What's your percentage of income spent overseas on retail?

Couldn't come soon enough. The Australian Lifestyle is extreme waste.

Soon we'll be forced to understand that less is more, in my opinion. Because the way we are living is not sustainable and to support it is not sustainable.

Less wages, more people cooking, more real food, less overpaid jobs and benefits and less overpriced real-estate. I'm all for it.

 

What have gun laws go to do with anything? I am simply saying that retail is the primary economic driver and employer in Australia, if it fails then Australia will enter a severe depression. If you want to live in a country like Greece is becoming then good luck to you. I don't. Good luck shopping on the net when you have no job.

 

All nice sentiments, and fine if done in a gradual controlled fashion. However if your desired version of Australia happens instead by way of an economic crash and depression you may change your mind once you see the suffering that will come from that event.

 

@ Jonesy. Yes, I think my opinion of your personality was spot on. I won't waste any-one elses time on this thread responding to your comments other than to suggest that you obviously think you know it all and others exist only for you to attempt to lecture to. Stay well in your apparent conceitedness and good luck with your bemusement.

 

+1

I'd really like to see more artisans and craftspeople operating here. At the risk of sounding all nostalgic, we've lost so much creativity and so many skills as we've become more and more modernised and stopped supporting small businesses in favour of giant multi-national retailers. When was the last time you got a pair of shoes repaired? Or sewed a button back on your shirt? Or repainted a piece of furniture to give it a new lease on life? Or chucked out a functioning gadget because a new model went on sale?

I touched on this in an earlier post, but I put a lot of the blame on commercial landlords. The insane rise in real estate prices has happened in the commercial sector as well as the residential sector. Conventional wisdom says that "returns are better on commercial property but the risks are greater as well" but since we all know that real estate never goes down in value (right?) that means there is no risk but you get a better return on your investment. So why wouldn't you invest in commercial property, even if it means bidding up the price a little bit? Its property, so its a guaranteed winner.

After having that theory dictate how the commercial property market has worked for the last decade or so, we've got these massive rents pushing out all the independent operators because the only retailers who can survive are big chains would can subsidise individual stores if they happen to suffer a temporary drop in business. If you look at some of the recent retail bankruptcies, the administrators go through and identify all the stores that are loss-makers and in some cases that represents dozens of locations that have been kept alive by head office taking profits from a good store to pay for the losses on a crap one. While those loss-makers are being subsidised, they're competing against independent operators who can't afford to take sustained losses so they either shut up shop or never open one in the first place - the commercial landlords say "Well, [Big Chain] can afford to pay $X per month in rent, so [Small Indy] has to pay the same or they can't operate here".

I think a lot of commercial property owners are going to be taking haircuts in the not-too-distant future. Hopefully that will help level the playing field for some of the independent operators who actually give a **** about the products they sell and the customers who buy them.

 

Unfortunately, I think that's what it will take for real change to take the place of waste.

 

Big A.D ......... you make an excellent point in terms of the dynamic between community supported small business and the giant national/multi-national retailers.

One nation that appears to be pulling its weight better than most in the global economy is Germany. The strange thing is that the concept of a huge shopping mall is not readily accepted in Germany (they certainly exist but they aren't the norm). Nearly all communities have their own local small businesses that are prefered to the shopping mall. Germans (as a generalisation) appear to prefer supporting their local butcher (business) rather than pre-packaged meat in the supermarket. Also, the concept of supporting the local small business shoe repairer also appears to be a prefered option than buying "large-retail-throw-away-consumer-oriented-shoes".

And yet the exact opposite appears to have occurred in the US (and occurring in AUS). In the US, I've seen whole towns (city shopping centres) shut down as a consequence of shoppers preferring the supermall full of shiney H#rvey N#rman like retailors.

Spending our money on domestic retail vs spending it "overseas" does not appear to be the question that poses answers for our retail industry woes. Spending our money supporting locally produced goods from local small business operators rather than at the monopolistic superstores appears to be part of the solution I think. But that would entail a massive change in our culture which I think is already beyond us

 

I don't know, you have to give Australians credit, over the last 10 years we have all taken up recycling in a big way, we are buying smaller, more efficient cars, we are fitting energy saving devices throughout our houses, we are installing rainwater tanks, we are installing solar rooftop water heaters, cutting plastic bag use and so many other initiatives. I think that you are being too hard on us, the change is gradually happening, why does everything need to be smashed in order to create change when it is already underway?

