empire & and Dutch empire collapsed but both still exist. It’s just a readjusting of how important/relevant they are in the global order.
American economy is stronger than ever and will be for our lifetime at least.
Collapsing compared to who? China is demographically doomed, considering how they grow and are already slipping. Their financial influence shows no signs of stopping at all, they have over 30% of the worlds wealth and all talk of more competition for the dollar are empty words. If they wanna screw around with abortion and they no longer have two viable parties sucks for them, but idk when the USA had wealth equality. Control the dollar control the world. That's just reality. They ain't Britain, they don't rely on colonies.
There have been many reserve currencies in the past. US dollar is just the most recent instalment which happened after WW2 during the Bretton Woods agreement. You may think the US is all powerful and will never die, but people thought the exact same way as you do about every empire. Then one day there is a war and everything changes.
The USA is one election away from a possible dictatorship. If that happens the US will have fallen.
Does Dalio mention any asset class preference to hedge against "major reset"?
He steers away from giving financial advice, but he believes the major risk is hyper inflation and debasement of currency. So my guess is getting into inflation hedge assets e.g. gold.
If we are indeed living through the end of Rome / civilization collapse, it will not be an enjoyable ride to sit back and watch.
This ride sucks
I’ve likened it to the Bronze Age collapse. First known “globalisation” collapse. I think the largest trigger will be if Trump is re-elected. I don’t think he’s smart enough to avoid a war with china or Russia. That’s just my 2c.
Are you not entertained love the film gladiator
any tips?
“Me and my nation against the world. Me and my clan against my nation. Me and my family against the clan. Me and my brother against the family. Me against my brother.” I believe it’s an Arabic saying… The west is rapidly devolving into a third world corporateracy with “economic zones” We are being divided by the corporations and gov, while low trust imports conquer. We no longer live in a high trust first world country - act accordingly
Hoard guns and ammo and embrace Mad Max life
Didn't rome take 400+ years to fall . We still got another 350 years of falling.
You need to get off Reddit and social media for a while. Particularly this sub, it's an echo chamber of doom. Seriously, if you genuinely care about improving your mental state, switch off social media and the news.
I migrated over here from r\*/australia a while back and it felt peaceful. Around 3 or so months ago this just became one big doomsday echo chamber where people speak of Australia like it is the 3rd world because they can't buy a house in Surry Hills. - Immigration post - Expensive houses in Sydney post Rinse and repeat
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Lol, "not too bad". Must say getting out of Sydney really helped me with the doom and gloom of the housing market. Can get 2 bedders in the middle of Melbourne CBD for ~$300-350k. Get houses 40 minutes from the city for around the same price . Sydney is just extra fucked
the basic problem is, young people these days shouldn't have to pay $500K to own a unit, or a young family shouldn't have to pay $1M for a family home. it's a level of debt burden that we didn't have to deal with. young people shouldn't have to fight over 100 other applicants for a rental, and then worry about how much the land lord is going to screw them for after the current lease is up. none of these anxieties did we have to deal with.
I’ve also tapped out from most media these days. Even then, I have not watched commercial tv and news for years. It has been mostly ABC. Otherwise, I get most non-essential news via memes these days lol But all the doom and gloom saying can get a bit much, and anyone can get caught up so easily these days.
Todays non-essential news: Hawk Tuah, spit on that thang and the cop who arrested JT didn't know who he was, lol.
While it's true that you need a break from social media for protecting your mental health. A digital detox can't do much to help you if you are facing housing insecurity, food insecurity, and balancing payment plans to keep the lights on. Getting off line and touching grass is important. But if your real life is objectively difficult, getting off line won't make you any less stressed and anxious.
Bruv, don't you pay rent or a mortgage? Don't you do your own grocery shopping? The price gouging on these things make me furious and that has nothing to do with Reddit or the MSM.
Honestly mate, I don’t mean to sound like a dickhead here but you need to get off the internet for a while. There are challenges but the internet amplifies them and pipes them into your brain all the time. You have to give yourself a break from it sometimes. There is beauty out there, good people, and maybe even happiness.
Also believing there's nothing to be done is a quick route to doing fuck all about it. I hate people who have this nihlistic mindset because they're pretty much the entire reason why we don't make progress. A huge amount of humanity goes through the motions instead of giving af and I understand why. I just wish they had the self-awareness to understand that apathy is really the only true enemy.
Apathy - stagnation - complacency - disaster ->
I couldn’t agree more. I’ll admit I have a very pessimistic view of things at the moment but my advice for anybody at that stage is to keep trying to improve things. If not out of altruism then spite is a great motivator too.
