But it was not made here of course !!

That was the message from the Hyundai factory in China according to a report on Today Tonight.

They buy the equivalent of $140 of iron ore from us and then turn it into a car and sell it back to us at 14,000% of the original cost of the iron ore :(

Does any stupid dumb libbo still want to tell us again how value added products are less valuable than the raw materials used to make them and how we in Australia should avoid these types of industries at any cost and put all of our efforts into digging crap out of the ground to hand over to other countries for a song ?

We should value add as much as possible to every mineral mined here.

iron ore, uranium, everything

Australia said goodbye to the possibility of viable value adding industries when it abandoned industry tariffs and protections for Australian jobs. Now you have to compete with slave labour wages in other countries where these things are made.
The horse has bolted, long ago.
Average Australians now have to content themselves with service or sales jobs or teaching in lefty schools and universities.

Sprintcyclist wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 10:18am:

We should value add as much as possible to every mineral mined here. iron ore, uranium, everything

The lazy b.stards don't want to do anything.

They just want to dig it up and ship it off. Value adding is completely alien to them !

shampain socialist wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 10:32am:

Australia said goodbye to the possibility of viable value adding industries when it abandoned industry tariffs and protections for Australian jobs. Now you have to compete with slave labour wages in other countries where these things are made. The horse has bolted, long ago. Average Australians now have to content themselves with service or sales jobs or teaching in lefty schools and universities.

I don't know how we will pay off our national debt with service industries when we nearly import everything !!

we won't. The only thing that stops Australia sinking into a black hole is the stuff they did up and sell overseas and the government gets a tax payment on it.

The only thing that can be done is stop the stupid government spending levels and not get into any more debt.

I mean, you could vote for a radical government that does things like subsidises industries instead, like they do in other parts of the world, except Australia, where the good old goverments want us to play on a level playing field, when everyone else doesn't - except those sorts of governments don't exist in Australia.

last nail - that is a real problem.

socialist - yes, we are idiots to play on a level field when noone else does !!!!!!!!!!!

Sir lastnail wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 10:13am:

But it was not made here of course !! That was the message from the Hyundai factory in China according to a report on Today Tonight. They buy the equivalent of $140 of iron ore from us and then turn it into a car and sell it back to us at 14,000% of the original cost of the iron ore :( Does any stupid dumb libbo still want to tell us again how value added products are less valuable than the raw materials used to make them and how we in Australia should avoid these types of industries at any cost and put all of our efforts into digging crap out of the ground to hand over to other countries for a song ?

Not unlike our free school lap-tops, all of which we bought from China despite many of the components and even software having been installed on them here in Australia.

It didn't surprise me that our kids school lap-tops came from China, more and more of our food is coming from china , fruit fly and all...as a Labor government pays Australian farmers to bulldoze their orchards, to make way for Chinese & foreign produce.

A sustainable Australia apparently!

8-)

Australia will eventually have just as low wages as the places where we import these things from. China has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, and it is funds like that, that are buying large tracts of Australia to secure their food and resource supplies.
Australians are on the road to becoming low paid wage slaves in their own country, and no side of politics defends the people against this trend, on the contrary they want it to happen. The labor people just want to be bureaucrats and stuff the rest.

Actually, what will happen is that there will be a gradual decline in the value of the Australian dollar relative to other economies (this has been going on now for a century or more), there will not be a sudden reduction in wages, but that is possible, just as it has happened in the UK and Greece, etc, etc.

What saves Australia is its natural resources which keeps our dollar strong as long as there is demand for those resources which there is, with ups and downs, but mostly ups. So if you're lucky enough to get a good paying job in Australia, you are probably fine for your lifetime, and maybe your kids are too, but in the long run, Australians will have a big problem because there is nothing actually made here, the non-resources sector is mainly a service economy.

shampain socialist wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 11:22am:

Australia will eventually have just as low wages as the places where we import these things from. China has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, and it is funds like that, that are buying large tracts of Australia to secure their food and resource supplies. Australians are on the road to becoming low paid wage slaves in their own country, and no side of politics defends the people against this trend, on the contrary they want it to happen. The labor people just want to be bureaucrats and stuff the rest.

We definitely need an alternative to the bureaucratic capitalists who enter politics for self serving reasons, that's for sure.

Have they genuinely lost touch with reality, and their nations grave predicament, or do they consciously set out to stuff us?

At what point does a politician or influential Australian say to themselves, "Ok, I had planned to make a real difference when I entered politics, or carved my path  but greed got the better of me , so I might just get in for my chop while I can."

Such a defeatist mentality.*waves Australian flag, with an extra 52 stars).

I really cant stand our "Blow you Jack I can swim culture" we are such a plutocracy.

Latham started out with the right idea, and now even he's ended up in bed with that conga line of suck-holes he claims to have loathed so much.

Is this the part where I lose heart, shake my head and give up on my nations capacity to get itself back on track?

No, I'm an eternal optimist,(possibly to a fault) and will never give up hope.