 

You were just saying that retailers in Australia rip you off and it's better to shop online and send the money overseas, and now you are saying that it is better to spend money with local small businesses. Make up your mind.

 

I think he's saying (and I feel the same way) that if Big Bookstore Company is going to screw over Small Bookstore On The Corner then we shouldn't feel so bad about screwing over Big Bookstore Company in return by shopping at www.evencheaperbooks.com

Breaking the big chains is the key to having a balance between lower prices from online retailers and quality products from local retailers.

 

Sadly, I think your correct BBQ. A lot of noise is made about some of the bandaid measures apparently being taken in our society ie buying smaller cars, fitting energy saving devices, rainwater tanks, solar water heaters, cutting plastic bag use etc. But they appear to be feel good measures undertaken by a relative minority rather than the norm, and thus add up to relatively little real change.

Take solar for instance. In Germany, there are whole house roofs or barns committed to solar panels. Why? Because the govt has made a REAL committment to solar as an alternative energy source. And yet that is a nation that only has on average 1000 hours of usable sunlight as opposed to Australia that has 3000. More-over, in Australia solar panels are so expensive to buy and yet (according to a Geman importer of panels for his solar equipment company), the best silica for panels comes from Australia. Why are Panels so expensive in Australia? I know the answer and it has something to do with a multi-national energy company having the production rights for panels in this country.

Plastic bags? It costs additional in Germany to purchase a plastic bag to put ones groceries in. Shopping is NORMALLY done with the aid of material shopping bags brought into the store by the shopper. How many people do this in Australia?

Smaller cars? Yes, there are more than 10 years ago but not because of altruistic motives on the part of car owners. It's simply getting too expensive in terms of petrol running costs for many people to have a toyota or other large type popular car.

Fitting energy saving devices? I still see as a norm, new houses being built of brick/masonary block with dark colour tiled roofs and airconditioners fitted to every room being the norm. And thats in North Queensland! What real impact would the fitting of energy saving devices within these houses amount to?

 

I agree with that. But where I see a problem is that the big chains had the buying power to sell more cheaply than the little stores, so the question is, now that Borders and Angus & Robertson have gone under, will Australians buy from little book stores? As much as I hope that they do, it looks like the scale has tipped towards web buying, and so the bookshops will vanish I think. Some may think that this is a good thing, I don't.

 

I would be interested in what you picture your ideal Australian society would look like and how we can get there without having to crash everything into poverty first? Destruction is easy, anyone can do it. Happens every year in many countries around the world such as Zimbabwe. Go ask anyone living there how things worked out for them and if they now pollute less and are glad that it happened. It takes a visionary to create change without wholesale destruction of the old system. Idealism is cheap.

 

re: post #64

 

What does it take to change Australian society without having to crash everything into poverty first? It takes genuine Government support (including incentive carrots) for people to want to change (not be forcibly made to change).

Here's an example of another nations change, meaningful change. I use the example of solar energy (not farcial fitting of feel good energy saving devices) in a nation that has only 1/3 the amount of sunlight hours that we do in Australia. This is visionary change without wholesale destruction. And its not cheap Idealism either (for the benefit of Post #73).

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I an not the one calling people names. you are. I am not posting personal attacks, you are. I am making points that I believe are valid. as are you. Please keep personal insults out of it.

 

:/

 

And, if you feel insulted by my demeanour I do apologise to you luckylukeonline. I have a retail store and 10 people depend on it for their living and I manufacture in Australia, I reserve my right to my opinions, and although you might not think so I do respect yours. Sorry if we got off on the wrong foot.

 

I don't really know what will happen, but I'll offer up this little bit of personal experience:

In the last three weeks, I spent $168 buying 18 books from a foreign online bookseller and another $73 on books, food and drink at a local cafe-book store.

The 18 books I bought online were for a research project on a specialised subject and I simply couldn't have bought them all at a local book store. Even if I could have found them all at the one shop, they'd have cost hundreds of dollars. The cafe-book store I went to happened to have a couple of second hand novels and a few reference titles I was interested in and I had a very nice lunch and coffee there with a friend.

The small local store isn't missing out on my business because they simple can't stock all the books I needed for my project and the online book store isn't missing out on my business either because they can't send scrambled eggs and bacon on toast with a flat white through the mail.

 

In Australia Australian books (books published and written in Australia) are typically (not always though) cheaper in a bookstore thanh online, but all the other books are more expensive, hence I buy Australian books from local bookstores and other books (e.g. American, U.K., etc) online (usually from www.Amazon.com).