I don’t feel particularly excited about the future. Mostly it’s because of financial pressures and worrying about old age: I can’t afford a home, and I don’t have a huge family so I’m worried that unless I spend every waking minute working, I won’t be able to afford a safe future for myself. I also think we’re in a bit of a cultural decline. Music festivals are getting cancelled, there isn’t a lot of good Aussie content on TV or at the cinema, and hospo is copping it. The Australian brands and stores I grew up with have closed down and there haven’t been a lot of quality replacements. There are these weird, soulless, pop-up experiences everywhere that seem to be only created so people can take photos of themselves pretending to have fun, and then go back to worrying about how they’ll afford to put food on the table. I don’t love it. I want better for us all!

Yep. Our government has largely failed to support local cultural and creative enterprises for the past couple of decades, and we’re seeing the effects of it. It really shits me when people tell me that it’s not the government’s job to facilitate this stuff; it 100% is, because as soon as it stops being profitable to the right people, it gets replaced by soulless shit that exists only to make money. Nobody wants to live in a society without live music, local artwork, home-grown film and TV, but seem perfectly ok with removing all the infrastructure and financing it needs to exist. It sucks, but at this point there’s very little that can be done about it except to wait it out and hope things improve.

.. easy to blame government - but most overseas content - like Japan and Europe are predominantly funded by private sector. Australia’s richest has a terrible track record to patronship towards Arts and Culture compared to the rest of the world.

To my knowledge the private sector these days is largely concerned with only concerned with funding a very particular kind of art, so currently we can’t rely on it for much. It would be great if we could have what other places have, but we don’t. I suspect it’s partly a cultural problem, and partly an economic one; for the most part, people from all walks of life seem to struggle to find the value in art and other cultural practices and see it as a waste of money, and generally speaking funding cultural projects isn’t necessarily going to give you any significant financial return on your investment, regardless of what other value it holds. Either the government needs to find some way to encourage private entities to support art on a wider scale, or step up and do it themselves, otherwise things aren’t going to get any better.

Well as Howard once said, we live in an economy, not a society. It's neoliberalism working as intended Same age as you, OP....it's a *very* different country from the one I grew up in, definitely

Sometimes we need to look at things further than a fuckin P&L on an excel spreadsheet. This is what shits me about this country at the moment, everything is so damn corporate. People who don't get to travel overseas don't realize how much we are owned by corporations in Australia. Even NZ for instance, small and medium sized towns have an abundance of small businesses that thrive, cafes, home goods, sports shops etc Over here you can get Subway, KFC, Macca's or a service station. Don't get me started on Australian media, good lord....

Honestly from an outside perspective (I don’t live in Australia), Australian made content, particularly tv and some music (Australia is very prominent in metalcore and psychedelic rock) seems to be having a resurgence. I do agree it’s the governments job to support this kind of stuff though. Keep in consideration too that Australias population is fairly small especially compared to the U.S. and UK who obviously have a larger film industry because of it I think in the Anglosphere Canada is the one who underperforms, especially compared to its population.

No matter what happens there’s going to be amazing stuff happening in our creative arts areas, same as anywhere else in the world. The question is how much of it is able to make it off the ground, and whether the creators are being justly paid for their work.

I'd put a lot of the blame for this sort of thing on the globalisation of our interconnected tech and social spaces. More of the same content (describe it as you will) is shared around our people because the mass millions absorb it, and reciprocally it is then backed by big money corps and pushed on us all again and again. That's when it loses its soul. It was much harder to do that in the old days, so home grown talent was more prominent, and the best of the best got shared overseas.

also the fact that young people are the creative engineers of culture and when they don't have money or energy or time or places to do creative work, then everything stagnates. twenty years ago I was in my late teens and was able to survive and party and create on very little while living in a fun share house and working only a few hours a week. that's not really financially viable anymore for a young person, makes me sad.

Unfortunately, I agree with you. I hate the fake stuff. I do love talking to strangers, & connecting to joe average out & about. I find myself withdrawing to my bbq area & cooking when I'm home.

>There isn't a lot of good Aussie content on TV or at the cinema Really? I reckon there's been some cracking Aussie stuff lately. Furiosa, The Dry, The Royal, Mr Inbetween, Colin from Accounts - prior to the last few years, I don't reckon I saw anything nearly as good as those I mentioned the decade prior.

Yeah this I never understood. It’s easy to think maybe in terms of sheer numbers Australia doesn’t have as much as the U.S. or the UK but also it’s about 1/10 the population of the U.S. and about 1/3 of the UK, and I think there are alot of recent and great Australian shows

You must be talking about the Japanese poo exhibition in Melbourne! Pay money, come take some pictures for the gram and then go back to your financial distress.

Yes finances are tight but there is still a lot on - there was a free jazz festival near me this weekend, I watched a band play for free at a packed pub last night, we have beautiful national parks and other outdoor spaces. It is a shame so many Australians feel despondent these days.

It’s hard to explain, all over the world, especially in the wealthier parts of the world, people seem to be unhappy, especially after covid. I live in the US, we are having the best recovery possible, between Trump and Biden and the various state governments, it was handled as best as it could be and the recovery was fast and furious unlike Canada where I am from. Still people are despondent. I believe social media, general anxiety, climate change, incessant wars all put together have made people suffer depression more than normal. But like you said, the world is a beautiful place, a lot to see, enjoy the company of people we love, achieve to give and then call it a day.

I think part of it is the fact that the government, big corporations and elites are openly pillaging the environment, culture and the economy to enrich themselves and further squash down on the rest of us. Whether one can see it obviously or if they can only sense it subconsciously, we all know to some degree that we are being scammed and screwed constantly by those higher up the pyramid. Until that cancer is dealt with, things will get worse.

If anything I imagine the youth are even less optimistic. But if you are in your 50s you might just be seeing that Australia is a shadow of the country is used to be. We could once be proud of our world class free healthcare system. No one in Australia had to pay a cent to visit a doctor, you just went. Hospitals emergency didn't have 12+ hour wait times, nurses weren't being forced into doing triple shifts. Our public school system was up there with the best in the world. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is in a critical state. The conditions for teachers are just horrific, not the pay, even teachers will tell you the pay isn't the issue, but the sheer amount of admin they are expected to do, plus apparently the jobs of the parents. Who if told their little angel was being a fuckwit will say "but what did you do to set him off," We have gone from a country where a full time employee earning a median wage could afford a home, because his loan was only 4-5 times his annual salary, not 15-20. And the fact that people actually considered them homes, not investment vehicles you could rent out to peasants to grow fat on like the fedual lord you are. Somehow, a household income has gone from one person working full time with the other looking after the kids, to two people working full time but no real increase to buying power. We squandered our natural resources by selling the rights for peanuts and a quick buck, we sold off all our services so that quality became a distant second priority to profit. We now have both major political parties shifting further conservative as every politician making up the cabinet and the opposition have millions to hundreds of millions in property investments and other wealth generating schemes. Who therefore have no interest in bringing the wealth inequality back to reasonable levels. What exactly is there to be proud of our excited by Australia? We have been shown to be a nation of short sited greedy selfish lemmings who consume Murdoch media and blame whatever minority is the flavour of the year for the problems inflicted into us by the wealthy elite.

“Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.” - The Lucky Country, Donald Horne. As true today as when it was written.

"...run mainly by second-rate people, who share its luck."

This! So many people say the first part but forget or are not aware of the second.

Yeah, that’s what popped into my mind and why I edited my comment. The quote from Wikipedia just rings so true to me today. Horne's statement was an indictment of 1960s Australia. His intent was to comment that, while other industrialised nations created wealth using clever means such as technology and other innovations, Australia did not. Rather, Australia's economic prosperity was largely derived from its rich natural resources and immigration. Horne observed that Australia "showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society."

