Why productivity is so hard to deliver. December 6, 2024

26:41So, I'll make the comment that, was it good? Yeah. Given what it could have been and what a lot of people were expecting, it's fine. No argument. But whether it's analyzing a business or analyzing an economy, you have to look holistically. There's like 14 ,000 different metrics you've got a menu to choose from here. So, this is in the toilet. That's in the toilet. but that's in the toilet. Oh, my retail sales are a bit better. Oh, that's in the toilet. I think, you know, like, okay, I'm not breaking out the champagne here. It's all I'm saying. It's everything good and getting better, though. I'm not saying it's good either, but it just strikes me that if we do look back and go, huh, things started to get better about October, November 2024, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

27:22It's not saying everything's okay or good enough or whatever. It just feels like things have stopped getting worse, hopefully. We haven't had a negative retail sales month since March of 2024. Yeah. And the one for that was December 2023. I would expect, by the way, just a quick heads up, and speak of not forecasting, but give you another forecast. December 2022 was down on the year before. December 2023 was down on the year before. I would put a decent amount of money that December 2024 will also be down on the year before, and that's largely Black Friday sales. And we talked about that last week, but it seems likely.

27:56I mean, Black Friday was all month, as we said last week. It's been a whole – it was still going early this week, right? Yeah, I was going to say, I thought it was still going. Which is what it is. But it does seem like people are pulling forward their consumption. So that trend, just keep that in mind. As much as I'm saying things that feel like they're getting better, don't do a victory lap when we get the November data because that will be good almost certainly, but it will probably suck sales out. So last year, for example, November sales were up 2%, but December was down 2.2. In 2022, November sales were up 0.9, but December was down 1.

28:31So there's going to be a lot of put and takes between those two months. We'll look at Octobers. You really shouldn't, you should ignore November retail sales when they come out. We'll try and talk about it. I'm reasonably sure, but ignore the data. Actually, we might be on leave. We might have prerecorded that one. Ignore the data until you get the December numbers. Look at those two together. It's genuinely the only way to look at retail sales at the moment, given those seasonal changes. Yeah, and look, yeah, I think I agree with that. And just look at it in the broader context of everything else as well, I suppose.

29:00Yep. Hey, the other bit of economic data that was sort of kicked around with a lot of this GDP and retail sales number was, again, governments out there jawboning about productivity. Yeah. Can I just have a little rant on that? Go on. There's a lot of things that stick in my craw. But what it means, like just to use basic real language for a second, is you're not working hard enough. Let me unpack that a little bit. We are a 70 % services-based economy, right? And the way that they measure productivity, labor productivity, is GDP per hour worked. So we have this certain GDP amount and we've had to work a lot harder for it.

29:46and you think, well, that's not good. Why is that? And forever in a day, people have been saying, we've got to improve productivity. We've got to improve productivity. And the government, of course, the principal cheerleader on that. And we do, I'm with you there. Two points I want to make though. It's not something that you need to declare an edict for, right? I made this point before on the pod, anyone who's ever run a business, whether you've got a dog washing business out the back of your trailer or you're running a multinational company, you always want to do more with less. It's not like, oh, Jim said I should, oh, I guess I'll do that.

30:26Like, oh gosh, I was thinking that, no, obviously, like just the sheer competitive pressure and nature of business is going to always induce and incentivize people to do more with less. So it's not something that you have to tell people to do. You're not telling farmers to put the sickle away and buy a tractor. Here's an idea, guys. What you really do, you've got 100 people harvesting that field manually, maybe buy a tractor. That'd help. Should I? It's good for national productivity metrics. That's right. Okay. All right. I guess I'll do it. But only for that. Exactly. Not for my own self-interest and to be more competitive and to make more money and to be more efficient.

31:03No, I wouldn't do it for that. And to keep up with competition. No, exactly. That's right. But it's one of these terms like productivity. Productivity is like it's thrown around. It's like, do anyone actually understand what that means, right? The second point I will make while I'm putting the boot into the government is that I would argue a big part of the reason as to why productivity is falling is because you keep adding all this regulatory burden on top of people who are running a business. Like I've got part of the hours worked that you're measuring is me sitting here trying to fill out this ridiculous form on this ridiculous website that continually crashes, that doesn't have the options that I have to.

