Social cohesion lowest on record as Australia reels from cost of living, inequality concerns and voice debate
Social cohesion lowest on record as Australia reels from cost of living, inequality concerns and voice debate
The social cohesion index – which draws on a survey of more than 7,000 Australians – plummets to lowest since it began 16 years ago
Relentless cost-of-living pressure, rising interest rates, uncertainty about the direction of the economy and growing concern about inequality has undermined Australia’s sense of social cohesion, according to authoritative new research.
After a polarising voice referendum campaign and amid rising community tensions over the war in the Middle East, the latest Mapping Social Cohesion Report puts the Scanlon-Monash Index of Social Cohesion at its lowest ebb since the survey began 16 years ago.
The social cohesion index provides a barometer of social wellbeing, measuring belonging, worth, participation, acceptance and rejection, social inclusion and justice. The measure declined by four points over the past 12 months, hitting the lowest result on record. Since November 2020 – the peak of social cohesion recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic – the index has plummeted 13 points.
I'm not sure anybody should be surprised at this. Certain political forces have spent the last fifty years systematically dividing society, instrumentalising fear, going all in on disinformation, and weaponising division, all for the purpose of acquiring power and wealth. They control a large portion of the media, big business, and an extraordinarily large amount of wealth. They've undermined government, hollowed out public services, and driven wedges into any societal issue they didn't like. Thanks to them, we have rising inequality. Thanks to them, we came out of Covid with no improvements whatsoever to the health system and our ability to handle a pandemic. Thanks to them, we have a housing affordability crisis. Thanks to them, issues like the same-sex marriage debate and the voice debate turned into the hateful, divisive shitshows they were.
And they will keep doing all those things, again and again, while pointing the finger and blaming others for the shit they cause.
21Who are these political forces?
2Well, yes, here in Australia it's the Liberals and Nationals, but also people like Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer. Especially Palmer, who has been using massive amounts of money on ad campaigns to distort debates and deceive the public.
But it's not just in Australia, and this is going back decades now. You could say it started with Reagan and Thatcher. Reagan was very open about his distrust in government, and used his presidency to hollow it out and turn the country towards neoliberalism. Thatcher's brutal austerity can be said to have set the country on the path that eventually culminated in the Brexit shitshow. Here in Australia the downward spiral arguably started with John Howard. In Germany, some of the decisions made through the reunification process caused an inequality between East and West that is still present today.
But it's not just politicians. Everywhere in the world there are wealthy businessmen who use their wealth to influence politics. I'd have to spend the next hour typing if I wanted to give you a reasonably exhaustive list. Then the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the 2001 attacks accelerated the process. There are businesspeople who are very apt at profiting from crises, and some of them made an absolute killing from 9/11. Every major crisis in at least the last 50 years, from 9/11 through to Covid, has been an exercise in upwards wealth redistribution.
5
This pretty much tracks with my experience over the last few years. People just seem to be more tense and inconsiderate on average. And it feels like this started to get worse just after the first round of lockdowns.
8I'm not an Aussie, but 3 years ago, things were truly looking up. I was just getting financially where I needed to be to buy a home, had gotten a few promotions, and was genuinely excited about prospects in life. Covid killed all of that. My payment today would be $2500 higher than it would have bought back then. That money is not in the budget. Housing skyrocketed to a point where I don't think I will ever afford a home. Then interest rates went sky high, and prices of homes didn't move a bit. That killed a lot of my ambition to work as hard, and care as much about my career. At this point, why even try? I'll just get by til my boomer Mom passes away and move into her house when /if that ever happens. I'd need like a 50% salary boost to get back the buying power I had 3 years ago. I just don't care anymore.
6Meanwhile the biggest companies, and their owners, are raking in record profits, globally.
This isn't a coincidence, it's by design - the working class gets squeezed so the capitalists can live it up with more money than anyone could spend in a thousand lifetimes. This was always the case in capitalism (and feudalism before it) of course, the pandemic was just an accelerator, they saw how much shit we would take then, and haven't stopped pushing since (like with the wars, that of course aren't some unfortunate biological mutation, but a choice made by some very wealthy and powerful people to try and increase their wealth and power). And the more they squeeze, the more desperate people get, which means we're easier to manipulate, exploit, and divide.
If it wasn't so evil, you might admire how well it works (for them, of course) - individualism and consumerism have been so deeply ingrained (along with the "basics" capitalism was built on - racism, sexism, ableism, cis-heteronormativity, and so on), and socialism and communism (never mind anarchism) framed as the true evils of the world, and just like that you keep the working class so divided and distracted and focused on getting themselves out of the bucket you've put them in, that they don't even realise that if they work together they can tip the bucket over and all be free..
5Capitalism has it's issues no doubt, but communism is not the answer either and had its own litany of sins, including massacres and even genocide (i.e. Ukraine). All systems must be looked at with a critical eye and a realistic appreciation of human nature. To do otherwise is perilous.
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As much as I appreciate The Guardian's existence as a foil for wall-to-wall NewsCorp press, I intensely dislike news articles that make huge statements like this, and then for a citation use nothing but their own insular content. Every link in this article goes to another Guardian piece. That's terrible reporting.
The source for this headline that the article should be linking to is here.
The Full report PDF if you want to read it is here.7This is the best summary I could come up with:
Relentless cost-of-living pressure, rising interest rates, uncertainty about the direction of the economy and growing concern about inequality has undermined Australia’s sense of social cohesion, according to authoritative new research.
The 2023 snapshot, released on Wednesday, draws on a survey of more than 7,000 Australians augmented by qualitative interviews with people who have migrated to Australia.
The research shows Australians are preoccupied principally with their stretched household budgets, housing affordability and the state of the economy.
Two-thirds (66%) of single parents surveyed say they are just getting by, and 40% of the cohort report rent or mortgage stress, skipping meals and foregoing medicines.
While institutional trust has crashed from pandemic highs, current levels remain higher than during the decade of leadership coups in Canberra, where the average was 29%.
He says neighbourhood and community connections help people navigate “difficult times” but the Israel-Hamas war could “drive a wedge between specific groups”.
The original article contains 835 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
3I think the only thing one can do is to scale back the doomscrolling and try and maintain some sort of hope that things will get better (and vote accordingly, of course!). Both reddit and lemmy have been incredibly depressing as of late.
222% reporting insufficient income to pay for prescription medicines or healthcare.
I'm curious about which medications and healthcare are so expensive. More than 1 in 5 is a lot of people and medicine and healthcare are usually cheap or free in Australia. Are there people with chronic conditions being ripped off?
1i suffer from chronic pain and can't afford medications going forward. i'm not sure what I'll do tbh, as it's not really possible to live like this. There are a lot of medications not covered by the PBS, due to intense lobbying designed to maximize profit on older medications; for me it means using illegal opioids(risking arrest or overdose) or suicide. If I were able bodied I'd try to take a few of those LNP scumbags who did this with me.
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