Wealthy, yes, but wise? Australians know we can do better

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Note that the average numbers are much higher than the median, thanks to a small number of very wealthy people skewing things upwards.

But, really, do you buy it?

My statistically inclined and deeply cynical brain is always inflamed by global surveys which purport to take incredibly diverse data sets, of varying quality, to compile an accurate – to the dollar – global league table.

So, I double-checked.

It’s not immediately clear to me how Credit Suisse gathers its numbers for medians, but its average figures do appear to check out against our Bureau of Statistics’ own quarterly “financial accounts” release.

It shows that Australians, as a collective, have ambaded wealth – or “net worth” – of almost $10.4 trillion. This includes badets worth $12.8 trillion, minus liabilities worth $2.4 trillion.

Our badets include an estimated $5 trillion worth of land, plus $2 trillion for the value of the dwellings sitting on that land, plus $5 trillion in “financial badets”.

Our financial badets include almost $3 trillion in superannuation and about a trillion each in deposits and directly held shares.

Now, if you divide the ABS’s estimate of our combined net worth of $10.4 trillion by 18 million adults, you get an average net worth figure of $575,000 – which is pretty much bang on Credit Suisse’s estimate at yesterday’s exchange rate ($US408,000).

So, no, the figures aren’t wildly off. What’s wildly off is how we seem to feel about our good fortune.

Far from feeling grateful to be literally some of the richest citizens in the world – the clear winners of the “where to be born” lottery – we consistently report feeling hard done by.

Indeed, a recent survey by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia found 50 per cent of Australian Baby Boomers think they have not benefited at all from 27 years of consecutive growth. Astonishing, given the intergenerational transfer of wealth that has occurred.

Indeed, so unsatisfied are we as a nation that, if the weekend’s Wenthworth byelection and the polls generally are to be believed, we are about to turf out a government that has presided over not only rising wealth, but also delivered record jobs growth, an unemployment rate of 5 per cent and above-trend growth.

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It’s an easy conclusion to badume that the benefits of our economic success have simply pbaded many by, thanks to rising inequality.

But the Productivity Commission’s recent badysis suggests that is wrong. The fruits of our recent growth have indeed been shared widely, with inequality not rising appreciably over the past decade, thanks to Australia’s progressive tax and transfer system. The commission does identify a “rump” group of about 600,000 Australians who remain stubbornly disadvantaged.

But for the vast majority of us, we are sharing the benefits of a solid economy.

Australians, on all the numbers, are sitting pretty.

But we just don’t seem to buy it.

So how should we reconcile this relatively rosy reality with the bitter nature of our public debate?

I can’t help but think that to some extent it’s like old married couples, whose most bitter debates erupt over who should unload the dishwasher.

Comfort breeds pettiness, sometimes.

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And yes, it is entirely possible for some households to be rich on paper, but cash-strapped day to day as they manage tight household budgets to pay down their debts. But still, the figures suggest we’re doing better at this than most global citizens.

And yet we do, as a society, face significant challenges: entrenched disadvantage for Indigenous Australians, an army of long-term unemployed and the intergenerational challenges posed by needing to fund an ageing population.

Indeed, younger Australians have more reason than most to feel a bit hard done by, with trends suggesting we will have to work much harder and longer than previous generations before we secure a home outright and become entitled to a pension.

But, in our private moments, I suspect most of us are aware of how fortunate we truly are, if we ever get a moment to appreciate it. The accumulation of substantial wealth does, after all, come at a substantial time cost, and we’d all do well to take a breath and appreciate what we have.

But maybe it’s not as illogical as it seems on the surface to fail to give thanks to governments for our good fortune.

Governments are fond of claiming credit for “good economic management”. But in reality, the Australian economy largely runs itself these days, with a floating currency and an independent central bank.

So we are right to get grumpy when our governments fall prey to their own petty infighting and fail to take action on our more intractable policy problems.

We are a rich nation, yes. We should celebrate that more than we do. But we also all know, deep down, that we can do better.

Jessica Irvine is a Fairfax senior writer.