Ageing population

[Value Collector]

Gough Whitlam ????

in Brisbane it was then Lord Mayor Clem Jones and what is more he did NOT take a salary ( he had a real estate/property develop business at the same time , so any improvement in land/house values in general echoed in his company profits )

and BTW Gough Whitlam was elected Prime Minister in 1972 .. i remember that very very well ( it gave me choices on whether i was going to be involved in the Vietnam War ( he cancelled conscription .. and the potential of being involved in a very brutal war )

Clem gave us sewerage , bitumen road , concrete gutters for road drainage , a sewerage system , a rare moment of true progress from a ALP politician

but yes out-back toilets , dirt roads , unsealed gutters ,and many other amenities were a feature of Brisbane at the start of his leadership ( even water-tanks were reasonably common in city allotments )

Yes, you are right. each state did have their own program, Brisbanes was lead by Clem. However the states where slow apparently, so Gough introduced the National sewage program to speed things up, and reduced they backlog of homes on the waitlists.

My wife's father was born in 1960, and he didn't get running hotter in his childhood home until he was a teenager , the good old days hey...

 

[moXJO]

I don’t know for sure, but I reckon on average retirees spending would be supporting enough economic activity in Australia to offset the medical costs, I mean even some of the medical costs are recovered through taxation on the wages etc of the the medical staff.

To send 100% of a retirees spending off shore, just to reduce the cost of their medical bills, if probably not a net win.

Import young people to fill the gap.
There would be more housing.
Less strain on services.
I'm sure the demographics for peak spending was a lot younger than retirees.

 

[Smurf1976]

It’s better to make the things that you can sell at high profit margins, and buy the things you buy cheaper.

We know this instinctively when it comes to managing our own households, we generally pick a job we know we can make the most money on and focus on that, and then buy all the other produce we need.

If each household tried to produce 100% of their consumption, rather than focus on one thing they do best, their standard of living drops.

It’s the same for a country, especially a small one.

For an individual it's easy to measure profit and I agree with your comments.

For society as a whole however it's far more complex.

As I posted in another thread, over the past century the state public service in Tasmania has grown by 4.36% which on the surface might not seem a problem, indeed per capita it's a reduction.

However there's more to it best explained by saying the PS circa 1990 was primarily comprised of hands on people. If you were a public servant then most likely you worked in a workshop, in a laboratory, on building sites, on roadworks or you were an engineer, draftsperson, teacher, doctor or whatever. The chance you'd be purely administrative wasn't zero but it wasn't that common.

Today government no longer employs painters to paint lines on the roads, it no longer has materials testing labs, it employs very few electricians and so far as I'm aware it's zero in most other trades, cleaners are now contractors, all roadworks is contracted out even routine maintenance, there's no longer a government department building public housing with its own trades, and so on. All gone and now either done by contractors on behalf of government or done by the private sector as such.

And yet the number of public servants hasn't reduced. Because what's happened is thousands of new administrative jobs, that previously didn't exist, have been created. So now society pays taxes to fund all these administrative jobs, and it pays taxes to fund the contractors working for government doing physical work, and in many cases things that used to be done by government are now directly user pays.

Now stand back and look at the macro picture and how is that creating wealth for society?

Regardless of how profitable it is, manufacturing is at least retaining money in Australia that otherwise goes overseas to pay for that product to be imported. That's the minimum of what it achieves.

Now how does shuffling paper around in the public service replace that? That's what I don't follow. How does scaling up the PS administration, whilst paying contractors to do all the hands on work, actually create wealth? I'm not seeing it.

Noting that I'm not picking on Tasmania, just using it because I have data, but it's the same in other states too indeed it applies across the economy. The workforce that's come out of manufacturing hasn't gone into some other industry producing an actual product but rather it's gone into administration, marketing, regulation, compliance, culture and so on none of which has an end customer paying for it.

I really don't follow the argument of how that's producing wealth at the macro level. For the individuals sure, and I've nothing against people getting whatever work they can get, but at a societal level how does it work?

Could Saudi Arabia (for example) just shut down their oil industry, scale up their public service and get rich? As I see it no, they'd go broke if they did that, because their PS isn't selling anything outside the country whereas the oil industry is. Regardless of how profitable their oil is, at least it brings money in from outside the country.

