And I lived in 'ole in road, I did !Probably not LW as if you could pay your rent then in most cases a house payment would have been less ? I think every average Joe out there has had the ups and downs in life, at around 15 years of age I lived on a can of baked beans for each three days for months on end. Didn't even have 10 cents to catch a tram to work but the plus side was, it toughened me up for the hard times life threw at me in later years. Then when I relate it to situations such as what the people in Ukraine - Turkey are enduring at this present time, it all becomes very minor by comparison.
I think your last sentence gives perspective - we have an extremely wealthy population on average (or median!) and very high standard of living - taking much longer to buy a house is not everything in life, we are not living in tents with insufficient food. We have a low poverty level (it is tough if you are poor here, but except for a tiny percentage who slip through the cracks, it is mainly tough relative to other Australians, not relative to most of the world).
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And our life spans are the longest in the world.
We need to focus more on that tiny minority - and on happiness of the population (though we are about 10th in the world for happiness of our population, which is not bad). A feeling of security rather than income level is probably important with happiness (and of course lack of wars, ethnic conflicts etc). The knowledge that your children will get a reasonable education, that you will get medical treatment, that you won't be likely to live on the street in old age). I think medical is the one we must not let slip, the others are fairly assured. We can find faults, but overall we do fairly well.
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