Like many women I have a serious shoe problem. I love them. The higher and more impractical the better. I have a large shoe rack in my wardrobe that covers most of one wall and I am doing my utmost to fill it. Such a terrible problem to have.
Thankfully I only have one credit card with a limit that I can handle. Otherwise I know that I would be in serious trouble because of a terrible lack of willpower. If I had multiple cards I would have a field day online, in store and my ¾ full shoe rack would be bulging.
What bliss. What tragedy.
Imagine that instead of only having one card I had many credit cards which were all at their limit. So I took out store cards and GE finance loans and accepted every offer of a higher limit, then went to hock shops and loan sharks and the debt went up and up but I kept spending and spending because the money was being given to me so what was the problem...? Beside it’s not really my fault because the store owners loved me because I was helping the economy right? Meanwhile politicians and the media were telling me that I deserved the shoes and that I was a working-woman so I was entitled to those shoes and they started offering me handouts so that I would keep buying them. So really now it was unpatriotic NOT to buy shoes wasn’t it?! So I went out and bought more shoes and racked up more debt and more shoes and more debt...
Yikes!
This might sound like a shopper in trouble (and deep denial) but essentially it’s a description of what we as a nation (and most of the western world) have been doing for the past decade. As credit became easier to come by and our standard of living has risen we have consumed more and more stuff. Now we are at the point that we actually believe the lie that we have been sold that we’re all little Aussie battlers unless we have the latest X-box, flat screen TV, designer jeans and i-phone.
Maybe the problem is that there is simply not enough of my grandparents' generation around to shake their heads and tell us about ‘in their day...’
What I do know is that our country has too many shoes and too much debt. By that I mean we have created a middle-class welfare system that seems to have lost the dignity that our grandparents had of going and doing something for themselves.
If I want the latest Jimmy Choos then I need to pay my mortgage, my staff and my bills. Work bloody hard. Then go and buy them. Sure I might forgo something to buy them but that’s all about choices and priorities. Sometimes I simply can’t have it all – no matter how many times I’ve been told by newspapers, magazines and TV shows that I can.
As a country we can’t afford Choos at the moment because we need to pay the mortgage, the hospital bills, our kids’ education and maybe build a few houses. That means that belts might need to be tightened a little. If that means that an elderly person receives an operation sooner, a mental health patient is cared for or more money goes to infrastructure then I for one will continue wearing my Tony Biancos for a little while longer.
I don’t agree with everything (OK a lot) that the government has done in this budget. Some of the measures in my opinion are just plain dumb and lazy. (What was the point of the Henry Review if we are simply going to ignore it people!!) However what I do know is that we need to tighten our belts and that is what this budget has started to do.
A courageous budget? I don’t think so. A responsible budget. To some extent. The government certainly has a long way to go and I think owes a big responsibility to small and medium business (SME’s) for holding the economy together so far...
Yes I think the budget has major flaws. But it's a start...
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