Originally Posted by
beefy
Interesting input everyone.
Jim, I was waiting for you, the guy who would come and say I'm complaining. I hope you have a job that gives you $400 a week in your hand and your life is still bliss. I think we should live in tiny caravans so we can escape mortgage costs, escalating bills, escalating fuel prices, etc. We should jog to work, etc, etc. Stating the gross income makes it look more rosy but super does not pay the weekly costs, and neither does the tax we pay, so just keep it at the $810 I mentioned, eh. Our mortgage is a cheap one and immediately takes up half of that amount. As for a reality check I've had a good deal of that having my own business for 15 years, it hasn't been a nice ride at all, and there's been plenty occasions where I've been living in fear with a couple of hundred in the bank and bills coming up in the thousands. I wouldn't be surprised if my reality has been a lot harsher than yours. As was said earlier, our standard of living is quickly going down. All sorts of basic living costs are going up fast while wages are doing not much at all.
Complaining doesn't really have anything to do with it, it's simply a matter of noting what an industry pays for what it expects from the employee, and what our cost is living is now. Its sad when a qualified and experience machine shop employee is going to live a pretty meagre existence if the wife cannot work too. I came here to ask if that is normal for machine shop employees, which I would consider a knowledgeable and responsible job. Whatever Australia used to be, it's no longer the land of milk and honey, and it looks like it's getting worse, but I'm glad you are happy with our dwindling lifestyle.
For all our creativity and inventiveness, I think our western world is full of absolute stupidity, and we are putting ourselves on a path of destruction. We stifle our productivity with ever increasing rules and regulations that drive up costs massively, and make everything take 3 times as long. We focus on university degrees to try and get jobs where maybe 10% of what was learnt is used, IF the job is related to the degree, what a horrid waste of time and money. which could be used so much more constructively. Common sense & self-responsibility is being replaced by "who can be made responsible", and it's great to be a lawyer nowadays. Trade type jobs are being made to look dirty & undesirable and only for uneducated people who can't get a degree. The latest I heard was about changing tyres on some massive loader. What used to take 6 hours now takes 3 days due to regulations, paperwork, and several different trades being required. Unions drain the economy in many ways, I bet it's only a matter of time before the country cannot support them any more and they will be cracked down on like happened in the UK years ago.
If nobody brings these matters up in conversation, nothing really gets noticed, and nothing ever changes. Regarding complaining, many changes often happen through dissatisfaction. I myself aim for a better lifestyle instead of just having one of your "reality checks" and accepting whatever is thrown at me. I may not get there but at least I'll try.
And what are you talking about "stay on the dole". I've NEVER collected any dole even when I could have, I simply focussed on trying to get my business going, of which I am an employee and therefore could have collected dole when I had no wage, and was living of my savings from working away in the jungles of Indonesia.
Keith.