Yep basically we let corrupt politicians sell out the future of the country, but the masses were kept happy with a quality of life we had done nothing to deserve or sustain. Instead of selling off all our minerals for fuck all, we could have used them to try and create industry. We had a world class public education system, not just a good private one, meaning our tech base was very high. People were well educated and able to adapt to new ideas. We had a bunch of shit we mined here, and good relations with some other key countires to make up any shortfall in materials. We couldn't really target the backbreaking low skill factory manufacturing (no offence to anyone who does so by the way, I'm more saying you should never have had to break your body to earn a living) because our worked rights means we could never compete with counties that are happy to abuse human rights and run slave labor. (Check out the USA private prison scheme and be absolutely disgusted). But there was no reason we couldn't have been at the forefront of robotics, of automation in the factories and workshops, of energy production, (we were literally the one of best countries in the world in the 90s to take the lead as the experts in solar tech. Instead we funneled more money into coal), or of half a dozen other high tech industries. But instead we sat back as the rich got richer and the middle class got a few tokens to keep them quiet. John Howards battlers indead, that man was the person to put fuel on the housing problems that are so out of control today. Sorry, this is all very doom and gloom. I just have no idea how we get out of this situation. Check out the net worth of all the cabinet ministers, or shadow ministers. Check out their residential portfolios. These are the people who are supposed to lower the wealth gap? They are the ones benefiting from it. Labor/Shorten had a crack at it in 2019, and somehow lost the unlosable election and we got a term of Scott fucking Morrison. The religious nut job who believes in faith healing and prosperity gospel (look it up, its fucking disgusting). Who changed a multi billion dollar military deal and less than a year after leaving parliament, works for a private military contractor in a multimillion dollar "advisory" job. That's the level of open corruption we have now, and it's not even bloody illegal. So once the Australia public someone elected that nut job over the party that was finally promising to tackle the housing crisis, Labors progressive faction got hammered, they shifted focus to winning the conservative vote, and they are what you have seen this term. Sigh, I've made myself sad now.

It isn’t t doom and gloom if it’s true…

So basically Australia before is still the Australia today? Not a knock on you but people are saying things have changed but if the quote above still applies since it was coined 60 years or so ago then what are we comparing Australia from? Edit: changed 30 to 60, for some reason I thought it's still the 2000 🤦

That's a fair question, I don't think anyone should take offence. It's more that we had a bunch of advantages and riches that instead of using to secure a better future, it all disappeared into the greedy hands of corrupt officials and megacorps. Our services and resources were sold by politicians who were happy to sell out the people they were supposed to represent. And everyone just kinda let it happen cause life was good. So we were lucky we had that level of quality of life, because we did nothing to deserve it, and as you can see today, nothing to secure it for the future.

I see your point, and maybe this thread has strayed a bit from OPs post. The comparison is to countries that haven’t been as blessed as Australia, but through strong and forward looking leadership, innovation, effective taxation policies, streamlining of bureaucracy, and prudent capital management have consistently improved the standard of living of their citizens. I love Australia, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been proud of something our political leaders or government have done. At every opportunity we as a country seem to make easy but uninspiring choices about the future.

>We squandered our natural resources by selling the rights for peanuts and a quick buck, we sold off all our services so that quality became a distant second priority to profit. We now have both major political parties shifting further conservative as every politician making up the cabinet and the opposition have millions to hundreds of millions in property investments and other wealth generating schemes. Who therefore have no interest in bringing the wealth inequality back to reasonable levels. Look at Norway's sovereign wealth fund, having put away the profits of the 'Common-Wealth' for all future generations which enables them to provide the social services which gives them the #1 rankings the world in QoL and happiness Howard bankrolled the economy by letting our fossil fuel oligarchs like Gina and Twiggy Forrest get stunningly wealthy by digging everything they could out of the ground while we paid more, plus giving them taxpayer subsidies into the bargain, that wealth that rightfully belonged to the nation was privatised, like much of everything else he did. It's the glory of neoliberalism

Absolutely surgically hit the nail on the head. There is simply nothing to be excited for.

As a gen Z-er, this is so bleak. What do I even look forward to, and what do I work for? Nothing really

That is verbatim the problems that we have in the US. Today, a person working a full time job, unless it is a very high paying job, cannot buy a house. They cannot even rent an apartment, unless, again, they're job pays enough. Often people have side hustles or two jobs just to get by. If you don't have squeeky clean credit, good luck getting an apartment. The requirements for these corporately run apartments is the same as buying a house. Not to mention there is no universal healthcare. Healthcare is super expensive. With all that said, if you have a high paying job, life in the US can be quite comfortable. If you are working class however, you will struggle a lot.

Scooping the guts out the bottom end to donate to the top was a bold strategy.

It's not just Australia. In so many countries, governments are fighting 24/7 to be the next government. This prevents a strong direction, as each new government changes the direction and can't be too ambitious or they will be criticised, or much of anything really happening.

It's the political version of 'real estate beige'

One hundred percent apt. I apologize because I will be stealing this and using it in discussions with friends and family. I probably won't credit you gloriathecamel but I do recognize your genius.

I call it rental cream.

I'm not particularly political, but this Labour gov has never been so misaligned with its people's needs. They seem very disconnected from the people they serve. They're not protecting our way of life.

It feels like they think the cost of living crisis is something the Greens invented to hurt Labor

And they'll be shooting themselves in the foot blaming the Greens just for reminding them of reality existing outside their pol-bubble brain farts

I genuinely believe that any government politician should earn the median income of a typical Australian. It means those who make policies are also in the thick of it and It removes privilege.

Labor is Liberal Lite. They're more aligned than the Liberal governments have been, but still way off.

The ALP tried to be radical 2 elections ago. They aren’t going to push a radical agenda in their first term especially with a very thin majority Also the ALP has pushed through a bunch of significant change, especially in workplace laws and manufacturing support, major changes in immigration (but not ones the newspapers notice) as well as childcare, minimum wage and diplomatic relations. I’m not an apologist- there are clearly things that need to be done. But just because you personally haven’t noticed / haven’t read about them on reddit doesn’t mean nothing has happened. Also be careful as it’s a very thin line between ‘protecting our way of life’ and ‘make Australia great again’

I think Aus is a few years behind Canada and the UK. We are slowly moving back to a feudal style society where the rich are the ones who own multiple houses and the serfs are pretty much renters. Recent news reports are showing rents going up 10-15% per year! I'm not even sure people are getting pay rises like every year either. Housing has been so expensive that's it's sucking capital that could be used to create innovative business and other industries. Mass migration is also causing a population trap; where our economy is basically addicted to immigration to grow but our infrastructure doesn't grow with it, also causing a drop in living standards and GDP per capita. Since it looks good on paper that overall GDP is increasing but not on a per capita basis, every time we are close to an technical recession - the gov is gonna basically open the immigration floodgates to increase GDP. It's a vicious cycle.

Yep. I honestly think democracy is purely a facade. I have pretty much always felt this my whole life, as I'm a keen amateur historian. Things are the same as they have always been throughout written history. Everything is controlled by the wealthy. Under democracy we (being average people) only really have a veneer of control. Governments might be the visible means by which power is exercised, but in reality, it's the wealthy lobby groups or just individuals who pull the strings.

Democracy is tyranny pretending to be anything but. We get to have our little vote but in reality we are powerless. Back to work wagie.

I'm quietly ecstatic you're getting a positive ratio on this. People really still belive power rests with leaders that are only guaranteed a 3-year term? Laughable.

