That block of dirt of our own - The Dream - 30.11.07

That block of dirt of our own - The Dream - Entry for 30 November 2007

Braembel said:

In the US, liberal is more often applied to the Democrats, who tend more and more to move toward socialism.I would say, I perceive the Clintons to be very liberal, and very socialistic. My opinion of Bush since the last election has drastically changed, but his party the Republicans tend to lean the other way, in some way they tend to atleast pretend to embrace my moral values, but from an economic point of view, it's almost a live and let die.
The economic level that you seem to describe as the norm, seems to be about what I see here. That block of dirt of our own is a large part of the "American Dream". I think it is getting harder here, but I think the wars contribution to oil prices, which affect everything else, because everything we get is moved across the country in petro fueled trucks, and the last couple of years of weather haven't helped our crops. I know there are alot of people who have just been getting by, and with the jump in prices I've seen in the stores the last few weeks, I don't know how they will make it. Back to the subject, I agree, the "haves" liberal or conservative make the policies to their own advantage.
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Thanks for your comment ff, as I may have mentioned, Liberal and Labor traditionally look after different social sectors but Kevin Rudd promised to be PM for all Australians when he gave his victory speech. I hope he's a man of his word because the small business sector, for example, is important to our maintaining our current standard of living and they might well go begging under a Labor regime.

The "Australian Dream" is also to own our own homes. It's a dream, I believe, that builds not only independence into a population but a feeling of belonging, when your shelter and the land it's built on are your own.

I grew up in the UK through the 1950's/60's and, in the UK, it was quite normal for people to live in Council owned housing estates. I did, all of my friends did, and a majority of the kids where I schooled did. We were among the 'baby boomer" generation who were born after the war but close enough to the war years to be living under its shadow, and there was a sudden population increase which necessitated the rapid widespread growth of public funded housing.

Wikipedia places the most commonly accepted duration for the baby boom between 1946 and 1964. It says "The Baby Boom reflected the sudden removal of economic and social pressures that kept people from starting families..." due to the Depression which was then followed by WWII. After which ..." Marriage became again a cultural and career norm for most women — and one result was babies."

Arriving in Australia with its long public housing lists my English-born husband and I elected to rent rather than aiming for home ownership. Then after being widowed I re-married and my Australian-born husband's parents owned their own home, so the jump from rental accommodation to home ownership for him was very small but it took me an age to bend my head around the idea because I'd been brought up in a domestic and social setting that deemed public housing as the 'norm'.

I'm happy to say that hubby and I own our own place now and I realise now how very trapped I was in the post-war socialist vision for the future.

It blinded me to the possibility of owning that 'little bit of dirt'. In particular where I'm an expatriate, aside from my Aussie citizenship certificate, being a home owner is the thing that allows me to call Australia, my country, and see myself as an Australian. To be a home owner is responsible citizenship, to me, and I hope all couples (or singles) can achieve that.

So while the home loan rate rises as a hedge against inflation cannot be blamed on the government in power, these are set by the Reserve Bank, high on a long agenda the new government has, must surely be holding down inflation without stifling business - a hard juggling act - to guard Aussies against the loss of their dreams.

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That block of dirt of our own - The Dream - Friday 30 November 2007

Isn't the Labor party for the working men and women? - Entry for 27 November 2007

Isn't the labor party for the working men and women there? I kinda got the idea that the one that lost was for the rich because they said here that bushie lost his ally in Aussie. Who do you describe as liberal there? What are they for? LOL. I guess I ask to many questions. Zena P
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Intriguing questions, Zena, thanks for your comment.

I think it's probably true that, in earlier times, a worker voting for the conservative party - the Liberals in Australia - would have been considered a class traitor but times change. We tread warily around the concept of class distinction nowadays and, besides, families might live quite well on the proceeds of two or more incomes, workers are also often homeowners and the modern fiscally challenged Australian is generally not destitute in the same horrifying way that his/her counterpart was when the ALP was created in the 1890's.

We even have bathrooms! We ordinary folk are no longer called 'the great unwashed' or the huddled masses - though we might sometimes still be in fact.

And admittedly the reforms that led to improving the worker's lot are due in some large part to the Labor movement. But even under Labor, so that's a socialist government, there still remains a big monetary (and power) gap between the filthy rich and the average income earner. Neither is socialism an antidote to the problem of inequality but it comes with its own inbuilt set of detractions (and keep in mind that Russia was once socialist when it was the USSR).

While whichever party is in power, oddly, due to commercialism, a perception has been, I think, created of a smaller gap between the have's and have not's (which I would put down to the magic of capitalism) when the average Australian worker has not only a job, but often a mobile phone, a car, a block of dirt he/she can call his/her own (or at least a mortgage), perhaps one or more computers along with a host of other electrical gadgetry - our bread and circuses no doubt, which creates the illusion of workers being fairly affluent. We are at least well entertained from cradle to grave even if not born with silver spoons in our mouths.

To answer your question, Liberals today are probably people who have an aversion to socialism. The Labor party is prone to be reformist (and so experimental) and, with its welfare programmes, socialist governments in Australia (and England) have in the past created welfare states producing a sub-culture (over more than one generation) of poor people, dependent on government handouts rather than their learning self-sufficiency, while their lives are strictly regulated by government officials. Often enough, unions become a virtual separate 'arm of government' by force of a tradition that Labor governments treat with union bosses, the unions also providing Labor with some of their rank and file. And because of the opportunism found in human nature, the system originally geared by social conscience to lift the whole of society up a notch or more, does sometimes ultimately grind into the ground, the very people it was originally spawned to help lift their game the most, those who are vulnerable, the poor, the homeless, the old, the young, the infirm. And a Labor party in power either means big government or, in the modern world, outsourcing the work to private firms, but taxes still have to be raised to pay for it all, thus the standard of living can become lowered generally.

So despite that I'm a worker, I'm aware of the pitfalls of socialism in that, in principle it seems to offer a brilliant answer to all of our needs and wants while, in practice, it fails to overcome the flaws in human nature of people often being miserable, selfish, lazy, ruthless and conniving. But then were we all honest and well meaning, there would be no need of govenments.

For our sins, we have to have politicians.