6 March

A story of 2 pictures. In 1996 John Howard came to power. From that date union membership collapsed. A big part of why is people felt well off (and gave Howard the credit). The other picture tells the real story. Howard introduced aspirational economics to Australia - encouraging people to compete against other people for status and wealth. People felt better off because they took on astronomical amounts of private debt to fund this status game. In reality they've never been poorer or more powerless.