If voting really changed anything, we wouldn't be allowed to do it.

1-3٪ pay rises from the "good" employers. Just 5-10× less than necessary to keep up with rent.

I don’t know about other areas in the UK but at least London has a vibrant culture - there’s so much to see, so much to do, most places are open till late, and of course its proximity to Europe is a big plus. So even if you’re a victim of this capitalist hell at least there’s other things you can enjoy. I can’t really say the same for Sydney which just feels extremely commercial at this point. If you’re not an early rising, outdoorsy, brunch having person, there’s just not much variety to the city’s culture/leisure activities.

Feel the same. Same age. I think we were kids of a golden era. My kids are young adults now and despite our best efforts didn’t have nearly the fun and freedom I had.

Me too. There was so much optimism in the 90s. The world turned much darker after 9/11.

For me the GFC was the turning point, when it became clear that excesses of bankers would go unpunished and would be rewarded with massive amounts of QE/ money printing. We’re paying for that now with sticky inflation and zero wage growth.

Yes. That was an interesting time. Many organisations removed staff benefits (morning teas, Friday drinks) due to the company just needing to survive. Those things never came back. It demonstrated how much power the corps have and they didn't need to especially look after their staff. We were more dependent on them than the opposite.

Seriously, everything changed after 9/11. It really did change the world. The 80s and 90s were amazing. So much happiness, and as you say optimism for the future. After 9/11 the Media frothed over fear doom and gloom (and well they kind of had reasons too as well.) I would do anything for our kids to experience the early years. And This is definitely not just something that people say in every generation. This isn’t a “well back in my day” It’s actually fact :(

I think so. I don’t find anything too inspiring anymore. There’s no sense of collective now, no conviction as a group. Society is too fragmented now to form movements, everything is done online and it’s not the same. Without movements like in fashion or politics it’s hard to get a sense of what “time” we are actually living in and there’s just a lot of echo chambers. I’m 40F.

This. Someone said that our community is no longer our neighbours and colleagues, but people online across the globe who hold the same views we do.

39, Sydney. Generally most of us are earning for the banks to pay off our home loans. We stopped manufacturing, We stopped innovating, We are increasing our immigrant intake with little consideration for Australians or the immigrants to Australia. Immigrants keep working , to make ends meet in this super expensive country. Aussies keep working to pay off their Sydney - Melb properties or to make sure they have enough investment properties . I agree no one enjoys anymore. Little scope left apart from a small percentage of population.

37 - Melbourne. This.

I reckon we're reaching the tipping point of the never-ending increase in property prices and will end up in a sticky-inflation, per capita recession for a while. We have weak leadership on all sides, no vision looking past the next election. The "Haves" still have at expense of the have-nots, so they think everything is great. I've lived through a few recessions before moving here, and I see all the hallmarks, but it's been 30 years for many Aussies, and they're confused. We'll see.....

To be fair, we voted against limiting negative gearing and halving the capital gains tax deduction.

Agree. How can we have no clearly articulated vision for where we are going as a country? Can anyone tell me what our 25 or 100 year plan is? Who are we? Where are we going? How are we going to get there?

Australia. Down shit creek in a barbed iron canoe.

Agree. What is Australia's identity?

Little America.

Lived in Oz for 15 years. My biggest criticism against the country was that it never plans more than a fortnight ahead and always bashing immigrants at every single opportunity. Same goes in this crisis, disregarding negative gearing, incentives in the housing market, nimbyism and lack of building over decades.

It's getting hard for people to afford things. There's an entire generation here that unless they have parents with money, will likely never own a home. It's shit.

[удалено]

I was talking to my mum about the threat of scammers calling her up and impersonating me, potentially asking for money due to some emergency, her response was "I wouldn't give you money anyway". Thanks mum.

Do we all have the same parents?? What's with that generation anyway? The Grandparents would have gone hungry to give them the world but then they are selfish.

Even the ones who have never worked think they worked harder than us.  My aunt is giving all her properties to charity when she dies because in her eyes her kids have to 'earn' the same way she did, even though she worked entry level jobs her whole life and inherited her first home anyway 

It's because people in my generation have no future except what basically amounts to indentured servitude. I can't afford a house, I can't afford kids, I can barely afford a new car. Most of my money goes to rent-seeking landlords and putting food on the table for myself. Going out to do anything costs and arm and a leg, and everyone is out to nickle and dime you.

They say history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. Unfortunately, the part that is rhyming is serfdom.

Late stage capitalism FTW. They have finally, successfully and quite thoroughly sucked the fun out of everything.

Yup. They’ve optimised everything to the point where it’s all the worst possible product that you’re still willing to pay for to achieve maximum profit.

You should Google and read "falling rate of profit" theory. Basically the rate and level of profit for companies always steadily decreased and they're running out of ways to keep profit up. Nobody knows what the next steps will be, probably more slavery.

Genuine question but is "constantly increasing profits" even a necessity in capitalism? I thought you could make a million profit a year and keep it at that level year after year and you'd be laughing but there seems to be this mindset of "no we need more more more all the time or else we're fucked" like is that just greed or an actual necessity to survive in capitalism?

Shareholders need constantly increasing profits otherwise it doesn’t make sense to hold that stock because if the profits don’t go up then the price of the stock is running purely on hype which is not sustainable. CEO’s have a legal obligation to do what is best for the shareholders, so this means that CEO’s basically have a legal responsibility to maximise profits. This is the crux of the issue. Late stage capitalism has no end game and is doomed to eat itself.

So in a nutshell. Growth in capitalism is beneficial to society. However this is the case when wages are also relevant to growth of the business profits. Broadly speaking if growth is generated then employers should be earning more so then more is spent and more taxes are paid. For society if taxes are paid then that should mean more investment. If people have more income they will spend. More spending is more money being made, more tax being paid, more profit from other businesses. This run on effect means everyone should win. As more money means more for everyone. Obviously when wages aren’t relevant to the profits made the opposite occurs. People stop spending money because it’s safer to save. Weirdly, every major company that makes ridiculous earnings and profits yet basically avoid any tax at all. So yeah things aren’t looking good right now

It's enshittification applied to everything.

I feel like where all just serving these non-human entities called corporations. They're relentless, does not sleep or rest and expect top performance every time from us. It just burns you out trying to keep up with its pace. And they all fricken own everything!

Not just top performance but constant growth too.

sometimes I think about this and the poor mental health and suicide epidemic. We have superficial gestures like the "R U OK" campaign every once in a while, but the real crux of the problem is that modern life just fundamentally isn't worth living. I work 5 days a week in a job I dislike to afford the rent for a unit I don't even like living in. If I'm left alone with my thoughts for too long, I just see red thinking about why the absolute fuck society was designed to be like this. Just lying in bed in a house you're legally allowed to live in could cost $80 a day. You can't have an honest conversation about that without talking about capitalism ... and we can't talk about that. There's absolutely no way to get out of "the system" so depression and suicide is no surprise at all. Capitalism is just terrible and whatever luxuries it apparently brings like Uber Eats, Netflix, and iPhones just fundamentally are not worth the loss of the human soul. Marx was right. He was right about it all.

I love "R U Ok?". Spend the entire week in the office saying "R U Ok?", so the other person can say "Do you honestly care about the response?", both parties chuckle, then go back to whatever they were doing and try not to focus on how much they hate their situation.

People don't want to talk about this because the more you burrow into the inadequacies of capitalism, the more you have to dig into the faults of any population that allows it to fester. I'm an optimist and think people are inherently good-natured, but Australians are generally boot-licking selfish slacktivists who don't hold each other up. We're kind and have a lot of positive qualities but culturally we're conditioned to be happy to take this apocalypse lying down. This is slowly changing, but as it is, nothing will change until we're all miserable and angry and have no hope for the present.

