Australian household wealth up 20 per cent from 2004-2010 as US drops 30 per cent

Given the large basic similarities between Australia and the USA, this shows that America's decline was not inevitable. But Australia does not have big black and Hispanic minorities that pull economic policies Leftward

Australian households are doing very nicely, thankyou very much. AVERAGE household wealth jumped by more than 20 per cent between 2004 and 2010, new Treasury figures show. In comparison, median household wealth in the US declined by more than 30 per cent in the same period.

Treasurer Wayne Swan claimed his Government's credit for the figures. "Contributing to this was our stimulus response to the GFC, which protected hundreds of thousands of jobs, as well as our decent social safety net and government policies that spread opportunity," Mr Swan wrote in his economic note released yesterday. Mr Swan said Australia had not been immune from global turbulence.

Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb attacked the Government for taking the most optimistic forecasts available to develop its Budget. "The Budget was predicated on everything going well around the world," Mr Robb told Network Ten.

Median wealth in Australia in 2010 was a little less than $400,000, compared with mean wealth of almost $700,000 [now], according to the RBA figures.

SOURCE

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Even Older Americans lose homes as great recession takes toll

MABLETON, Georgia: Roy Johnson fell so far behind on his $US1000-per-month mortgage payments that last year he allowed the red brick, three-bedroom ranch he had owned since 1963 to lapse into foreclosure.

"I couldn't pay it any longer," he said. "One day, I woke up and said, 'Hell, I'm through with it. I'm walking away from the house'."

That decision swept Mr Johnson, 79, into a rapidly expanding demographic: older Americans who have lost their homes in the great recession. As he hauled his belongings by pick-up truck from this Atlanta suburb and moved into his daughter's basement, Mr Johnson became one of the 1½ million Americans over the age of 50 who lost their houses to foreclosure between 2007 and 2011. Of those, the highest foreclosure rate was for homeowners over 75.

Once viewed as the most fiscally stable age group, older people are struggling. Last week, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), released what it described as the most comprehensive analysis of why the foreclosure crisis struck so many Americans in their retirement years.

The report found that while people under 50 are the group most likely to face foreclosure, the risk of "serious delinquency" on mortgages has grown fastest for people over 50.

While the study classified even baby boomers as "older Americans," its most dire findings were for the oldest group. Among people over 75, the foreclosure rate grew more than eightfold from 2007 to 2011, to 3 per cent of that group of homeowners, the report found.

"Despite the perception that older Americans are more housing secure than younger people, millions of older Americans are carrying more mortgage debt than ever before, and more than 3 million are at risk of losing their homes," the report found. "As the mortgage crisis continues, millions of older Americans are struggling to maintain their financial security."

More here

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Gun Lovers: New York's Nanny Bloomberg Won't Protect You

I have just about had enough of NYC nanny, uh, Mayor, Bloomberg. He has finally gone over the cliff with his comments last week on CNN. In response to the horrific shooting in Colorado, his remedy is once again, to control and take away our freedoms, i.e., our second amendment rights. Nanny Bloomberg says "I don't understand why the police officers across this country don't stand up collectively and say we're going to go on strike," Bloomberg told the "Piers Morgan Tonight" host. "We're not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what's required to keep us safe."

Ok, I get it; he’s basically telling the police to blackmail the citizens of this country until they give up their right to bear arms. When does this end? When do the American people finally stand up and shout these people down? Well, I think they have come to the tipping point. It’s like the old story of the frog in a pot of water who doesn’t notice that he is being boiled alive until it is too late. We the American people are at the boiling point and most of us are jumping out of the pot.

Bloomberg, who has been at this since 2002, started with the smoking ban. Now, no one can smoke in any park or open space without facing a fine. Next came the ban on trans fats and salt in restaurants, then the mandatory salads for school lunches. (That went over well!) Next he outlawed food donations to the homeless because the city couldn’t access the salt, fat and fiber content and of course he outlawed the Big Gulp. You can’t buy a drink over 16 oz or the food police will get you!

