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GDP is up, but most of us are still feeling that we have less than we want or need. Why are you feeling poorer? No less an economic boffin than Alan Kohler puts the onus on moribund productivity within the Australian economy. Now, that does not infer that you are not working hard enough, rather it is due to lack of investment by the companies at the heart of our economy. Why is this so? Have a look around at the markets making up our economy. They are largely controlled by one, two or a few giant corporations. Monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies abound. The distinct lack of competition in most sectors in Australia translates as neutered consumer power in the market place. These companies have no market driven need to innovate, as they have massive market shares already. Little to no innovation means they are not investing and that means productivity gains are not happening within the Australian economy.
Poorer Aussies Blaming Immigration
Political opportunists are encouraging Australians to blame high levels of immigration into the country for their perceived poverty in the face of rising costs and inflation. Blame it on the immigrant is an oldie but a never ending trope during times like these. One Nation’s Pauline Hanson is pointing the finger at recent arrivals into the country, many of whom have darker skin. The LNP is desperately battling for right wing votes downunder and promising to cut immigration is one way to appease the punters on this score. The Albanese federal government has followed suit with more moderate but still substantial cuts to their immigration numbers. The truth of the matter is that the migrants coming into Australia are keeping us out of economic recession, as they spend up big coming into the country. Our higher education system is financially dependent upon overseas students paying their way to the tune of billions every year.
Poor Investment In Plant By Australian Corporations
Returning to the decade of moribund productivity that this nation has experienced. I work for one of the supermarket giants controlling half of the liquor trade downunder. This sector is worth some $26 billion annually.
“In 2023, the mean annual spend on alcohol across Australian households was $1,770, or $34 per household per week on average.”
This company has a policy of not investing in older stores across the nation. It has around 900 stores nationally. My research included reading some 150 reviews by current and former staff on an employment site, many of them managers and ASMs. This theme of underinvestment was revealed repeatedly throughout. I know from my personal experience that when computer systems for POS, online training and stock taking do not function efficiently you waste a lot of time waiting around for them – productivity suffers. If the tools are not sharp workers struggle to produce results. These huge companies, obviously, do not see the need to modernise and invest in better tools for their staff. They already control the market and have no market driven requirement to innovate. Why you are feeling poorer? Productivity is down across the board.
Protecting Consumers & Competition, My Arse
Successive Australian governments via the ACCC and ASIC have looked on whilst mergers and acquisitions have rendered competition obsolete within so many sectors within the Australian economy. I am sure by now, I do not need to list them all for you. Big companies abound, making innovation by startups and smaller players either impossible or extremely unlikely. Big corporations in control of markets do not do things better for their customers as a matter of course. Nor do they run things better for their workers, as a matter of course. Multiple infractions by large companies have been exposed, where they have systematically underpaid their staff to the tune of millions of dollars. Big is not necessarily better for consumers or workers. Big is also bad for the productivity of the nation. Once you get to the top you tighten things up, as growth becomes determined by other factors like population increases and new geographic opportunities. Thus, workers and suppliers get screwed tighter by managers cutting expenses to make bottom lines look better. Australian government regulatory bodies have failed to protect competition and consumers. Why you are feeling poorer? Big business sets the prices you have to pay. Consumer power is dead without effective competition.
AI Is Really About Reducing Labour Costs To Companies
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is really all about slashing wage bills more than it is about anything else. Again, in my position we have some form of AI doing the ordering at the store and after observing this for 6 months it is doing a piss poor job of it. I have never worked at a business, which so regularly runs out of lines all the time. There are a number of factors involved in the ordering, which I won’t go into here, but on the plain basis of disappointed customers AI sucks at it.
The Narrow Lane Of Digital Convenience
On the macro level of what is happening I will provide the example I heard Yanis Varoufakis give during one of his talks. Twenty years ago the biggest global companies were in manufacturing, like vehicle makers GMH and Ford. The wage bill of these giant companies was around 70% of revenue. Google/Alphabet generates around US$400 billion annually. Their wage bill is around 1% of that. Have a think about that. This is what the ‘so-called’ digital revolution has really been about. Companies getting rid of workers in favour of machines. Big Tech has been training your behaviours to do everything via your phone. That narrow lane of digital convenience now defines your life. Kids grow up thinking that smart phones are cool gadgets, but they are devices actually controlling their lives. Akin to electric ankle bracelets for prisoners out on parole. Investment in AI will boost the GDP figures and particularly productivity because less workers makes them look better. Human beings are not graphs, however. We have to ask ourselves what kind of world we are now living in and whether we like it? This unaffordable place, where a few have super wealth, whilst the many struggle for crumbs from the big table.
Things are not going to get any better while these huge companies control things. Most Big Tech companies have effective monopolies.
American Style Capitalism Rules The World
This is American style capitalism, where a manipulated form of capitalism delivers extreme wealth for investors and executives. The billionaire factory turns CEOs into billionaires via stock buybacks manipulating the share price and stock bonuses going to the executive. Ordinary workers keep getting their conditions tightened and seeing less real money in their wages. Inflation continues to rise and wage growth has not kept pace with the real cost of living. Central banks warn of wage – price spirals, but in actual fact profiteering by companies controlling markets is more of a problem. Elon Musk in his recent SpaceX IPO broke rules and had them changed by Nasdaq.
“For one thing, it’s Nasdaq has cheated and changed the laws of the land so that they can squeeze it into the Nasdaq index despite the fact it has no earnings, etc. What that means is there’ll be a lot of people who have to buy it for any index that is Nasdaq-y.”
