freediver wrote on Jan 9^th, 2016 at 11:35am:


Of course. Our economy depends on cheap foreign labour. The shelves of Ebay, David Jones and the two dollar shops would be empty without it.

China pays an average of less than eight dollars a day. India pays less. In the Philippines, it’s a little over two dollars - the minimum wage. And there is no minimum wage in Bangladesh, where our clothes are made. Workers there make as little as a dollar a day, for up to twelve hour shifts.

How much do you make, FD?

freediver wrote on Jan 9^th, 2016 at 5:39pm:


The global economy is interdependent, FD. Labour requires capital, capital requires labour. Australians have one of the highest household debt levels in the world. Our terms of trade are slipping - badly.

If China stopped buying our resources and lending us money, we’d be sunk. And if we needed to produce our own cars, fridges and Ipads, we wouldn’t have the capital to re-establish manufacturing. Australia is a service economy. The developing world produces the goods. This is how the world works.

And if you don’t mind me saying, a jolly old world it is too. Better them on a dollar a day than us, no?

Ban them.

freediver wrote on Jan 9^th, 2016 at 6:36pm:


You’d be lucky to afford a Hyundai made in Australia without subsidies, FD. You certainly couldn’t do it on a dollar a day.

In most of the world, a car is a luxury item. People in the developing world ride motor scooters or catch the bus.

The tinted races prefer it that way, just as they’re happy to work for a dollar. They’re simple little people, you know.

Keep an eye on them though. Better to be safe than sorry, I say.

Karnal,  does unsustainable population growth have ANY influence on the relative poverty of the tinted races or is it all the fault of their (your) colonial overlords?

the good ole boys wrote on Jan 9^th, 2016 at 9:38pm:


A very interesting question, Homo. I believe the aged pension was introduced in Australia early last century. We kept sending our boys off to foreign wars and they kept getting killed, so we thought we’d do something nice for the ones who survived. You know, health care, higher education, and all the spoils of the welfare state.

The tinted races do things a little differently. They have lots of kids who grow up to make some money, and that money helps mum and dad when they’re old.

This is the way developing economies work. A developing economy requires population growth, so people make more people. These people keep the machine chugging along. The machine grows. This is essentially the formula for economic growth - attract capital, add population and wait.

But when people get to a certain economic level, dare I say middle class, they stop producing population. Middle class people live in cities and value education. Their households are different. Even their apartments don’t have space for poor old mum and dad. One or two kids - at best. And a fortune in tuition.

The economy creates population, not the other way around. Our bodies are shaped to fit within economic roles. Reproduction - can I say sexuality? - reflects this.

This is why we import the tinted races, Homo. We don’t produce enough whites, you see. Once, we did - too many. They all got sent down here, to Australia. The industrial revolution that followed was a result of surplus population.Back then, machines required lots of people. Today, machines don’t need so many people, but economies do. Economies need people with money to buy things.

This is the stage of development China’s at. It now plans to shift to domestic, not foreign, demand. We’ll watch as China shapes its own version of a welfare state, and just as we did, experiences a drop in population.

FD predicted all this, he just got the timing wrong. He thinks China’s population dropped as a result of the one-child policy.

Alas, China’s population continued to grow for a bit. It is now starting to age. China has just relaxed its one-child policy. Population is predicted to stabilise by about 2025.

And who knows? Some time this century, immigration will probably be the other way around.

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We'd be dirt poor communists?

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I hope not.

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You don't like giving the poor chinese people a job?

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I think it is great. Everyone benefits. Fairness seems kind of arbitrary to me, like the sort of thing a communist would try to impose. Does fair mean everyone is on the same wage, or everyone's wage matches their contribution? Or their effort?

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This is a good example.

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It will last forever. What will change is the relative wealth. You confuse the the product of the system with the system itself.

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Except China of course.

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Why? To grow the population?

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That is the strawman madel invented by deluded hippies.

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The industrial revolution came after they sent people to Australia?

Most sensible economic historians credit reductions in the population.

I don;t keep up with your nicknames Karnal.

Karnal wrote on Jan 17^th, 2016 at 12:19pm:


Are you a communist?