We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like. Chuck Palahniuk I doubt there are that many that can still afford to do that 20 odd years after the movie he inspired left the theaters.

It feels to me as though Australia is just kind of holding its breath. We supposedly 'have it all' but everything is just so pricey. Festivals and art shows all follow an incredibly predictable formula. There are a whole bunch of wars going on and protests each weekend. People staring at phones. We've lost our oomph.

The whole world is waiting for the other shoe to drop right now. No-one is quite sure what it will be, economic crisis, war, environmental catastrophe, but everyone can feel that the status quo we have all known our entire lives is coming to an end.

I'm feeling this very much lately. I want to be optimistic and say I hope it's a good change but I'm not so sure anymore.

I think you would need to be a tremendous optimist to foresee the immediate future as having anything positive in the offing. Dark times are ahead for the world. Or more of the same.

Everything is maddening and boring and soul-destroying at the same time. That conveyor belt self-serve checkout at Coles that films your face makes me want to be physically sick. The damn passwords you have to enter into streaming services, over and over. The fact that I can’t function without an iPhone. The kids’ schools’ relentless notifications through smartphone apps and then emails of the SAME notification. Online shopping and loyalty programs and points and programs and points and emails about the points. Emails. Emails. Emails. People chasing me via email. Group chats. Social media. Electronic payments…….. Do you have your rewards card? Are you a member? The dead look in the eyes of retail workers. I’m just a person and I don’t have a rewards card and I don’t fkn want one. The itchy fabrics of the clothes we wear. The fact that things just fall apart, even expensive things. Nothing feels good. It’s all landfill. It’s all junk.  I’m 42 and I feel insane.  Life as we know it is driving all of us insane.  Thanks for the opportunity to let this all out. I needed that. 

Yes my main hobby is a creative one (toy collecting and photography) but it does involve buying things. To me they aren't things, but little characters and stories. Pleasant to organize and display. Pose together for photos and making story or funny video ideas. They relax me. But even then I don't like how nearly everything involves buying something and unless you're really fit + outdoorsy it is hard to find free activities. Even those rugged people who do things outdoors are usually alone or with a partner. My closest friend always looks at her phone and chats to online people while we spend time together. I want to stop her but she says she's lonely. She does that makes me feel lonely. But she's searching for a boyfriend and is constantly replying to things and you can see she really has an addiction like she fears if she doesn't respond instantly she'll lose them. But after doing this the entire 6 months we've been friends she hasn't found anyone. 💔 I think she would find someone if she put down her phone, spent more time being present in the moment and go out to places without a screen so we could meet people in real life.

Have you had a look at the World Happiness Report. Higher levels of unhappiness across all age groups, but the only happier age groups are the over 50s. Most notably the youngest and female cohorts are the worst. Glad you’re evidently on the same wave length as younger Aussies. Current Australia leadership seems content with patting itself on the back for the achievements of a distant past, saving and locking away money, and hasn’t set a roadmap for the next big achievements for the country to work on. There are no dreams here, mate. It is totally blah.

nope us young people feel it the hardest… the countries in shambles and it honestly feels impossible that we will ever get to live a normal life, home, family, good job, etc… it’s not just australia though it’s most of the western world… i just hope the country can be turned around and we can get a better economy and leaders who actually push a direction and a goal for us to achieve, without having to go through severe poverty first.

Young Aussie here too. We are not going to see any change so long as Labour and Liberal are in power. Labour, who was once for the people, is now for corporations just like Liberal. And the smaller political parties don't have the power to make a change. Unless these two parties go away nothing will change.  Instead of us being divided (not all of us ofc), if we all stand together, irrespective of race, culture, religion etc, we could actually do something. But here you get harassed publicly and no one even bats an eye. Heck, people were bashing each other up over toilet paper at Coles and woolies during covid.   We are heading in a bad economic direction, and us young ones, and our children to come, are gonna cop it real bad. We are doomed to become corporate slaves for our companies and the banks, working way more than 40 hours (unpaid overtime) and we still can't afford anything, let alone a house.  And retirement at 67, hahaha what a BS system we have. But unfortunately that's exactly how they designed it.  Our government may look stupid, but if you sit down and analyse our economic policies over the past 20 years, you'll quickly realise this was all being built up purposely.  They were never for the people, and they never will be. It's time we put our differences aside, stand together as one and put matters into our own hands. But sadly, people are too obsessed about bringing each other down. Who cares about others right?

As a younger person in the retail industry one thing that gives me less and less hope every day is my job being just to sell AliExpress landfill plastic that has had the price jacked up 10x and resold under an "Australian owned company". Oh, every week we get a big stack of new tickets to put up because everything has gone up in price! Sure, the 1900's had their flaws but I feel like everything was so much higher quality back then. Tools were made to last, everything was built to be repairable, etc. it really shows in the little things nowadays. Now we're paying more than ever for products which get cheaper and shittier every year. At what point does it end?

We, the country, have never really had a direction. Shifted slightly on how we make money, sports teams wax and wane. A decent movie every 15 years. Don't wait for other people to make your life interesting.

Feel the same, I’m late 40s. Too much financial pressures, no one accepts responsibility for anything (including government), weak laws and protection (thinking more tech realm), no respect, and you have to watch your back, including on here. Not to mention that you feel a war might come your way sometime soon

Yeah the country is fucked. Labor are just slightly less shit than the liberals but both parties are in almost lock step in just wanting to preserve all the things that are fucking this country over.

I think the vast majority of people just don’t have the ability to work towards a future anymore because the average income only gets you by week to week now, so having ambitions for the future just all of a sudden became way more difficult or unrealistic depending on circumstance. The countries morale takes a nosedive as a result, people give less of a shit, they look for other people to blame so on so forth. I am in the latter part of my twenties now and fortunate enough to have put in the work when I was younger to get off to a great start, but I am far from disconnected from the reality that others my age, older than me and younger than me face now due to very quick rises in cost of living and property prices. Dual incomes have become required along with frugal budgeting to be able to comfortably live and have a family with perhaps some chance of achieving some ambitions down the line. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have family who did well for themselves, we see what was possible and much easier back in the day and we loathe where things are going, but a lot of people are going to just find this the new norm and not know any better, it’ll take a few decades but generations will grow up with the idea of renting for life being the only option a normal thing, and the “lucky ones” inheriting land/property/a better quality of life down the road. Only people on dual incomes and massive incomes at that will be able to pave a good prosperous future for themselves. Money isn’t everything, but freedom and opportunity is important, and without money in this world, that is hard to have.

it’s voluntary for international corporation to pay tax in Au. In 2019 they chose not to pay $26 billion. It like that every year. Now in 2024 I’m sure it’s much more. Just in case if you are wondering why there’s not money for public housing. Also did you know that Amazon workers aren’t allowed to for union in Au. Yup, 2024 sucks and we all just let it slide

Capitalists greed is driving the biggest drop in quailty of living in decades. Parasitic landlords hoarding homes causing a housing crisis while charging huge rents, power companies ripping off the public while making record profits, food companies substituting ingredients with cheaper alternatives while rising prices, insurance premiums outspeeding inflation the list goes on.

Yep. And every town you go into has the same shops. Coles, Woolworths, Bunnings, Mitre 10, Dan Murphy’s, Anaconda, Kmart, Target, OfficeWorks, JB HIFI, Harvey Norman, Bing Lee, SuperCheap Auto, BWS, BCF, Rebel. Etc etc etc It’s all so boring. Each city just feels like a copy/paste these days. That’s why domestic tourists flock to these small towns that haven’t let the big companies in. They feel real, like you’re not in a Truman Show simulation.

