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Give me some figures, just out of interest.
I think you cannot really differentiate middle-class and upper-middle. I know so many retired teachers (being one myself) who have assets in the millions and also people who earn millions and spend the lot.
I don't think it is the assets acquired. Whether being a teacher is a lower middle class or middle class status is perhaps a debatable point. Possibly more the former.
Individual or household? Friend’s kids who are a teacher and a hospital physio and live at Heathcote would fit that profile. But I guess it comes down to the prestige, or lack of it, associated with their jobs and where they live.
Household. Well done to your friend's kids. I don't think it matters what job they're doing. I certainly never said it did.
I don't think it is the assets acquired. Whether being a teacher is a lower middle class or middle class status is perhaps a debatable point. Possibly more the former.
Maybe being a teacher at Sydney Grammar puts you in the middle-class whereas being a Year 1 teacher at Busby Primary gets you labelled lower-middle (even though anyone who has taught knows the younger the kids, the harder the work.)
But it is all arbitrary. Our neighbours one one side are a lab worker and a truckie. They bought the house off a doctor and a vet. The neighbours who are a lawyer and a plumber are off on a long European honeymoon. But he was telling me about some of his call-outs during the floods. Starting at 3am and finishing at 7pm. Would be quite lucrative, deservedly so.
My definition of middle/upper etc was based on nothing more than income. I couldn't care less if someone makes $250k/year cleaning toilets or being a lawyer. It was related to what sort of income one needed for a middle class lifestyle. This thread has gone down some bizarre rabbit hole of whether a person doing X qualifies as Y.
My definition of middle/upper etc was based on nothing more than income. I couldn't care less if someone makes $250k/year cleaning toilets or being a lawyer. It was related to what sort of income one needed for a middle class lifestyle. This thread has gone down some bizarre rabbit hole of whether a person doing X qualifies as Y.
Yes, enough of this! It is just that I think that the British and American definitions of class are not very similar and I wonder where we fit in.
If you stick around the CBDs then Melbourne has vastly more and taller towers now. Travel outside the CBDs around the metro areas then Sydney is considerably denser overall, with tighter streets and pockets of high density developing everywhere. So both cities kinda going in different directions.
Australia, and UK almost sound as if they have some subtle alienation. That is exactly because of technical geographic isolation from each other thousands of miles/km+ from their own homelands in another Continent. New Zealand is then much closer to Australia.
Some islands of Indonesia is actually less than 1 hour away from Australia with airplane. Very impressive! Darwin-Bali might be only 1 hour 30 minutes. Better be a direct flight from over there. lol Indonesia is very Middle East(Asian ladies wear the Hijabis traditional dress over there almost up to 80 to 100% percentage). For immigrants, how much Australian Indonesians are there? Is this one of the most popular migrants into Australia?
Australia minimum wage is higher than USA's own. $15 to $17 in San Francisco, New York City. Even less in other states/USA cities. And USA has 10X+ up the population from Australia, so the paid work opportunity might be overly saturated/with tight competition from the relative availability in Australia.
Yes, having to pay the weekly! not monthly rent, having children, car, frequent public transportation rides, International travel cost is going to make $80,000 to $120,000 AUD=$50,000 to $80,000 USD significantly less.
How much of Australian society owns a house/don't have to pay the rent? Not be surprised if up to 80%.
Also, a 10th new Question in the earlier Questionnaire Survey talk:
Australians are well travelled. What is the average number of countries visited if averaging absolutely everyone into the statistic? 17 to 23 countries? Heavy strong emphasis on Asia because much closer/easier/cheaper on airplane. Almost relatively very light connections with Middle East, Europe, Americas because of geographic isolation. No doubt much further consistent than the USA's own extreme probable average of 10 to 15 countries. With 1/3 of USA society literally going nowhere.less than 5 to 10 countries, and maybe up to 3 to 10% of the USA citizens amount actually exceeding 20 to 30 countries travelled. Australia did better.
Is New Zealand on Australia's own level?
First question: Indonesians are only the 14th largest immigrant group with around 100,000 people born there. Many are Chinese Indonesians.
2. In round figures, a third of Australians rent and one third are paying off a home. The remaining one third own their home outright. Obviously people who have only a couple of years to go on their mortgage would be under a lot less financial stress than those who bought in the peak last year.
3. No idea how many countries people have travelled to. I doubt if there are reliable statistics on that. I have been to around 50 but that includes tiny countries like Monaco and San Marino.
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