You know how the media and pollies keep telling us the average family is struggling with rising interest rates, defaulting on mortgages, struggling with the consequences of job loss etc etc?
The writer Ross Gittins has taken a counter view to prevailing opinion.
He observes that the person/s to blame for this pity party is ourselves.
Why are we upgrading to McMansions, renovating/altering existing houses and buying holiday homes?
Is anyone making us do it?
"We buy ourselves a fabulous new house, take on a huge mortgage then, when we find the payments a bit of a struggle, think of ways to blame it on the government or the banks.
And the media and the politicians - which sell themselves using self-pity rather than truth - encourage us. We take what's clearly a self-sought rise in our material standard of living and, driven by self-pity, mentally convert it into a rise in the cost of living."
That's what we need.
The inconvenient truth told like it is. Rather than the truth we prefer to hear.
*Update*
Just after I finished this post, I stumbled on to a serendipitously related article in the Brisbane Times: A Fate Worse Than Death. Enjoy.