31:40So I'm spending all of this time, you know, and again, it's the road to hell is paved with good intention. You got to be careful how you frame this up because you start sounding like, oh, so we shouldn't, you know, people should be able to do anything. Like, no, I'm not saying that. Obviously, we need regulations in a lot of different areas. But when that regulation is implemented really, really badly, and again, has anyone been to a government website and tried to apply for something? It is a nightmare. The amount of times I've nearly thrown my laptop through the window because you spend four hours trying to fill this thing out.

32:16And then it goes, sorry, your session has expired. All of that stuff is lost. What? No, no, no. Back, back. It's gone? and I bet you a whole bunch of people right now listening going, uh-huh, uh-huh. And again, the reason I do it is not just to have a little bit of a whinge at bureaucratic incompetency, although any day of the week I will do that. But it is that is at least not maybe all of it, but a big part of it. So you've got someone here saying you should do this, which because I would do it anyway, and then adding work that is entirely not related to the output that I'm trying to generate here.

32:55And then you're complaining about it. And more to the point, you're saying it's your fault. You know, and it just, anyway, sticks in my craw, rant over. Well done. Temporary suspended anyway. Temporary. So I agree with almost everything you said. You know what's funny is, you know, governments are overreaching in either direction, depending on the particular political party, when those who normally are kind of okay with what they're doing kind of think that feels like it's gone a bit far, whether it's the last government of work choices, whether it's this government, the LNP when they did the work choices thing under Howard, or this mob with lots and lots of intervention.

33:30At some point you kind of go, I kind of thought you were on the right track, but you've just gone too far. Talking about saying the season of our own political destruction, it kind of feels a bit like that. I'm actually, you know, I'm pro-good regulation as you are. Yeah. And I think it's really important. But we're talking about productivity, and it goes back to the NDIS. It goes back to spending. apparently the numbers now are one in five people that's employed by the government. Now, by the way, there are more important things in productivity. As you said, there are more important things in GDP as well, quality of life.

33:56And if the government is doing stuff that makes us healthier, better, happier, and we want to pay more taxes, I'm all for that. If we have a great society, we want to all have ponies and we want the government to supply us with ponies, okay, fine, then do it, you know, if that's what we want to do. But when one in five people are employed by the government, Any growth in the government sector as a proportion of the economy, almost certainly not entirely because it's going to be exceptions, but almost entirely means less productivity. Why? Because there's not a lot of genuine output provided by government.

34:25I don't say that as a pejorative, right? They're not supposed to do that. They're supposed to provide us services or look after us or do whatever it is. The money that's going into that stuff doesn't generate economic output at the same rate as the private sector. Again, that's fine. I'm okay with that. but at some level and this is where i kind of get to the whole you know you push people who would normally support something you do do we have good relegation yeah uh is food safety important yeah okay but what what inth degree do you say actually that's probably too much and i think really recently i i feel like every time the treasure opens his mouth he's putting another rule in place and look i'm going to talk about a rule i think you should put it in place in a minute right so i'm going to absolutely say there are good rules and bad rules and i think we'll have our views on which ones are the good ones and not.

35:06But once you've got government growing - But there's trade-offs though, right? Right. And once you've got government growing as a share of the economy, it almost by definition, almost, not entirely, but almost by definition, says you're going to have lower productivity. And so we've got to make that decision, right, of the government saying, you should be more productive. By the way, we're going to hire more bureaucrats who don't produce. It's like, well, okay, but what you're really saying is we're choosing to be less productive for reasons they might completely agree with. And some is good, some is bad, I think.

35:34but they would say all is good because that's why they're doing it. That's the circumstance you create. On productivity matter, I will say one thing, which is I think you're right about the services economy problem, and that is actually the hardest part of dealing with productivity in Australia is you've got to look at the way we – the economy has grown to the service economy. Why? Because it's higher wages. That's great, right? But it's much, much, much, much, much harder. I joked about the sickles and the tractors. If you've got a physiotherapist, could they work on two people at once? No. Could they use a Theragun massage machine and make their job a bit quicker or easier?

