That ~30% of GDP number is government debt. I am not talking about government debt. I am talking about private debt. Australia has a much much worse private d

That ~30% of GDP number is government debt. I am not talking about government debt. I am talking about private debt. Australia has a much much worse private debt problem than a government debt problem: total private debt ~150% GDP; mortgage debt ~80% GDP; gross foreign private debt ~85% GDP; gross federal public debt ~20% GDP [1]. The reason you take on debt matters. Almost all of that debt went towards unproductive bidding up of real estate. Much of the "growth" experienced in the last 20 years was just making the economy larger by importing more money via debt from overseas. I challenge anyone to argue that was a prudent course of action, unless you were a political party that wanted to get re-elected by making people feel richer. Why intrinsic advantage? Australian wages/salaries are high, in part, because the average Australian has to pay so much to service their mortgage debt. Because service economies are human resourced, any where with humans can do those jobs. If Australia is inherently more expensive due to the overhead of high house prices, what services can we offer for which others are willing to pay a premium? Also, we must have a service economy bringing money in from overseas, rather than just supplying services internally, because we still have all that interest to pay on our debt. The future for Australia might be bright in as much as it is slightly less dark than some other countries. [1] https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/abbott-government-ignores-australias-actual-debt-crisis,7010 https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/a... edit: figures