[GTP owner]

Originally Posted by fmc351

Well today, even dead broke you can eat by going to the Salvos, but given the numbers of people out of work in a depression (30 -50% or more), and the tight government budget theres no Dole and the Salvos are stretched far to thin, so you get poorer by not being able to eat or feed your kids. Id say thats poorer.

What you can buy now, even well within your means is well out of your means in a depression for most people. One of the first things to go in a depression is your job, and likely your partners. By that time people are begging for work to earn just enough to feed the family and not much else.

What you are talking about is not happening. We are not going into a depression, the dole is still there, and unemployment will not go to 30-50%. In the Great Depression people ate rabbits, possums and seaguls to stay alive. We are so far away from this reality that we think our world is ending when we have to cut the subscription to Austar. As an example - the highest per-capita spending on pokies occurs int he lowest socioeconomic sectors/suburbs. How poor can you be if you can still afford a flutter? Oh, there will always be ACA or TT doing an article on some idiot living off tinned cat food, but really that is more an example of stupidity that anything else. One tin of cat food is $1, which will buy you 2kg of spuds if you buy a bag. Which one fills you up more?
So I will stand by my original statement that the poor cannot get poorer. And if you really think you are poor and getting worse off, then you were not really poor in the first place!