Stimulating (the economy).
Trickle-down Economics in Action Words Pearl Bullivant Photo Albert Niemann As Australia’s self-appointed COVID-19 Ambassador, Pearl is proud that the people of the Eastern Suburbs have managed to cruise through the past year by employing inventive ways to ease the economic and social distress of ‘The One-Nine’. While the Western Suburbs has been wallowing in the misery of unemployment and financial distress, the good burghers of the East have been quick to take remedial and therapeutic action. Nothing can replace the joy of the annual European skiing holiday, but people have taken it on the chin and offloaded their hard-earned cash on property, boats and campervans. What is there to be depressed about? The property market is booming (thanks to the RBA’s 8 The Beast February 2021
Philip Lowe, who obviously has no idea about cause and effect), and the streets are paved with black Range Rovers and botoxed yummy mummies in P.E Nation leggings. If one is still in the depths of despair over the lifestyle limitations imposed by COVID, they can always resort to an Eastern Suburbs standard: cocaine. For those Eastern Suburbites who have outgrown the cult of Billecart-Salmon Champagne, a line of cocaine has become a cathartic alternative when goat yoga and loving-kindness meditation no longer cut it. Even New South Wales Police Commissioner Mick Fuller appreciates affluent Sydney’s cocaine obsession. Rather than shaming the wealthy and educated by making unnecessary
value judgments, Commissioner Fuller has taken the softly-softly approach, appealing to the upper middle class sensibilities by pointing out that one’s “insatiable appetite” for cocaine is fuelling gang violence in the Western Suburbs - a far more genteel alternative to pulling out the big guns and bringing out the sniffer dogs on New South Head Road. What Commissioner Fuller understands - unlike Philip Lowe - is cause and effect. The Eastern Suburbs’ cocaine obsession is trickle-down economics in action. Like rent-seeking property developers and mining executives who use corporate welfare to share their love via ‘jobs and growth’ (and destroying communities and the environment in the process), we are seeing affluent, drug-addled crazies directly contributing to the wealth of hoons in the Western Suburbs, allowing them to feed their children, build ugly McMansions in Kellyville and line the streets of Auburn with Mercedes AMG C63s, rather than bludging on Newstart and public housing. This lightening of the taxpayers’ load also trickles down to Western Suburbs builders and car dealers - a win-win for all. If it results in a few drive-by shootings in Bankstown, so be it; there is always a price to pay for economic growth, and Pearl is not seeing mass outrage over truck related road deaths or industrial deaths on building and mining sites. So, darlings, reassure yourselves while hoovering a line of cocaine on your stainless steel kitchen benchtop; if it wasn’t for the stoic Eastern Suburbs drug user eliminating the trauma of not skiing in Aspen, some sections of the Western Suburbs would be suffering in enclaves of slum and destitution. For this you should be proud.