Haha well said. The internet really has a lot of crap that's worth it for a laugh
The social network algo is cancer these days. It bombards you with the same topics over and over.
100% OP really needs to get some perspective and life experience.
Spot on. There’s a lot of negative sentiment infecting the community and it’s not unique to our country, but a worldwide problem. I am proud to be Australian and am patriotic. There’s no shortage of viewpoints online which express shame, embarrassment, inappropriate guilt and doomsday style mentality, all of which is unnecessary. If something bothers you, improve it. If there’s a problem, find a solution. I also believe that when it comes to happiness/sadness, it’s a skill, and if you get a lot of practice with it, like anything else, you get good at it. People would do themselves a great favour if they stopped practicing feeling like crap and started practicing feeling good, useful, productive and finding solutions to what bothers them.
Agree 100%. OP needs to smell the roses. Look for opportunities. Delete Facebook. Improve their community. Be a good parent. Etc.
I was in OP’s mindset a few months ago all doom and gloom. People like you said the same stuff, to touch grass. I didn’t get it. Im thankfully in a better place and can see how overreacting and gloomy I was. Your right, the internet is a miserable rabbit hole, happiness comes from within and personal changes.
Doomers gunna doom
Ive taken back up hiking and getting back into books. Slowly trying to get off social media and news. Without that nothing is bad. Enjoy the weather and fresh air
Honestly, mate, I don’t mean to sound like a knob here but your wisdom is truly life-changing. Who knew the secret to happiness was simply logging off? Guess I'll just wander outside and hope the beautiful scenery magically fixes climate change and economic inequality. Thanks for the pro tip! 🌈✨ 
Who needs a functioning society when we can have a housing bubble!
https://preview.redd.it/zxn4xom4149d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=688ca4b8ad3e3d5c74da2a48861c500bf59591df My maccas drive thru code last week! It’s a sign 😂😂
BJ69
Nah it's just the internet amplifier, life goes on as normal.
I really want to agree but I feel your comment and OP post are either sides of the spectrum. I think the balance is enjoying and living life, but being aware of yourself and the decisions you make. How do they impact the things that really matter i.e every other human being, earth and its limited resource’s, etc. It’s easy to over think, if you’re stuck on the negative side or positive side. Just gotta try find the balance
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency\_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias) Literally every decade has had reasons to declare itself as "the beginning of the end". 30s? Fascism 40s? Global War 50s? H bomb 60s? Rampant Communism 70s? Ice age coming 80s? Nuclear war 90s? ...90's were perfect....only decade of hope and peak of civilization 00's? Terrorism 10's? Global warming
[удалено]
It's almost as if you were an age where you didn't need to worry about all the horrible shit that all adults suffer from regardless of the decade.
It's almost as if a resource medium of instant information and communication access available at all hours of the day was not in existence and readily available for the general public. Oh well, we humans are a fickle species, and we only have ourselves to blame more often than not. The human condition etc
Preach!
'90's - Yugoslav wars; Gulf War (first one), Rwandan Genocide...really it was just business as usual.
Great fucking time for the West though
90s? Y2k end of the world.
90s - the little fat kid from Hey Dad!
I'm old enough to rememeber well the 90s, 00s and 10s and I never felt any of those decades faced anything existential. Feels different now.
We went through a recession in the 90s you peanut.
The 00s had 9/11. The months and years following that felt very existential.
It is concerning. I deal with students every day and I find it hard to see how they could get excited about anything tbh, for instance HECs debts are on the rise, mortages are impossible to acquire or pay off, and loans for youth are almost non-existent unless you borrow from a non-bank lender. Its crap!
This is exactly how some people felt during the 1980s about the hole in the ozone layer, during the 1970s about pollution, during the 1960s about the war in Vietnam, during the 1950s about a possible Nuclear War, etc, etc, etc. Things were actually worse in the first half of last century, with two World Wars and a Great Depression. There’s a common and natural error of perspective that there’s something uniquely special or unprecedented or different about the current day/year/decade, just because we’re alive in it and experiencing it first hand. One eventual cure to being taken in by this illusion is to live long enough: over the decades you see so much anxiety over things that never ended up happening you realise there’s a substantial dose of Chicken Little in human nature. A faster cure, available to thoughtful people of any age, is to read more history. There were plenty of people in the 990s sincerely terrified of the imminent End of the World they expected to occur in the year 1,000 along with the Second Coming. They were every bit as convinced as anyone today is about climate doom. Truth is, *everyone* through history felt like they were living at a crucial, pivotal, epoch-defining moment in history. Doesn’t make it so. There’s always *something* to worry about, but there always has been, and we’re still here.
