The other day I got a call from one of those people doing research.  The topic was the cost of living in Australia.  They ask your income bracket and then ask if you think the cost of living is too high, if it is going up etc etc.  I answered no to most of the questions.

Firstly, while I do think cost of living in Australia is high I don’t think it’s too high because mostly it is expensive because we have such ridiculously luxourious lives.  In Chulucanas sure life is cheaper for people because they don’t have cars, they don’t have running water all day or have air con, fridges, big screen TV’s, DVD’s etc etc, they shop at markets instead of massive supermarkets with endless variety, they travel less, the list goes on.

Secondly, while I do notice that I am spending more at the shops etc there was a guy on the news the other day who has actually researched this topic and he showed that cost of living is going up slower than our incomes.  There are a few hikes here and there but if you look at the general trend incomes are increasing faster than the cost of living so we’ve never had it better.

Thirdly, I confess while sometimes I do worry about money and can’t believe how fast it goes here I also recognise that even though Martin and I are currently living off one part time income and a small percentage of the parenting payment we are still wealthier than most of the world. The woman who was calling me had a very strong Indian accent, it is posible that she was living in Australia but I imagine she was actually calling from a call centre in India (which I don’t have a problem with this by the way).  I was so embarassed by the idea that this woman and her colleagues earning I imagine very little (as that is why the call centres are there) and whose working and living conditions would be far less than most of ours woulld have to sit there day in day out and listen to rich Australians complain about how hard their life is.

Just to clarify, I am not saying life isn’t hard for many people here in Australia.  People here struggle with lots of things such as illness, sexual asault and other trauma, disability, domestic violence, depression, anxiety and other mental illness, social isolation and exclusion, racism and injustice, never feeling like their enough and not that it really compares but I have been struggling with my own brokeness a lot lately.  However, I don’t think cost of living is why we are suffering so I feel like instead of trying to ease cost of living we should be trying to tackle the above isues.  I acknowledge for people living solely on the pension here in Australia, life would be pretty difficult financially but the answer to that is not middle class Australians complaining about the cost of living but simply raising the pension.