Are We Better Off Now?

The right of politics can't work out whether we're better off now or better off in the past. The Prime Minister describes the Menzies era as a golden age of prosperity, saying "These years of low unemployment, low interest rates and strong social cohesion are the gold standard by which all governments will be judged". He describes this period as one of expanding Universities, the building of Canberra, and home ownership being brought within reach of most families.

The Institute of Public Affairs, on the contrary, titled a recent report "Things are Getting Better All the Time", and claims that life has improved dramatically for Australians in terms of earnings and work and economic changes.

They should try and explain this to our young people, who are today caught in an Axis of Financial Evil – student debt, job insecurity, and housing unaffordability.

We would be better placed to judge whether life is improving or not if we produced more accurate performance indicators than the deeply flawed and inadequate GDP, and adopted in Australia, as other countries and States of the USA have done, a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).