Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Oct 21st, 2011 | 17 comments
Editorial note
Yes, they’re back. The Bogamonics team. We’ve missed them. Today’s post is an excerpt from their forthcoming book, the great Australian novel, Boganomics. Indeed that’s where our high priests of the mortgage belt have been, penning their masterpiece. I’m sure it was not entirely coincidental that when Boganomics departed in June, MB suffered it’s only (however brief) dip in readership.
So, welcome back to MB’s intrepid adventurers into the dark soul of the Australian economy. I’m sure our pre-May readers will cheer. As for the multitude...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Jun 24th, 2011 | 10 comments
In an odd juxtaposition, the bogan, while poorly informed on almost all matters, will still have an opinion on most things, and is actually a relatively voracious consumer of media. The media have long known the enticing power of the bogan buck, and once their websites gave them the power to monetise bogan clicks, and the ability to count those clicks, internet news trends were set in place forever. While news websites are thus invariably plastered with images of women in varying stages of undress, links to stupid stories about bogans and various other trollbait, there has been an increasing move to...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Jun 17th, 2011 | 51 comments
Henry Ford was born on the outskirts of Rockhampton in 1922. In 1925, he established Ford Australia, and subsequently travelled back in time to found the Ford Motor Company in the USA sometime prior. The upshot of all this, is that the bogan knows there is no car company more Australian than Ford, because Holden is owned by General Motors, and Ford is not.
Henry Ford was in his 90s by the time he downed tools and unveiled the Ford Falcon in 1960. The car induced rapturous tremors in the ancestral bogan population, with ancient bogans unanimously declaring that Australia was better at cars than anyone,...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Jun 10th, 2011 | 32 comments
Rightly, the bogan hates being told what to do, hates having its movements restricted, and hates feeling obliged to anyone. This is an important reason why it loves purchasing investment properties; so it can tell someone else what to do, restrict their movements, and have someone feel obliged to them.
This free-thinking, independent creature is informed by its convictions, exhaustive research and by Brent down the pub. These resources have led it to believe that the best way to stay in the pink of financial health is to invest in property. Various credible people and publications have told the bogan...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Jun 3rd, 2011 | 158 comments
The question of climate change has long been a vexed one for the bogan. During the mid-00s, when the weight of public opinion began swinging behind the scientific consensus, and the need to take action about it, the polling suggested that the bogan jumped on board. Far be it for the bogan to stand out from the crowd with its opinions – only with its brightly hued attire and accessories. However, much of this support was predicated on the notion that the bogan would not have to do anything in particular to remedy the climate change problem.
When confronted with the entirely unwelcome idea that an...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on May 27th, 2011 | 19 comments
Off the bat; if you don’t want to smoke, be our guest. You have every right to deny yourself the abundant pleasure. One of our number is known to do so. He does so in the full knowledge that robbing himself of the pleasure is a poor trade-off against a premature, hideous death. The bogan, however, has figured out a way around this. Because the bogan is a wily beast, it doesn’t smoke any ordinary cigarettes. Those cigarettes that it used to smoke; they give you cancer, they’re dangerous, bad for the kiddies. No, the bogan smokes ‘Mild’ cigarettes. These cigarettes, you see, have less tar. So...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on May 20th, 2011 | 26 comments
The Australian dollar is the only currency that the bogan believes in. It’s the currency that last year’s designer drug can be purchased in, it’s the currency that Centrelink can be defrauded in, and it’s the currency that can be acquired in wholesale volumes when one goes to work in the mines. While Australia’s economy was doing very well through the middle of last decade, there was a problem. Other nations were also doing well, and the exchange rate of the Australian dollar was not high. This weighed heavily on the bogan’s heart whenever it proposed to venture to Thailand, Bali,...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on May 13th, 2011 | 20 comments
Wayne Swan spent a great deal of time reminding the nation of just how tough this year’s budget was going to be. While this is hardly a new strategy for federal treasurers, this year, the bogan had a creeping sense of unease; folk in their ivory towers were whispering about cuts to middle-class welfare. Really, Swanny had to be tough, in competing with a man of REAL ACTION across the aisle, he was forced to straddle the line between two of the bogan’s greatest needs: budget surpluses and free stuff.
‘Money is wasted when not spent on bogans.’ Were the bogan’s eco-political philosophy to be...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on May 6th, 2011 | 38 comments
The bogan is a voracious consumer of media. It will, on any given day, access any or all of a variety of newspapers and news sites ranging from the Herald Sun to the Daily Telegraph and occasionally the Courier Mail. On the days it’s feeling like pretending it knows something about economics or politics, it will brush up against Fairfax, but often retreat hurriedly, confronted by the lack of likeness to Andrew Bolt’s blog.
