The boom in immigration and the shift in the economy from goods to services has made the normal aggregate data that the ABS measures meaningless.

Economists and policymakers use it to assess the economy, and say that everything is fine. A data point that matters most, it seems to me, is per capita household disposable income adjusted for inflation, and on that score everything is not fine at all, far from it.

As Michael Read wrote in the Financial Review last week, over the past two years Australian households have suffered the largest fall in disposable incomes in the OECD.

What’s more, on Wednesday this week we’ll learn that Australia’s 15-month per capita recession is now 18 months old, even though total annual GDP growth has been positive the whole time and is likely to be about 1 per cent in the year to June.

The struggles of Australian families are being covered up by surging population growth, but why are they struggling? Higher interest rates and taxes.

Australia is unusual in having both a very high proportion of variable rate mortgages (about 80 per cent) and income tax scales that are not indexed to inflation.

As a result of bracket creep, income tax is at a record-high 16.4 per cent of incomes and mortgage interest is approaching a record high as well.

And both of those aggregates mask individual experiences: Those who have bought a house recently are copping the biggest share of the increase in mortgage interest, and middle-income earners who aren’t negatively gearing a property, or doing other tax avoidance things, are paying most of the tax.

Tax cuts on July 1 are estimated to have increased disposable incomes by about........

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