To keep up with global food demand, the UN estimates, six million ha of new farmland will be needed every year. Instead, 12 million ha are lost every year through soil degradation. Australia lost 36 million ha of agricultural land in just the four years from 2005 till 2009.
Australia may have the world’s highest debt to GDP ratio. We have the lowest ranking in the region (61st) for income security. Our social expenditure is behind Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy's. The OECD has ranked Australia second last in government funding of public education.
"Australia's GDP per capita went backwards in the June quarter, sliding by 0.2 per cent. Reports that it increased depend on the use of "population creep". GDP increased by 0.2 per cent, but that was only due to population growth, and GDP per capita, which is a far more accurate guide to living standards than GDP, declined.
Not surprisingly, then, real net national disposable income per head, which is the best measure of living standards, slid by 1.2 per cent in the three months to June. The Fairfax economist Peter Martin says this is the fifth consecutive slide in real net disposable income per head, which is now 5 per cent below its peak in 2011." (The Hon. Kelvin Thomson, Federal Member for Wills, 3rd September 2015).
The Australian Minister for Future Planning, Mrs Jaqueline Crapaud is interviewed here by Pru
Economists advising Politicians on nation building are like the blind leading the blind. Historical facts prove that Australia's economy is managed by targeting consistent rates of extreme GDP growth. Let's define the facts before we review this problem. Economists and politicians apparently don't do this.
Today I helped a registered nurse to scan documents to submit in a job application. While we were doing this, she mentioned to me with great concern that she had heard that the government is talking about making people work until they are 70 years old and make them take out loans on their homes in order to fund their retirement. "I'm only 46," she said, "but I didn't work when my children were young and I never had the money to save for a home. So I'm supposed to keep on working until I'm 70. I'm too tired now to work full-time because, even though standards are slipping, working conditions are getting tougher and tougher and management more and more unreasonable." The latest productivity report on An Aging Australia supplies policies to undermine the political strength of older people who would otherwise be able to represent the rest of the community and defend the wealth and security basis of the younger generations. Blaming older people for economic decline that has its real seeds in resource decline sets the scene for generational splitting. However, the real targets are actually today's young people and their children.
Bill Gross, Nouriel Roubini, Laurence Kotlikoff, Steve Keen, Michel Chossudovsky, the Wall Street Journal and many others say that our entire economy is a Ponzi scheme.
In the US Presidential race, both roads lead to financial collapse, resource depletion, war, irreversible climate change, species extinction, chaos, despair and hopelessness.
The Time Is Ripe For This Man To Lead Your Exceptionally Debt-Ridden Nation!
Australia and Canada are in a race to the bottom to dig up all their minerals. They are importing workers and failing to train their own. Their politicians are caught up in the myth of sustainable economic growth. "The tar sands are the engine of that growth. And we'll want top dollar for what we export because the thirst for tax revenue is insatiable.
"Every time I hear or read the word 'sustainable', for instance, in 'sustainable growth', 'sustainable living' and 'sustainable economy', I feel that we are being cheated and lured into false security."
Article by Hans Brunner
Report on the Federation Square (Victoria, Australia) Population Forum on 23 April 2010, where Mark O'Connor debated Marcus Spiller.
Report on the Federation Square (Victoria, Australia) Population Forum on 23 April 2010, where Mark O'Connor debated Marcus Spiller.
Click image for the same hamster film that is in the teaser for this article.
Or click to go to thewebsite of the impossible hamster.
Click image for film
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