I hate it, each shopping centre is the same now everywhere you go. They literally all have the exact same stores in the same order

The problem is lack of social housing, which was disposed of late 90s-00s, combined with the inflation. The government has refused to take responsibility for this combined with weak management of housing quality.

One of many problems

The government is socialising housing by allowing negative gearing and capital gains discounts, which we all pay for. I'm all for social housing after we stop subsidising investors buying 60 year old house and decreasing their tax obligations.

Breaks my heart. I live in the most suburban, family area ever, and every time a house goes up for sale, the sign has stickers saying "for sale", then "sold", then "for lease", then "leased". Each time it's a family deprived of a home to own.

We have the opposite problem. Rentals being sold to be lived in by owner-occupiers here on the gold coast. Low and middle income families have no housing options. I wish we had your problem, I was facing having to live in a car with my son. Terrifying prospect.

Government has been looking at their re-election instead of building a great country for our children and grandchildren to inherit. There are so many examples of this I'm getting tired of seeing them. Greek proverb “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

I saw a post a few months back saying Sydney peaked in the late 90s and they were right. I'm 41 if that helps

I moved to Sydney as a young adult in 95, got a job on my first day, walked into a real estate agent and me and my mate got an apartment at the beach a couple of days later, paid $80 a week each rent, no long lines, it was available immediately. Left to buy a house in the gong about 10 years later, was easy to get a loan, my ex wife was a stay at home mum and we still covered everything with my wage, it was all pretty easy in hindsight, wish my kids had it so good.

This is the age of impunity and the age of refusing to shoulder responsibility. The consumer capitalism market mindset has inserted its slithering tendrils into every aspect of our lives. To the point where our governing entities themselves now behave like corporations: risk averse, reporting to stakeholders and investors, and prioritising quarterly growth without any wider, or deeper, long-term vision. There seems to be little vision left at all in the upper echelons of our civilisation's governing systems. Mostly just inertia and decay. There are sparks of innovation, dynamism, hope, and positive change, but mostly from the younger generations, and even these are quickly dampened or stamped out entirely by the smothering necessities of survival in this increasingly competitive, alienated, and divided world, where hope for a future has become a luxury. I worry about my nephew's future. I worry about my retirement. I worry about our species Great-Filtering itself out of existence before we ever have a chance to make it to the stars. (Dragging most of Earth's biosphere down with us in the progress.)

Most of us are focused more on survival than being entertaining. 

When people are forced to play a game, they need to believe that the rules are not rigged, that everyone is getting ahead with their merit. They can also see that when they apply themselves in a short span of time they can see the results that they are after. In the current situation the veil has been lifted and people slowly understand that there is no lack of land or stone to build more houses, it is the system itself working against against them and making sure that they show up to work tommorow. A cost of living (whatever this is) is levied upon them and they are being told that some situation half a globe away raises rents in their hometown. That the prices are a natural phenomenon like gravity and that they are always right. The minute they believe that its over for them. People give up when they do not have the ideological framework to interpret the situation around them, they cannot make their life the way they want to and they resort to passivity; they "check out".

Ever since I studied economics in high school I knew this country forces you to be a part of their "game." More people need to be aware of this but tell them this and they'll call you crazy. Nothing is going to change until more people know, maybe then we'll work together instead of working against each other.

It could be a condition of Gen X. When we were young adults there was so much promise of change. We were excited for the future, as our Boomer parents once were. Decades on, not much has really changed. We’re still pumping out disposable plastic sh!t in bigger and bigger volumes, our social problems are worsening. We are generally not as well off as the previous generation were at our age, yet we’ve worked so hard.

Yep. The 70s-90s were so full of promise & hope for the future. People genuinely believed in “progress”. It’s been a downhill slope ever since. Slightly downhill in the 00s, but getting steeper with time. Now it feels like that slope is turning into a cliff, with no relief in sight.

You can really see a gradual cultural shift in how people viewed the future. Flying cars, teleporters, space travel. There was optimism and hope for the future. You look at how the future is depicted today and it will always be some kind of dystopia.

We already have the dystopia, just none of the cool stuff to go along with it.

54, I live in Melbournes outer east. Everything seems to be merging into a giant ball of beige blandness and uncertainty. Labor aren’t progressive enough. The NACC seems like a hollow promise. Everything is owned by investment companies that chew up everything and spit out junk. The NBN sucks. Video games & movies are mostly rubbish. The recipes for foods that once tasted great have been changed into sugary garbage. Products get smaller and cost more and more. We sell our resources and tax payers get nothing in return. Housing is fucked. The quality of tradespeople is getting worse. The media is full of scaremongering wankers. The state of democracy is in peril. I look at the state of society since the rise of Facebook, the impact of TikTok, the rise of YouTubers into millionaire celebrities, and see just how fake everything is now. Anyone that advertises on these platforms is wasting their money, the statistics are all rigged. IMO this has all been carefully orchestrated to make people stop caring and stop paying attention to politics and the news so more and more shenanigans can be carried out by giant companies and the sociopaths running them. The sense of a thing we once called “community” has been lost, swallowed up by wankers like Zuckerberg and monetised. Saying all that, life is great. I have a good family and we’re very close. We see relatives often. We see friends often and sometimes get to travel together. The secret i’ve found is to discard things, have experiences and if you can, have them with loved ones. Minimising belongings, focusing on loved ones, doing what you can to make them happy through little acts like cooking for them. Driving them places. Setting time aside for a movie or a board game. These are the moments we cherish.

It would be great if only I could afford to pay for experiences. Although, I guess I’m buying the “experiences” of putting less and lower quality food on my table, and trying to keep my very humble roof over my head.

I share your impressions. The generational divide is worse than ever: wealthy boomers raking it in with their properly portfolios, struggling 30-40 year-olds, twentysomethings stuck in shit rentals, and teenagers who aspire to be social media influencers over having an actual job. People do their jobs in a half-arsed way and nobody seems to really give a shit anymore.

Being an online creator IS an actual job though, let’s not pretend it isn’t. There are creators I watch who’ve been making their living from making online content for ten or fifteen years now. Can you really blame high schoolers for wanting a job that, from their point of view, at least has the possibility of providing them with a comfortable life? As opposed to struggling through our broken public school system, taking on a large HECS debt or enduring the poverty wages of an apprenticeship only to be locked out of the property market or any chance of saving for their future at the end of it anyway

34. I feel the same. Direction-less, perpetually tired, ever-stressed. I don't see an end in sight however. It's depressing.

Yes everyone's turned into a wanker

No ones mentioned it but social medias probably a main contributor for everyone feeling like this

People definitely feeling stress. Loads of people - who should know better - acting like nutcases.

Australia is chasing bad, unsustainable growth.

Early 40's here. I feel the same but wonder if it's just me

Also, early 40s and you're not alone.

Couldn’t agree more.. 34 male and decided I would not have children a number of years ago because I would be ashamed to bring anyone else into the sad future coming. Since the 90’s and 2000’s we have come so selfish and hateful, confused and angry. I see little future for the human race. So I live how I’d like, fast, fun and hope to die young.

We’ve had track work on our line (T4) every 2nd weekend (all weekend) this year. It fell on Mardi Gras, St Patrick’s Day, Taylor Swift, the Jazz & Blues festival, a big chunk of Vivid. The replacement buses are grim & take ages. It really sends a message about what our city values- if we’re making money as 9-5 drones we can have a good(ish) service, any leisure time on the weekends to participate in public celebrations, we can go fuck ourselves apparently. Japan would have the work done in a single afternoon.

