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KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES IS EXPENSIVE
Cost of living is … not as bad as we’re told, according to one study. The National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the University of Canberra and AMP study lead author Ben Phillips said it’s really bigger lifestyles, not rising costs, that are squeezing budgets. ”I don’t want to say everyone is doing wonderfully well. But there’s been this ‘rising cost of living’ story over the last decade when, really, Australian households are doing better than ever,” Mr Phillips said.
“We’re spending bigger, and on a wider range of goods and services, such as private schools, and we’re spending more on discretionary or luxury items, like restaurants.”
The study found the average household was $224 a week better off in 2009-2010 than in 2003-04.
1. Octomum Nadya Suleman is … going to do porn. She says she would never touch anyone or kiss someone and so has signed a deal with an adult website to perform solo in a ‘self pleasure’ video. Hmmm. She says she needs to do what it takes to support her family of 14 children which includes the octuplets she is famous for.
2. Horror author Stephen King, one of the most prolific and successful authors in the world, has written an op-ed titled ‘Tax me, for fuck’s sake’ aimed at the ongoing American argument the ultra-rich should pay more tax. King says he’s sick of the argument ‘you have money, so just cut a cheque and be done with it’ saying there are some things only the Government can fund.
“And hey, why don’t we get real about this? Most rich folks paying 28 percent taxes do not give out another 28 percent of their income to charity. Most rich folks like to keep their dough. They don’t strip their bank accounts and investment portfolios. They keep them and then pass them on to their children, their children’s children. And what they do give away is—like the monies my wife and I donate—totally at their own discretion. That’s the rich-guy philosophy in a nutshell: don’t tell us how to use our money; we’ll tell you.”
3. Male cheerleaders in the United States have been told to keep gay hand movements to a minimum. Well, that’s what the revised United States All-Star Federation guidelines suggested. “The new USASF rules included an “image etiquette” guideline that [cheerleader Kyle] Gadke, who is gay, hadn’t noticed on his first read-through. Under the header “minimize the negative,” the document said, “Males—minimize exaggerated or theatrical movements.” Yeah, stop being homos and stuff, cheerleaders. How would they enforce that? Is there a scale of theatricality ranging from ‘Pirates of Penzance to Wicked’?
4. Comedian Sacha Baron Coen, famous for his alter egos Borat, Bruno and Ali Gi, arrived in Australia yesterday as a pyjama-clad dictator to promote his latest film ‘The Dictator’. He didn’t skip a beat, asking to be put in touch with embattled, stood-aside speaker Peter Slipper. “I’ve come to find Mr Slipper,” he said. “The Slipper! Slippery Pete! What is his number? I need to hire him.”
5. The Reserve Bank Australia yesterday cut official interest rates by 50 basis points to 3.75%. But will the banks pass it on? There’s a thought and at the time of hitting publish, we’ve not heard a peep from the Big Four. The Bank of Queensland passed on 0.35.
6. Oh, it’s about that time again. Time for some Labor Party leadership speculation, which happens about every three months or so these days. Is Bill Shorten going to challenge the PM? Kevin Rudd? All of them say ‘of course not’. For now.
Top Comments
When my husband and I started our business 12 years ago we were earning the same per beast as we are now. That is 180 cents a kilo for our bullocks. That price has not changed since the 1970's. Wheat is still at 70's prices at $200 a tonne. Costs have gone up for us so much so that we won't grow it anymore. We can't make anything from it once you take out the cost of chemical for minumum till farming.
There is no way to increase prices to keep up with inflation and costs of producing as we are price takers and we can only hope that when we sell the market is up a few cents.
"Stuff" is getting cheaper. TV's, home appliances, ipods most electrical items are getting easier to come by in a flooded market due to the boom in China. We can have everything we like in shiny new products. But food is becoming more and more expensive even without GST on fresh veges. Power is atrocious and never stops rising, even though our infrastructure is crumbling. I have never had as many power problems and blackouts as we do now. We have solar panels and this helps a tiny fraction, but the power rises anyway. We try to use as little as possible and I know most people live in darkness as they simply cannot afford to turn on a light or heater in winter.
I do think that people do buy more than we used to, but appliances lasted 20 years before you needed to replace them. Now, you are lucky to get 5 years.
I fixed a very old washing machine because it is a well made appliance. It cost me a bit, but I know that it may last me another 10 years being a well constructed unit.
Everything is made in China and nothing is as well made now. It is all about turnover and disposable items that buying quality clothing is hard to come by too.
This lack of foresight by us is killing our country and making everything expensive. We don't manufacture anything anymore, we don't own anything anymore. I don't know where it will all end, I do think wars will be fought over water and food in the future - very depressing.
The challenges that farmers face in this day and age are simply extraordinary. The fact that prices for things such as meat, milk etc have been going up for years but the farmers are still getting paid the same as they always have is appalling. The supermarket duopoly in this country plays a large part in that and the ACCC has been toothless. Consumers also contribute to this, perhaps understandably. For example, when the supermarkets dropped the prices of their own brand milk and people started to switch to those brands, the ability of independent suppliers to compete was nil - the only reason the supermarkets can do this is because they are backed by billions coming in from pokies and petrol and alcohol and all the other interests they have. They will wipe out the competition, with the assistance of consumers (who understandably are trying to get the best value for their money) and then we will be in a much worse position than before - where there is little competition, leaving them to raise prices on staples as much as they want. Anyway, rant over.
Happymum, thank you for doing what you do - farmers have an incredibly important role in this country and their devaluing will be to our detriment. Food security is, as you rightly point out, going to be a massive issue and at some point we're going to have to wake up to the fact that, when all is said and done, we can't feed our families on coal seam gas.
You have got it all in a nutshell what I am trying to say.
Thankyou for your kind words of support. I don't want to be all "poor farmers" every time I comment about our situation. Because there is a lot of people who like to stick the whingeing farmer tag on when we stand up and complain about these things.
You are absolutely right about CSG too. I can go on and on for years about how terrible this environmental raping is.
We can't eat coal and we can't drink gas.
The gas is the worse of the two though.
The old saying (native American?) "only when the last tree is cut down (etc) will you realise that you can't eat money" is so true here. I wish (in my fantasy world) that we could bypass the big buyers like supermarkets and have a lot more food co ops to buy from.
I bought a punet of cherry tomatoes the other week for 89c. I looked at it and thought of the ground that was tilled, seeds sown, plants nurtured, tomatoes picked, packed, transported by truck to a market, then again to a distribution centre and then again to the actual supermarket, where it was then unloaded from the truck, put on the shelf, where I finally picked it up and took it to the checkout where I paid for it. There is no way that all the costs involved from farm to plate were factored into that. It was so cheap I actually felt guilty buying it.
Hi, just wondering what happened to my comment from earlier this morning? I was the second person to comment and wrote a reply to John James. I don't think I was breaking any comment rules?
Hello! We haven't deleted anything from this post this morning and can't see your comment in our spam folders either ... it may have been eaten by the Internet?
I wouldn't be surprised. I seem to be having one of those days where I probably should have stayed in bed. Thanks for your reply.
I wondered what happened to that too...I promise, I had nothing to do with it disappearing...
;)