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.
Do you honestly believe labor governments both at state and federal levels have clean hands? They claim to be a friend of the people then meanwhile enact and support the same kinds policies and tactics.
It is an unfortunate fact in politics that all parties regardless of what they “say” they claim to represent often do the exact opposite. One could argue it’s a matter of degree but nonetheless, all parties must be examined with a critical eye.
Well, 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.
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.
I’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.
Meanwhile 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…
Capitalism 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.
Here you go: The Irish Famine, Indian Famines, Indigenous Genocide, Slavery, Indonesian Genocide (backed by the USA), 1973 Chile Coup, Pinochet Dictatorship + Pinochet Concentration Camps, Argentina Dictatorship + Argentina Concentration Camps, Brazilian Dictatorship, The Pakistan Incident (Bangladesh Genocide), The Gilded Age, The Great Depression, Operation Condor, Batista Dictatorship, Guantanamo Bay, Vietnam War, My Lai Massacre, Operation Rolling Thunder, Sinchon Massacre, Kent State Massacre, Patriot Act, Red Summer, Jim Crow, MK Ultra, 1985 MOVE Bombing, Partition of India, US Prison Industrial Complex + US Prison Slavery, The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, Malayan Emergency + “New Village” Concentration Camps, Repression of the Mau Mau Rebellion + British Mau Mau “Detention Camps”, Covert War in Yemen, Stanley Meyer Incident, Genocide in Turkey, Congolese Genocide (over half the population killed and much of the remaining mutilated), Greek Civil War + Ai Stratis Concentration Camps, Invasion of Cyprus by Turkey, Washita River Massacre, Nanjing Massacre + Current Nanjing Massacre Denial, December Massacres, Ganghwa Massacre, Geochang Massacre, Goyang Geumjeong Cave Massacre, Jeju Massacre (30,000 executed), Mungyeong Massacre, Namyangju Massacre, Sancheong-Hamyang Massacre, Gwangju Massacre, Kentler Project, Operation Gladio, Minamata Disaster, Bhopal Disaster, Indian Mutiny, Opium Wars, 1740 Batavia Massacre, Amboyna Massacre, Lamey Island Massacre, Conquest of Banda Islands, Conquest of India, Nestlé Child Slavery, Nestlé Killing Babies With Baby Formula in Africa, Nestlé Drought in Pakistan, Nestlé Drought in Brazil, Nestlé Drought in China, Nestlé’s Deals With Dictators, Nestlé Killing Union Workers in the Philippines With a Private Army, Nestlé’s Cartel in Canada, Nestlé’s Ethiopian Debt Trap, ExxonMobil’s Private Army in Indonesia, ExxonMobil’s Torture in Indonesia, Banana Massacre, Maya Genocide (Guatemalan Genocide), Ludlow Massacre, Partition of India, Repression of Haiti Slave Revolt, French conquest of Algeria, 228 Massacre (Taiwan), US Conquest of the Philippines, French exploitation of Africa, German Genocide of the Herero & Namaqua, French Suppression of Madagascar Revolt, Tlatelolco Massacre, US Laos Bombing, Somoza Nicaragua Dictatorship, East Timor Massacre, El Salvador Dictatorship, Contra Proxy War in Nicaragua, US Invasion of Panama, Residential Schools, British Capitalism killing around 100 million people in India in just 40 years (1880-1920), The United Fruit Company taking over Costa Rica, Honduras, & Guatemala as essentially a government for profit (The Banana Wars), the Dole company taking over Hawaii as essentially a government for profit and appointing its CEO as the president of Hawaii, The US brutalizing Korea in the Korean War into what it is today, South Korea executing suspected leftists along with their families (Bodo League Massacre), South Korea detonating a civilian bridge in Seoul (Hanging Bridge Bombing), South Korea’s labour camps for the homeless (Brothers Home), South Korea currently using the mentally disabled as salt mining slaves, Argentina’s president Carlos Menem dropping bombs in Río Tercero to hide state gun trafficking, continuing flow of US military aid to the Philippines government to kill innocent civilians and progressives, Thomas Midgely Jr knowingly poisoning people with leaded gasoline for profits, forced labour in private US prisons incentivizing false imprisonment, the USA military gunning down civilians in Iraq on purpose (Collateral Murder) then going on a multi year man hunt for the man who leaked it (Julian Assange), the majority of USA drone strikes taking place in countries the US hasn’t even declared war on, 90% of people killed in US drone strikes being innocents, the USA imprisoning the man who revealed the drone strikes civilian casualties, 1/3 of the world’s population living under US sanctions, America supporting 70% of current dictatorships, USA and UN targeting civilians in the Korean War killing millions (part of Operation Rolling Thunder), West Germany never released any of the LGBTQ+ people from the Holocaust camps and kept them in prison until 1994, Industrielleneingabe, the Nazis being funded by capitalists who wanted them to silence the left, Hitler trying to justify the Holocaust by saying every Jewish person was a communist and vice versa (Judeo-Bolshevism), the Nazis having lucrative deals with Ford, GM, IBM and other American companies, cigarette companies killing all of their customers slowly, Capitalist food companies replacing traditional fats with chemically treated vegetable oils which are extremely bad for us and has lead to the rise in health related deaths merely because it’s cheaper this way.
Eleventy gorillion deaths holomodomor black book I’m sooo scared the commies are gonna take my toothbrush!!
The deaths from war and starvation over capital never seem to be the fault of capitalism to you types. That’s always just “the way of the world” and “human nature”. You are happy to let people die of exposure and then claim your pet economic system had nothing to do with it, so your conscience can remain clear while you shill for the economic model that destroyed your planet.
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.
This 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!
I 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.
