Australia and the West have experienced, hand over fist, improvements in GDP and living standards since we moved our manufacturing and resource extraction overseas*.
Even as the working class got sold out**, living standards improved across the board. The rich got richer and so did the middle class - with most Australians joining the middle class, during and, since the post-war era.
We were getting a good deal on our imports, taking more from poorer countries (Global South) than we gave in return, but that has been coming to an end.
The Global North (the First World) has monopolised trade with the Global South, by Capital and demand but also coercion and regime change, which ensured a good deal. But with the rise of the BRIX and China’s Belt and Road initiative, the Global South has more opportunity for equal exchange of goods and services.
While the IMF used third world debt to influence policy change, allowing Western Capital to buy up and exploit industry, Chinese banks are forgiving debts and negotiating mutually beneficial agreements (to the benefit of China).
While Western Capital built limited infrastructure to extract a specific resource, China is investing in not just general infrastructure but education and the creation of a local workforce.
The Global South are trading with each other. They have more options, trade is more competitive - we get less of a deal.
Where previously Australia could afford to give Corporations absurd profits and still have money for the people, this will be less and less possible. Australia needs to re-embrace the policies of the post-war era, which ensured a dignified life, and roll back the last 50 years of neoliberal policy built for an age which no longer exists.
* Not just in the neoliberal era, but all the way back to the start of colonial expansion.
** With manufacturing moving overseas and the denationalisation by various Liberal -and some Labor- governments.
*** consent manufacturing became harder to enforce
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization
[4] https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2377740023500173
CC SA NC
???
our top exports are to china?
I am referring to unequal trade, - us getting more in return from the Global South (Asia, south america, Africa, etc.) for what we’re giving them.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59881-1
https://globalinequality.org/unequal-exchange/
This is true for our trade with China, but I am specifically speaking generally.
“China’s exchange ratio with the Global North has improved over time. During the 1990s, the exchange ratio was on average 34 to 1. In other words, for every unit of embodied labour, materials, land and energy that China imported from the Global North, they had to export 34 units to pay for it. As of 2015, the ratio had declined to 4 to 1.” https://progressive.international/wire/2025-04-18-china-unequal-exchange-and-the-present-world-historic-juncture/en
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X
Does that answer your question?
Trade with China is essential to Australia, don’t get me wrong, the profit of the trade has, and will, change.
none of your links refer to Australia, they just seem to be a general vibe
We live in Australia, we are the major exporter of resources?
https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/australias-goods-and-services-by-top-25-exports-2024.pdf.pdf
Not only that but I’m not sure how well we pay Afghanistan for its resources it’ll still be a corrupt islamic shithole.
It feels real simple to be like, the south is poor because of the west, all you need to do to counter this is find a country that was poor and now isn’t anymore. Singapore, Israel, Qatar, etc
Even eastern european countries as they shake off communism and socialism and embrace capitalism have had considerable improvement in quality of life
You’re off topic.
This conversation is in regard to trade disparity.
Yes, this is a Marxist analysis. But in this thread the argument regards how trade relations are changing.
Australia does not manufacture a lot of the goods we consume. We export and import, and if we get a less good deal on both exports and imports, that will affect our standard of living.
I am arguing, in the medium term, we will not get as good of a deal as we have been historically. As such, the cost of living crisis will get worse if we do not alter policies to protect the people.
Edit:
Something to keep in mind with looking at export / import data, is we measure it in money terms, not use-value.
Say India - our 5th largest trade partner - sends us 20 billion in machine parts and clothes. They made them with cheap labour, the actual value to Australia is far higher than that 20 bill. We’re getting a good deal. Now say India is trading with south America and Africa - higher demand, higher prices. We still buy from India because we need the goods and the use-value is still higher than the cost. But now we no longer have a trade surplus.
We’re discussing if the deal we’re getting will get worse for us and better for the Global South.
oh no wonder i was so confused, I’m like the economics of this are weirdly based on vibes, poor innocent third world countries exploited by the big bad west🥴
Right, if anything this puts us closer to the global south than other first world nations because the majority of our exports are commodities and resources instead of global north high value manufacturing and services
With who? Our biggest partners are China, Japan, South Korea and United States, with the exception of China which still scrapes into global south because of its currency manipulations and deliberately keeps it’s workers poor (there’s that communism 😂) … who feels like they’re getting fucked over by our trade deals? The only one I can think of is Trump who we have a negative trade balance with so we’ve not really been a focus at all.
We have a positive trade balance and mainly trade with the global north (outside of china and india), I think I’m focused on Australia because you posted in Australia, you’re focused on a grand marxist theory that explains everything and losing all the details in the picture and thinking maybe of continental europe ?
Yeah, vibes, that’s why the article was published in Nature and you’re out here spouting verifiable falsehoods.
I have no interest in arguing off-topic but that’s all your interested in; I’ll bite. The USSR took a backwards country of starving peasants and turned it into the worlds greatest superpower while defeating the Nazi’s and fending off constant interference from the other greatest superpower without foreign capital investment, without colonial exploitation and with constant sanctions.
The leap in living standards was like nothing the world had seen before. And you’re arguing the West coming in and buying 99% of their industry for 10% of its worth while stripping them of free healthcare, childcare, housing, and social structures lead to a higher living standard because money number go up. Insane.
My argument is not for Communism. It’s for the return to Australian values, the socialist ones of the post war era. An era which the baby boomers grew up in and then preceded to gut for their profit.
Worlds greatest superpower? This one?
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/lend-lease-eastern-front
I assume you’ll be the first in line to thank America :D
You also forgot to mention this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933
Oopsie woopsie 😂 bloody hell that’s so bad though, so glad communism died out
I also have no idea why you’d use a failed state as an example of just how great marxism is, I guess it’s slim pickings when economic reality hits economic idealism, also funny how literally all the break away soviet states had popular revolutions away from communism and none of them have any intention of going back
Most Australians are doing pretty alright, in the context of the world we have a super high quality of living, we live like kings, unlimited food, entertainment, access to the worlds knowledge, we live a life unrivalled, the biggest protest we had recently was for… Palestine lol? a place a million miles away which has nothing to do with us
The biggest problem is housing which is largely because again, we live like kings, more single people living in 2 and 3 bedroom houses/apartments than ever before, many elderly and simply holed up in massive 4-5+ bedroom houses by themselves due to stamp duty making it uneconomical to downsize
You seem to be solving a problem that largely isn’t there
We’re off topic.
Yeah, shit was fucked. But the average standard of living went up. As stated, not saying we should elect a dictator, export grain during a famine and refuse to import grain. I wish to return to Australian values, not Soviet ones.
So your argument is we let things get worse, and be thankful of what we have. Cool, chill, you do that buddy.
You’ve just found the problem with communism ;) when you centralise all resources under one man, it turns out people can be real power hungry dicks
I don’t really see things getting worse, with immigration rates going down and labor spending a ton of money on building houses and streamlining approvals I expect over the next 5 years house prices to cool, inflation has been going down as well, by all measures our economy is in pretty good shape
tbh i can’t ask for much more? I have pretty much everything anyone could want and I’m just a regular joe :S
Is there something I should want? 2 overseas holidays a year?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-16/travel-tourism-australia-holiday-cost-of-living/104337072