I think most people also feel like tough times are coming. But your document resembles an information dump, and it draws on so many ideas that it comes across as incoherent. I don’t want to be mean about this, because you’ve clearly put a lot of work into it. But I think you should distill these ideas into an essay format, because I’ve kind of got no idea how to process it and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I think your document needs an executive summary. There is too much information to process here. I appreciate your thoroughness, but it’s too much and most people won’t commit to reading all of that. It’s like sifting through academic papers, you need to read an abstract to decide if it’s worth your time.

It’s just intimidation. We have a problem with hating poor people in Australia. Goes back to the dole bludger trope. When Robert Doyle was mayor of Melbourne he “cleaned up” the streets by removing homeless people from the CBD, because some rich cunt complained about the sight of it.

“Some residents, such as Penny Essing from Elwood, in Melbourne’s south-east, who has pushed for disbanding the camp, begged councillors to “restore safety in our streets, and protect the truly vulnerable and not enable rough sleeping”. Essing, like others, argued that allowing the encampments threatened people’s safety and wellbeing, while dominating public spaces.”

Protect the truly vulnerable eh? This east suburbs private school dickhead pearl clutcher knows nothing about the precarious life faced by people without generational wealth in the current housing situation. Totally fake empathy.

I think that’s very insightful. I’ve always been a been a left wing person. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised that the only way you can change a person’s political perspective is to first make them feel heard. Establish a personal relationship, establish common ground, listen to them. Once you’ve done that, you can start to challenge their beliefs, from a place of understanding. Then they don’t feel attacked. I think online discourse mostly can’t do that. For example, my grand father was a racist for most of his life, until he joined the local rotary club, and started doing community programs with the local indigenous people. It’s much easier to empathise with people when you’re face to face and those mirror neurons are firing. Too much leftist politics are based online. It doesn’t work.

Yes, but if we succumb to this narrative we risk the same fate as the US. Clinton’s “deplorables”. Reform party rising in UK. The solutions are misguided but the grievances need validation.

Words from someone else’s mouth. Your reading comprehension is cooked.

It removes money from circulation. Its the same thing you fucking moron.

That’s what I said you fuck wit. Redistribution is the whole point. And no I’m not an objectivist. The goal should be to prevent runaway wealth inequality like we have now.

Taxation takes money out of circulation. It is required to prevent inflation after money creation. Lack of taxation is largely why asset prices rose after covid stimulus.

The social forces that resulted in the trump presidency won’t go away. He’s not a political aberration. He’s the culmination of decades of grievance, which accelerated after the GFC. He’s the wrong solution of course, much like one nation is the wrong solution to Australia’s problems.

To look at things from a charitable perspective, that generation experienced the most stable economic period in history, in terms of social mobility. I think a lot of them assumed that we had reached a stable normal (as in the fukuyama end of history idea). What they didn’t realise was that the period they experienced coming of age was a historical anomaly, and now we are reverting to the normal (unequal wealth). They had a misplaced trust in authority. I can accept that things have changed, but I can’t accept millenials being told it’s their fault they didn’t work hard enough. On the one hand I hear about about 17 percent interest rates, and then they go on about buying a house in Melbourne on a single income public service wage and leaving work for the pub at lunch time. The cognitive dissonance is rattling.

I understand that, and I empathise with their position. I have friends in this position. I’m talking about housing prices rising, not staying the same or dropping and putting them into negative equity. It will affect everyone negatively unless they are an investor. But I can’t stand hearing the boomers in my wider social circle creaming their pants over house prices. I’ve put up with it my whole life. They never spared a thought for the future generations.

There are a lot of people who aren’t able to make that logical step. Home ownership is a rite of passage in this country, mainly because renting is awful for many. When the media frames house price rises as positive, which was the framing for much of the previous 3 decades, many people accept this without question.

You’re one of the smart ones with a social conscience.

The media headlines framing the budgets in terms of “winner and losers” fuels this counterproductive notion that government policies serve some at the cost of others. For example, high house prices seem positive to house owners, but this comes at a long term cost to all of society.

I don’t expect it to be addressed either. But it’s killing my career motivation, and I used to be a very driven person in my engineering career. I’m starting to change my priorities and expectations, now that my salary increases have slowed dramatically to below inflation level. No prospect of home ownership, so I spend more time hanging out with the neighbourhood cats instead of grinding every night. Enjoy the moment a bit more and not worry about the things I can’t control.

Unless this is properly addressed in the coming years, we are going to see a lot of resentment everywhere, and declining productivity, since those who must work for wages will have their rewards taken by those who have assets. All the money going to rents and mortgages.

We will implement polices to improve housing affordability while the housing minister assures the public that house prices will grow “sustainably”. Then the public will see us as helping those in need while protecting those with wealth. Win win.

Spot on. Trump’s behaviour needs to be viewed through the lens of narcissistic personality disorder combined with ADHD. All of his actions are in pursuit of narcissistic supply. We have a crisis of sane washing in mainstream media. He has no strategies. He acts based on his psychological needs. He doesn’t have beliefs, he has dispositional states. He is easily manipulated by those who can see that. This is why sucking up to him fails. Anyone who has lived with a narcissist can understand this.