declining standard of living in Australia

Discussion in 'Australia, NZ, Pacific' started by kazenatsu, Jul 10, 2017.

  1. m2catter

    m2catter Well-Known Member

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    When I told that my daughter she first couldn't believe what I was saying, then burst into laughter. She told me "yes dad, that was when I was a child, but things have changed since".
    It looks like my grandchildren aren't as cheap to get through public schools as it used to when my daughter went through the system.
    Regards
     
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  2. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    That's the 2017 fee. Actually it's more like $180-something. Add in excursions/sports, voluntary contributions etc, and it amounts to around $500 a year.
     
  3. scarlet witch

    scarlet witch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Exactly, $200 is ridiculous, my son is in public Secondary, it was $4000 (including laptop of $1500 & uniform A$500) to get him into his first year, I received the paperwork for year 8 this week, here's the list, not including another pair of A$70 school shoes I bought him a week ago because he's growing so fast, uniform I bought last year won't last much longer

    A$724 school fees
    A$285 camp
    A$369 for books
     
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  4. LeftRightLeft

    LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

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    Mate, do you or have you had kids at school and when? Honestly...

    Your all right, most public schools ask around $200 to $300 in fees for our "free" public education. Don't get me wrong, I spent many years as president of my kids P & C and know that the money is needed to "top up" their budget allocations. This and education is an entire topic on it's own so I will leave it here.

    So on average, we are at $250. Any year you can get away with only forking over $250 for excursions, field trips, school events etc is a good year, most of us will pay around $1000 to $2000 for 1 or 2 camps alone. so we are $600 pa already.

    Now sports, if your kid is into sports you just double everything at least, but for most sport will add around $100

    OK while on the subject of sports, sports organisations, local charitable and service groups etc all seem to like sending schools books of raffle tickets, there is the school fete, other P&C related events. This will cost us around $100 pa. They will attend at least one formal, which if your the proud parent of a young lady will cost you around $500, averaged out over 10 years add $50 pa so we are now at $850.

    If your child goes to the tuck shop only once a week and only spent $5 you're very lucky, add $200 per year .... $1050 total so far and we haven't looked at shoes or uniforms, books, calculators, laptops etc and they're the expensive bits.

    As for all the elcheapo garbage, $2.00 tee shirts cotton takes just as many resources, energy, land and water etc as $40 ones but we buy 10 times as many.

    I bought an ACDC tee shirt, genuine, still had the label attached at my French Taylor, "St Vincent De Paul" for $10 and a beautiful pair of handmade Italian leather boots which I have had now for 5 years (resoled twice) by far the most comfortable shoes I can remember, for $5.
     
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  5. LeftRightLeft

    LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

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    Of course if your a mean stingy tight r's you may halve that. If you are financial burdened talk to the ladies in the canteen, most run a secondhand exchange, donate or at least very cheap uniforms etc, speak to the P&C etc.
     
  6. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    three kids, two in high school. maximum $350-400 per year, each. no 'camps' in senior years .. or at least they're optional (our kids hate school camps, so always opt out). sports only compulsory up to year 11, and there are plenty of free options. canteens/tuck shop expenditure is optional. laptops are optional (at least in regards to how many family members share one, etc). haven't included uniforms, because they're not 'fees'. We spend about $120-150 per year each on same.
     
  7. LeftRightLeft

    LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

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    No uniforms are not fees but they are compulsory in most schools. They are an expense of educating your children. Correct there are no camps for seniors, 11 and 12, but junior years yes, so I averaged them over the 10 years, yes you can get away with a family laptop, but that would disadvantage some if you have 2 or 3 older children.

    Yes you can pick up cheap made in china/india/wherever pants for $15 to $20 each at Target or Big W etc and to get say 2 x lang pants, 2 x shorts, 2 x tees, 2 x shirts, I jumper, socks and shoes would easily come to your $150, without books pens etc at K Mart etc. To buy the same from Lowes, a good Australian brand, usually has school logos etc would cost around $500 for a senior student. I can think of a dozen of my expenses I would give up to ensure my children look respectable.

    A guy in a pub one afternoon after work was complaining of the cost of educating his kids. I said "Beer is expensive too". He said that is why he limits himself to 2 after work.

    Cost of giving his children an education for their future ... approx. $2000-$3000 pa. Cost of his "2" beers ... approx. $3000-$4000 pa
     
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  8. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Add cigs to that, and you're up around $10k a year. Some people don't deserve kids.
     
  9. scarlet witch

    scarlet witch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The laptop in "our" school is not optional, if you want to attend this public school you need a laptop and it has to be purchased via the school. The price for the laptop is double than what you will purchase it for privately for several reasons,
    1. insurance for 3 years
    2. The school has their own IT department with two techs who will swap parts instantly. The reason for the service department is that 90% homework is submitted online. If you don't have your laptop it's your problem. You get detention for un-submitted or late homework. Also if your laptop is not charged for an entire day's use.
    Any changes to your schedule is also advised electronically, it's your responsibility to make sure you show up where you're suppose to be... if not, detention.

