How Australia Really Works

Summary : "The $250 billion healthcare system will be overwhelmed by a four-fold increase in the number of people turning 80 and put extraordinary financial pressures on younger taxpayers, patients and the industry"

Summary : "It is no coincidence that Australia’s sluggish productivity, real wages and living standards coincided with massive amounts of taxpayer money being pumped into the now $52 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme and other social welfare programs over the past decade."

Summary : Google Gemini synopsis of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy by Mariana Mazzucato . Key Ideas : Value creation vs extraction (Value vs Price); Production boundary; Financialisation; Rent-seeking. How Australia Really Works : Australia continues to become financialised, extractive and dominated by rent-seeking industries. More details on Mazzucato's book's arguments to follow. Potential Solutions : TBC

Summary : Google Gemini synopsis of The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good? by Michael Sandel Key Ideas : Meritocracy Myth How Australia Really Works : The top 20% of Australian society rely heavily on the meritocracy myth to justify inequality. However, Australia is one of the easiest places for those with existing power and wealth to use socioeconomic segregation (or urban stratification), credentialism (and limit migrant competitors), networks (e.g. private schools), nepotism, coded norms, grey corruption, exploitation and intergenerational wealth transfer to rig the game in favour of their families. Potential Solutions : TBC...

Summary : Google Gemini synopsis of  Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) by Elizabeth Anderson. Key Ideas : Wage Slavery; Employer Dominion (Corporate State); Workplace Tyranny; Stockholm Syndrome How Australia Really Works : Australian politicians, media and those with power in organisations (business but also public and non-profits) pretend Australia is free and its democracy is meaningful in people's lives. In reality, 80% of the population are wage slaves or dependent on government in some way. A simple analysis of one's time reveals how much of your productive, waking hours are actually free. Potential Solutions : Free Speech; Clock-off Reform; Universal Basic Services; Universal Investment Accounts; Workplace Democracy; Power balance shift.

Problem : Australians managing their own super may lose ~1-3% of their interest on cash in their superannuation transaction accounts compared to the minimum super funds are making on it (benchmarked by the RBA Cash Rate). Interest rates well under 1% are not uncommon for SMSF or DIY Super. By eliminating the value of risk-free cash returns, the finance industry forces people into fee-extracting and unnecessarily high-risk or fraud-exposed investments. Key Ideas : Wealth Extraction; Financial Repression; Negative Real Rates (aka Stealth Tax). Rationale : Australians employees are forced to have 12% of their wages paid into super. If saving in at-call cash outside of super they could get returns ~0.5-1% higher than the RBA Cash Rate. E.g. Macquarie offers 4.25% with the RBA rate at 3.6%. Solution : Force federal politicians to require all super funds to pay a minimum interest rate on cash benchmarked to the RBA Cash Rate (or relevant proxy like BBSW). See prior reforms  here . Rew...