 

[Smurf1976]

Adding to my previous post, it's not limited to manufacturing.

Eg I can follow that pop music, tourism or wine are exports bringing money into the country. Something's being produced that someone else is paying for.

But that's very different to things that just shuffle money around within the domestic economy with either no actual product at all, or only a low value product that nobody would offer if it wasn't for their inability to get something better paid.

 

[qldfrog]

Adding to my previous post, it's not limited to manufacturing.

Eg I can follow that pop music, tourism or wine are exports bringing money into the country. Something's being produced that someone else is paying for.

But that's very different to things that just shuffle money around within the domestic economy with either no actual product at all, or only a low value product that nobody would offer if it wasn't for their inability to get something better paid.

That is the key issue with GDP like KPIs.
A very concrete example as we are talking aging population.
A 70y old pensioner gets cancer, goes under chemo therapy, lose a limb, get strokes, is put in a wheelchair, moved to a retirement house but bloody cancer is relentless and now goes to a new assisted living house, endless trip to the emergencies until after another year hooked and fed on IV in an hospital, passes away.
In the last 3 y of their life, this person is responsible for an absolute explosion of GDP, millions more than ever produced in their life have been spent shuffled and dozen employed full time for care and associated
Is the country richer? Yes a PM will brag that the gdp is growing and recession driven away but even the most neurones lacking knows that this person was a pure cost, should i say burden on society and the society is poorer now
That person could be me, Nana or your preferred teacher, it could be cancer or Alzheimer and i do not suggest we should go the Aboriginal way and drop our sick and weak ones at the next crossing in the Nullarbor.
But the fact remains we are in a system where even absolute money pits pretend to be economic growth, be it care, hospitals, NDIS,or even most of BS PS jobs whose numbers should have been slashed with IT 20y.
At least health does benefit or pretend to benefit the population but when you employ people to look at satellite maps and check for building permit lacking sheds, or handle subventions to the MSO or manage free tree gifts to councils taxpayers....
(I gift you back some of your taxes lol)
Worse, most of these myriads of BS job only make life harder, add regulations, decrease productivity and produce a miserable daily life to most if not all
Yet even these KPIs show a decrease of wealth per Australian in the last 13 y, show you how we are heading...

 

[Value Hunter]

Adding to my previous post, it's not limited to manufacturing.

Eg I can follow that pop music, tourism or wine are exports bringing money into the country. Something's being produced that someone else is paying for.

But that's very different to things that just shuffle money around within the domestic economy with either no actual product at all, or only a low value product that nobody would offer if it wasn't for their inability to get something better paid.

I agree, and you are pretty much making the same point I was earlier in the thread just in a different way.

A perfect example of this in Australia is the education system. In a government run school the expenditure is something like $24,000 per student. Its an astronomical amount really.

A public school teacher on average if you include their superannuation, etc probably costs the government no more than $150,000 per year. Average class size is around 25 students. So one teacher is teaching 25 students. $150,000 divided by 25 is $6000 per student to pay for the teacher. Where is the other $18,000 per student going? Yes there is a certain amount of expenditure necessary for the physical infrastructure of schools, etc but a large chunk of that is paying for useless paper pushing bureaucrats.

It could be done much more cheaply and at much higher quality if they just abolished all public schools and the department of education entirely. Just have complete freedom and let the private sector take over and we can get rid of all the useless bureaucrats who are a net drain on society.

If they just give parents back that $24,000 per students and let them organize the education of their own children.

 

[Value Hunter]

That is the key issue with GDP like KPIs.
A very concrete example as we are talking aging population.
A 70y old pensioner gets cancer, goes under chemo therapy, lose a limb, get strokes, is put in a wheelchair, moved to a retirement house but bloody cancer is relentless and now goes to a new assisted living house, endless trip to the emergencies until after another year hooked and fed on IV in an hospital, passes away.
In the last 3 y of their life, this person is responsible for an absolute explosion of GDP, millions more than ever produced in their life have been spent shuffled and dozen employed full time for care and associated
Is the country richer? Yes a PM will brag that the gdp is growing and recession driven away but even the most neurones lacking knows that this person was a pure cost, should i say burden on society and the society is poorer now
That person could be me, Nana or your preferred teacher, it could be cancer or Alzheimer and i do not suggest we should go the Aboriginal way and drop our sick and weak ones at the next crossing in the Nullarbor.
But the fact remains we are in a system where even absolute money pits pretend to be economic growth, be it care, hospitals, NDIS,or even most of BS PS jobs whose numbers should have been slashed with IT 20y.
At least health does benefit or pretend to benefit the population but when you employ people to look at satellite maps and check for building permit lacking sheds, or handle subventions to the MSO or manage free tree gifts to councils taxpayers....
(I gift you back some of your taxes lol)
Worse, most of these myriads of BS job only make life harder, add regulations, decrease productivity and produce a miserable daily life to most if not all
Yet even these KPIs show a decrease of wealth per Australian in the last 13 y, show you how we are heading...

