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Ah, Prawn, the clarity and simplicity (I won't actually say arrogance) of intelligent youth. Not everyone has been born with your intellect and capacity to do good things with your life. People get sick, marriages fail, disabled children are born, events you can't begin to imagine put people into positions where they simply do not have the capacity and potential that you enjoy. There are thousands of hard working Australians out there, doing the best they can, and still finding it a struggle.

I've been involved in the welfare sector for about 15 years. Yes, there are people who fail to take advantage of opportunities and who know how to milk the system. But there are far more who are genuinely having a hard time, perhaps with sick children, and who deserve our compassion.

How would you get on, Prawn, if you developed a mental or physical illness which prevented you from continuing your studies and dictated that you would never be able to work for a living? Could you support yourself?
Could you happily fill your car with petrol, buy good food at rising prices, and pay rapidly rising rent? And here I'm not even assuming a wish to buy a home of your own.


Might be good to be a bit less dismissive and genuinely consider that some folks are doing it tough through no fault of their own.
 
Well said Julia.

And to Prawn, what gives you the qualifications to tell people how hard they should or should not work. Get a job first, it will add weight to your argument.
 
You can say arrogance Julia, I wont be offended.

I do agree that there are genuinely people out there that are struggling, however the actual amount i would not know, but i do think a lot of the media hype is just that. I think that there is a huge % of families who claim to be struggling, yet it is their own fault (ie too much debt etc).

People get sick, marriages fail, disabled children are born, events you can't begin to imagine put people into positions where they simply do not have the capacity and potential that you enjoy
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I agree with this, but in my limited experience i know of a lot of people and situations where people have managed to make the best of a hard situation. Im not saying it is that easy for everyone, but what can be a chieved with determination is amazing.

The people who struggle genuinely (disabilities etc) is a tough issue. Theoretically governments should look after this portion of the population, but they dont. Unfortunately i cannot think of any society, either now or historically, which has not been segmented on some basis. This doesnt mean its right, but shows it is likely to continue to happen.

Not everyone is in a position to hedge I agree, but what do you (or others) propose should be done? it is a tough one...


To Macquack,
I am not telling people how hard they should work, i am just saying if they dont work hard dont expect things to come easy.

Just because i am a student does not mean i do not have a job. In fact in this debate i would think being in my position adds more weight to my argument. Having to support myself while studying full time means i am exposed to rising prices, more so than people with full time work...
 
son of baglimit said:
therefore dont invest in oilers - invest in those servicing the oilers.
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firstly i dont see any problem with investing in oilers, as it assists my practice in meditation and learnings in patience

as for the suggestion that investing in services attached to the industry, i agree with that.. its far less a risk for sure but beyond doubt a brilliant sector..

temjin

have to agree with what you saying.. i am a resource sector investor.. and try to stay in a narrow field, i have massive successes in gold and platinum, but oil gets a lot of interest from me. I listened to a keynote address by Craig James, Chief Equities Economist, CommSec at the excellence in oil and gas conference in sydney.... interesting presentation, but lost me on a few points, one was very interesting, he argued peak oil was driven by economics.. his view is the peak oil situation will disperse as the price of oil now will open up so much more fields previously not economic!! and leaving an impression that peak oil arguement was not valid as oil gets more expensive then more will be found.. the next speaker was eric from arq.. he followed up with a very polite little speculation that on peak oil, craig james was all at sea and definately not in agreement with the industry, i guess all craig needed to do was demonstrate the theory with evidence, and as eric bluntly pointed out, there are no new reserves coming out anywhere on the globe that are going to suddenly be a miracle reserves replacement for the currently depleted fields world wide.. so it was easy to shoot down craigs excellently argued thoery with a demonstration of facts not following the thoery.. but eric was remarkably restrained and polite about it!!
 
I wonder how many of these "strugling families" have smokers in them?

food for thought.
 
Hi Roland,

Thanks for your response. You have my respect for managing as well as you are. And, yes, I should have made clear in my earlier comment that I was thinking of the people who really are without the choices that you and I have.

My sympathy definitely doesn't include the wannabes who have borrowed too much - on mortgages or credit cards - in order to have what they don't need.
And it doesn't include people on benefits who smoke, drink and gamble and then ask for supplementary assistance. Sadly, many of these people simply have no expectation of working and will breed further generations with the same mentality. Personally, I'd like to see the welfare system become a bit tougher here.

The people I feel concerned about are those I described before. Usually they have no political voice and are pretty much forgotten. Someone on a Disability Pension is getting $14,000 p.a. ($273 p.w.) and paying rent of at least $200. Doesn't leave much to live on, does it? Especially when they often have considerable medical expenses.

That said, Australia's welfare spending is huge. Maybe some redistribution of the funds would help.

Good luck with your businesses.
 

Ironically, apart from some companies, oil & gas producers have not attracted interest.The American stock markets dictate the direction of the world stock markets, and that is down.We were all raised on oil.It is part of everyday life and `the price` we all have to pay for it has the wider population asking why.

If the American markets make their way upward for a sustained period of time then oilers may attract interest with the returns they are receiving from higher prices.

A lot of fear around oil at the moment!!!!
 
DRIL...DRILLL....DRILLL!!! I need cheap gas for my Ford F-150 and my boat!
 
Not sure if it has been raised before, but I feel that we are entering a period where oil production is hitting the incredibly profitable stage. No doubt there are input costs to oil production that affect margins, but this depends on the quality and accessibility of crude being drilled.

Demand is up and supply is increasingly concentrated towards OPEC. I see a hugely increased transfer of wealth over the next few years from the West (particularly US) to the Middle East.

It has been mentioned that the US has stockpiled oil for emergency use (2 month supply seems to be the word on this forum). I wonder how this has been stockpiled? In barrels? In formerly dried up oil fields?

I wonder if more has been stockpiled for economic rather than emergency (resource depletion) purposes by banking on the exponential rise in the value of this soon to be precious commodity.
 
algis said:
Demand is up and supply is increasingly concentrated towards OPEC. I see a hugely increased transfer of wealth over the next few years from the West (particularly US) to the Middle East.
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This article called Foreign Investment in Australia, How Much is Too Much? mentions similar belief and it does seem to be in action now.

Good article with a lean towards `keep buying Aussie shares`.


.
 
sam76 said:
I wonder how many of these "strugling families" have smokers in them?

food for thought.
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Or gamblers, drinkers, compulsive renovators, those who spend $50+ per month on a mobile phone, bottled water buyers...

I don't smoke. Just making a point - there are exceptions but most people spend rather a lot of money on things they could easily do without.

A classic case I know of is someone with decent income, minimal necessary expenses and yet their net finanical worth is close to zero. They did at one point tell me how they just couldn't survive on double what I spend - and I'm quite happy with my lifestyle.

Their mobile phone bill is more than my home phone, internet and mobile combined.

Their petrol costs are more than I spend on petrol, rego, car insurance, house insurance, electricity, gas and firewood put together. And yet I never avoid driving due to petrol costs, never put up with the cold or sit in the dark to save power etc.

And don't even mention how much they spend on (junk) food. It would easily feed me, the cat, pay the rates and pay for an interstate holiday each year as well.

Agreed that many do suffer genuine hardship. But there are many others for whom it's self imposed.
 
algis said:
It has been mentioned that the US has stockpiled oil for emergency use (2 month supply seems to be the word on this forum). I wonder how this has been stockpiled? In barrels? In formerly dried up oil fields?
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Apart from normal above ground commercial stocks in tanks, the reserves are in salt caverns underground.

It's only about 0.1% of all oil used to date though or about 3.2% of present annual global consumption.
 
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