Day after day we Americans are being chained and shackled by regulations and laws that limit what we can say, do, eat, drive, wear or even believe. Chick fil-A is a great example of how you can’t even have a moral belief without someone trying to take it away! You can’t have an opinion on anything unless it is the politically correct opinion. You can’t make a joke or compliment anyone lest they take it the wrong way and call in the PC squad.

Have you noticed how when one or a small group of people do something wrong the rest of us have to suffer for it? If obesity is a problem for a section of the population, those of us who eat responsibly and have a healthy weight have to be punished for their sins. Instead of targeting that group of people and educating them on proper diet, we all get penalized. I don’t want to be told not to eat fried chicken if I want to, it is my choice. I am not overweight and I pay my own health insurance, leave me alone!

I own guns and took an intense training course in the use of many types of weapons. I did not and will not shoot anyone unless they threaten me or my family on my property and neither would the vast majority of gun owners.

If I want to drive an SUV or a pickup truck and can afford the high cost of gas why shouldn’t I be able to? One SUV that carries eight kids to a baseball game sure beats three little Volts that you can’t even fit a “mandatory” car seat in. Three cars versus one make sense to me.

How long do you think it will be before they decide to outlaw football? You think I’m kidding? Right now, the nannies are scrutinizing the head and other injuries that are part of the game that the players make a choice to play. Mark my words it will either be outlawed or they will look like the Michelin man. If someone chooses of their own free will to play the game knowing full well what could happen, why should anyone have the right to take that freedom away?

I am tired of being the one groped by TSA for doing absolutely nothing except boarding an aircraft; I’m tired being monitored by cameras whenever I enter any store or building. I have nothing to hide, but it is unsettling to know that you are being watched all the time because someone else might do something. I agree, there is an upside to catching criminals on film, but it is too bad that we have to live like this.

How free are we when we have to work 111 days of the year just to pay our tax burden? That will be going up even more in 2013 after the enormous tax hikes kick in. No wonder businesses and workers feel strangled, we are running as fast as we can and are still losing ground.

The bottom line is we are less free than some other countries around the world. Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland and Canada have far more room to breathe than we do. How did we let this happen? How have we lost control of what our founding fathers envisioned for us?

We have always fought for freedom in our country. We fought for our independence and our right to free speech, religion, etc. We fought the Civil War for the freedom of slaves. We have sacrificed American blood and treasure for others to have freedom around the world. Why then, do we not stand up and fight for the freedoms that are being taken away from us every day by the control freaks in government who think they know what is best for us?

WE know what is best for us! Just get out of our way and we will handle it. We are not incompetent little children that need a nanny all the time. That kind of enabling is killing this country. Yes, there are good regulations and laws that help everyone, but let’s be reasonable and use common sense. Everyone needs to start showing politicians and other elitists how ridiculous they are. They are acting like helicopter parents that don’t allow their children to experience life. Those children end up paying for it later in life because they have been protected from everything and haven’t a clue how to do anything. You can’t be protected from life; it isn’t possible and if we don’t stop this soon, freedom will be something we can say we once had.

Having freedom makes us stronger, it makes us braver. Free will can’t be bought and it can’t be taken away as much as they may try.

SOURCE

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What Mindset Leads to Communism?

by TOM MCLAUGHLIN

An old friend from Massachusetts happened upon my blog last year and was shocked that I'm so conservative now. We both worked a couple of years with Saul Alinsky, red diaper baby "community organizers" in the early ‘70s. He's still a proud leftist and loyal Democrat. He didn't ask me why I'd changed, and I didn't ask him why he hasn't. Perhaps we'll discuss it someday.

Until fairly recently, I felt ashamed of my left-wing activities in those days, but I realize now they were essential to constructing my world view of today, especially now that my country is being run by the kinds of people I worked with then. It's not just the president and secretary of state, it's thousands of bureaucrats, judges, and other functionaries appointed over the years. I understand how they think.

