Australia’s middle class might abandon woke politics as they are battered by property slump, AI and soaring school fees. By Robert Gottliebsen in The Australian.
The prosperity of large portions of middle-class Australia has declined more dramatically than other sectors. The middle class did not see the blows coming and was not well prepared.
Its fall will impact Australian community, corporate and government attitudes. At the moment, One Nation is winning from the frustration.
Their wealth, which insulated them from reality and allowed them to go woke, is crumbing:
Significant sectors of the middle class in Australia have been an island of continued prosperity for many decades and, because their occupations are often at high levels in both corporate administration and government departments, they have set government and private-sector agendas on issues like gender, climate, emissions, race and education practices.
Their prosperity has enabled them to embrace ideas that were often different from other parts of the nation who now often use the term ‘woke’ to describe middle-class views.
While ‘woke’ has become a term of derision, middle-class views are genuinely and passionately held.
But the reduction in their prosperity may bring the ‘woke community’ closer to the views of ordinary Australians. …
Economic battering:
The middle class is being impacted more severely than other sectors because their residential and holiday properties are among the hardest hit; their occupations are often in areas that are in jeopardy as a result of AI; the cost of educating their children in private schools is rising sharply; and their children no longer can see a straightforward path to rewarding professional careers but are saddled with huge debts that reduce their ability to borrow from banks to buy a house. …
Most reports on suburban property markets concentrate on houses around or below the $1m to $1.5m mark, where falls are usually well below 10 per cent. The big falls taking place are in middle-class, higher-priced suburbs and are often around 20 to 30 per cent from the peak. …
Among the professions most impacted by AI are law, economics, administration, marketing, human resources and consulting – all areas where middle-class executives were used to receiving $200,000-plus salaries.
Many enterprises now have hiring freezes and such salaries in new jobs are rare, so if a person loses a $200,000-plus job, it is hard to find a replacement at that level. …
The traditional path for middle-class children has been to go to university, which leads to a well-mapped career in law, commerce, medicine, engineering, etc. These careers are still available in some areas but are becoming harder to obtain. …
Their politics might change:
That is a lot of blows at once to a segment of the population, many of whom have isolated themselves from large parts of the rest of the nation as a result of their ‘woke’ attitudes.
We saw the attitude difference between the middle class and the rest of Australia in the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum when electorates that covered middle-class suburbs like Killara, Double Bay, Bellevue Hill and Manly in Sydney, and Albert Park, Camberwell and Hawthorn in Melbourne, plus equivalents in other cities, all voted ‘Yes’. Apart from the electorates where the Greens dominated, all electorates in the rest of the nation voted ‘No’.
Perhaps most significantly, the woke live in “nice” expensive neighborhoods with few third world immigrants.