Quote:
Originally Posted by dazzling
One thing I have noticed about Australia is there are no factories, at least not what I can see. Its really weird. In fact, the only thing the economy seems to have is mining. You walk into a shop and everything is made overseas, nothing in Australia. Everyone you speak to seems to be getting some sort of welfare from the government. Maybe im wrong here...but is this a recipe for disaster?
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You are correct.
Once upon a time Australia was one of the worlds largest manufacturers of Radios, we used to manufacture televisions here, we also used to manufacture many other things here. Now we don't. For most of our history, other than our short lived manufacturing booms which died off in the 1970's, we have lived off the sheep's back, in other words we lived off exports of primary production.
As mineral resources grew in value and large deposits of iron ore were exploited we grew into a country which lives largely off mining income. We also have a large scientific, research base, however most innovation ends up going overseas for exploitation.
When the day comes that the last ounce of iron ore is pulled out of the ground, we are fucked.