One of my more ‘social justice’ inclined friends griped during the John Howard era of economic prosperity that ‘The country is more than just an economy’. In the context of the moment he was talking about his desire for more welfare and handouts for the poor. I replied ‘That’s easy to say while the economy is good. See what happens to your poor people when interest, inflation, and unemployment all hit double figures.’

It was a ‘shoot from the hip’ response, but one that I’m still quite proud of, and one that we’re about to learn the truth of very very soon. He of course scoffed at the suggestion that the good times might at some point come to an end…

Well here we are. Ten years later and the good times are coming to an end, which is news that comes as a surprise to absolutely no one.

A further slide in business investment has economic forecasters pondering the unthinkable: that the Australian economy shrank in the September quarter, and that next week’s GDP growth figure will have a minus sign in front of it.

If so, it’ll mark an end to eight years of near-continuous growth since the economy shrank 0.7 per cent during the global economic crisis in the last quarter of 2008.

Like I said, no surprise to those of us who have been paying attention, and even if we’re not negative yet, we’re heading that way and (Christmas bump notwithstanding) will be there by mid next year in any case. And it’s going to come as a massive reality check to the younger, more privileged generation of soft lefties who have grown up thinking that good times are a given. All of a sudden the ‘obsession’ of people like me with silly things like economic freedom, employment flexibility, low minimum wages, low regulatory burden on businesses, low cost of living etc will start to make a lot more sense as they get their first taste of less prosperous times.

How the left have cheered as they delayed or killed investment in mining, especially fracking and LNG, through endless lawfare and fears over the futures of frogs. How they’ve made a mockery of us all by stopping dams, power plants, roads, factories, and anything that had a whiff of progress to it… all the while calling themselves ‘progressive’ and insisting they held the moral high ground over ‘evil capitalists’ like me. How they’ve hurt us as they’ve pushed up the cost of living in countless ways, all the while insisting we should be grateful that they’re doing it all ‘for our own good’.

Well soon we won’t be able to afford their ‘help’. If the global economy is headed where I think it’s headed, and if Australia isn’t going to be spared like we were in 2008, and I’ll wager we wont, then what we have right here is an important ‘teaching moment’ in history. It’s moments like these that turn hippies into conservatives, statists into libertarians, socialists into capitalists.

It’s a contested quote, but it’s been said many times many different ways:

If you’re not a socialist at 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.

Of course I think that’s hogwash, being a ‘socialist’ or ‘progressive’ isn’t compassionate or proof you have ‘heart’ at all… but putting that aside, this quote makes a valid point: Life experience tends to make people more conservative. Reality has a way of beating idealistic and naive idiocy out of us, and replacing it with more even tempered respect for reality.

And reality is just about to beat the entire western world over the side of the head with a massive stick. We can only live beyond our means for so long. We can only fight against wealth-creating businesses for so long. We can only deny people the fruits of their labor for so long… before it starts to hurt us all.

So I’m hoping for a silver lining… I’m hoping that whatever comes our way in the next few years that the world on the other side of that economic or military (or both?) crisis will be wiser for it. I’m hoping that people will rediscover the principles that made the last century the most successful and peaceful in human history (yes really!).

But for now, just consider this another marker, another signpost on the road to the tough times that lay ahead in the next few years.

And understand that it’s the bleeding hearts, the compassionate and ‘caring’ among us that have led us down the road to much tougher times. And as is always the case, their efforts to ‘help’ will hurt the poorest people the most.

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