House prices down 10% and will drop a lor lower. My guess 30-40% lower than the peak. Most people have the majority of wealth in their house so this is a significant factor in the 'gloomy' stakes.
Shares basically flat last five years. Most people in super funds are 'skewed' towards shares. They will have seen very little growth in the last five years.
Taking inflation into account, hourly wages have barely grown in the last 30 years. People's income is not keeping pace with the government official inflation figure let alone the real inflation figure which is around 5-6%.
As an illustration on what stagnant share price, reducing incomes and lower housing prices means, the net worth of US families has dropped 40% in the last three years.
For Australia we have the added bonus of the worse Government in living memory lead by the worse Australian Prime Minister ever.
And most people can work out the situation will get worse before it gets better. Much much worse.
Internationally, Europe is gone. Too much debt and too costly welfare programs. Not coincidentally, the one country doing well in Western Europe is Sweden which did the opposite of the other countries. It's Finance Minister is a Libertarian and he is well worth some research.
USA is deader than Gold Coast's chance for a flag. Debt levels are over 100% of GDP and year on year they spend $1.5 trillion more than they bring in. Again it will struggle on for some time but it will never recover.
China our only hope? Nope. Big big problems there too. Huge debt levels, a massive bubble in infrastructure and housing, andd all compounded by having a centrally planned authoritarian Government. Again it will waddle along but a bust is due.
Where does that leave Australia? Collapsing commodity prices, soaring overseas costs of borrowing money and a Government that only knows one thing, that is to spend money it doesnt have.
So people gloomy? Yep and they have every right to be.
But the key question you have to ask is what are people doing to protect their remaining wealth?
