‘We love living in a flammable, deflating, high rise dog box’

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The Domanifax machine rolls on at “Essential kids” with a profile of a happy, young FHB family:

I live in a one bedroom apartment, with my husband and toddler. Family and friends ask how can we live like this – but we are happy here. Is that so hard to comprehend? It seems it is.

The lack of housing market affordability in many of Australia’s major cities in recent times has driven many young families to adapt to smaller living spaces. The reality is most of us cannot imagine owning a Californian bungalow, Federation or Victorian style home on our incomes. Whether you’re renting or a homeowner, high density apartment living is becoming more common place.

So let me explain to why living in an one bedroom apartment with a toddler, even one who is active and running, is great.

And on it goes. Human ingenuity flourishing in a flammable, deflating, high rise dog box.

This is such a sad effort that I’m tempted to conclude that Domainfax has capitulated. It could be that the Nine takeover has robbed it of its spark. Or that the cost cutting has reached some critical tipping point past which the fire just goes out. With no Pascometer to stoke the property boiler, Ross Gittins bludgeoned into timidity on population, Peter Martin fled to The Conversation and Jess Irvine losing ballast story by story who is left to fan the dying embers of property fervour?

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The wall-to-wall observation of humourless Seinfeldian social trivia is still working hard as a great distraction across the mastheads but these are reminiscent of the string quartet perched atop the deck of the Titanic, de-anchored with the core spruik overboard, while the ship tilts ever more towards some fatal imbalance.

Even Domainfax seems robbed of macroeconomic force as this correction deepens and as the ship capsizes and sinks it seems more likely than not that it will go straight to the bottom right along with it.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.