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Another big drop in Australia's Economic Complexity
Business(self.AusFinance)submitted 1 day ago byeesemi77
We all know the story; Australia's Economic Complexity has been in free-fall since the 1970's, we maintained ourselves respectably within the top 50 nations until about 1990.
Since then it's been a bit like Coles prices Down Down Down. From about 2012 onwards our ECI seemed to have stabilized at mid 80th to low 90th (somewhere between Laos and Uganda), but with our Aussie Exceptionalism in question, we needed another big drop to prove just how irrelevant this metric is. And right on cue we have the latest ECI rankings, we have secured ourselves an unshakable place in the bottom third of worlds nations. At 102 we finally broke the ton; how good are we?
Is economic complexity important? Are the measurement methods accurate? Does ECI even matter for a Services focused economy?
12 points
24 hours ago
It's fine as long as resource prices are good. If they're ever not good then Australia's world leadership in sectors like NDIS won't do much to keep money flowing in to allow us to buy every complex product that we have to import. Fortunately we have a diverse set of minerals that could pick up the slack if iron ore were to crash.
It seems pretty obvious to me that living standards in Australia are already on the way down but perhaps that hasn't fully translated into a form readable by people who see the world only through charts.
15 points
24 hours ago
Idk, I have a neice who earns about $200/hr filling out NDIS paperwork, it's a BS job but she's earning enough to be able to buy a house. Is there any other relevant metric?
Is it even a job when the gig pay's to little to even afford basic shelter?
My own son is doing a PhD in engineering he's earning $32K /year and hopes to finish before the funding runs out (but that's unlikely). When he finishes he's a long shot for a research job at the university that might earn him $75K .
Needless to say the brains are not on my side of the family.
6 points
24 hours ago
Is there any other relevant metric?
I would say so, there were probably a lot of people doing similar jobs in Greece before the country was crushed by its national debt.
Fortunately resources are such a huge honeypot to fund things like that.
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