I agree. As soon as you dig slightly past the most headline of figures it becomes immediately visible standard of living has been slipping for a long time in Australia. GDP per capita in Australia in U.S. dollars adjusted for CPI is lower today than in 2012....... So all the GDP "growth" in Australia since 2012 has come from inflation, devaluation of the Aussie dollar against the U.S. dollar and population growth.

 

[divs4ever]

Import young people to fill the gap.
There would be more housing.
Less strain on services.
I'm sure the demographics for peak spending was a lot younger than retirees.

there is another solution , of course

a currently undesired one , inspire more teenagers to go to work younger ( say after grade 10 or 12 ) instead of loading them up with education debt and often useless mush like degrees and diplomas , we seem to have a zillion lawyers , psychotherapists , varying arts graduates etc , etc

maybe if more young citizens were paying taxes instead of propping up educational institutions ...

 

[Value Collector]

For an individual it's easy to measure profit and I agree with your comments.

For society as a whole however it's far more complex.

As I posted in another thread, over the past century the state public service in Tasmania has grown by 4.36% which on the surface might not seem a problem, indeed per capita it's a reduction.

However there's more to it best explained by saying the PS circa 1990 was primarily comprised of hands on people. If you were a public servant then most likely you worked in a workshop, in a laboratory, on building sites, on roadworks or you were an engineer, draftsperson, teacher, doctor or whatever. The chance you'd be purely administrative wasn't zero but it wasn't that common.

Today government no longer employs painters to paint lines on the roads, it no longer has materials testing labs, it employs very few electricians and so far as I'm aware it's zero in most other trades, cleaners are now contractors, all roadworks is contracted out even routine maintenance, there's no longer a government department building public housing with its own trades, and so on. All gone and now either done by contractors on behalf of government or done by the private sector as such.

And yet the number of public servants hasn't reduced. Because what's happened is thousands of new administrative jobs, that previously didn't exist, have been created. So now society pays taxes to fund all these administrative jobs, and it pays taxes to fund the contractors working for government doing physical work, and in many cases things that used to be done by government are now directly user pays.

Now stand back and look at the macro picture and how is that creating wealth for society?

Regardless of how profitable it is, manufacturing is at least retaining money in Australia that otherwise goes overseas to pay for that product to be imported. That's the minimum of what it achieves.

Now how does shuffling paper around in the public service replace that? That's what I don't follow. How does scaling up the PS administration, whilst paying contractors to do all the hands on work, actually create wealth? I'm not seeing it.

Noting that I'm not picking on Tasmania, just using it because I have data, but it's the same in other states too indeed it applies across the economy. The workforce that's come out of manufacturing hasn't gone into some other industry producing an actual product but rather it's gone into administration, marketing, regulation, compliance, culture and so on none of which has an end customer paying for it.

I really don't follow the argument of how that's producing wealth at the macro level. For the individuals sure, and I've nothing against people getting whatever work they can get, but at a societal level how does it work?

Could Saudi Arabia (for example) just shut down their oil industry, scale up their public service and get rich? As I see it no, they'd go broke if they did that, because their PS isn't selling anything outside the country whereas the oil industry is. Regardless of how profitable their oil is, at least it brings money in from outside the country.

Manufacturing something that you can import cheaper is not maintaining money in Australia if it means labour and capital is diverted away from a highly profitable export industry, or some other industry that creates more value locally.

That is my whole point, both labour and capital is limited, we only have so much to deploy.