Perhaps I'm just delusional...either way, I cant bare the thought of submitting to what will be the death of our lucky country.

shampain socialist wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 11:22am:

Australia will eventually have just as low wages as the places where we import these things from. China has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, and it is funds like that, that are buying large tracts of Australia to secure their food and resource supplies. Australians are on the road to becoming low paid wage slaves in their own country, and no side of politics defends the people against this trend, on the contrary they want it to happen. The labor people just want to be bureaucrats and stuff the rest. Actually, what will happen is that there will be a gradual decline in the value of the Australian dollar relative to other economies (this has been going on now for a century or more), there will not be a sudden reduction in wages, but that is possible, just as it has happened in the UK and Greece, etc, etc. What saves Australia is its natural resources which keeps our dollar strong as long as there is demand for those resources which there is, with ups and downs, but mostly ups. So if you're lucky enough to get a good paying job in Australia, you are probably fine for your lifetime, and maybe your kids are too, but in the long run, Australians will have a big problem because there is nothing actually made here, the non-resources sector is mainly a service economy.

I agree with much of what you have said there...

Despite the relatively-high headline Average (Full-time) Wages , Australia has a disproportionately-large number of workers on Minimum (often Part-Time and Casual) Wages - and therefore the real world income picture is nothing like the headlines would have us believe...

Gone are the days, when Aussie incomes followed the normal distribution of a bell curve - and the skew is increasing every year...

I reckon that most people would be shocked to learn that: the Median Income in Australia is now so low as to approximate the official (Full-Time) Minimum Wage - i.e. that about half of all Aussie adults have incomes below the Minimum Wage!

Oh, and I note that median housing price figures are typically quoted relative to (full-time) average wages...

I gave up worrying about this stuff years ago, mellie, it does not make any difference except to upset *you*. Australia is on a trajectory and it is a downhill one in the long run, but in the meantime it will be fine, it will have a veneer of wellbeing. It is just another country that is going down the same track as the ones before it, it has not done anything new or creative to avoid the ills that societies have, it will get these as well because nothing has been done to prevent it.
Australians think our country is somehow different and special, probably this way of thinking comes from our distance from anywhere else, but it is not the case. It is just that it is a *new* country and our supplies of everything haven't been exhausted and our environment hasn't been completely stuffed up - yet.
Australia has a leftist bureaucracy it has been a long time in the making and it is now entrenched. It is not so much the politicians as people like Henry (of the Henry Report). There are tens of thousands of them, it is a club.
It was said by one observer back in the 1920s that Australians had decided to put their faith in "government" rather than the private sector; since then this bureaucracy has built up and now rules Australia. They do not care about the private sector, many of them actively despise the private sector. I'm not sure what word you would describe this phenomenon of extreme leftists running an all powerful bureaucracy of a country - it used to be called communism.
Australians need to be honest enough to face up to the fact that they are quite an extreme leftist mentality, bordering on bureaucratic communism.
There are better places to live in the world at the moment. Not many, but some.

14000%?

And all they do is turn it into a car?

I used to have what is regarded as a solid average job in education on a moderate wage for that role, and I could not make ends meet. I was actually losing money with all the costs involved. So I gave it up. It just isn't worth putting yourself through that when you can't save a dollar.
Now I'm concentrating on getting out of the place and living overseas. That seems to be the best option, and quite attractive.

Quote:

Australia will eventually have just as low wages as the places where we import these things from

They are probably looking at one day having wages as high as those who they sell to.

The objective isn't to keep other nations poor so that we may be rich, however, that seems to be the rule of thumb.
We are streets ahead (no pun) of most other nations in infrastructure, human rights and health care. We need to keep raising the bar.

With our vast expanses of land, it will be a long time coming before we run out of opportunities to provide something that other nations want.
I just hope that we see it as being valuable than a quarry, a jail, or a uranium dumping ground.

who is "they"?  Millions of people work in China for poverty level wages and are housed in corporate concrete bunkers for the privilege, while China has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. It doesn't seem to be like the workers there are going to be paid the same as western workers any time soon, and if there is a protest about it, there is a military response from the government it seems.
Is that what you want to live with in Australia?  
You might get that here one day, it can happen.
The best days in living memory in Australia were some decades ago, it was absolutely wonderful. It is not the same place now as it was then, and it doesn't seem to me to be getting any better at all.
Good luck.

have you ever noticed that while there are Inquiries and Royal Commissions held with no problem at all into various things, that there is never ever ever an Inquiry into the size and cost of Australian bureaucracies. Don't you think that is a glaring omission?

Quote:

I gave up worrying about this stuff years ago, mellie, it does not make any difference except to upset *you*. Australia is on a trajectory and it is a downhill one in the long run

I refuse to accept this as our impending doom, and furthermore, I know "we'll" be ok, but what about those we'll leave behind in the ruins of what could become a 3rd world country?

Some 3rd world countries will argue that it's humbling, merely cyclic, that what goes around comes around and has done so throughout the ages of human evolution, though I think we should stop ancestrally torturing and limiting ourselves, I really think we can do better.

Is it possible to make things better for everyone, is it just a matter of 'faith' this and to stop being so pessimistic and short sighted.

