THE "good" economic growth figures for the   September quarter capture a simple, brutal reality about today's, and even more, tomorrow's Australia: after the resources boom we are getting poorer.
It is a reality which is simply not widely appreciated - understandably, in the parallel context of million-dollar ordinary suburban homes; and indeed is being both masked and actually offset to some degree by exactly the widespread "cashing in" of such Tattslotto-style windfalls.
But it is a reality which ultimately overrides one-off property profits and whether we recognise it or not, whether we are prepared to accept it or not, will set the parameters for just about everything in our lives - from jobs and wages, through government finances and the ability to spend on public services, and on to the whole tax debate. 
Tax cuts? Fuggedaboutit. Tax reform? Equals tax increases, whether by bracket creep, an increase in the GST (or its bastard sibling, a carbon tax/emissions trading scheme) or more probably both.
There's a seeming contradiction or paradox in the GDP figures. We continue to record relatively strong growth in the economy. That's, of course, "relative" to other developed economies which are barely staying out of recession. And why they've been given zero interest rates by their desperate, clueless central banks.
And isn't economic growth supposed to be what "it's" all about? Growth boosts incomes and living standards. That's the way we got from the grinding almost universal poverty (and early deaths) of the 19th century to almost universal prosperity (and longevity) unimaginable to even kings and queens previously.
Yet right now it's become a sort of empty growth. In simple terms we are producing more but earning less; we are shipping off more and more of Western Australia to Japan and of course especially China and getting less per tonne and so more or less the same actual dollars overall.
The story is captured in the graphs. On the left is our "Terms of Trade" - the difference between the prices we get for our exports and the prices we pay for our imports.
In fact the rise and then even more spectacular rise and equally spectacular fall is almost all about the prices of our exports, and coal and iron ore in particular and even more especially iron ore. The graph on the right tracks our economic growth (GDP) which measures the volumes of what we produce, including what we export; and our national income, which is broadly, what we earn, mostly from each other but also from exports.
As commodity prices soared higher and higher through the 2000s, this flowed straight into incomes.
At the corporate level; at the peak, BHP Billiton's profit almost equalled that of the big four banks combined.
At the individual level; as wages in the west and the north rocketed and money poured into the domestic economies and on to the providers of services such as legal and accounting in Melbourne and Sydney.
And at the national level; as both corporate and personal tax revenues soared on the basis of those incomes.
We saw a dip - no, a bloody great plunge - in both, in our export prices and our national income, in 2009 when the GFC sent the developed world (apart from us) into the worst recession since the 1930s.
But both sprang back almost immediately, thanks of course to China. Commodity prices soared even higher; we had two years of spectacular growth in income, way higher than our national output.
But from 2011 our commodity prices have been on a long, relentless slide. This has coincided with very big increases in the actual volumes of coal and iron ore we are shipping, as the new mines built by BHPB, Rio Tinto, Fortescue and the others in response to those lush prices started to produce and ship.
So for the past four years we've had this "prosperity-lite prosperity". We are producing more and more; we are shipping off more and more of WA. But our incomes aren't growing.
This shows up in all, sorts of places - like wages, which are now growing at their lowest pace in 60 years and barely keeping up with (very low) inflation. So according to yesterday's figures, we recorded relatively strong growth in the economy of 2.5 per cent over the year, mostly coming from exports. Indeed in the latest quarter increased export volumes, to stress, contributed all the growth. The economy grew by 0.9 per cent; exports contributed 1 per cent growth. Indeed if we add on the contribution from imports (by falling), so-called net exports contributed 1.5 per cent of the growth.
That is to say, but for the (rising) exports and (falling) imports, the economy would actually have shrunk by 0.6 per cent in the quarter.
Yet the actual dollars we were getting for those exports hardly increased. Over the year total export income - higher volumes multiplied by lower prices - only increased by 1.3 per cent.
We are going to see more of this paradox - economic growth thanks to increased export volumes, but at best static, more likely falling incomes - as the last round of projects, those big LNG plants in Queensland, come on line. The critical thing is that 2015 and going forward is very different to 2009. We know that 2009 plunge in our national income was temporary; we also know now that there is no way that China is going to spring back so spectacularly as it did then.
The best we can hope for is that it continues to buy what we are digging and pumping out of the ground, even at lower prices.
It doesn't bear thinking about - or just maybe we should - if it actually cuts back on the volumes. It would not only mean that GDP growth line would sink (hopefully only) towards zero, but it would push the income line even further into negative territory.
As any business owner income is volume multiplied by prices. Indeed, the same applies to wages - hours (volume) multiplied by wage rate per hour (price).In that possible world, both export volumes and prices would be lower. We are going to find out through 2016 whether we are going back to that future.