It’s just intimidation. We have a problem with hating poor people in Australia. Goes back to the dole bludger trope. When Robert Doyle was mayor of Melbourne he “cleaned up” the streets by removing homeless people from the CBD, because some rich cunt complained about the sight of it.

“Some residents, such as Penny Essing from Elwood, in Melbourne’s south-east, who has pushed for disbanding the camp, begged councillors to “restore safety in our streets, and protect the truly vulnerable and not enable rough sleeping”. Essing, like others, argued that allowing the encampments threatened people’s safety and wellbeing, while dominating public spaces.”

Protect the truly vulnerable eh? This east suburbs private school dickhead pearl clutcher knows nothing about the precarious life faced by people without generational wealth in the current housing situation. Totally fake empathy.

The social forces that resulted in the trump presidency won’t go away. He’s not a political aberration. He’s the culmination of decades of grievance, which accelerated after the GFC. He’s the wrong solution of course, much like one nation is the wrong solution to Australia’s problems.

I don’t expect it to be addressed either. But it’s killing my career motivation, and I used to be a very driven person in my engineering career. I’m starting to change my priorities and expectations, now that my salary increases have slowed dramatically to below inflation level. No prospect of home ownership, so I spend more time hanging out with the neighbourhood cats instead of grinding every night. Enjoy the moment a bit more and not worry about the things I can’t control.

Unless this is properly addressed in the coming years, we are going to see a lot of resentment everywhere, and declining productivity, since those who must work for wages will have their rewards taken by those who have assets. All the money going to rents and mortgages.

We will implement polices to improve housing affordability while the housing minister assures the public that house prices will grow “sustainably”. Then the public will see us as helping those in need while protecting those with wealth. Win win.

Missing out on superannuation due to taking on domestic duties with kids, succumbing to financial coercion by male partners who prioritise their careers over child rearing, being aged out of the workforce. Blokes who grew up with single mothers know all about this.

I can totally understand the frustration at the boomer generation. But there is an underlying issue at play here which is unfair. There’s an assumption that older people should have forseen the future and made the right choices about housing. I was born in 1990, and I didn’t even see this housing crisis coming when I was in my mid 20s. Lots of people are being blamed for not making the right choices before the gate closed. The fact is that gate shouldn’t be closing. We shouldn’t have to live our lives focused on accumulating wealth just to be OK.

I really don’t think the limit has been discovered yet. People will skip all sorts of necessities to stay housed. Lots of investors have family to lean on, move back into the family home etc. Shit is gonna get really bad in the coming years.

Labor have really dropped the ball with renters though. They could be doing so much more. So many people are paying too much money to live in shit boxes. I found it easier to get a rental when I was a low paid farm worker in 2010, and when I was on centrelink studying in 2012. Now I’m an electronics engineer and it’s harder than it’s ever been. My quality of life has not scaled with education and effort. (Edit: quality of life with respect to housing security solely I should clarify. I am not struggling in other respects financially)

There is some nostalgia distortion at play here, but a 30 year old can still study history. Some of us have parents who bought houses in capital cities on single incomes working for the public service in the 70s.

Yeah but we can’t let that overshadow a very real and justified frustration at the devaluation of labour in a world where asset inflation is hurting a lot of people.

Great. Meanwhile lots of people have fucked up families they can’t live with and I guess those people are shit out of luck. What a privilege.