Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T02:39:35.818Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 2 - Incomes and Their Meanings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Michael Pusey
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Get access

Summary

Whereas market economics holds that money is a neutral medium of exchange whose influence is exhausted by its power over goods and services, my findings suggest that money is itself an emotionally charged symbol.

Robert Lane

In June of 2000, in the wake of twenty years of economic reform, Australia's premier national newspaper, The Australian, ran a cover story, and then a week of special reports, under the headlines ‘Advance Australia Where? … Death of the Fair Go’. The caption announced that ‘two decades of reform have … generated feelings of loss and anger’. The cover story continued under the headline ‘Death of the nation's great middle-class dream’. A few weeks later I showed these pages to an audience of American social scientists. They were bewildered. Someone asked whether this was a left-wing newspaper, and another whether such sentiments were overstated. I replied that this was generally a New Right newspaper that has promoted economic reform with ferocious zeal for the whole period; and that, no, the sentiments were everyday concerns in Australia that a prestigious national newspaper would have to address. With a shrug, one person in the audience said, ‘Well, it's obviously not working then.’

But working for whom? For the corporations and elites who drive the reform process, success means reconciling the people to whatever reduced relative incomes are deemed necessary to insure increasing shareholder returns (profits), investment and growth.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Experience of Middle Australia
The Dark Side of Economic Reform
, pp. 19 - 46
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Incomes and Their Meanings
  • Michael Pusey, University of New South Wales, Sydney
  • Book: The Experience of Middle Australia
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481628.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Incomes and Their Meanings
  • Michael Pusey, University of New South Wales, Sydney
  • Book: The Experience of Middle Australia
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481628.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Incomes and Their Meanings
  • Michael Pusey, University of New South Wales, Sydney
  • Book: The Experience of Middle Australia
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481628.003
Available formats
×