For me it's about how the rich simply accumulate without hard work - once you've got money it just begets money. So the real inequality is how the poor and middle classes just keep working their asses off and get nowhere especially with inflation with what it is. We're even feeling it with our earning capacity - a teacher's wage used to mean you'd be reasonably well off but now it feels we're struggling with the rest of them. So it's this inequality that's eroding the social fabric - rather than inequality in general. You just can't get anywhere. YOu can't afford to build assets and have wealth accumulate the way you used to be able to. People are getting locked out of things they could work to buy into - housing, education etc. And now it's looking at only those who can inherit the last gen's wealth will have any social mobility, which furthers the upset.
And now we seem to be simplistically blaming migrants when it's been an accumulation of factors over successive governments. Worse, it becomes about blaming Indians and anyone not English (we have almost the same amount of English migrants here as Indian) which furthers social division. Sure 'mass' migration is a problem but there's a lot more factors at work. But people need a simple and easy thing to blame. It's a shame that people whip up rhetoric about migrants rather than acknowledget that yes, mass migration is an absolute issue but so is taxes, negative gearing etc etc.
Everything feels a bit fucked up right now. For once I can see how people are beginning to align with Pauline Hanson, though I can't stand her politics.
On a side note, have you got Australian citizenship? Jamie's finally applying for his this year.
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I think you've put down in words here what the majority of the population are feeling right now. I'm not sure if teachers would be classed as upper working class or lower middle, but it's only a matter of time before people higher up the wage ladder start feeling it too. Recently I listened to a chap saying that if you are employed and paid by the hour for your work then he would class you as working class. I think he was trying to say that we shouldn't even be dividing ourselves into classes at this point, because all of us are facing the same challenges moving forward. We've still got AI to tend with as well and that's assuming best case scenario.
Migrants are a conveniently visible target to distract people from looking too long at where the problems are really coming from. If one were a conspiracy theorist one might even suggest that the increased migration from countries very different to our own are purposeful in order to increase tensions and enmity. Then all the billionaires need to do is fund the right wing parties who are listening to the fearful concerns of the people. Then they could get the media they own whipping up a storm on every bad thing a migrant does. 🤔 But that would crazy talk!!
Only my eldest has citizenship. Shaun and I don't particularly want it, but with all the threats One Nation MPs are throwing out we might have to just bite the bullet if they get in.
Yeah that's what Jamie is worried about. Even though she said that permanent residents would be exempt he doesn't trust that. I mean he would never have bothered if he didn't feel there was a bit of a threat there. I mean would you move back to England seeing how things have got over there? I told Jamie I wouldn't even take his ashes back there haha, I'd just post them...
I'm not sure on the conspiracy there about increasing tensions via migration, I think we legit need the labour.
Her speech the other day was just so fucked up. The problem is this RHETORIC about tensions rather than the tensions themselves. I was really hoping we'd be left out of that whole craziness in America and Europe but we seem to be following the playbook.
I did read about how the social bubbles we're in online are just mirrored offline, and because we are now in enclaves of 'classes' and like minded, like financially mobile/immobile people, we don't mix as much as we used to, and thus don't really understand how other people might struggle, and how jack some people are of the educated classes talking their own rhetoric about issues that they want simple, honest, transparent solutions to. I can see why the whole transgender thing has got their goat - I get it, and I can see why the ordinary Australians feel their own needs aren't being met. It's dangerous to just sit in our bubbles and not even try to imagine how other people might feel or live or what they need.
But it's the same for, say, Hanson supporters and anti immigration folk. The whole 'let's defund SBS because if they really took part in our culture they wouldn't need foreign films or the news in their own language, they should be talking Australian' without thinking that maybe, if they had to live in another country, they might be trying to talk French but they'd sure need a break to watch AFL or English news just to feel some home comfort.
Anyway, England beat Croatia this morning, Jamie's happy as he won't be teased by all the Croatians at work :P
🤣 I think our ashes will be staying here if we don't get deported.
I think this and social bubbles have a bit in common. I have friends online on both sides, so thankfully it means I get a wider range of concerns rather than it spiralling into an echo chamber (at least I bore so). Unfortunately I feel like I'm also seeing some reasonable people being led down a radicalisation path, for want of a better word.
Yes, we need the migration (always have) but more so for regional areas. Unfortunately most are ending up in the major cities (Sydney, Perth, Melbourne) and from what's being said our systems are struggling to keep up (schools, healthcare etc). We're not seeing it in Adelaide as much, because we're probably classed as regional. Then there are gripes that a special deal has been made with India for them to get permanent residency visas granted without the hoop jumping that other immigrants have to do. This could be why there is particular resentment towards Indians here as well. Not to mention that some are Muslims and of cause there's the stirring up of Islamaphobia. My daughter was saying that even some of the long term Indians here at her workplace are complaining about the new influx. 😆
I think the problem with governments setting different rules for different ethnicities is that it just creates more division than help any group out.
I haven't listened much to Pauline's speeches. I'd probably get riled up partway through and just switch off, like I do with most politicians. All I hear coming from them these days is lies and division. And YES the RHETORIC is so much worse than the actual tensions and even the acts of violence. I love seeing a comment section pointing out how those recent attacks in the UK by migrants are plastered all over the news and causing protests, but none of the multitude of recent crimes by the native population are garnering this level of attention.
Thousands of years of history shows that when standards of living get stressful it's often the migrants who become a target to blame.
Oh yeah when a Sudanese guy with a machete commits an act of violence there's riots, but if women are killed in DV, crickets.
Absolutely. This is why sometimes I'd much prefer we never went global. Sometimes I think AI will sort us out into enclaves and be done with it.
Let's hope that's the worst of what AI would want to do with us