Australia and the West have experienced, hand over fist, improvements in GDP and living standards since we moved our manufacturing and resource extraction overseas*.
Even as the working class got sold out**, living standards improved across the board. The rich got richer and so did the middle class - with most Australians joining the middle class, during and, since the post-war era.
We were getting a good deal on our imports, taking more from poorer countries (Global South) than we gave in return, but that has been coming to an end.
The Global North (the First World) has monopolised trade with the Global South, by Capital and demand but also coercion and regime change, ensuring a good deal. But with the rise of the BRIX and China’s Belt and Road initiative, the Global South has more opportunity for equal exchange of goods and services.
While the IMF use third world debt to change those countries policies to allow Western Capital to buy up and exploit industry, Chinese banks are forgiving debts and negotiating mutually beneficial agreements (to the benefit of China).
While Western Capital built limited infrastructure to extract a specific resource, China is investing in not just general infrastructure but education and the creation of a local workforce.
The Global South are trading with each other. They have more options, trade is more competitive - we get less of a deal.
Where previously Australia could afford to give Corporations absurd profits and still have money for the people, that will be less and less possible. Australia needs to re-imbrace the policies of the post-war era, which ensured a dignified life, and roll back the last 50 years of neoliberal policy built for an age which no longer exists.
* Not just in the neoliberal era, but all the way back to the start of colonial expansion.
** With manufacturing moving overseas and the denationalisation of various Liberal -and some Labor- governments.
*** consent manufacturing became harder to enforce
[1] www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y
[2] ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization
[3] bu.edu/…/bailouts-from-beijing-how-china-function…
[4] www.worldscientific.com/doi/…/S2377740023500173
CC SA NC
hitmyspot@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Per capita gdp has been dropping for years and productivity gains has been poor in general compared to our other western peers.
The big problem is consolidation of mega corporations that suck all the profits up from smaller businesses and take those profits overseas, paying no tax here,
That, and treating housing like a commodity and not a human right. We need to build more houses and tax large multinationals fairly.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 2 days ago
This is because of the huge population growth due to immigration, as the government use immigrants to prop up the total GDP while ignoring the per capita gdp which is getting worse and worse as you said. Just bring in more people to spend to prop up the house of cards seems to be their only play, and I genuinely believe they don’t have a way out of the situation. The politicians don’t care because they’re all getting filthy rich so the degradation of living standards won’t ever affect them or their families.
hitmyspot@aussie.zone 2 days ago
The per capital drops are not the fault of immigrants nor immigration. Immigration normally helps with productivity and gsp growth. As you say it’s the only thing propping up the economy.
Blaming immigrants is misguided and an easy way to foment racism, as per the march for Australia rallies today.
If immigration drops suddenly, due to policy change or otherwise, we’ll all be even worse off and could trigger an even worse recession.