Are you worried about your job security or wages growth relative to your domestic outgoings?
Did you vote Labor (sic) at the last general election?
If you answered “yes” to both of those questions, consider the possibility you’re a bit of an idiot.
Don’t get me wrong, my opinion is that voting is a diversionary tactic to prevent us from forming lynch mobs and distributing instant righteous justice to politicians.
However, voting for a party that was always going to open the immigration spigots just as the country was hitting 40 year highs in inflation is nothing short of an act of self-harm. Do you practise bulimia too?
Perfect economic storm to hit Australia 2023.
To be fair, the article is written by Leith van Onsolen, a man even more famous than me for predicting 17 of the last zero housing crashes in Australia, so caveat emptor. The difference between us is, the economy isn’t my career expertise unlike LvO.
At the same time as the economy will slow in response to the RBA’s aggressive monetary tightening, Australia’s labour supply will grow sharply in 2023 on the back of record-high net overseas migration (NOM).
A key reason why Australia’s unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since 1974 is because Australia lost hundreds of thousands of migrants over the pandemic. Therefore, many of the jobs created went to unemployed Australians rather than migrant workers.
Record high net overseas migration is going to cause economic stress for Australian workers?
If only there was a lever someone, anyone could pull to influence that. Bueller, anyone?
Bill’s Opinion
Since becoming an Australian citizen, I have never exercised my right (legal duty, actually) to cast a vote. I’ve simply not appreciated the false choice offered me.
The “unaparty” choice became all the more apparent in Covid time when the only difference between the two major parties was who would lock us down earlier and harder.
If I were to vote though, I’d be highly suspicious of a party claiming to be for the working class whilst overseeing a return to immigration at exactly the same time a four decades record slowdown and interest rate shock arrives.
There is one member of the Australian left who gets it though; (National) Socialist, Sally McManus, head of the ACTU.
Mind you, IIRC Howard bumped it to record highs, or at least the highest in the OECD, all while distracting with boat people. Well played really.
I maintain that the primary difference is that one brand of the uniparty pretends it is not destroying the country, while the other makes no pretence at all.
The inflation is the result of the COVID welfare boost. Too much money chasing too few goods and services. To fix that, what do we do? We don’t produce more, hoping that someone will buy it. We want more velocity. We want to bring the money supply back in line with consumption and production. A sudden burst of immigration hurts wages in the short term. In the long term, immigration is always positive. The highly technical name for it is the Boom Town Effect. As a corollary, net emigration is negative.
Well, I have it on good authority we’ll be in a deflationary world in the next two years anyway, so tant pis!