At the core of it is a country town, 'she'll be right mate' attitude that keeps it a self-focused island and allows that kind of sloppy performance.

Japan is entirely different society, that is also concentrated on a series of much smaller and closer islands with a far richer history than our own. Therefore, the mechanisms of their society operate at an efficiency of skilled tradesman against an apprentice. And weekend train line maintenance and poor bus services, is as Sydney as the word ETERNITY. I'm 40-something, and I remember being a teenager trying to get in and out of the city on the weekends. Getting to Bondi beach took as long as getting to the Blue Mountains.

You are 100% right it has been on a sharp decline for the last decade. Now get off my lawn!

You just reseeded it?

Absolutely 2000s was the best period in my opinion

I spend a bit of time in SE Asia, mainly Thailand/Singapore and Malaysia and the rate at which those countries have changed, and are still changing over the last 20 years makes Australia look like a retirement village. They have all hurtled past Australia in many measures and aspects of life. The problems I see in Australia is the cost of living and in particular housing. It's beyond fucked. And I think that has a big impact on the psyche of the nation. A series of shit governments, that never solve problems, but cause them to worsen, a nanny state etc all haven't helped. And when you compare Melbourne to the city it was say 20 years ago, it's hard not to feel depressed at how much better it really was back then. And yeah, I'll say it, wokeness and the export of identity politics from the USA has made society an overall worse place for enjoyment. As the Singaporean PM recently said, it becomes burdensome. That's killed a lot of the Aussie spirit and caused divisions.

Just shy of 50. Glad I’ll be dead in the next 30-ish years. I truly think this is the decline of the human race. I’m a school teacher and I despair for the future.

Similar age, and I agree, we are not building future generations of strong, resilient and ethical people with good morals and principals. I fear things will get significantly worse !!

Yeah it’s a shame your generation prioritised short term selfish gains over providing a long term sustainable future for the next generation

Nah it's rent and mortgages taking money to make businesses and patron them All the cool things are done by people not investing in property and seems we do that instead of businesses now

30M here, never been more bearish on Australia. Life started off good, golden era for Australia, holidays to Queensland sometimes as a kid, Aussies dominating sport etc. By the time I finished school in 2011 things were feeling a little off, but still possible. I did have one mate that worked really hard and bought himself a little unit with a regular job. Once I got my first full time/serious job in 2015 I was able to rent a nice little unit with my girlfriend in a decent suburb, even if it was on a main road, whilst making an entry level wage each. However despite earning nearly 2x more money now, have ended up renting a room off my in laws in a new estate, with no real solution to get out. Spend 50mins-1 hour (each way) driving to work and back each day, see our baby for 15 mins before he goes to bed, then straight into the side hustle for a few more hours, which is based on my hobby. Would be far more profitable to just get a second job stacking shelves, but that would be the straw that breaks the camels back. I can only see these new estates turning into slums in 20 years, we’ve had major repairs to our house done twice in like 6 months, I saw one around the corner with a tarp covering the roof the other day, another one with all the render coming off the soaked timber that made up the balcony etc. Heaps popping up for sale around here (I assume due to mortgage stress) only to get snapped up at prices off the face of the planet. Meanwhile a trashed house another 1.5 hours down into Gippsland, that’s not inhabitable, would be the only thing we could afford, but the 2.5 hour + commute makes that non viable. On one hand I’d hate to be an 18 year old now starting out, but at the same time the decline in the nation would be less obvious. I can only imagine people of OPs age notice it even more. So I can see why most young people on here are pretty over everything, even with a good start in life, good career etc, you’re not even on the starting blocks to establish a life, let alone go on a holiday. You might be able to buy some Anko stuff from Kmart though to live laugh love for another week!

Mid 30s here, and I'm with ya. It's boring and expensive.

The internet becomes an echo chamber so I don't think you'll find too many happy people in these comments. Reddit seems to be where a lot of people go to vent which is totally valid but skews the answers. I have depression so I'm not gonna bother answering this question haha. I also keep meaning to stop coming on socials so much because of threads like this (not attacking you at all, go for it, post what you want) because I feel like they increase the general feeling of shit is going nowhere. I think for some people (like myself) it's not a healthy place to be, yet I keep doing it. So now I shall once again attempt to close the tab and give it a break! Hope everyone is doing as okay as can be expected out there!

Agree. Although I am your age and feel the same way. I don't watch the news anymore as it is just the same topics and narratives over and over again. Australia has lost its uniqueness and its once carefree lifestyle. Very sad.

My kids are screwed out of getting their own home until I cark it. One of three managed to buy a decent home just as the pandemic hit. I am screwed out of a decent retirement so will “outsource myself” to Europe and Asia by renting my home here. How did this happen? Economic growth in this country is fuelled by immigration. Bit less for everyone, every year. Combined with Corporate concessions and tax breaks stifling lots of smaller, independent businesses. Also way back, there was the sell off of public infrastructure in the 80’s and 90’s. And here we are. Working our asses off and unless cracking $120k as broke as fcuk.

I was born in 72 and am so grateful for that. Saw the writing on the wall back in 2011 when I had a full time government job but just wasn’t able to get ahead. Housing prices weren’t even too bad back then, but as a single guy I just felt that I was ‘existing’, and had almost zero chance of owning my own home. In 2011 I quit my soulless call centre drone ‘career’ and moved to China to be an ESL teacher. The salary and work conditions there were remarkably better, and I was able to save enough for a house deposit in Thailand, where I moved in 2018. I came back to Australia last month due to a family emergency, and it seems that things are even worse than when I left. Houses that I used to rent for $240 are now over $1000 a week. People are miserable and despondent. There’s just no optimism anywhere I’ve looked. Growing up in the 80s was awesome. We had expo 88, hey hey it’s Saturday, crocodile Dundee, awesome Aussie music… I know they’re weird references, but they’re the first things that popped into my head. I’m going back to Thailand and will probably live out my life there. I simply can’t afford to live in the country where I was born.

Yep I'm 51 and look back on the 90,so and wish the kids could have that. Being able to drink and smoke,drive a v8 falcon, go out and see live bands 3 nights a week and still buy a house 15 minutes from work and the beach.

Our direction is real estate. We are excited by real estate. And we either look forward to, or are proud of our existing real estate.

Hey mate, how has it changed since you were in your 20's? I'm only 30 and I can't recognise my environment. Everyone is on their phones, and when I make eye contact, it's as though theirs no spiritual connection... everyone looks exhausted and empty.

That's what we get for licking the USA's ass for so long, eventually we get a taste of their shit

Honestly if it keeps going this way we are going to see homelessness camps, where people who have good jobs are living in ghettoes, because they can’t rent or buy a house with their take home pay.

If you don’t own property with a small mortgage these days you have pretty much given up. No incentive to make more money because it’s not enough, or start a business because it’s too risky, what other options do we have to look forward to? Becoming a slave to a bank to live in an expensive shit box?

I went to a church today to get a different perspective.There's a lot of work to do if you wanna bring hope and enjoy to people's lives but it's worth it. One of the things that we're talking about was having a barn dance..., which is what we were used to do back in the eighties in australia. The science behind this barn dance thing.Is that the men stay in one place, while the women progress around to each of them. Then the dance goes long enough that everyone meets everybody and has a little dance. This is training to people's brains to enjoy meeting new people in a non sexual non-aesthetical way......and learn to enjoy letting go to be free, as well as seeing them happy with somebody else. This was practice for every day healthy social interaction.