 

[divs4ever]

That is my whole point, both labour and capital is limited, we only have so much to deploy.

but so is much of the stuff we export since we seem to be adverse to value-adding

sure our wine exports are a good example of exporting done correctly , but what about say ( most of ) our oil where it is exported , then refined and we import the refined products

labour issues can be reduced by trimming the education path , offering more jobs to workers without degrees ( but the ability to learn those skills as they go ) and CAPITAL goes where it is treated best .. why can't that be locally ( at least most of the time )

 

[Value Collector]

Adding to my previous post, it's not limited to manufacturing.

Eg I can follow that pop music, tourism or wine are exports bringing money into the country. Something's being produced that someone else is paying for.

But that's very different to things that just shuffle money around within the domestic economy with either no actual product at all, or only a low value product that nobody would offer if it wasn't for their inability to get something better paid.

I don’t understand what you are saying about shuffling paper, I am talking about diverting labour and capital to value adding industries, that create real value for Australians.

You are talking about taking some steel, copper and glass and making a TV, to add value in Australia.

But, I am saying if that means we have to pay more for TV’s, and we have less people turning coffee beans and milk in high value coffee, our lives might be less enjoyable.

IMO all industries are value adding, even food delivery services, policing, education, theme parks, ski lessons etc etc etc

The market naturally shifts towards the industries that produce the most value with the least capital and labour.

 

[Value Collector]

but so is much of the stuff we export since we seem to be adverse to value-adding

sure our wine exports are a good example of exporting done correctly , but what about say ( most of ) our oil where it is exported , then refined and we import the refined products

labour issues can be reduced by trimming the education path , offering more jobs to workers without degrees ( but the ability to learn those skills as they go ) and CAPITAL goes where it is treated best .. why can't that be locally ( at least most of the time )

We aren’t averse to value adding, we just don’t go into industries where the value added is not profitable.

As I explained above, even a coffee shop is a value adding business, don’t just think of value adding as bending metal, the service industry adds huge value.

think of how much value a place like Disneyland adds, would it make sense for California to close down Disneyland to open a steel mill?

 

[divs4ever]

I don’t understand what you are saying about shuffling paper, I am talking about diverting labour and capital to value adding industries, that create real value for Australians.

You are talking about taking some steel, copper and glass and making a TV, to add value in Australia.

But, I am saying if that means we have to pay more for TV’s, and we have less people turning coffee beans and milk in high value coffee, our lives might be less enjoyable.

IMO all industries are value adding, even food delivery services, policing, education, theme parks, ski lessons etc etc etc

The market naturally shifts towards the industries that produce the most value with the least capital and labour.

that assumes the ( local or global ) economy won't collapse , now i am thinking a major trade war ( where Australia is liable to be a collateral victim ) , but there are other semi-isolating scenarios , where increased resilience and self-sufficiency would have been a useful bonus

BTW how flash does your TV need to be >

the last TV i bought was $10 and it doubled as a computer/laptop monitor to boot maybe less hypnotizing TVs is a good thing , less fancy coffees as well

 

[divs4ever]

We aren’t averse to value adding, we just don’t go into industries where the value added is not profitable.

As I explained above, even a coffee shop is a value adding business, don’t just think of value adding as bending metal, the service industry adds huge value.

think of how much value a place like Disneyland adds, would it make sense for California to close down Disneyland to open a steel mill?

not much in California makes sense , but it did attract a lot of drug-addled hippies back in the '70's , so maybe for the residents ...

BTW .. San Andres Fault , maybe a steel mill isn't a good place either ( unless you are planning to build a bridge to the new mainland )

 

[JohnDe]

there is another solution , of course

a currently undesired one , inspire more teenagers to go to work younger ( say after grade 10 or 12 ) instead of loading them up with education debt and often useless mush like degrees and diplomas , we seem to have a zillion lawyers , psychotherapists , varying arts graduates etc , etc

maybe if more young citizens were paying taxes instead of propping up educational institutions ...

The Greens and socialist parties have been pushing a similar but different strategy, allowing 16 year olds the vote.

A dangerous policy, in my opinion opinion.

 

[divs4ever]

The Greens and socialist parties have been pushing a similar but different strategy, allowing 16 year olds the vote.

