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Comment on We're experiencing the biggest dive in living standards in half a century — and a recession is looming

Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

That period during 2020 was the first time in ages I’d felt positive about the economy. Due to the immigration tap being turned off demand in my industry increased and pay and conditions got better.

After Labor decided to open the immigration flood gates, the shoe is obviously on the other foot again as far as employer vs employee relationships go. Pay has flat lined and conditions like WFH are getting wound back. Thank you Labor for living up to your liberal lite™ tag.

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rainynight65@feddit.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Remind me, what else happened in 2020? Was there any particular reason why the ‘immigration tap’ was turned off?

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- Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Can’t quite remember. I seem to recall WFH becoming important, and not being able to travel interstate or overseas easily. What was it that caused that again?
  
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exocrinous@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You xenophobe.

I’m suffering from the recession too but I don’t blame immigrants, because they’re coming into an economy just as bad as I live in. That means where they’re coming from is even worse. And besides, complaining about immigration is hypocrisy unless you’re aboriginal.

If the government had any sense they’d tax the rich and use the money to increase infrastructure spending. That’d create more jobs and improve all our lives. Imagine high speed rail from Melbourne to Perth, going at speeds comparable to a plane. Imagine how many jobs a project like that could provide. And what about solar and wind power? Government should be hiring thousands of people to build solar farms. That’s the sensible thing to do with a surplus of immigration; use that productive power to make the country better. Any money paid to immigrants goes straight back into the economy when they buy stuff, so in a functioning economy it should be no problem.

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- Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s not about blaming the immigrants themselves, it’s the rate at which the government has chosen to bring them in. We can’t build housing at anywhere near that rate to accommodate them.
  
  All that happens is those at the bottom end of the socioeconomic spectrum end up not being able to get a rental and living in their car or a tent.
  
  Those in the next few rungs up end up with reduced standard of living also. Meanwhile the 1% laugh at us losers calling each other names and squabbling amongst ourselves instead of pointing the pitchforks at those who orchestrate it.
  
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  - exocrinous@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The government is building housing as fast as they want to build housing. They’re providing subsidies to external developers to build suburbs zoned for residential only. You know how fast the Soviet Union built housing when they put their minds to it? It’s just a matter of taxing enough from the rich, and investing in government run industry instead of relying on corporations.
    
    Money in the accounts of the rich is static. It doesn’t move through the economy, it sits there are gets leveraged so they can take more. Money in the hands of the workers moves. We spend it on rent and groceries and doctors visits. The cause of a recession is simple: we don’t have enough money to spend past the essentials. If there are more workers in need of money, so what? Build them houses and give them the benefits of taxes. Ideally paying them to build houses and killing two birds with one stone. The reason the government hasn’t done this is they don’t want to. They’re in the pockets of big business.
    
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    ajsadauskas@aus.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    @exocrinous @Longmactoppedup I think there's a few big pieces of this puzzle that you guys are missing.
    Housing is too expensive.
    Why? Australia doesn't have enough housing.
    To build more housing, we need skilled tradies, structural engineers, etc.
    But there's a problem.
    Australia has skills shortages in those areas.
    Okay, so we'll bring in more skilled migrants to fill those skills shortages to build more housing.
    Those skilled migrants need somewhere to live.
    But there's a problem.
    Australia doesn't have enough housing.
    So we need more houses for the skilled migrants we need to build more houses to fix the problem of not enough houses.
    It gets worse.
    For around two years during the pandemic, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade needed more staff for things like hotel quarantine and border pass applications.
    So DFAT basically took all staff off examining skilled migrant visa applications.
    The problem is that when the borders reopened, there was a roughly two-year backlog of skilled migrant applications.
    Also, Vlad decided to invade Ukraine, which meant most Western countries blocked Russian exports.
    The problem is that a lot of — for example — the timber for the formwork used in concrete came from Russia. So the countries that had domestic supplies were hoarding them, while the rest of the world was scrambling to find alternative supplies.
    So developers were waiting weeks or months to hire tradies, the tradies would show up on site, the parts they needed still hadn't shown up because of the supply shortage, so they'd go home. A few weeks later, the parts would show up, but the developer would then need to book the tradies again...
    Russia is also a big oil and gas supplier, so as it was shut off from the world market, energy prices surged.
    So building projects were being delayed, costs were increasing, new housing supply was delayed.
    But wait — what about our higher education system? Why are there skills shortages to begin with? Why aren't our TAFEs and unis producing enough skilled workers?
    Well, starting with the Keating government and accelerating under John Howard, the federal government discovered that full fee paying international students are a great way to fund higher education without raising taxes.
    So higher education went from primarily training students to fill local skills gaps to exporting education.
    Student migration dried up during the pandemic, but it kicked off again just as border restrictions were lifted.
    Those students need housing.
    At the same time, delays in processing skilled migration visas meant there were massive skills shortages in construction. And supply shortages.
    It still gets worse.
    In a number of key industries — supermarkets, telcos, banks, airlines, electricity — Australia doesn't have genuine competition.
    It gets even worse... (1/2)
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