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, which ensured 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 used third world debt to influence policy change, allowing 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, this will be less and less possible. Australia needs to re-embrace 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 by various Liberal -and some Labor- governments.
*** consent manufacturing became harder to enforce
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization
[4] https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2377740023500173
CC SA NC
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the 12 months to June 2024, the net immigration number was 446k. That’s over 1200 people a day. They’ve increased migration since last June, so an increase to 1500 a day is easily possible. In fact from June 2023-2024 the ABS says the net migration figure was 536,000. Know how many a day that is? 1,468. So it was 1500 a day in 2023-2024 but it’s “racist propaganda” to say it is or could be 1500 a day in 2025?
“Easily debunked racist propaganda” 🤣
I mean you walked onto your own intellectual landmine there; the cognitive dissonance is now your row to hoe. Given that burden there is little surprise in watching you devolve to emojis like every other nervous boomer caught in a lie. Also the the phrase was “Racist propaganda that is easily debunked,” but we’re not allowing reading comprehension to get in our way now are we?
Did you not even read my comment?
The ABS, on their own website and documents, show that the net migration - not the OAD data - just 2 years ago was 1500 a day, and last year was 1200 a day. With how quickly this government has been trying to pack electorates with newly imported Labor voters it’s absolutely possible it’s back to 1500 per day.
So what is it - you believe the ABS or you don’t?
The ABS are saying “that number isn’t what you think it is” about number A, while number B which is what people think number A is is virtually identical.