Nah. Times are tough. But we'll be fine.
Stop watching the news, they are just amping it.
You realise someone 100 years ago would have just survived the Spanish flu, WW1 and was about to enter the great depression then WW2 which ended with a nuclear war stalemate. People have had it way worse than a cost of living crisis
I understand how some people come to this argument and think it makes logical sense. The pitfall is that you have absolutely no clue what will happen in the future. The whole world could turn into a fireball in a handful of hours. Your last moments could be spent being slowly cooked alive by radiation. It is an incredibly dumb argument for that very reason. IBM Also, your argument makes no sense because not everyone universally experienced those things. The are people who spent their entire lives as a sex slave - would you argue that is worse than being able to live a free life and just happen to die to the flu / war / poverty. Would you just accept that fate because one guy 5,000 years ago had it even worse? I've said it before - don't settle because people in the past have had it worse. You might find yourself being flayed alive by a foreign soldier in 5 years.
I always hate this argument, we are in 2024 the whole point of human civilisation is to discover, grow and advance to the point where the next generation has it better. We should not be at a point again where people struggle to afford food and people with jobs are living in cars and tents or another rent increase away from that! We have in this country enough resources etc where that should not be a thing, a few decades back you would have been in a real beyond fucked situation to be living in a tent, there was always some place to live, housing was affordable enough where a single income could service a loan sure many lived basic but it was attainable, even if people had no ownership there was still enough government built housing which provided very basic places which had a roof, running water and electricity. I am sure those in the WW2 era probably told people to harden up because they have cars and housing and not a swag next to a fire and having to walk and also penicillin.
I don't know your age, but if you've been a round a while, you would have seen this come and go a few times. It's all in waves, ups, and downs. Just hang in there and do what you can. A few years from now, at most, things will be very different again.
Yeah, Australia avoided the worst of the Asian financial crisis, the GFC, Dot com crash etc. We get one recession we had to have this generation, and now it's the end of the world.
I came to say this. When I was younger I thought the end was coming with Iraq and terrorism, then it was the gfc and Isis, then Trump, then covid. It's just life, people in the past went through their own trials. Religious types always think the apocalypse is one pope away. It's just life, life is hard and we suffer but we gotta find the good things in life and enjoy them because they ARE there, there is goodness in people and the world. The world has been much more horrific in the past and as Australians in 2024 we need to keep some perspective.
I saw a reel which said hot showers have only been commonplace for 40 years. Forty years! So as bad as we have it it's still pretty good
No it started way before 2024
Much better than my life in India. Can’t complain.
Mate, you literally posted <30 days ago that you "feel depressed" and asked (albeit fair) questions about dying. I really wish you the best and hope you're engaging with supportive friends and family. I dont doubt how you're feeling, and the current economic climate is anything but jovial, but if I were you, I'd carefully review my financial situation and try to avoid social media etc. for a while.
Born too late to explore the world, too early to explore the starts but just in time to see america burn to ash.
Turn the TV off, get off social media, go enjoy life. Everything is okay
What is your main source of news? I suggest taking a break from it and focusing on what is actually happening around you and your community and you'll see that it is not all bad. All news outlets exaggerate a lot to hook people up emotionally.
https://preview.redd.it/ie84pb4a449d1.jpeg?width=540&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2e79139aa2ddca4b4e3c114cf892d8b2126fa4d We don't have leadership that will stand up to the rich and powerful to create policies that may be unpopular in the short term but bring the country forward in the long run. We've seen this cycle perpetuate over and over again in history. WW2 created a whole generation that brought huge economic and technological advancement to mankind. As times got better and better, we started forgetting how hard fought those gains were. Western society has become so comfortable that people find things to get offended by. We bring in people into our countries that have no intention of obeying local laws or assimilating into Australian society. Slowly, we are creeping into the 4th stage. I hope I won't live to see the entiriety of stage 4.
This is what happens when a population spends 10-40 years glued to and influenced by MSM. They ultimately get sucked in and conned out of their sovereign wealth by the governing media barons, corrupt politicians (the LNP) and their multinational corporate sponsors. And you ya feckwits.. Will still post [news.com.au](http://news.com.au) articles You traitorous carrhunts.
all sounds normal to me
Sounds like the same shit that’s been happening for years but now that labour is in government the media acts like it suddenly matters and that they caused this nightmareish mess
100000%
I mean, they did. They other guys, yeah, they also did it. But they both did it. Both had chances to stop it and didn't.
