how much have the waiters lost, page-193

Our population is also aging. Hence why now retirement age has been boosted up to 70.

Hi Ryan1986, Our population is indeed aging but we should be careful associating this with the new 70yo retirement proposal and any thing else. Bottom line with this one is that at the current time Australia is not creating enough wage/salary earner jobs to meet current and future social welfare/infra structure/medicare and/or any other politically motivated spending. On top of the slow population growth we are excluding migration of entrepreneurial type migrants that created the jobs and economic booms at the end of both WW1 and WW2. God forbid that we have to have another calamitous war to get the cycle started again. We are bringing in other migrants though which is better than nothing whereas the Japanese actually have policies that exclude just about anyone that is not Japanese from migrating there. That's a problem for them and their population is mature and virtually stagnant which is exaggerating the problem. I understand your concern for others that may buy a property to live in and cause themselves to bite off more then they can chew and potentially go under should rates increase. But again that is a social problem and not one of economics and/or investment. Thanks for your honesty in disclosing that you rent. As a matter fact I used to live I the property that I owned (did this for years). Then found that I could live in a suburb of my choice as a tenant (cheaper than buying) and use all the savings from home ownership to build my portfolio of shares and properties. The former I have been more successful in by the way. I still own my old house and it has been tenanted by great tenants for about six years. We are all happy. I didn't buy any of it for tax benefits (even though I can claim losses from income from other sources on my margin loan and property investments). I've bought everything because I thought it made sense and a good idea at the time. I did the same with Boart Longyear thinking I was clever buying at $0.48 not long ago. :( Should have saved just a bit more and got another house. :)