Giant companies with huge stock prices dominate the global economy. Governments are mere window dressing, giving the illusion of democratic input by the citizenry. In real terms, things are run by these big companies, multinationals that do not pay their fair share of corporate tax in the places they operate. Profit shifting to tax havens is the MO of Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and their ilk. American multinationals think that they walk on water and are above the rules the rest of us must abide by. The greed of shareholders shields these companies from retribution and accountability. Because if you think about it, they don’t employ many people and they run virtual monopolies. Why should we put up with their exploitative behaviours! A few rich folk profiting from their share price and dividends is hardly justification.
Big Tech must be reined in, if we are to reverse the shrinking wealth of the middle class.
AI Will Increase Your Relative Poverty
AI is only going to make things worse. AI is dominated by American billionaires and China. Our government will choose the Americans because it is politically more palatable. There are no Australian AI companies. We are and will become more dependent upon US digital technologies throughout our economy. Digital tools make us all innately dumber. The message is that these machines do it better. We are underselling ourselves and our future generations. Older Aussies complain that younger folk working in retail cannot add up. Well, get ready for them not being able to write or reason. AI chatbots encourage mental laziness. This is not idle doomerism. This is true. The data tells us this is so. The use of AI by school students improves homework rates but exam results take a hit. Knowledge does not stick because convenience does not provoke profundity. Familiarity produces contempt. Yes, AI will achieve some great things in science and other areas of human life, but these highlights will not cover for the damage it does to the bulk of us. Is a cure for some cancers worth hundreds of millions of us losing our jobs and careers? Compare the numbers involved folks! If you look at the global crises from recent history, like the GFC, the individuals involved do not, generally, recover their former standards of living.
The Cost Of Convenience
I have already lost my career, due to the decision of my employers to choose AI over my skills, as a professional writer for digital content marketing. The cost analysis was not in my favour. This kind of thing is happening in a variety of sectors and industries involving the digital world, which now runs our lives. The Internet, as a whole, has taken a huge hit with traffic down by up to 90%. The reason is because viewers are choosing to accept the AI chatbot answer for their queries to search engines, without investigating further and going to the source website, where AI has gleaned its material to answer the question. I have a degree in history and historians are all about qualifying source material. Untrained punters do not act in this way, the bulk of them blithely accept the answer provided as gospel truth.
This behaviour makes us all vulnerable to control and manipulation, 1984 Orwellian style. The cost of convenience is sovereignty, it seems.
Australian Life Becoming Unaffordable For Many
Why you are feeling poorer? The cost of everything is going up, whilst your income has flatlined and does not buy what it used to. Digital apps have defined your life. You have been trained or schooled by the digital economy. The narrow lane of digital convenience is not cool or smart – it is a trap. Our government has no ideas, but it is not the worst of them. Albanese is a zombie neoliberal political animal. WTF? It means he cut his teeth during the small government relinquish real power to the market years. Privatisation and toothless tiger government regulators have manifested wherever you look. A skyline full of duopolies dominate our economy. Politicians are mere talking heads without much real power in 2026. Consumers and workers have lost power, while shareholders are king.
This is the neoliberal realm, which has seen the largest divide between rich and poorer Australians in living history.
Productivity Demands The Break Up Of The Duopolies
We must break up these giant companies and reinvigorate real competition in our marketplaces, if we are to increase productivity. Big companies do not favour greater productivity. The evidence is there for all to see over the last 10 to 15 years. These corporations see Australian cities as their fiefdoms. It has become a closed economy dominated by a few to the detriment of all of us. Big Aussie companies investing millions and billions in companies like Palantir, Anthropic, Open AI, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are tying our nation up in an American knot, we will never escape from. AUKUS has diluted our national sovereignty, as we speak. We are paying $368 billion for the privilege. This is the largest transfer of Australian wealth ever. Were you consulted? No, neither was I. Fear of China is a beat up, folks. We are the suckers paying the price for it. As Paul Keating reminds us, why would China invade us? It is only America in a dick measuring contest with China! We are not in that league. Our Second World War leaders, Curtin, Chifley and Evatt protected our sovereignty – they did not give the farm away to the Yanks. More recent pollies have quivered in their boots and sold us out. The recent war in Iran, where the US has blown US$45 billion worth of armaments in 6 months striking that nation, tells you that missiles cannot win wars. Australia should wake up to that fact, when thinking about this $368 billion investment in nuclear submarines and in its childish fear of Chinese military capabilities. The boogie man is always worse than reality, folks.
Culture War Stupidities
“Look around at the evidence of stupid right wing culture war’s behaviours in Australia. Those on the Right champion fossil fuels like diesel and coal, despite the economic savings now available via renewable energy and batteries. Australia has spent the last 30 years facilitating the investment and development of LNG. During that same time frame, successive governments subsidised diesel use to the tune of billions every year. Australia is one of the largest exporters of LNG globally, but our transport trucks run on diesel and not on gas. Australia imports oil and diesel. Predominantly right wing federal governments have overseen the energy policies followed in Australia during this period. The trucking industry itself has long been content to stick with what it knows rather than open its eyes to realities like global warming. Surely, it would be smarter to use our own resources rather than run our essential trucking transport infrastructure on imported energy.”
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of The Stoic Golfer; The AI Heresy; What Price Life?; America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump; and other titles. NOW AVAILABLE AT APPLE BOOKS & GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS. Google Play Books AUDIOBOOK
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