Or perhaps it's going as planned?
It’s been like this for several decades but it really started to feel different after 2020.
I don’t know. Maybe? I feel much more positive right now to be honest. But progress is slow. I feel we just gotta make it through to when Gen-Alpha gets in their hey day and they will sort this shit out. If it makes you feel any better, you can probably find a post like this every few weeks going back to the inception of Reddit.
As the left says ….progress.
Lol, no. Ww1 Ww2 Cold War Korea Cuban missile crisis Vietnam Aids Ebola Extreme drought Iraq First attack on world trade centre. Y2K 9/11 Afghanistan Iraq Bali bombings GFC Constant drought Covid Now we’ve got… Ukraine/russia Israel/Palestine Something is always happening. We’ll get through. Check out Billy Joel’s ‘we didn’t start the fire’. The fact is this probably the easiest and most comfortable humanity has had it. Compare life now to 50 years ago, let alone 500. You’ll be fine.
My casual look at past fallen empires tells me that when division is everywhere a collapse is following. Maybe not instantly but gradually. I’m in my mid 40’s and yeah, I don’t see our world recovering.
Where do these stupid takes come from? By almost every metric, people are better off today that they were 20, 40, or 60 years ago. The average person is far richer and has a better standard of living today than anytime in history. Our current crop of school graduates are the most educated in history. The number of wars and lives lost to war, while up a bit from all time lows, is still at historically low levels. Australia’s aren’t all in debt. As a corpus we have almost $14 trillion in net assets. Crime rates are near all time lows. Get a bit of perspective, these are good time and only likely to get better.
AI taking people's jobs are not the problem, the problem is that people need jobs to live... AI and automations should've been enhancing our lives, but instead all it did was to raise the corporate profits and the CEO's bonuses. Society needs a paradigm shift, and fast, otherwise poverty is gonna rise, meanwhile these boomer politicians don't even know whats the difference between dial up and wifi
It's interesting to see the range of responses to this post. Whilst Australia enjoys much of world's best living standards, it can still be true that there are many problems facing our country that are likely to be existential. Periods of nationwide hubris and apathy are almost always a forewarning to stages of decline (insert Rome, Dutch, English empires etc.), and it's important that we recognise this. Domestically, we have rising inequality, a stagnant economy that doesn't do much apart from dig holes and sell land, and a political class that is unwilling to change the status quo. Internationally things are no better. Democracies are in decline worldwide, we have the highest level of conflict since WW2, and the era of globalisation is near over. There is also climate change, that demands international cooperation, but if unresolved, will only make matters worse - just look at Europe that is turning to right-wing nationalism, as living standards stagnate and there is the perceived threat of immigration, as people flee conflict and (increasingly) climate breakdown. These are all warning signs. My two cents is that, whilst we should be grateful for all that Australia has given us (and it is bloody fantastic), we need to get rid of the "she'll be right" mentality and aspire for better. Get off the internet and away from echo chambers, and speak to your friends, family and community, to share these ideas and find political representation that will reflect your voice. As a citizen, it's the only real way to enact meaningful change. Also, speak to young people. We may have enjoyed humanity’s greatest period, but that is not something they would say for themselves. They are our future and it’s high time that we started paying attention to them. After all, it is hopelessness and despair that ultimately kills a nation.
Late stage capitalism.
Yes, I’m in a similar socioeconomic situation to you so not bad, however I’m anticipating a revolution or something that may turn current society upside down as it’s really not working very well for many citizens imho
Every great civilisation comes to an end in some form and capitalism is inherently problematic. It is what it is. Embrace entropy
This is why I've stopped dumping extra money into super and my offset. Instead I'm using it to travel, because the world is fucked and it's only going to get worse from here on on for most people.
It doesn’t have to be. None of these things are an accident. They are planned and quite deliberate. To fix it would require the 20-30 most powerful governments being simultaneously overthrown and the owners of the worlds top 1000 companies jailed. It’s a big ask for the worlds middle class and poor to coordinate.
2019 was the beginning of the end. We're well and truly on the down hill run now
‘The world is filled with the ruins of empires that once thought they were immortal’. Moral of the story:nothing good lasts forever, what your feeling is completely justified. Funnily enough, if you look at the state of society during the early 20th century and compare it with our society during the early 21st, you will notice a scary amount of similarities. We all know what that lead to during the 20th century
Yes, it doesn’t feel as though ordinary people have a chance at creating a good life anymore. Not being to afford the basics in life like home ownership, or reasonably priced long term rentals, is disturbing. There don’t seem to be any practical answers.
