Things that give you the sh1ts

[gadj1976]

Because?

....you're selfish.

Statement or question Boon?

I was asking because I thought Wegs might have zero mortgage and investments but was inviting a response.

For me, an interest rate rise with two mortgages isn't ideal. And Wegs and I are the same age. Interesting how people view the state of play huh?

[Jim05]

There is a strong argument to increase the GST as a curb to inflation, to spread more evenly the tax base and to increase the revenue for the Government.

This is out of the RBA's hands. They effectively only have the one tool.

Asking people to stop spending is close to pointless.

I’m not sure that either the current Labor or the current Liberals if they win the next election would have the balls to do this.

LNP certainly wouldn't consider it.

Won’t probably have to worry about that for sometime and perhaps never.
The LNP are close to finished unless they make drastic changes IMO

[Pseudo]

( I'm not saying the bullshit average wage which is not anywhere near average in reality )

What is the official average wage, and what do you think it actually is?

Serious question. I've often thought there is a vast disparity between the reported median salary and what I would estimate it to be - but maybe this is due to my own biases.

For the good of all the majority need to curb spending but as demonstrated above if we all think "I'm alright Jack" and only worry about ourselves these rate rises might just keep coming and we spiral off into recession.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

So the real question is how does the government or RBA curb the spending / lifestyle habits of those who haven't felt the impact of the rates rises?

Taxation is as much a social engineering tool as it is a source of revenue. However I suspect that higher taxes would be less popular than higher interest rates, and the government would be directly answerable to the electorate for it.

[Pseudo]

Internode.

Apparently Internode (and iiNet, and TPG) is wrapping up its email service this year. Reading their website, current users can nominate to have their email migrated to a dedicated email company before a certain date, and keep the username@internode.on.net email address. This will be free for a year - and then it's going to cost. If you don't nominate by a certain time, then your email will be disabled, and deleted by November.

I heard about this by overhearing a conversation in the office. I received no email from internode, no letter, no SMS, no nothing about this. Nor did the guy I overheard; he heard about it from his parents.

The shitfulness of this is manifold:
- Internode is divesting a service but not decreasing its cost.
- Ultimately having to pay extra for email is untenable, particularly when there are plenty of free email services out there.
- Changing to a new email address is a right royal pain in the arse; I have numerous accounts registered with my Internode address (think utilities, superannuation, subscriptions ... pretty much everything) and now I have to change each and every one.
- I called Internode support to get info. The bloke I spoke to sounded like a Filipino. Clearly Internode has outsourced its tech support. Not a good thing. I'm still waiting for the info he promised to send.
- Most of all: if I hadn't eavedropped on a conversation at work, I'd be none the wiser, and some time in November my account would simply disappear in a puff of ethernet and I'd be rooted.

Rant over...

The circus has begun.

Transition to the third-party email provider has not yet happened. I'm led to believe that it will be a drawn out process, with users migrated over to the new service in order of sign-up, and the process is expected to take until mid-2024.

Nevertheless internode has clearly decided to stop support of email more or less immediately. Incoming email might happen once a day, if that. I've had emails lob in my inbox timestamped at 48 hours prior. Outgoing email might be processed instantaneously, or not. It's a coin toss. Logging on to the webmail is an exercise in futility; during daytime hours you're likely to get a 504 gateway timeout. Using IMAP with an email client tends to work, but keeps on dropping connection.

Internode has been aware of this since at least Saturday...
https://advisories.internode.on.net/item/21366/
... although the problems began well before then. Performance has been markedly worse this week though. Nonetheless there is no sign that internode cares about this. "Technical staff are continuing to investigate service restoration", WTF?

Last night I began migrating all my internet accounts over to a new free email address - until I can settle on a more permanent email provider. Once this is done I'll be in the market for a new broadband provider. Internode used to have the best service on the planet; now I wouldn't trust them to organise a root in a brothel.

[Booney]

What is the official average wage, and what do you think it actually is?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics :

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labou ... a/may-2023

Full-time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings $1,838.60 * 52 = $95,607.20 p/a

I would say it's actually more like $65-70,000.

[dedja]

SET boring as faark discussion = ON

Inflation is a measure (in my view a poor and outdated one) of the rate of price rises for products and services in an economy, not the size of the economy, nor the revenue raised by governments to fund services.

The Cash Rate, set the RBA (independently of the Federal Government) is effectively the wholesale interest rate that financial institutions have to pay on the money they borrow to operate. The RBA has a target rate of between 2-3%, and uses changes in the Cash Rate (basically the only tool it has) to coerce inflation to be within the desired range.

GST is a measure to generate revenue collected by the Federal Government to distribute to State and Territory Governments to assist them in funding their services.

GDP is a measure of the total value of goods and services produced in an economy.

Economic growth (or deficit) is the rate of change of GDP.

Whilst there is somewhat a relationship between all these things, depending on the context, I’d be surprised that the rate GST is a consideration to manage inflation.

I would have thought that any discussion on changing the GST rate revolves around the ability of State Governments to fund their services, particularly since the total amount of GST revenue is decreasing as a percentage of total government revenue. This is a completely different but valid discussion.

Note that setting the rate of GST has absolutely nothing to do with the RBA, and any change to the rate is managed by the Federal Government, requiring approval by both Houses of Federal Parliament AND the unanimous support of all State and Territory governments.

