And we weren't even out shopping!
Mass immigration is not the great panacea.
"Part of the problem is that the level of government with control over immigration, the feds, is not the level of government with responsibility for ensuring adequate additional investment in public infrastructure, the states.
As for the additional investment in machines to cover the needs of the bigger workforce, that’s down to the nation’s businesses. Guess what? They haven’t bothered. Our ratio of capital to labour is actually a little lower than it was a decade ago.…So why have our businesses done so little to improve their productivity? Rod Sims, former boss of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, answers the last part of the puzzle. He says that increasing productivity is just one way for a business to increase its profits.
I think our guys have found it much easier to increase their profits by using legal loopholes such as casualisation and labour hire to screw down their wage costs.
The mass immigration economic model is awful:
It kills wage growth.
It kills productivity.
It boosts profits anyway by growing the market size thus stalling business investment.
It kills reform because pollies point to GDP as evidence everything is good, even as GDP per capita stalls and falls.
It crush loads all public services and goods, including the environment."
...In short, the mass immigration economic model is corrupt and designed to do you harm as it fattens select bosses."
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/03/gittins-immigration-destroying-living-standards/