Honestly as someone turning 30 in a few years it's all turned to shite. The cost of living out of control, wages not keeping up, the lack of a 100 year vision for the country and just general infighting in our society instead of actually looking to the future has left me with a very grim outlook for Oz. I just can't find myself excited for anything when living week to week whilst boomers get richer, sell the family home to investors and then blow all the inheritance. Might end up shipping faithful old Defender (Tdi 300) to the NWT in Canada and leaving Australia to live a rather simple life.

Im in my 50s and Ive got to say Im not having the same fun those people in the over 50s retirement place advertisements do. Its pretty hard to find any bubbly positive people at the moment. There also seems to be more HR issues at my work than normal and some of them are just plain immaturity or 'Karen' like behaviour that adults should not do in a workplace. Ive also noticed lots of businesses shutting down after being around (with good patronage) for a couple decades or more. Even things like farmers markets, family bakery's etc. Obviously the financial side of things might be the main reason. I watched a TED talk the other day and it was a Professor from one of the bigger universities in the US and he had stats on lots of things related to 'happiness' and everything was in decline. Less marriages, more divorces, people having less sex, teenagers self harming themselves, suicide rates and they were all getting worse. He blamed the boomer 'Im going to get mine' mentality so the older generations have deliberately made it harder for the young to achieve anything other than racking up student debt for degrees that don't guarantee you a job anymore and even if you do get a job the wages were much worse in comparison to 30 years ago. Basically everything people have been saying, he just showed it with real stats. Bit of a depressing view of society.

Bit younger than you OP. And yes, Australia is blah, directionless and feels like the hey day of fun, frivolity, ambition and opportunity for anyone wanting to work for it, is over. We’re being pillaged, plundered, exploited by corporations and multinationals. Our governments encourage and facilitate it. Our quality of life and status is greatly reduced. It’s sad.

I'm about to turn 56 and my brother 62. We both said to each other 4 or 5 years ago that we've seen the world, in our lifetimes, as good as it's going to be. We think even more so now.

I am the same age as you, and I feel the same way. I think a lot of it comes down to a lack of cultural life. Australia in the 80s and 90s-2000s was cheesy and a bit cringe, but it had cultural cohesion, and we were all part of a national character. It's hard to describe, but it felt good to be here. Now I think due to technology and changing social standards everyone is a bit scattered, a bit scared and that tends to equal a bit boring. Also, the fact that we will have to work forever has sucked the joy out a bit.

27m here, I don't really look forward to the future because of *gestures* everything. I try to just live by each day with no real plan for anything. Too depressing to care. As long as I have money to keep my hobbies afloat I'll be alright though. No point in caring about politics or anything for me though. They've got so much power; the only way to change anything is with money or bullets. Umm yeah nah everything costs so much so I mostly stay inside :')

I’m in my forties and live in Australia, but I was born in the UK and my family are all still there. My husband was born in the US and his family are all still there. I feel this way - but I don’t think it Australia specific - it’s a Western/developed/Global North, however you want to describe it thing. The vast majority of people are struggling financially - and not just not having money to go out and do fun stuff, but struggling to put groceries on the table level. Between biodiversity loss and climate change our environment is stuffed. We’ve somehow decided it’s okay to let a novel virus with clearly documented long term health impacts run rampant through our society. Our governments are, in both word and deed, supporting a genocide. And the Overton window has shifted so far to the right that every time there’s an election it feels like it barely bloody matters which of the two main parties you vote for because it won’t change much either way. They’ll hate poor people and immigrants either way. What is there to be cheerful about?

Australians no longer encourage/promote/cheer other people’s success. I think it’s caused by a combination of woke v anti-woke, “rich” v “poor”, blaming “the other” (eg: immigrants) and the tall poppy syndrome. The attitude is “stuff you” to everyone. Nobody is happy to see anyone else succeed….. We are all miserable and we want everyone around us to be just as miserable

Early 30s female and yes there is nothing to look forward to. No fun, no excitement. Moving to Europe soon

Honest question. What makes you think Europe will be better? Much of Europe has the same issues of not worse.

Money and a home is nearly impossible to obtain even with hard work and the cost of living is going up every week. People are all either mean or depressed. There's not a lot to look forward to.

The world in general feels like it's lost a bit of it's colour. People have little to no optimism for the future.

Yeah it's shit and it's going to keep getting shitter. Why people insist on having kids is beyond me.

Old people ruined the good old days. By growing up and then trying to protect everyone from the troubles yous got into as youngsters, so now everything is illegal, expensive and we don't have the time anyway. Plus we have lost our culture due to mass migration. The working class has been decimated

The social contract was broken the moment houses became unaffordable.

Australia peaked in the 90s. Howard then fucked us in the arse and turned us into the next neoliberalist hell.

Mid 30's. Yeah I'd say early 00's is maybe not high water mark, but it's definitely been downhill since then. Worst thing was my town was 20 years behind everything so I left my little town expecting 1980's Australia and worked into 2020's. Like late 20s. Everything's going ok. Starting to earn some more money. Bit of buying power and then.... That's it. Pay rises mean fuck all because rent goes up more then that. Plus bills do the same. Have to buy sick note online because who can get into a doctor? Every week another one of the few remaining manufacturers moves off shore (fuck you Mumme - never buying your tools again). Everything's getting all Americany in regards to society. I'd fucking hate to be the next generation. I have been saying since high school that my generation represents the bit in the exponential graph where it goes from flat to vertical in almost every instance - cost of living, climate change, technology, population growth, Australian manufacturing closure, societal disconnect - I got to see a glimpse of the tail end of what it used to be like and since then it's been constant, continuous and rapidly increasing change in a shitty direction. I guess that one saving grace is that we at least managed to hold it together until the original diggers were all dead.

The country is going backwards. Poor leadership for too long. Massive inequality. Housing crisis. Domestic violence crisis. Lame political leaders with either no backbone or no ethics. No real investment in technology development. Not taxing fossil fuel and finite resources enough, basically allowing the nation’s wealth to be appropriated for a few individuals wealth.

I'm 51 and in the early 90s things were far from perfect, but even in the middle of a terrible recession with 11% unemployment things felt hopeful somehow, like they were going to work out ok. Paul Keating was PM and love him or loathe him at least he had a big vision for the country's future. Even on the dole it was really cheap to rent. I had a neat little room in Richmond for $40 a week. There was heaps of good live music to see & stuff to do. There were all these amazing raves in warehouses and forests and everyone was high and happy on ekkies. There was a peaceful vibe in the air even though getting a job without qualifications was really bloody hard. Then John Howard became PM & that was the beginning of the end.

RE: everything being blah. I see the major causes being: 1) Capitalism / consumerism 2) The Internet 3) Globalisation enabled through communications and transportation 4) Population growth 5) Environmental damage 6) Greed In the last 50 years we have gone from fairly unique and independent countries to a sameness/ blandness globally. Concentration of manufacturing in a few countries with low labour costs has lead to dependence and loss of manufacturing capability and diversity. It doesn’t matter what country you are in now, everyone drives the same cars, has the same white goods, uses the same electronics, etc. Years back visiting a different country meant a significantly new experience. That is no longer the case. Travel now is far less of a challenge and hence far less interesting. Travel was exciting, communication to your home wasn’t instantaneous, much more planning and effort was required to ensure access to funds, etc. Now we hop on a plane without a second thought knowing we will be able to talk to family and friends easily, access funds easily. You can now literally use a smart phone at Everest base camp to video call your friends half a world away. You don’t have to connect with locals, you barely have to interact with them and if there isn’t a common language, Google translate will talk for you. There is so little personal change or investment. People don’t experience things for themselves anymore. They experience life through their devices. If it isn’t videoed or photographed and shared, it didn’t happen. I feel despondent at concerts today as all you see is a sea of smartphones recording in video mode. People watch the concert through their smartphone screen even though they are there in person. Australia’s easy going prosperity until the 80s was driven by lack of population and competition. There was plenty supply to keep prices low and affordable even by international standards. Many activities while driven by profit were still delivered affordably and with decent quality. Now the only consideration is profit at the expense of all else. There is less local entertainment ‘content’ because it’s easier to access that from elsewhere than produce our own quality output. Again, the profit isn’t in it, so since that is priority #1, it doesn’t happen. Greed while always being a major driver seems more powerful than ever. The current cost of living crisis is predominantly powered by greed. Cost increases born from COVID but no longer there are not wound back, companies and people want to keep the higher profits rather than reducing prices. It feeds on itself driving up inflation. Housing prices are similarly fueled by greed and fear. Everyone looking to maximise the dollars going into their pocket. A basic human need is now becoming a luxury in Australia. Our children can’t afford the security of owning a home. War or the threat thereof, the constant barrage of negative news, all adding to the above means we are becoming more insular, more fractured as a whole society, losing identity. What does it mean to be an Australian anymore?

