Besieged by the non-stop promotion of the consumer life-style everywhere we look and everywhere we go, many people are struggling to cope with consumer debt and the pressure to live a lifestyle that is, to be honest, beyond the means of their available income. However, if you look back at how our grandparents are earlier generations lived, we are currently living in a "golden age". To quote an article in the SMH:
"A couple of decades ago, the language of prosperity was almost like a foreign language ... Now, phrases like full employment, stock market highs and the commodities boom roll off the tongue.
Across the board, jobs are plentiful, wages are high and individual wealth continues to rise. There's no doubt this is a golden age of prosperity - possibly the best of economic times Australia has experienced.
And there's no doubt, either, that the economy is surging. The latest figures for the June quarter showed annual growth of 4.4 per cent, the highest for three years. Non-farm GDP growth, which removes the impact of the drought, was at its fastest in almost 13 years at 5.2 per cent."
At the same time, looking forward there are problems with "the limits to growth" that could quite possibly make living conditions much more difficult for our descendants. The apocalyptic prophesies of Malthus and, much more recently, the "club of Rome" turned out to be wrong (or at least premature). But the more recent concerns about climate change (whether or not they are caused by human activity) could mean we run into problems supplying food and water at reasonable cost to everyone. And the commodity boom has some chance of turning out to be a supercycle (or a "peak" in production of many commodities, not just oil) which could lead to ongoing real price increases in resources.
Therefore, there is a least some chance the our current economic situation is just about "as good as it gets". If so, we'd better make the most of this opportunity to build up of families wealth so we have some store of wealth put aside to tide us, or our kids and grandkids, over where the hard times come again. Make hay while the sun shines, for there may be some hard winters ahead for our descendants.
Copyright Enough Wealth 2007
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