Will the average human lifespan have to increase to 500 years before we begin long term planning the best interest of our own selfish selves before we begin seeing any real progress?

Perhaps like all primal self limiting organisms, it's entrenched in our gluttonous DNA to engulf and sustain ourselves like viral predators  on an agar dish until extinction?

I know we are a plague, and know that in spite of our having evolved from bacteria and being by our own grandiose definition, 'intelligent life-form' I genuinely question this sometimes, this and wonder  if indeed we have mutated into a self limiting hybrid organism with an attention deficit disorder, incapable of controlling our own  self preservationist and destructive impulses.

Because even bacteria will endeavour towards sustaining itself and even it's offspring, perhaps we just mutated back into intelligent dinosaurs or something.


It's times like these I thank god I'm an atheist.

I don't want to know what I am, or what I will be, or what consequences my own species actions might have on those we leave behind after spending an eternity in hell regretting the errors of our ways in what would otherwise be some kinda parallel existence to the paradise we knowingly and wilfully corrupted.

Far easier to rot in the ground and at least satisfy the worms.

Worms don't judge!


Sorry about this... it's just the hatred of ones own flesh somewhat appeases the distaste I have for my own colony,  I'll stop the theatrics now, just had to get it off my chest.

 8-)

it's a pity you didn't start a political party and called it something like the "Liberal Democrats" before someone else grabbed the name.
You cannot change these things on your own, mellie, it takes a national political movement. You certainly sound like you have ample intellectual capacity to do just that.
I have very good contacts on the ins and outs of doing that if you want to, and I'd be glad to facilitate that for you.
Talking about it won't really change anything, only action can. We both know what the Australian electorate is concerned about as the big issues, and how to communicate with them about it. Why don't you consider it?

shampain socialist wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 2:51pm:

it's a pity you didn't start a political party and called it something like the "Liberal Democrats" before someone else grabbed the name. You cannot change these things on your own, mellie, it takes a national political movement. You certainly sound like you have ample intellectual capacity to do just that. I have very good contacts on the ins and outs of doing that if you want to, and I'd be glad to facilitate that for you. Talking about it won't really change anything, only action can. We both know what the Australian electorate is concerned about as the big issues, and how to communicate with them about it. Why don't you consider it?

I will.

:)...  It will take more than one individual to bring about positive change, I know this, and I'm always happy to help wherever possible.

email me if you like, I can give you excellent contacts with experienced ex pollies on your side of politics who can help you with this quite quickly and easily. No problem at all, mellie.

Quote:

They buy the equivalent of $140 of iron ore from us and then turn it into a car and sell it back to us at 14,000% of the original cost of the iron ore

Except that Hyundai China don't export cars to Australia.

BTW. A seed for an oak tree costs about $0.01, yet last week I saw a nice oak roll top desk for $2100. Suddenly your Chinese Hyundai seems like excellent value.

[color=#ffff00]email me if you like, I can give you excellent contacts with experienced ex pollies on your side of politics who can help you with this quite quickly and easily. No problem at all, mellie. [/color]

The ex pollies are the biggest problem; too many of them and too many perks.
Would be interesting to find out how much the ex pollies cost us a year?

some politicians actually know how to be proper politicians, believe it or not. They are not all dumb-asses.
The problem is actually that you get people going into politics who have no idea of how to run a country or tame the bureaucracy, they are more often just egotists or career social climbers.

Gee, they've done a really good job on spak filling Bob Brown's face in the new television ads for the Greens!! Looks fifty years younger in a Madame Tussaud's sort of way. :-?

I never said that politicians are dump, because that would make us voters even dumber, but it is hard to find a politcian who is really honest, and maybe that is the publics fault.
I'am sick and tired to listen to  the current politicians, they must think we are all idiots, yet most of them will not answer tough questions, and i wrote dozens or maybe hundreds of letters and e-mails to them.

you need to know how to speak with them. Bombarding them with volume letters and emails does not do the job.
Whenever I have sent a letter to a politician, which is rare, I get an immediate response.
You need to understand how they think and use that.
Sorry for your frustration.

shampain socialist wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 6:06pm:

Gee, they've done a really good job on spak filling Bob Brown's face in the new television ads for the Greens!! Looks fifty years younger in a Madame Tussaud's sort of way. :-?

I noticed this too when he was on the ABC last night.
I think the silver old fox has died his hair a little, or darkened it slightly in parts to appeal to a more youthful semi-intellectual left-wing audience at his Latrobe campaign pit stop the day before.

Either that or he was very unwell the last time we saw the old lush mumbling in his beer about preference votes and how he didn't really agree with his parties decision to preference full stop.

......  Perhaps some of those Latrobe uni students youthful skin-oils plumped up his skin, gave him a bit of a gloss.

;)

yes, I think they must have touched him up with an air brush as well.

Oil of OLatrobe?

Who knows, but I have to hand it to him... this and wouldn't mind getting a few skin care tips off him either.

8-)

yes, hand him the Oil of Latrobe for skin tips.
You've got to hand it to him.