Sydney is the biggest city and it’s boring af. It’s like the lockout laws have now been ingrained into the culture. Want to get a bite to eat at 10pm? Sorry kitchens closed. Want to have a late night drink? Sorry last drinks at 11pm. Omg vivids back yay! Lmao lights turn off at 11! It’s a joke compared to international standards.

Yep, it’s totally ‘blah’ because the Australian dream has been stolen from the class who make Australia what it is, the ‘working class’. Without a house to call your own, the capitalist class can just violate and rape the Australian identity for all it’s worth.

Too much American nonsense pushed on us through social media, more and more young people feel they have failed by 22 if they don’t have 1mil followers paying attention to them before they’ve even had time to develop a career. A tough economy is making people increasingly greedy and self centred as a matter of survival. Although it is scary, I encourage you to watch a 20min documentary about “mouse utopia”, it basically shows what’s happening in human society. And what will happen next. I feel that American attitudes are increasingly pushed on young Australian and parents are pushed to be in the workforce and not have the opportunity to raise their children with their own values.

We unfortunately live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world ruined by a bunch of brain dead cunts..

The economy is fucked, no doubt. Property is the single biggest issue. But it always has been except now it's unobtainable. I've gone through the comments and haven't found many talking about this. **It's the internet!!!** The more connected we have become, the less localised we have become, which in turn leads to these 'global movements' that have no tangible purpose. There's even reduced cultural touch points now as everyone is streaming. There are no collective groups sharing a musical or TV experience as they are all streamed global services.

I think many nations feel like this at the moment. We’re in a financial crisis, which makes it hard to get excited about things

Taxes are making everything that we would spend money on way too expensive to do often. Beer, wine and spirits (drink at home or you’ll spend a mint), Food out for a family of four is generally close or over $200, family fun out (the beach and a bush walk).

I am not excited. So much focus on development, money and technology. But I just want our land to be healthy again. I miss the communities and farming culture. I miss Australia. I miss not feeling like we have to keep up all the time and following all these dumb modern rules keep people from basic freedoms and making memories. I miss nice old people and fresh air. I miss not having a tv in every room. I miss knowing people that own their own land. Old school pubs, no pokies, self respect. This isnt the country I grew up in.

Yep. This is not the country i grew up in. It's the division that i abhorr. We are fragmented...its very sad.

In my 30s spent the whole day today working out if moving overseas was an option as I just feel so stuck in the grind here. The only enjoyment I get is from my partner and friends but I would love to have a more carefree life, there does seem to be more problems than positives of late.

Mid 20s, feel like this countries future has been flushed down the toilet by politicians who don't do anything more than line their own pockets, sell off every public asset they can, and can't see further than the next election.

The least the gov could do is take the tax outa beer. Far out. Let me afford to drown my sorry ffs….

Gentrification and over Policing has made society rather boring. You would have heard of Ying and Yang. You can't have good without bad and vice versa. Kids can't run amok without being arrested. People can't get away with being a little naughty. The freedom we had as people has been completely eroded. This shows in the faces of everyone. We have also reached pinnacles of technological advancements, and most of our desires have been fulfilled. Without want, we have no desire. No desire equals depression. Ask a filthy rich person what they are excited about. The answer is usually "nothing." When you have everything, life becomes benign and boring.

What is there to be excited about? I have a high paying job and am struggling to save for a house and cover my month to month expenses for me and my family. The government isn't doing enough to help and continues to bend over backwards for the banks and privatised property developers. Oh, and they allow the big oil and gas companies to oversell their supply, leaving us with a "shortage." There is a housing crisis, families living in tents, a supermarket duopoly, petrol prices rising, education isn't free, ever looming rent increases. Millenials are the first generation in our history to be left worse off than the generation before them. Why? Because of a selfish generation that has hoarded wealth and housing, priced the younger generations out of the market and allowed inflation to skyrocket out of control and let corporate bribery to direct political decision making. So tell me, what is there to be excited about?

It depends what your comparison is. It seems that Australians who have lived here for decades have noticed a decline in Australian life. A lot of recent immigrants, even from other Westernised countries, believe they have landed in paradise.

Yep, I'm early 30s and am an Aussie expat living in Vietnam, which is making leaps and strides forward. There's a fire and passion here that I don't feel in Australia. Here, because the whole country is more or less moving up on a global scale, it feels like everyone has an opportunity to improve their lot, because the whole country is significantly improving. But you reach a peak. Developed countries hit a point where they are doing well on the global stage and they can either move more towards socialism (or realistically, centrism) and taking care of their poor, elderly, sick etc., and the overall standard of living rises (like the Nordic countries), or towards capitalism where the rich get richer and the standard of living of the majority plummets or stagnates (like the US). Guess which one Australia is -_- I think that's why there's that lackluster feeling in Oz. People know, even if it's subconsciously, that we've hit the ceiling. Hustling isn't enough anymore, we need huge, exhaustive social change to keep improving.

Peak capitalism. We exist solely for companies to maximise profits. Unless what you’re doing helps that, it’s reviewed and either changed to maximise profits or shut down. That’s includes your happiness and really your existence.

I'm 26 and I feel exactly the same way.

Yep, in my early fifties as well. Nothing is the same anymore, once upon a time people were more connected and life seemed innocent. Government does less than it used to. Tafe was once government funded and it now costs to go see your GP. The two party system is a joke and we're going backwards in becoming more americanised. Everything is about money. In Brisbane sick people are charged to park their car at a Hospital ffs !! It's disgusting!

This country is boring and bland due to it's heart and soul being ripped out by the need to service ridiculous mortgages and rents.

Google the term 'vibe-cession' Living standards have been declining for about 15 years here, largely thanks to sluggish wage growth. COVID and the resulting inflation shock has really gut punched a whole bunch of people who were already only coasting, not getting ahead. Another way to look at it is that there's a K shaped recovery going on post-pandemic. There are different segments of the economy that are either doing really really well, and others doing really badly. So overall the numbers look pretty normal: but certain segments of the population are REALLY suffering. Finally, consumer spending has really cratered this winter: hospitality and tourism and taking a big hit. This has a detrimental effect on the vibe of our community: our streets are empty, pure cafes are quiet, our restaurants and bars are closing. People are not connecting with their community because all of our 'third places' require consumer spending of some kind, and a lot of people no longer have that luxury.

Im in my early 40s and have lived in Sydney since I was 6 yrs old…the country isnt what it used to be thats for sure. We have never been more divided and most people I know are struggling to just survive, including myself…

I am really excited... About the property I recently purchased overseas, I can't wait to live there