The bogan consumes all of this media because it cares about the big issues. It needs to opine vociferously on matters of importance. And to the bogan, there are two matters of...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Apr 29th, 2011 | 26 comments
The Australian retail climate isn’t particularly strong at the moment, because bogans are Doing It Tough. Confronted with historically low interest rates, a strong dollar, a resilient economy and low unemployment, the bogan knows that it has to cut back on some things in order to get by. Its newfound love of online retail and Australian retailers’ inability to, you know, build a functional online retail site, has left us something of a retail wasteland. Until you realise that compared to pretty much every other developed economy, we are, in fact, a retail oasis.
International fashion retailers...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Apr 15th, 2011 | 29 comments
The phrase UnAustralian has long resonated deeply with the bogan. The bogan knows that it is Australian; indeed, the best kind of Australian. Anyone who disagrees with things the bogan likes is therefore not Australian. QED. However, something has occurred this week that gives us pause, as we consider the possible death of one of the classic bogan-baiting calls of all time. This is kind of like when Liberace died.
Much has been made of the success (and phenomenal ROI) of the mining companies’ campaign against the MRRT, or RSPT, or GREAT BIG ROCK TAX (GBRT) of late, as for a piddling investment of...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Apr 8th, 2011 | 10 comments
During the week, Woolworths announced that its CEO, Michael Luscombe, was stepping down in favour of some fresh blood in Grant O’Brien. The local media, desperate to get into a flurry over something other than Kevin Rudd telling the country what it already knew, began flailing wildly for an angle, settling on one of two narratives: that this may mean a ‘change in strategy’ for a company that is well entrenched in a loss-leading price war with an encroaching Coles and is committed to a long-term expansion into hardware with Lowe’s to take on Wesfarmers’ Bunnings, or that he’s a ‘shelf...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Apr 1st, 2011 | 24 comments
Boganomics, along with its sister project Things Bogans Like, performs a crucial role in Australian society. While bogans may tell you that they want to bed you or glass you, they also have many other wants and needs that they are less adept at articulating. As the bogan’s unofficial mouthpiece, we simply must take exception to the Unconventional Economist, who on these very pages has been spreading anti-bogan propaganda about negative gearing.
Negative gearing is the lifeblood of cashed up bogans nationwide, asking only that the bogan be greedy and territorial in order to have the federal...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Mar 25th, 2011 | 12 comments
While the bogan has spent the past few years variously coveting foreign-looking domestically produced beer, Mexican beer, and low-carb beer, what has remained constant is that the bogan has continued to enjoy getting the more traditional Australian beers on the cheap. With this in mind, the bogan has been incensed by the revelation this week by Fairfax that Foster’s cancelled beer shipments to Coles and Woolworths because the rival supermarket chains has plans to sell beer for really, really cheap.
This is not the first time that the Australian supermarket industry duopoly has resulted in product...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Mar 18th, 2011 | 28 comments
It used to be so easy. In recent decades, controlling the bogan’s retail habits was as simple as spending a few million dollars on an advertising campaign on commercial television, and inviting television cameras to film other bogans trying to kick the front door of the shop in at 5am on Boxing Day. Even the advent of discount airlines and the associated rise in Phuket-sourced fake clothing and DVDs didn’t crack a mention at the boardroom tables of Australia’s largest retailers. But things have indeed changed.
They’ve changed to the extent that Gerry Harvey and Solomon Lew had to disrupt their...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Mar 11th, 2011 | 4 comments
Boganomics apologies for its absence this week and will return next week.
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Mar 4th, 2011 | 31 comments
The announcement this week by the Federal Government of a fixed carbon price to be set next year, followed by an ETS has been met with the predictable ill-informed back-and-forth that we’ve come to expect from any major policy announcement, whether or not any actual information has been imparted. No doubt, the news has sparked ‘considered’ objection by various business and consumer groups, as well as the pockets of the media that enjoy reminding the bogan how tough it is doing. It has also prompted the PM to remind bogans that while there must be a price on carbon, there is no way in hell...
Posted by Boganomics in Boganomics
on Feb 25th, 2011 | 30 comments
Australia is Doing it Tough. At least this is what we are led to believe, courtesy of a chorus of political and business leaders who lean on this phrase any time they wish to be seen to understand the traumas that Australians, bogan and non-bogan alike, face on a daily basis. We are constantly told about rising electricity prices, rising food prices, Great Big New Taxes and how others are Doing it Tough; of course, the bogan population knows that it is a better battler than others who are Doing it Tough, so it will squeal futilely into the void that times are hard.
Years of high interest rates since...
