Barnaby Is Right

From the Australian:

One in four households relies on welfare benefits while one in seven is spending more than it earns, as increasing cost-of-living pressures bear down on families.

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Of the nation’s poorest households, one in 10 went without meals and 7.3 per cent could not afford to heat their homes in winter during 2009-10, according to a six-yearly snapshot of spending by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Australians are having to spend more than half their income on the basics – housing, food and transport – as the soaring cost of living bites into spending on life’s luxuries. One in eight households could not pay their bills on time.

The ABS household expenditure survey reveals that households are under as much financial stress now as in the lead-up to the 1998 east Asian economic crash.

The “financial stress” afflicted some of the nation’s wealthiest people, with almost one in seven high-earning households failing to pay bills on time and 8.8 per cent seeking financial help from friends and family.

The ABS survey reveals that government pensions or benefits are the main source of income for one in four households, which get by on an average of $557 a week.

The typical Australian household spent $1236 a week on goods and services in 2009-10 – 38 per cent more than was spent during the previous survey period, in 2003-04. Prices rose by 19 per cent, which the ABS said indicated “a rise in real living standards”.

Half the spending was on food, housing and transport.

Now I really have heard it all.

Price rises = “a rise in real living standards”?!?

What a complete and utter load of doublespeaking bullshit.

Now, if the ABS had said “a rise in disposable income indicates a rise in real living standards”, then possibly there’d be some truth in the statement.

But to try and argue that price rises equates to rising living standards, is so utterly nonsensical as to be nothing less than delusional.

Why do we continue to allow our government bodies to so blatantly lie to us like this?

Tags: ABS, census, cost of living, doublespeak, living standards, newspeak, orwellian, price rises