A dangerous policy, in my opinion opinion.

maybe ... however it may just be my tiny social circle in that age group , but the ones i talk to seem to be red-pilled

maybe all that indoctrination has been counter-productive ( like it was for me at that age )

however these Socialists/Communists have to believe their own narrative to have the political stance they have ( and the ability to resist seeing reality )

 

[sptrawler]

Manufacturing something that you can import cheaper is not maintaining money in Australia if it means labour and capital is diverted away from a highly profitable export industry, or some other industry that creates more value locally.

That is my whole point, both labour and capital is limited, we only have so much to deploy.

That beggs the ever recurring question, what export industry? And for gods sake don't say fckn mining, they are trying to reduce their labour cost 24/7 .

If we keep putting more out of work and on the dole, or in more service industries, which indirectly end up with the Govt having to print money, we will end up as Keating said a banana republic.

I can understand your stance on the issue, you only need the economy to stay bouyant until you check out, but there are a lot of Aussies that have kids and grandkids, some even have great grandkids, that don't want to see all the sacrifice and doing without that they did meant nothing.

Your situation just doesn't resonate with hard working Aussies, that don't want to throw in the towel, that isn't the legacy they want to leave.
Just my opinion.

 

[JohnDe]

maybe ... however it may just be my tiny social circle in that age group , but the ones i talk to seem to be red-pilled

maybe all that indoctrination has been counter-productive ( like it was for me at that age )

however these Socialists/Communists have to believe their own narrative to have the political stance they have ( and the ability to resist seeing reality )

Several years ago I would have agreed with you, but not today.

I have a few friends that are teachers in different schools, and they all say the same thing: high school students, especially girls and the effeminate overly concern themselves with fear for animal rights and the environment. They want government to change rules that will protect animals from being farmed, and tougher laws to protect environment and stop global warming. All the things that the green and socialist parties want but can’t get enough of mainstream voters to support.

 

[sptrawler]

I don’t understand what you are saying about shuffling paper, I am talking about diverting labour and capital to value adding industries, that create real value for Australians.

You are talking about taking some steel, copper and glass and making a TV, to add value in Australia.

But, I am saying if that means we have to pay more for TV’s, and we have less people turning coffee beans and milk in high value coffee, our lives might be less enjoyable.

IMO all industries are value adding, even food delivery services, policing, education, theme parks, ski lessons etc etc etc

The market naturally shifts towards the industries that produce the most value with the least capital and labour.

We can only employ so many uber drivers and baristas, many of them have degrees and are waiting to get Govt jobs , meanwhile we are importing many more that want to be baristas and uber drivers.

Is this is the marker shift towards industries that produce the most value with the least capital cost?

You talk as if we are on the cusp of an export bonanza, when in reality we are on the cusp of a dollar revaluation IMO, which wouldn't be too bad because it would wake a few people up IMO. Lol

I keep harping on about batteries, but as the pandemic showed, when the $hit hits the fan, you soon relise how exposed you are to external shocks, the 1987 stock market crash actually forced the introduction of the compulsory superannuation scheme.

Well if we are going to go to say 70% renewables, we are going to need a huge amount of battery storage and sourcing them from China is great until we can't.
Even if we used a Chinese manufacturer to establish a production facility here, it would make a hell of a lot more sense, than having no battery manufacturing ability at all.

Our educational outcomes are falling, our technical skill levels are falling, where you think these value adding export industries are going to spring from eludes me.

 

[divs4ever]

That beggs the ever recurring question, what export industry? And for gods sake don't say fckn mining, they are trying to reduce their labour cost 24/7 .

If we keep putting more out of work and on the dole, or in more service industries, which indirectly end up with the Govt having to print money, we will end up as Keating said a banana republic.

I can understand your stance on the issue, you only need the economy to stay bouyant until you check out, but there are a lot of Aussies that have kids and grandkids, some even have great grandkids, that don't want to see all the sacrifice and doing without that they did meant nothing.

Your situation just doesn't resonate with hard working Aussies, that don't want to throw in the towel, that isn't the legacy they want to leave.
Just my opinion.

indeed there is a contingent of Australians that DO think of multi-generational consequences ( for their family-line ) and some of them are ( or close to ) financially secure

** I can understand your stance on the issue, you only need the economy to stay bouyant until you check out, **

that should apply to me , but i have always had an unconventional way of thinking

the main danger of our current trend is IF 'free trade ' gets abandoned or blocked , and we MUST make ( or go without ) but lack the skills to fill any gaps quickly .