36:06I guess. Could they give better outcomes to people? I guess. But the reality is when you do that sort of stuff, your service is just harder to improve the productivity of. Not impossible. AI is going to be a great boon to that. So it will happen. It will happen increasingly. Excel made a whole lot of accounts, clerks, unnecessary. So you can improve service's work. It's just harder to do. and it's kind of natural that productivity growth should moderate as an economy modernizes other than those big jumps. And it's kind of, I think it's worth saying that as well because - Yeah, that's true. Last one quickly.

36:40GDP, productivity is the only way you grow GDP. You know what you can do it per capita. You know what you can grow economic output is to do more with the same. Not less because you want less people, but more with the same because that way you produce more stuff. Same people, less work. Can I work 20 hours a week instead of 40? That'd be great. Yeah, but that wouldn't improve GDP per capita. It would improve living standards. And that's the point I wanted to get to, which is we talk about GDP, well, should we talk about GDP per capita? We talk about GDP per capita, and we really should be talking about the distribution of that, so the fairness of it.

37:12I'm not saying what we should do with it. I'm saying the conversation should be about that. And when we talk about GDP per capita distribution, we actually should be talking about quality of life, of which the economic measurement is just one part. And I gave that chain because we're so bloody far away from it. You can't agree with 1.1 % or 0.8%, isn't that great? I mean, I guess, but what was it per person? How fairly was it shared? Do people like the output we created? Or would they rather, to your point, work half the amount of time and actually have less output but be happier? That seems like a pretty good deal to me too.

37:45That might be worth doing. Yeah, and I think one of the other things we've got to be careful of here is that there is something called a ratchet effect. And it's a bit related to Parkinson's law, which is this notion of that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. And so you have very sensible and well-meaning ideas here. So for example, hey, all of those factories are tipping all this pollution into the river. We as a society represented by our elected officials should probably do something about that. So the government goes, yeah, let's put in an environmental protection agency of sort that will monitor this kind of stuff and prosecute it.

38:29Who's got a problem with that? I don't. Some people might. I don't. I think that's a really good idea. I'm okay with that, yeah. Great. Okay, let's do that. Oh, it turns out that, you know, you do need to protect yourself from the threat of foreign invasion. We should probably build some tanks and missiles and that. Yeah, okay, let's do that as well. You know, it'd be really cool if there was some socialized healthcare that meant that you could get adequate health protection regardless of your personal financial economic means. Yep. Again, I mean, I could pick some dumb examples, but I don't think anyone's going to disagree too much with that.

39:05But what I'm trying to get at here is where you've got to be careful is that when something is put in place, it tends to stick around. because we started this pod by talking about how there is this natural feedback mechanism in the private sector. In other words, no one likes to see us dance, so no one pays for us, so we go out of business. Again, not nobody. Maybe somebody. I don't want to close that door entirely for that sort of money, mate, but I broadly understand your point. We'll put it out there. We'll see what happens. If you would like us to dance and you want to pay$10 ,000 for that hour, let's talk.

39:38But we don't have this mechanism in the public sector. So, it does ratchet up. And so, again, it starts for the right reasons and for the best of intentions. And then even – it's not just that new services and programs get added all the time, but those departments get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And my favorite hobby horse, the Reserve Bank, is a classic case in point. Go back and read their annual statements over the last 20 years. The workforce has exploded. I can imagine, yeah. Exploded. At the same time, by the way, computing power has exploded. So in your thinking theory, you'd be able to say, well, we can get a lot more easily and do these things.

40:13Yeah, go on. Do you need 800 PhD economists? Like, what the hell are they doing? I'm making that number up, but I'm not actually – it's in that ballpark. It's in that ballpark. Well, to your rhetoric question, what are they doing? They're doing really, really important stuff they feel really good about and think is necessary. Yeah. But the question we have to ask, which I'm telling you a thunder bit, is, okay, you could do all that work, But is that work as valuable as it otherwise might sound? Are we getting value for money and the opportunity cost, which is your favourite phrase, for very good reasons?

