Sunday, 6 November 2016

Australia's new class war: A return to the Gilded Age


The betrayal of an entire generation of young Australians by the political classes by refusing to do anything about the Great Housing Bubble is a national disgrace.

Matt Ellis writing as Rational Radical sets out the arguments.

 “Even the so-called party of the youth, the Australian Greens, and the traditionally progressive Australian Labor Party are just as leveraged into landed wealth as any political force in the country.”

.        .        .        .        .

“But for the most part, the vanishing class consciousness of the newly minted home owner or property investor has created a political and media culture of looking the other way as wealth inequality and economic imbalances threaten to tear the system and community apart. It is so ingrained in the every day Australian cultural psyche, that it has become a truly rarified exceptionalism, wherein any person of influence or power who dares to question the path of the great Australian Housing Bubble is patronisingly reminded that history does not apply to Australia, and that genuine reform is for doomsayers and bankrupt European states.

Indeed, our exceptionalism has morphed into full a blown collective denial of the very same imbalances that brought half of the modern world to its knees only 8 years ago. That somehow these forces do not apply to the economic miracle that is Australia, and that income inequality is only a matter of a few mega-rich corporations evading their tax obligations.”

Spend five minutes to read Matt’s compelling blog..