Australia is currently a case of too much money chasing too few goods [1], especially in its rental market. Huge net migrations into Australia without commensurate increases in housing stock have caused rent increases but also left some without a place to live and caused some long-term tenants to be unable to continue to afford their place [2].
Most Australians just see their salaries go a little less far (due to inflation), but on the extreme end it means homelessness, at least in the short term, and all the associated stress.
Media has a tendency to piggyback off the hype around this legitimate problem to peddle all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas, sometimes over simplifying the narrative to (wealthy|employer|landlord) == bad, and (poor|employee|renter) == good.
The problem is housing in Australia has been turned into an investment. The Howard government in the 90's gave houses only 50% capital gains tax, which puts it inline with stocks. This has led to rampant speculation in the property market and the idea the price can only ever go up.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory to say that Japanification of the west’s economies is here to stay, and we need legal, economic and cultural reform to adapt to the changing needs of our housing
I feel like this is sort of silly. Unless I am missing something I would expect almost everyone to answer the survey in such a manner that would financially benefit them. With the exception of remote work I would imagine if a want isn’t met no one would quit.
We sort of have this. My employer REALLY wants everyone back at the office, but there is the obvious pushback, so everyone can choose how much money they want/need to commute and the employer hands the cash. Even with this cash option, many are only doing 2-3 days per week at the office, other simply refuse all together and said they will resign if there is any mandatory at-the-office days.
What will you cut from government spending to get the lower tax rate that won't affect anyone negatively?
I know you didn't say this, and I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, but I'd rather have higher taxes and a better safety net than lower taxes and a look-after-number-one dog-eats-dog world.
Not OP and not necessarily in favour of blanket lower taxes:
Dramatically push up capital gains taxes on non-speculative investments like land ownership, housing and superannuation (capital movement must be slowed here)
Australia has too much unoptimised capital appreciating in these “non-functional” assets which should be moved into more “functional” investments
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I use “functional” in the sense that certain asset types have potentially emergent utility over others eg: investing a growing business or working-age person has a higher probability of high or non-linear growth over linearly appreciating assets like bonds, stocks or land.
Businesses and people “do” things invariant of their quantitative value, while stocks, land and bonds are just fancy ways of dressing up bearer bonds/instruments
Our economic system needs to reemphasise the importance of systems which provide utility over a baseline static capital to just syphon into the shortest path to profit
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Disclaimer: I’m not an economist and don’t claim to be
No, and calling people children is unproductive. Especially in tech, RTO mandates can require significant expense, in time and money. Working from home, I spend another $20/mo for more bandwidth so my zoom experience doesn't hinder meetings. To work from a local office, I'd need to buy and maintain a car and spend an hour a day risking life and limb in traffic; or spend two hours a day taking transit. Or, I could buy a very expensive apartment to shorten my commute to my office. If my office wasn't local, I'd need to relocate my family, buy a new house, on top of all those other expenses.
Negotiating with your employer to cover the rising cost of living, and especially expenses incurred by their policies, is a very mature thing to do. Why do you consider that behavior childish? If you're working a job that forces you to make lifestyle changes that you cannot afford, what do you think the mature response should be?
But it's well understood that salaries aren't keeping pace with inflation / retail cost inflation. If salaries aren't then the ask starts to make sense.
But in terms of real dollars would total compensation go up? How would this even work? Isn’t this just moving around the chairs on the deck of the Titanic?
Unfortunately rising cost of living is mostly generated by people’s salaries going up (due to gradual increase in productivity), then it’s ripe for the taking by landlords. The rising rent requires everyone to raise their prices, thus eating most of the gains of the initial salary increases.
The article says “are demanding” instead of wants, but I don’t see any hard examples of workers demanding anything but remote work in the article. If anything people are wanting more independence from their employer by having more money and time.
There are a lot of things related to business expenses that you cannot ask employees to pay for such as first aid kits, desks, chairs…even travel outside a certain range. this is simply to say that perhaps the categorization of transportation could be expanded
I'm in Australia also and have (amoungst other things) worked FiFo on and off for four decades now .. mining & resource companies certainly pay for the flights to and from the work place .. and provide accomadation while there.
I live outside of Perth, if I consult | work for folk in the big smoke I quote charge for time on deck + travel allowance .. if I'm travelling for their benefit it's detracting from time I could otherwise spend on myself or other clients.
I'd rather just have additional salary, which I could invest/use however I wanted.
What's more, companies and the 1% also want us to have additional salary, they just don't realize it yet :-) This business of 99% going to 1% is creating serious economic distortions, and when those resolve themselves 100% of us are going to wish we hadn't created those distortions in the first place.
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Most Australians just see their salaries go a little less far (due to inflation), but on the extreme end it means homelessness, at least in the short term, and all the associated stress.
Media has a tendency to piggyback off the hype around this legitimate problem to peddle all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas, sometimes over simplifying the narrative to (wealthy|employer|landlord) == bad, and (poor|employee|renter) == good.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation#:~:text=....
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-12/immigration-house-pri...
Negative gearing must be scrapped and the capital gains tax wound back to pre-Howard levels
The speculation on people’s shelter needs to end
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Reforms aside, I agree housing stock must lift. How we can achieve that with such pervasive red tape at the local government level is beyond me
One fairly extreme capitalist approach (Japan’s) was covered in this great summary by ABC Australia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5pPcV54kiQ)
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory to say that Japanification of the west’s economies is here to stay, and we need legal, economic and cultural reform to adapt to the changing needs of our housing
The status quo cannot persist without great pain
I know you didn't say this, and I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, but I'd rather have higher taxes and a better safety net than lower taxes and a look-after-number-one dog-eats-dog world.
Dramatically push up capital gains taxes on non-speculative investments like land ownership, housing and superannuation (capital movement must be slowed here)
Australia has too much unoptimised capital appreciating in these “non-functional” assets which should be moved into more “functional” investments
——————
I use “functional” in the sense that certain asset types have potentially emergent utility over others eg: investing a growing business or working-age person has a higher probability of high or non-linear growth over linearly appreciating assets like bonds, stocks or land.
Businesses and people “do” things invariant of their quantitative value, while stocks, land and bonds are just fancy ways of dressing up bearer bonds/instruments
Our economic system needs to reemphasise the importance of systems which provide utility over a baseline static capital to just syphon into the shortest path to profit
——————
Disclaimer: I’m not an economist and don’t claim to be
You DO NOT want Australia to be like the USA, trust me.
Deleted Comment
Negotiating with your employer to cover the rising cost of living, and especially expenses incurred by their policies, is a very mature thing to do. Why do you consider that behavior childish? If you're working a job that forces you to make lifestyle changes that you cannot afford, what do you think the mature response should be?
In this case it feeds the zoomers' sense of importance and feeds boomers' opinion of zoomers as entitled.
Win-win.
Google campuses circa 2016 are the dream for many of them.
Disclaimer: Live in Aus but this is the first I've heard of this.
I live outside of Perth, if I consult | work for folk in the big smoke I quote charge for time on deck + travel allowance .. if I'm travelling for their benefit it's detracting from time I could otherwise spend on myself or other clients.
What's more, companies and the 1% also want us to have additional salary, they just don't realize it yet :-) This business of 99% going to 1% is creating serious economic distortions, and when those resolve themselves 100% of us are going to wish we hadn't created those distortions in the first place.
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