40:44Yeah. What else could those people be doing if they weren't sitting around playing with numbers that maybe didn't have a huge impact? That's why I am somewhat sympathetic to things like DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency. I'm going to be careful of that because that's driven by a lot of ideology and a lot of nutbags. Let's be real with that. And those are the problems. But, yes, you're right. Well, same with Trump, right? No fan of Trump, but do I understand why a lot of people voted for him? Yeah. Disenfranchised, disaffected, angry, not sure what the problem is. Dude offers easy answers.

41:19I get it. I totally get it. And even if you don't necessarily believe it 100%, well, it's worth a shot because the other lot aren't offering much, so I guess that'll do. You know? And so, I guess the point I'm trying to get at here is that because of that lack of feedback mechanism here, we have to think very carefully about implementing new programs. Here's a problem. The government will fix it. It's like, okay, but just understand that that department is there forever. And in 10 years time, it's going to be 10 times the size. California, baby, yeah. And all those people who are working there are not making widgets and washing dogs and cutting hair and fixing pipes and doing all the things that happen in the real economy.

42:01And again, I've really got to be careful here because it makes you sound like some laissez-faire free market capitalist extremist. It's not that, but there is a balance. And I think on the spectrum, we're moving a little bit too far for a democratic capitalistic society where one in five jobs are now in the government. much more than it ever was what's again it's not so much where we are you can debate to the nth degree as to what the exact perfect setting is but directionally it's heading in the wrong direction and it it is it is having a consequence because all those people need to be paid all those people need to get super or you know or etc etc etc etc etc so it's it's it's just one thing that i sort of ask with people is not to sort of just jump to that which too many people do i think maybe it's just my circle where people see an outrage they see an injustice they see a failing and then the knee-jerk reaction is the government should do something about it yeah and it's just like well maybe they should but how they do something about it is super important and and and and and to your point there are opportunity costs with that is all i guess what i'm getting it i think that's right man it's kind of the point i was making before i i am normally the person who says actually, you know, we should cut government spending.

43:19I'm like, well, no, that doesn't, you know, we've got to be careful because the service is being paid for, we've got to be careful, all that kind of stuff. So I'm not only that person, right? But that's what I meant about going too far. I'm getting to the point, as you are, which is actually, those are the Department of Government officials in the US is a ridiculous thing. But the concept behind that of do we actually reckon if we did something like that here, we couldn't? Maybe save a bit of money, find a bit of waste? Yeah. And that's - Improve productivity, maybe? Maybe that would help improve productivity.

43:47And that's kind of where I think, that's why I think, again, to your point, that's why Trump gets elected. That's why, you know, those who I would normally say who are on Twitter and saying, oh, should cut government's being, oh, it's all wasted, I'm the guy going, well, I don't know about that. And I think actually at the moment, like, you know, not because I've changed politically or ideologically. And to your point, it's getting worse. There is more of it being done. And so it's kind of like at some point you end up saying, well, it's a bit like the Overton window in politics, right? It's not so much I've moved.

44:14It's just the circumstances move. So far, I end up being the guy saying, actually, yeah, that probably does make sense. We probably should look at that now. Not because Elon's doing it, not because Trump's doing it at all. But when someone says they're doing it, should we do it? It's kind of like, well, it kind of maybe feels like, yeah. For the first time in a very long time, I'm now on the, actually, let's go and look at some of that and try. Not that we shouldn't have in the past, but it just feels like, to your point, directionally and at a quantum level, again, at a size level, maybe we should do something.

44:40The pendulum just shifted too far. That's all. That's all it is. We're just saying bring it back closer to the middle. a little bit here. That's the key point. Now, having said that, I'm going to have to absolutely talk exactly out of the opposite side of my mouth. Go for it. Because I reckon it is time for a government ban on something. Uh-oh. And I think there should be a government ban. So the news this week, Pepper Money, the kind of non-bank, low-doc lender, is going to launch a 40-year mortgage. Now, I think that is just the worst thing in the world. What? You don't want people to have houses?

