Sign Up
..... Australian Property Network. It's All About Property!
Categories

Posted: 2023-04-04 21:35:08

Just a note on that point in Philip Lowe's Q&A, where he was asked about the falling rate of economic growth per person in Australia.

But it is useful to think about the concept.

A couple of weeks ago, Dr Ken Henry (a former Treasury secretary) delivered a speech to the Tax Institute in which he explained why Australia's economy has experienced such low productivity growth and wages growth in the 21st century.

He dedicated some of that speech to talking about the economy in per capita terms.

And he said in the entire decade pre-COVID, Australia recorded the sort of growth rates per person that were only previously recorded in recessions.

That's before we were hit by COVID and experienced this surge in inflation.

"For many years prior to the pandemic, the Australian economy had been performing poorly.

"Figure Seven provides the five-year average rate of growth in real GDP per capita over four decades, commencing at the end of 1979, through to the end of 2019, immediately pre-COVID.

"The chart clearly shows that, before the onset of the pandemic, GDP per capita growth had been weak for many years.

"More than that, it had been in trend decline for two decades.

"The recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s stand out clearly in the chart. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, GDP per capita growth appeared to have settled at around 2 to 2 ¼ per cent a year.

"But then the global financial crisis hit. And growth hasn’t recovered.

"In the entire decade pre-COVID we recorded the sort of growth rates only previously recorded in recessions.

"COVID has made this record a lot worse, of course. And yet, in recent years, you would have had no end of politicians and commentators wanting to tell you how strongly the Australian economy has been performing."

That was before COVID hit Australia.

Would many of those long-term trends still be in play right now? Dr Henry thinks they are.

View More
  • 0 Comment(s)
Captcha Challenge
Reload Image
Type in the verification code above