To sum up a few of the differences between them and me within an 800-word, op-ed column, generalizations are necessary, so here goes:

They're nihilists. I'm a theist. They believe the universe happened by itself. And humans? A few chemicals mixed together in a primordial sea and became a cell which reproduced and evolved into us. There's no meaning, so don't waste time looking for any. The laws of physics are absolute and nothing else exists. I believe God created it all and He is absolute. Laws of physics are secondary instruments of His spiritual will.

They're relativists. I'm not. I believe in objective truth, but since I'm as flawed as every other human, I perceive it imperfectly.

They're utopian. I'm not. There can be no perfect society this side of heaven. My former Alinsky associates think they can manifest utopia with big government. Mine is a tragic view. That is, we can never achieve perfect happiness in this life. The best we can expect is episodes. As government grows, those episodes become fewer and farther between.

They're atheistic, or, at best, agnostic. I'm Christian. More so, I'm a Catholic Christian. My church is the oldest, continually-functioning institution on earth, but it's imperfect too because it's comprised of flawed humans like me.

Both Communism and Nazism have been manifestations of their thinking. That the Catholic Church and capitalism were enemies of both is not coincidental. The 20th century was dominated by the struggle between and among these competing belief systems. Hundreds of millions died and that struggle continues, smoldering, into the 21st. Neither Communism nor Nazism are dead. Both had been in remission, but are re-emerging in parts of the body politic with ubiquitous application if Alinskyite euphemism.

Even when I was a leftist, however, I was pro-life, although today that would be considered oxymoronic. I always knew abortion kills innocent human beings. Abortion epitomizes the leftist, nihilist, atheist, utopian mindset. Protecting it is the primary objective of today's Democrat Party. Redistribution of wealth and income is second. Big government is their vehicle for both. The November election will be pivotal to the continuing struggle.

Writing this column - putting ideas into logical sequences of sentences and paragraphs each week - helps me work all this out. I do it more for myself than for you, my readers.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Israel: Romney declares Jerusalem to be capital, rattles saber at Iran: "Standing on Israeli soil, U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday declared Jerusalem to be the capital of the Jewish state and said the United States has 'a solemn duty and a moral imperative' to block Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. ... A goal of Romney’s overseas trip is to demonstrate his confidence on the world stage, but his stop in Israel also was designed to appeal to evangelical voters at home and to cut into Obama’s support among Jewish voters and donors."

U.S. birthrate lowest in 25 years: "Twenty-somethings who postponed having babies because of the poor economy are still hesitant to jump in to parenthood -- an unexpected consequence that has dropped the USA's birthrate to its lowest point in 25 years. The fertility rate is not expected to rebound for at least two years and could affect birthrates for years to come, according to Demographic Intelligence, a Charlottesville, Va., company that produces quarterly birth forecasts for consumer products and pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and Procter & Gamble."

On courage and cowardice: "I was at a meeting the other day, of a new group that was looking for a name. The name that was proposed, under which the individuals at the meeting had gathered in the first place, was a fine, tradition-evoking one, stemming from the early American Revolution. It stated a purpose, it sent a message, and I was very proud to be associated with it. Almost immediately, however, a few participants began to object to the name and to the logo that went with it. It was 'too edgy,' someone said. It looked too 'aggressive' (believe me, the posture involved is one of pure self-defense). It might offend some people. It might make them reluctant to join the organization or (gasp!) to give us money. It might keep other groups from affiliating with us. Worst (and most hysterically funny of all), it might bring us to the attention of the government." [Funny? I think that's prudent -- JR]

Comment on the Olympic opening ceremony: "Is it just me or did the Olympic opening ceremony seem a little leftist and one sided? Whilst the commentary was totally lacking and some of the scenes made no sense at all it would seem we went from Britain went from tending fields with a few geese and horses to an industrial revolution with nothing in between. What’s worse we went from the industrial revolution to the internet to pop music and nothing else. Where were the sciences, the biotechnology advances, space science and astro physics? Britain has contributed so much more to the world than suggested on Friday night."

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my old Facebook page as I rarely accessed it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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