45:15You heartless bugger, you. Exactly. Thank you for saying bugger. You know what? So Finder, the comparison mob did some research. This is numbers, not research, just maths. And the average mortgage in Australia is$640 ,000. The average? Yeah. If you add five years to the term, you can save$183 a month, which sounds pretty good, right? you will pay, as a result of that$183 a month saving, $145 ,000 more over the life of the loan by extending it for five years. Totally believe that. And you know what they say? Those who understand compound interest earn it and those who don't understand it pay it.

45:56I don't know who said that line, but it's a beautiful line. So good. This is where it looks like you're making housing more affordable. I mean, the bank's not trying to pretend. They just want to make more money, right? If they can make$145 ,000 more interest, why would you not give someone a 40-year line? So that's where we are. It's not just the more interest. It's the more people paying the more interest too. Yes. And by the way, so that's bad enough, right? That's absolutely bad enough. Except I've said this before. Here's the thing. Let's pick a number. Let's say$3 ,000 a month. These numbers don't match the loan lengths.

46:23I haven't done the maths. But let's say you're paying$3 ,000 a month off your mortgage. And someone says, actually, you can pay$2 ,800 a month instead. Someone says, well, I'll make that try. Yeah, five years. Yeah, 145 grand. Okay, that sucks. And I don't really understand compounding. I'm an idiot for doing it. But yes, I'll take it because I want my bills this month to be a little bit lower. I absolutely get that. And I'm desperate for a house. I'm desperate for being kicked out every 12 months. I'm desperate for some idiot agent telling me that there's a weed in my front. You know, like obviously, I totally get it.

46:54Except here's what happens next. Is that person who was going to pay three grand, now paying$2 ,800, which feels like a thing. All of a sudden, it's not that. because they go to an auction and they see the price of the house. They go back to the bank manager and say, you know how I save 200 bucks a month because I went for a longer loan? If I actually paid three grand a month like I was, could I afford a more expensive house? And the bank manager goes, you know what? You actually can. You can afford to borrow more now because you're paying less, you're paying over a longer term. So instead of paying a million bucks for that house, you should be at$1.1 million.

47:32And you won't have to pay any extra than what you would have been paying if the loan length was shorter per month. So what you've actually done is you've extended the loan length. You haven't reduced anyone's outgoings, and you've pushed house prices up, making that person's life worse in all of those different ways. And I know we just talked about regulation. I know we just talked about careful what you introduce, what you don't introduce. When I was a kid, mate, you remember this, I think I'm pretty sure my first mortgage was a 25-year mortgage. It was the standard term. Everyone had a 25-year mortgage.

48:00And then it kind of crept out to 30 years. and Westpac's offering 35-year loans to apparently certain professionals. And now Pepper want to take this to 40 years. And as soon as they do, to your point, when Pepper says you can borrow more money and CBA says, well, you can't borrow as much with me, CBA doesn't have a choice but to say, well, I'll give you 40 years. They probably want to either way, but even if they didn't want to, they have no choice. And at the same time, the government's going to pay some of your deposit as well, as I understand it. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, mate. It is – anyway, so for everything we just said about bans, if I have to get rid of 15 bans and put this one in, if I have to get rid of 40 bans and put one of this one in, I would do it tomorrow.

48:42It is just – it is preying on people's innumeracy. Innumeracy and desperation. Thank you. Yeah, and desperation. Yep. And it is just – again, do I blame the banks? On one level, no, because they're in the business of making money and they're entitled to offer a loan and people are entitled to take the loan and it is what it is. You know, they're no worse than people peddling junk food or anything else. You know, you're selling a product that's crap, but you're entitled to do it as long as it's not illegal. And so the banks are doing what the banks do. And, you know, I don't love them, but I kind of blame Pepper for doing it.

