And I lived in 'ole in road, I did !
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).
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.