    They gave us three options, I bought the top of the range because my son is looking at a computer science or engineering field.

    The school also "locks" the laptop so students can't misuse it, so whilst they get the full Adobe suite & other great programs for free use within the schools software, there's no download and install of games, only online research, google, you tube etc. They can also see everything students do on these laptops, even in private time. School provides free wifi for students.

    I think schools who do not use laptops are falling behind because there's very few jobs out there that do not require the use of computers in some way. It teaches the kids how to use the laptops for work... not play.

    Things are changing and they're moving from a "memorise everything you can & answer questions" system to teaching "how to research find good sources and write essays"

    No I didn't like paying the premium for the laptop but after a few things went wrong and was repaired within minutes I stopped complaining.
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2017
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  10. LeftRightLeft

    LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

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    At my school, a "computer" was compulsory also.
    [​IMG]
     
  11. LeftRightLeft

    LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

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    Oh and my 101 year old father said it was in his day too.
    [​IMG]
    plus
    [​IMG]
     
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  12. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    We had little blackboards, pencils, dipping pens and then fountain pens.
    Times tables and later, Kaye and Labey Logarithm books.
     
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  13. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    If you want disposable clothes. Ones that you discard after two washes the it is OK but if you want quality.........

    Problem is that we have forgotten not only how to make our own but that we CAN. I was looking through the family linen. Huge table cloths all hand crocheted and thought " this is just no longer done"
     
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  14. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Oi remember dem.........
     
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  15. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Luxury!!

    WE had to use these

    [​IMG]
     
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  16. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    Lick road clean, WIT TONGUE.
     
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  17. LeftRightLeft

    LeftRightLeft Well-Known Member

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    ?????????¿
     
  18. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    ripping yarns
     
  19. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    I buy all my clobber from op shops. Not a fan of cheap new builds :p

    And I sew. And knit, and crochet, and make bread, and yogurt, and cheese .... god help me ......
     
  20. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    What sort of cheese?
     
  21. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    quick and easy!

    seriously, 2 litres of full cream milk, heated (I heat mine past the standard because I'm in a domestic kitchen, not a sterile cheese factory!) but not boiling, throw in a cup of vinegar or lemon juice, leave for 20 minutes, drain. Add salt at any point after the addition of the acid, if required. Fantastic for cheesecakes, salads, pizza. Eaten still warm with semi-dried tomatoes :p

    edited to say drain til consistency preference is reached. the longer, the drier and harder your cheese will be.

    BLESSED ARE THE CHEESEMAKERS!
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2017
  22. Sallyally

    Sallyally Well-Known Member Donor

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    Great, thank you.
     
  23. garry17

    garry17 Well-Known Member

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    So this has become a debate on the costs of education in Australia which I assume is some sort of demonstration on reduction of standard of living.


    Again the original premise has failed to be demonstrated and in fact the latter two posts clearly demonstrate the reduction costs. After all in their joking of the abacus and slide rule (of which I am sure they know little of the use) the cost of their purchase was by the consumer while the government provides the later day equivalent.

    All the while, the point of immigration remains ineffectual in the subject it was raised on…
     
  24. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'll just say this: the more "socialized" a society is, the more costs there are that are not apparent. Everyone has basically been placed in a giant pool and now you're adding more people, only you assume that all those services you're getting will just continue. The ratio of available money to people is going to decrease, and that's going to have all sorts of ramifications, which will be unforeseen to most people. Everything's going to become cheaper. And without all that extra money to lubricate that economy, methods of business that existed are going to break down, some types of economic activity simply won't be worth it anymore. It will be a regression. Imagine lubricating oil circulating around and then you do a re-design and build more gears into the box. Those gears will be able to do more things but they won't be able to work as they did before, there will be grinding and metal against metal, some of the gears won't be able to move in certain ways.

    Have you heard of the fallacy of composition? You have one cow on a small pasture and its producing twenty buckets of milk a month, so you assume if you get another cow you'll have forty buckets a month. But that's not true, there's only so much grass on that pasture, you might only get thirty buckets of milk.
    Now of course that pasture expands, but you have to wait for the economy to grow first. Enlarge the labor pool faster than the economy can produce job opportunities and you'll run into problems (wages will be driven down and you'll have lower quality jobs).
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2017
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  25. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And unfortunately, as we've seen, GDP is expanding faster than all that money can trickle down into business opportunity and jobs, at this stage in time. There's no easy fix for that, and if you try to turn to redistributionist methods it will likely lead to complications (could put a drag on overall GDP), though I suppose this is debatable.

    Well anyway, I foresee in the future most Australians won't be able to afford to live in Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne, at least not with any decent living standards. Though some people will be willing to spend the majority of their income on rent and crowd together in a tiny living space together with other people.
    Keep in mind that, while Australia does have a vast land area, 89% of Australia's population lives in urban areas, in just a few of the major cities. That's where the job opportunities are.
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2017

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