49:13If they can make the loan, someone wants the loan. I don't know. Do it. But that's where I think, and again, I know we just said no more bans, no more regulation. But this one, it is a massive societal self-inflicted harm. Yeah. And we can stop it and we can not do it and we can help people not fall for either, as you say, the desperation or the innumeracy. I just – I don't think it's a difficult one, is it? Yeah. And you've got to understand who's being helped. Exactly. I'll tell you who's being helped. The person selling the house is being helped. And the bank. Yep. And the bank. Sorry. The bank?

49:48The bank's always looking after the bank. How's that for the Holy Alliance going? Yeah. But it is. And, you know, we've mentioned Steve Keen before, but he called the first home buyer's grant the first, what is he called, the vendor's grant, you know, because that's where the value accrues to. But even then, not really because, hey, my house is worth more. Woo, sold it. Fantastic. The only situation where any value accrues to you is where you downsize. Yeah. Or you move to a cheaper area. So, again, in theory, that's what should happen. But in practice, it actually doesn't. It doesn't. Like think about all the empty nesters in your own life.

50:31How many have actually gone to the two-bedroom unit? I'm sure there are some. Yeah. But I bet a huge amount of money that at least 80 % don't. And I'm not judging that as well. You know, that's your house. It's cool. But it goes to show you the nonsense of how it's not real wealth in a lot of sense here. because it makes everything harder for those who are trying to buy. They have to spend much more of their life energy in servicing that. So I'm not even getting a deposit until I'm 35. Let's be real. Yeah, right. And then I'm going to be 75 when I pay the damn thing off, right? Assuming that nothing bad happens along the way.

51:09So I'm not better off. The person who sold the house notionally has a nominally higher price, but then, well, if I'm going to move into another house or, you know, It's not going to help me as well. If anyone does benefit, it is the vendor, but it's not as much of a benefit as you might otherwise expect. And one of the real key crimes here is that we divert so much of our nations and our people's productive capacity to supporting these Easter Island statues that we call homes, which have absolutely very, very real utility value. but a massive, massive, massive, massive monetary premium. So when you buy a house, you get shelter, which is great.

51:55You get somewhere to raise a family, but you don't make anything with it. You don't do it. It's money that would, again, opportunity cost, it comes back in. This is money that someone who is 35 now, who very reasonably desires a house to live in, is now going to spend a much more significant portion of their life servicing that where they could have started a business, where they could have invested in someone else's business, where they could have spent more discretionary income in the economy and then supported another person's business in that kind of way. So, it drains money away from the kinds of things.

52:33Again, productivity here is another key as well because how is this good for productivity, right? It's such a bastardization of the system. And I don't know if regulation is the answer. You and I have, I think, take a different view on this. I tend to have the view of like, if you want to do that, you can. But if it blows up in your face, and it will blow up in your face at some point, it's on you. You'll fail. You're gone. You're not going to get bailed out. We'll protect the depositors. I'm aware of the home buyer who ends up being locked into originally by choice and then by necessity a 40-year loan because they start getting offered.

53:11I don't care about the institution at all in this case. You're right. We have different views on saving banks or not saving banks. But this one, this is not even about the banks at all for me. This is purely about turning young people wage slaves for another 10 years. Financial predation. Right. Again, it's not for the bank doing it to us. We do it to each other because it's like house price in the first instance. Is it the bank's fault? I mean, they're pretty important contributors. But if I go to the auction, you go to the auction, and I want to pay more than you, and I'm happy to pay more than you, I push your price up or you push my price up, and then that slow-moving auction around the country.

53:45Yeah, there are government actions and inactions that absolutely should be brought to bear. But my biggest concern is the 40-year mortgage. Here's the other bit, by the way, quickly, and we'll wrap this up. But you know what it also is doing? It's effectively destroying the superannuation system by stealth. Oh, yes. Good point. Because the 35-year-old who finally gets the deposit won't pay it off for 40 years. They'll pay it off for 30 years and then they'll retire and take a lump sum out of the super and finally get rid of the mortgage. So what have you done? You've effectively co-opted super to pay for housing without actually saying this is a super housing scheme.

