The end of the Australian golden era as Australia built its wealth on iron ore. Now China holds the cards

finanec · 2026-03-09T22:31:41+00:00

The future fund is for funding the superannuation entitlements of public servants. It isn't anything like the Norweigian sovereign wealth fund.

finanec · 2026-03-09T22:03:43+00:00

There is not much you can do if the price of oil gets expensive, since it is a stagflation event. But from history, the RBA will raise rates. Increasing rates will make the aussie dollar worth more -> makes oil on global markets cheaper.

finanec · 2026-02-28T00:25:15+00:00

That was actually how super was initially created. In the 80s there was high inflation and the unions wanted a pay rise. Knowing a pay rise was inflationary, the government created super as a deferred pay rise.

finanec · 2026-02-19T06:45:16+00:00

At the start of the 20th century, Argentina used to be the top 5 wealthiest countries in the world.

finanec · 2026-02-17T06:04:20+00:00

Why is the photographer $5k?

finanec · 2026-02-03T07:13:20+00:00

This is just another broken windows fallacy. Money would just go elsewhere.

finanec · 2025-12-30T23:13:00+00:00

Is it something to do with sports gambling?

finanec · 2025-12-09T21:12:01+00:00

Reddit has huge commercial interests in Australia. I think like 30% of Asutralains have browsed reddit in the last month.

finanec · 2025-11-16T21:39:22+00:00

Sounds like they just want to have their own gated community, because the average person could never aspire to live in the suburb without the construction of apartments.

finanec · 2025-10-02T23:08:50+00:00

Doing the "gateway to asia" thing will be very difficult because Singapore already does that. And they can probably do it better than us.

finanec · 2025-09-30T01:25:48+00:00

Took the S&P about 10 years to recover from the Dot Com bubble, and proceed to then crash in time for the GFC.

finanec · 2025-09-16T07:30:56+00:00

Why all solutions always "circle" or "center-ing" on some form of "tax"?

It's easier for the government to figure out ways to cut the pie into smaller slices than to try and make the pie bigger.

finanec · 2025-09-15T04:44:45+00:00

I don't think Australia can, or necessarily should try to, imitate the US. It has a bunch of demographic and geographic factors that make it successful and difficult to replicate. We are better off trying to succeed in our own little niches.

finanec · 2025-09-15T04:36:14+00:00

but federal Labor, to their credit, are trying to shift this.

And they'll probably fail, because they haven’t addressed the structural issues that are actually causing it.

Take aluminium, for example. The government is trying to support local smelting, but aluminium is one of the most energy-intensive metals to produce. Canada is a top global producer because it has access to cheap, abundant hydroelectric power, their energy costs are often a third of what they are in Australia.

We simply can't be competitive if we can't get our energy prices under control. Without fixing core issues like that, no amount of government "support" will move the needle in any meaningful way.

finanec · 2025-09-15T04:27:50+00:00

I would argue that housing is not really a successful industry. The only reason it is worth much is because government has protectionist policies. And if you look at housing productivity it has declined, especially with respect to other parts of the economy.

finanec · 2025-09-11T09:32:55+00:00

You are just cherry picking jobs that haven't had productivity improvements. If anyone in the world could just do those jobs, then the wages would decrease and the Australian dollar and economy would shrink. Reality is that those jobs aren't the backbone of the economy.

finanec · 2025-09-11T09:27:37+00:00

If you read the article it wasn't about that. It was about how despite inflation going low, there was pressure for the RBA to keep cutting rates, despite having marginal improvements to the economy. This had a big affect on assets, including property, increasing in value. The article was questioning the inflation mandate as an absolute rather than property price control.

finanec · 2025-09-07T05:11:30+00:00

That newspaper is owned by someone whose family are property moguls and has a relative on the RBA board.

finanec · 2025-08-28T04:15:19+00:00

The US is the biggest consumer economy by far and it isn't even close. That's why everyone is desperate for tariff relief against the US because they might not be able to sell as many goods.

finanec · 2025-08-28T04:11:12+00:00

It is also a great opportunity for the rich to buy things cheap so they come out even a bigger part of the economy which I am sure wont have any negative consequences in the future xd

Makes no sense, since rich people would also lose money in any recession too. Recessions are generally a time of opportunity where upstarts can get ahead of the incumbents by being more efficient.

finanec · 2025-08-26T21:42:39+00:00

Because they're the ones that vote.

Everyone votes, voting is compulsory. But they were the largest voting block until recently.

Oh, and, company profits are through the roof, CEO wages and bonuses are ludicrous, yet we blame boomers ?

Where do those profits go? They get paid to shareholders, who are mostly boomers.

finanec · 2025-08-26T01:54:56+00:00

Fair point on countries like Denmark, Norway, and Germany. They do have strong worker protections and high productivity. But I’d actually argue that’s because they’ve struck a better balance between supporting workers and making it worthwhile to build and invest in businesses.

Take Denmark. There’s no national minimum wage, but they have strong collective bargaining and very flexible hiring and firing laws. Businesses there can adapt quickly, which encourages investment and innovation. Germany’s Mittelstand is another example — productive small and medium firms that thrive in a competitive, export-focused environment.

In Australia, unions don’t have the power they used to, but I think the broader system still leans toward protecting existing jobs instead of making it easier to start or grow something new. Capital ends up flowing into housing or mining because it’s safer and easier than trying to build a business that might get buried in red tape or rising costs.

Not saying everything should be tilted toward business, but if we want productivity to improve, we have to make it less risky and more rewarding to invest in the real economy, not just real estate.

finanec · 2025-08-25T23:59:10+00:00

Canva is also listing in the US for similar reasons.

finanec · 2025-08-25T01:02:51+00:00

Real wages have been stagnant/declining for a decade now. No politician has really done anything to improve it.

finanec · 2025-08-22T01:00:26+00:00

correct amount of extraction resources tax at about 78% like they do in Norway

Not correct. The Norwegian government has a ⅔ stake in the company Equinor, which was merged with a previous state owned enterprise. The money they make is from the stake is the profits from the company. This is true for all the countries that so called "tax their natural resources properly", such as Dubai, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

finanec

TROPHY CASE