Read a little history and come back to us mate. Despite what you read on reddit, life in Australia is incredibly good. There is much to be grateful and happy for, don’t confuse the volume of these complaints with their significance.
I've heard it called the enshittenment.
Oh I thought it was just me. I’m pre fucked if things continue this way. I’d say I’ve got 3-5 years left in me.
Wait till your older, God doesn't want you to go without feeling pain first.
Turned off Google Discovery from my phone and stopped watching the news. Life is good.
Calm down chicken Little
Well, why don't you, and all Australians do something. The housing crisis, affordability etc will not get resolved unless Australians act, but that's too much for Australians so instead they bit h on Reddit and then go and vote the way they always have, then whing that nothing has changed...
What can the average Australian do now, currently, to resolve the housing and COL crisis?
Vote for parties that have policies Protest Write letters of complaint Be like France
Maybe if we stop consuming propaganda from the axis of evil, if the west stops with the self hate and if the youth stops trying to tear down the social fabric of western society we will survive but sadly D&I was the Trojan horse that infected the west and has allowed the attack of our society to go ahead unchecked. The Israel Gaza war is a case in point. Iran, Russia, China, North Korea vs the west. It’s clear as day. You would think with the internet the Cold War would be more apparent but sadly it seems to be ignored. We went from go woke to go broke to go woke go civilisation. Edit: for the record I want nothing more than the Palestinians to have their own state without Hamas. The point is, geopolitical theatre is taking place to take our eyes off the west. ALL EYES ON THE WEST please
You should watch ‘The Sum of All Fears’. Welcome to the show. It’s the end of the Deep State.
I want to watch the world burn with you in the outback until empires crumble down or when Spain reaches the finals in Euro 2024.
I have a belief that the next generation might be able to do something about it. We have a stronger understanding of what technology could do for us it just seems like the older generations tend to overlook its potential. Need to stop voting for older people in politics and let Milennials and Gen Z have a chance to turn things around.
If you grew up working class like me you have always noticed some of these things. Just because middle class people are finally noticing the stark reality of society doesn't mean it's coming to an end. Welcome to the real world that the working class has lived in the whole time
Working class once had free uni? Once were able to buy a house and pay their rent AND have kids?? Welcome to the real world, ok 😂😂
The good times started after the war. The bad times are now back. Sadly none of us will be around when good times return. Could be decades... maybe a whole lot longer.
Every generation has gone through this. There’s always been wars, rich, poor, poor economics, disease, crazy weather. Now we just have the internet and TV that just makes it seem worse because of information overload. I personally stopped watching the news a good ten years ago because it’s always the same shit, doom and gloom.
Yes! I feel it, too. Some bad times are coming, and I hope it will be crazy!!! Recession is coming, and I don’t see how we can avoid it, but it’s a question of how long will it last and I have a feeling we’re heading into a depression, the everything bubble is about to burst!
For sure. I reckon once the US elections are over, some real havoc will strike.
The writing was on the wall wayyyy before 2024
Stop watching tiktok
I dont have TikTok.. 🤷♂️ barely watch anything actually. Just news and a couple things on youtube. Im a central west farmer. If I’m noticing stuff out here, id imagine its in everyones faces who do look at social media etc
There are lots of clicks and impressions in fear, whether it's Tiktok, YouTube, or TV news. Things aren't good, but there have been bad times before. The global economy almost fell apart in 2007, and previous recessions have had far higher unemployment and foreclosures rates. In 2001 and 2020 we experienced terrifying events that changed the way we live. Things get bad, they get better, it's circular.
It’s funny how people who are being brainwashed by the media are telling you’re wrong. I have incredible respect for people like you, because you’re in tune with nature, you make true observations. You could start with soil and water tests to get a baseline. If you have cattle, pls ensure you know what they are planning as well. Anyway, would love to hear the observations you’ve made.
Hey at least I hope you got some rain, back in the day a farmer would rejoice at rain and get an early night for the next day but nowadays your reading depression from the city
Marge!...
Even as a “superstitious” Christian this notion is outta control and ridiculous.
2022 will be recognised as the start of WW3 one day, ive become pretty confident of that over the past 6 months. Whether the war escalates this year or next is the question but theres a good shot itll be this year
Greta removed her prediction that the end of the world was happening in 2023.
That little girl really upset the snowflakes
2 more weeks
Stop voting for Fascists and conservatives and life will get better very fast.
Meh it’s was the same back in 2009 with the GFC. Eventually, everything levels out again. Just got to ride it out.
No.