54:18It's exactly what you've done. The other thing I would do, no, no, no. It's an exciting point. I don't want to talk about bans again. I would specifically preclude a bank from making a loan where you require anything other than the wages of that person for the remainder of their life. In other words, if you're 55, you get to put 12 years of income in that loan calculation, not their superannuation at the end of their lives. Because all we're doing is basically making that the reverse deposit. That's the lump sum at the end or the lump sum at the beginning, which eventually gets paid off the house.

54:46And so you pay off the house. You go, thank God I got my$15 million house. Now I'm on the pension. Why? Because I had to or chose to do that or the bank allowed me to or the market conditions of everyone else is doing it. So I don't have a choice. I've got to pay that amount of money, means you end up effectively siphoning off super and a larger and larger chunk of super over time. The bank should be precluded from using it as a part of their person's repayment ability. Just take it out completely. I'd actually make different changes to super, which is a whole different conversation. But that at least is what we should be doing.

55:17If we genuinely care about super, letting it be effectively just a deferred house repayment is stupid. Beware I will be pessimistic and not to try and segue into another conversation. Too late to mention Bitcoin, dude. We haven't got time. We've always got time. We've always got time for that.

55:37Let me start. I 100 % agree. Like, yes, it makes imminent sense. It won't happen, though, because of the political challenge of that. Again, it comes down to the easy wrong answer will always be preferred over the difficult right answer. Yeah, correct. And we won't talk about this. We sort of had it as a point maybe if we ran out. When will we learn? We always go, what do we talk about? And we go, oh, we put down a list of things and go, oh, is that enough? And I'm looking at that list now. I was like, oh, there's four other points on here. Correct. One of the other points was France.

56:17One of the politicians there said, gosh, this deficit's getting out of control. Things are pretty bad in France on that front. And he got turfed out, right? So that is the very hard part here because unless you get a Javier Malay or someone very extreme who sort of comes in, who somehow gets some social mandate to do something that kind of needs to be done, you're always going to get the next election. If Albo says, listen, we're going to ban this. We're not going to do that. Dutton then gets up and goes, oh, he's against homeowners and we're going to do it. and we're going to let you tap your super, and we're going to secure some of your loan.

56:55And just to flip that around in case anyone's upset that thinks I'm being anti-Dutton, flip the names, right? He says, no, no, no, we're going to try and cap this because of all the unintended consequences and how it's going to make everything worse. And then Albo goes, well, we're not. And Albo wins. So that's the diabolically tough situation here. It almost requires us as a society at large to go, yeah can we actively choose this the path that is going to suck in the early stages but we'll be better later on and no one's going to do that right so it's so that's why i just sort of despair because like while i i just so thoroughly agree with everything that you say i just the political challenge of doing that is very very very hard yeah that's right i um yeah that's a depressing when I finished, but I can't improve on that one.

57:50All you can do is start a podcast and rant every week about it. It feels better. It's better for our families, let's just say that. We get it out now. We can go on with our day thinking, I've made that point. I've ranted that way. I'm okay now. It saves our better halves from a lot of stuff, I'm sure. They still cop it. You know what Nat said to me last night? Because I was ranting and raving about something. He goes, you calm down. And in my mind, I wasn't upset. I was actually in a state of flow. I was enjoying myself. Like, this is cathartic to me. You just can't, you know, sometimes things suck and you've got to let up.

58:32It's like, yeah, but there's a row. It's not good for your blood pressure. It's not good for your blood pressure. It's not like, no, no, no, it's really good. But it's okay, I'm talking to Scott tomorrow, so I'll save you a bunch of paint. Cover there, exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, hopefully our listeners haven't been in too much pain during our conversation. Will you join me on Sunday for a Malvo? If we get to Rand Rave, then, you know, try and stop me. Easy done, dear. Let's lock it in. Until then, enjoy the first half of your weekend and full on. Cheers. The Motley Fool and people appearing in this program may have positions in the companies mentioned.

59:07General advice only. Please speak to your financial professional to understand how it may pertain to your situation. Subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener. The Motley Fool operates under Financial Services Licence 400691.