My personal view is that the RBA should update its antiquated financial models for both the calculation of inflation and the data used to set monetary policy. As has quite correctly been discussed in this thread, the current monetary policy of raising the cash rate to manage inflation is an extremely blunt instrument that not only is poorly targeted, but punishes those that that can least afford it whilst those who have a collective larger impact on inflation can either better afford the impacts or have sufficient cash flows and lower or nil borrowings that are much easily affordable for them.

SET boring as faark discussion = OFF

[Booney]

SET boring as faark discussion = ON

My personal view is that the RBA should update its antiquated financial models for both the calculation of inflation and the data used to set monetary policy. As has quite correctly been discussed in this thread, the current monetary policy of raising the cash rate to manage inflation is an extremely blunt instrument that not only is poorly targeted, but punishes those that that can least afford it whilst those who have a collective larger impact on inflation can either better afford the impacts or have sufficient cash flows and lower or nil borrowings that are much easily affordable for them.

SET boring as faark discussion = OFF

That wraps it all up nicely.

Right, we can get back to arguing about crumpets* again.

[dedja]

Specifically due to CrumpetGate, I recently indulged in round crumpets with fritz and sauce.

Of particular note is that I had no issue in removing the said crumpets from the packet, nor did I have any issues re-wrapping them for future use.

[Brodlach]

Specifically due to CrumpetGate, I recently indulged in round crumpets with fritz and sauce.

Of particular note is that I had no issue in removing the said crumpets from the packet, nor did I have any issues re-wrapping them for future use.

[dedja]

Internode.

…

Last night I began migrating all my internet accounts over to a new free email address - until I can settle on a more permanent email provider. Once this is done I'll be in the market for a new broadband provider. Internode used to have the best service on the planet; now I wouldn't trust them to organise a root in a brothel.

Yes, that sucks big time. I last used Internode 10 years ago, but perversely still have an active email account that I don’t use. Their email service has always been one of the shittiest ones on the planet, but this is the norm with most ISP provided email services.

The Internode of today has only a passing relationship to the OG one.

Just make sure that you can organise for your Internode email account(s) to be forwarded to your new service(s) for free, regardless of the proposed or now active Internode service changes. This will buy you the time required to re-organise your affairs.

[Jimmy_041]

I do see your point Booney and I could spiral this conversation out of control but I will say many people who borrowed for homes over the past 5 years borrowed at record low interest rates and borrowed too much. Didn’t factor in the rates would return to “normal” levels.

Price gouging by goods and services has to be close to record levels IMO as we can see from profits by big companies

I have written, on here, about this before.

Going from memory (because I'm not going to search for the actual numbers) 18 months ago when interest rates were around the lowest, BOQ were using a nominal rate of somewhere around 5.5% to assess your ability to service a mortgage. 12 months later, when interest rates were rising, they lifted that to 7.5%

Current rates are around 5.5%. The difference is the cost of living has also, dramatically, increased.
Last week, I asked the same economist about that and he said they had factored in higher inflation because it was bleeding obvious we were going to have an inflation problem due to all of the money stimulus.

No sane person ever thought interest rates would stay that low.

[RB]

What is the official average wage, and what do you think it actually is?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics :

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labou ... a/may-2023

Full-time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings $1,838.60 * 52 = $95,607.20 p/a

I would say it's actually more like $65-70,000.

Perhaps the average is affected by a few very high income earners? Do they publish a median wage?

[Booney]

What is the official average wage, and what do you think it actually is?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics :

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labou ... a/may-2023

Full-time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings $1,838.60 * 52 = $95,607.20 p/a

I would say it's actually more like $65-70,000.

Perhaps the average is affected by a few very high income earners? Do they publish a median wage?

SalaryExplorer puts Australia’s median salary, therefore, is a more modest $79,800—more than $10,000 less than the average.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/au/perso ... australia/

[Dutchy]

Every interest rate rise takes around 6 months to show any impact on spending, most are expecting another rise early next year, it ain't over yet.

[dedja]

Anne Moran.

After finally not being re-elected last year, we thought we’d seen the end of her faarking whinging and whining elitism.

But alas, not the case.

I don’t give a faark that you’re selling your North Adelaide mansion, and I certainly don’t give a faark that your dog ran off during the recent storm.

FFS all media, stop reporting about this privileged has-been, elitist waste of space.

[Lightning McQueen]

@Spargo

Anne Moran.

After finally not being re-elected last year, we thought we’d seen the end of her faarking whinging and whining elitism.

But alas, not the case.

I don’t give a faark that you’re selling your North Adelaide mansion, and I certainly don’t give a faark that your dog ran off during the recent storm.

FFS all media, stop reporting about this privileged has-been, elitist waste of space.

[Spargo]

@Spargo

Anne Moran.

After finally not being re-elected last year, we thought we’d seen the end of her faarking whinging and whining elitism.

But alas, not the case.

I don’t give a faark that you’re selling your North Adelaide mansion, and I certainly don’t give a faark that your dog ran off during the recent storm.

FFS all media, stop reporting about this privileged has-been, elitist waste of space.

My misunderstood princess.

[Booney]

What a way to start a Friday.

[Brodlach]

Fight! Fight! Fight!

[Brodlach]

People who just don’t listen.

I hung up on a customer just because they just didn’t want to listen. Frustrating