There is this idea that wages can just keep rising and "catch up" with housing prices. On paper, yes. In reality, not really. We live in a massively interconnected world, that is advancing technologically by the day. And the more expensive labour in Australia gets, the more likely it becomes that jobs are lost to AI or offshoring. We are seeing this playing out at the moment and the rise of taxpayer funded employment has masked the severity of the adjustment so far. Australia lost much of its high tech manufacturing years ago and today, a car manufacturing plant in China making the exact same cars is far more efficient, particularly dollar for dollar than those in Europe. But it was thought that the so called "knowledge economy" and white collar jobs were safe, but now they are the most exposed. Yet we have a system that drives people to demand much higher wages to keep up with house prices that detached from household earnings years ago. So in an attempt to acquire something as simple as shelter, particularly shelter that reflects one's level of income relative to the median, Australia is increasingly pricing itself out of the global marketplace. Ultimately, the resilience seen so far is not going to last forever and people can forget about wages catching up with housing costs without it crushing competitiveness in the process.

"Europe will be destroyed by women who project onto those animals the motherhood that belonged to the children they aborted."

French-language X is awash with images like this one. People to the right of centre are making fun of the spokesperson La France Insoumise chose to appear on La Grande Confrontation. I can see the funny side. A spokesperson for a left-wing party who, down to the smallest detail, signals “academic elite” and “inherited privilege”. But I would actually like to take Ms Whittaker seriously. Because she represents one of Europe’s greatest political paradoxes. The two French parties that, according to the polls, are on course to reach the decisive second round of next year’s presidential election, in May, are both running on platforms that amount to the greatest theft from the young in history. The older generation wants a very low retirement age. It wants very generous benefits. It wants an extensive welfare state. And it does not want to pay for any of it itself. So the older generation borrows the money. The debt now stands at roughly 120 per cent of France’s GDP. One day, that will stop working. Then the money will have to be repaid. And who will have to repay it? Ms Whittaker’s generation. If Ms Whittaker wanted a secure and comfortable life in middle and old age, she would vote for a fiscally responsible party such as Les Républicains. If she votes for Rassemblement National or La France Insoumise, there are many things Ms Whittaker cannot be sure of. But one thing is absolutely certain: these two parties will leave her and her generation with a gigantic bill for decades of overspending. Who will pay France’s enormous debt? Ms Whittaker’s generation. Who will have to carry on working far longer than their grandparents did? Ms Whittaker’s generation. And who will suffer when the French welfare state becomes much smaller than it is today? That’s right: Ms Whittaker and her generation. They are the ones who will face poorer healthcare and poorer care for the elderly. Because the leaders of the party she supports have economic plans that extend no further than their own generation. That makes Ms Whittaker a perfect illustration of a concept developed by the great French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu: méconnaissance. For Bourdieu, méconnaissance meant systematically misrecognising the social world and the relations of power that shape it - including one’s own position within it. Think of the middle manager who believes he belongs to society’s elite, yet fails to see that he is treated and paid only marginally better than the workers on the shop floor. Or the impoverished farmer who imagines himself a business magnate because he employs a couple of people who are even worse off. That sort of profound misunderstanding of one’s place in society. It is hard to imagine anyone of Ms Whittaker’s age displaying a greater degree of méconnaissance than she does. And I have not even touched on the méconnaissance of a woman who believes that still more immigration will give her a safer future.

The affordability crisis is actually an inflation crisis that is unsolvable under a democratic system Dems will blame taxes and military, the GOP will blame entitlements, but neither will address any of these issues because in a democracy buying votes is the winning strategy

Tattoo removal is about to become a massive industry. Gen Z has rejected post-modernism and they are absolutely mogging older generations. This is the first summer in over a decade where almost every young girl I’ve seen in a bikini is completely natural. No tattoos No dyed hair No septum rings No heavy makeup