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California alone has about 14 million more people than ALL of Australia and California’s economy is bigger than ALL of Australia’s. Where’s the comparison between the two counties when just one state... pretty much kicks their butts, with both population and economy?
Do you seriously think that we are an inferior country simply because we have a much smaller population? Or that we wish to have a much bigger population? Our smaller economy is in line with our small population, which is small as we have basically no water in the interior. That is caused partly by having no significant mountains.
I agree comparisons are not valid. But if you think that we all wish to have the economic and political dominance of the US or China, you know nothing at all about us.
Do you seriously think that we are an inferior country simply because we have a much smaller population? Or that we wish to have a much bigger population? Our smaller economy is in line with our small population, which is small as we have basically no water in the interior. That is caused partly by having no significant mountains.
I agree comparisons are not valid. But if you think that we all wish to have the economic and political dominance of the US or China, you know nothing at all about us.
Absolutely not! I never said anything of the kind. My point ( like yours) was that there’s no real comparison between our two countries. I said nothing disparaging about Australia. Now I am kind of thinking that some Australians might have a chip on their shoulder. ( just kiddin)
Yet Australia (like almost all of the developed world except the US) has:
- Universal Health Care
- State mandated minimum paid vacation and sick time
- A higher minimum wage than the US (at least the federal minimum)
Our economic claim to fame is that we have had the longest run of any country without a recession. We last went into recession in 1991, twenty-eight years ago. In the global downturn of ten years ago, we had only one quarter of negative growth.
Apart from our twenty days annual leave, in addition to public holidays, we accrue long service leave if we stay with the one employer for about ten years or more.
We also have a non contributory Aged pension which is however means and assets tested. But this enables a couple who own their home and only have perhaps $200,000 in assets to collect about $35,000 (US 25k) a year.
That’s a simple concept. Small economies like Singapore shouldn’t be a factor. And no, USA is not competitive, because too much rests on import tariffs in a Dollar world economic order, an obvious sign of not competitive. It also has too much foreign dependency in critical areas like rare earth imports.
China must be number one competitive economy by far.
I think in order to be competitive, we all need to drop our wages to a dollar an hour, live out of a wooden shack, and breathe in toxic air.
The labor component of manufacturing is surprisingly small, only 5%-10%. There are lots of advantages to situating your factory in China but actually the cost of labor is only a small part of that.
There's also a lot less drug addiction, white collar crime such as embezzlement of company funds or theft of property, government mandated rules for who they can hire & fire, environmental protection, OSHA, lawsuits, insurance, etc.
Basically, they have almost none of the well meaning regulations and restrictions on businesses in the U.S. which have hobbled our ability to compete.
The flip side of the coin is that if you buy a defective product in China, and it kills your kid, you're not able to sue the company for millions of dollars. At most, you might get them to reimburse you for the funeral, and if it's an egregious defect or something nasty like that powdered milk product that damaged the kidneys of thousands of Chinese kids, the government might come in and arrest the CEO and execute him, thus scaring other companies into behaving.
Having said that, we're seeing a rebirth of manufacturing in the U.S. thanks to regulatory reform, lower taxes, and rising costs in China. Right now everyone's getting out of China not only because of the trade war but also because "made in USA" is becoming a marketing advantage again, and also automation and 3-D printing are making it more possible to make a profit here.
It also doesn't hurt that energy prices, esp. natural gas, are historically cheap in the U.S. In fact, chemicals and pharmaceuticals that depend on cheap natural gas are booming in the U.S., and plastics are coming back as well.
The biggest problem in the U.S. right now, according to many testimonials by business leaders, is lack of skilled workers. There are factories across the country screaming for workers. Half of job applicants can't even pass a drug test. What's alarming is not so much that someone smokes pot or snorts coke on weekends, but that they're too stupid to go clean for 30 days so they can pass the stupid test! Smack head!
Our economic claim to fame is that we have had the longest run of any country without a recession. We last went into recession in 1991, twenty-eight years ago. In the global downturn of ten years ago, we had only one quarter of negative growth.
Apart from our twenty days annual leave, in addition to public holidays, we accrue long service leave if we stay with the one employer for about ten years or more.
We also have a non contributory Aged pension which is however means and assets tested. But this enables a couple who own their home and only have perhaps $200,000 in assets to collect about $35,000 (US 25k) a year.
Let me start with I'm a Texan lucky enough to have visited Australia four times, once for over a month, and simply love the people and the just about every inch of Australia I've seen.
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So far as the Australian economy:
Think of The US and Australian economies as near-identical race cars, Car-USA has a RPM/rev. limiter set at 15,000 RPM while car Australia's rev. limiter is set at 12,000 RPM. Car-Australia rarely breaks down but performs sub-optimally in terms of economic output, wealth creation and employment over time.
Right now:
1). U3 unemployment in The US is roughly 30% lower than the same in Australia - this undoubtedly is partially explained by the very high minimum wage in Australia.
2). Dollar value equalized per-person US economic output is roughly 17% higher than the same in Australia.
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Reasons why Australia has avoided recession recently:
1). As noted the Australian economy purrs along with generally much higher unemployment rates over time.......this keeps inflationary pressures low.
2). Australia does not have anything like the huge moocher class that The US has. These figures cover more than just the moocher class but include the moocher classes according to The OECD SOCX Index The US in total spends 30% of GDP on social welfare, AUS 23.5%.
And the "08 bust:
1). AUS does not/did not have many (almost zero) residential subprime loans.
2). The Reserve Bank of Australia in effect is more powerful than The US Federal Reserve. Around the time banking and insurance institutions began to fail and the overnight funds market faltered in The US many low information congressional republicans (Jim Bunning and several others) fought Fed. action and stimulative government spending. The Reserve Bank in AUS within days (literally) began shoring up weaker banks, made efforts to ensure its overnight funds market remained stable and in concert with The AUS government began street level spending efforts that worked. While in The US congress dragged its feet and then President Obama's stimulative spending efforts were wildly misguided, slow, and simply didn't do much.
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Far more importantly I haven't had a Nomad - Jet Lag IPA in a long time.
I would agree with pretty much all the above post. What was good in 2008/9 was that we were all expecting to head into recession like most of the rest of the developed world. Then out came the stimulus money and people started spending; it seemed the whole country were buying flat screened televisions and every second school was building a new assembly hall. And we slowly started to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Of course the debt accrued is still being paid back. But I have always believed much of the credit of avoiding the recession was due to the Reserve Bank. And the country does have the means to pay down the debts, especially now that the government has been returned with a majority.
Of course a lot of money was lost when it was invested internationally and people still would have had to postpone retirement for a while. I think part of the reason for our unemployment rate being a bit high in the long term is that employment tends to be strongest in Sydney and Melbourne. These can be very difficult cities for some people to move to, both socially and economically.
I think people often think that if a person really wants to make a lot of money it may be easier in the US. But here it is very comfortable for people with more average aspirations.
I would agree with pretty much all the above post. What was good in 2008/9 was that we were all expecting to head into recession like most of the rest of the developed world. Then out came the stimulus money and people started spending; it seemed the whole country were buying flat screened televisions and every second school was building a new assembly hall. And we slowly started to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Of course the debt accrued is still being paid back. But I have always believed much of the credit of avoiding the recession was due to the Reserve Bank. And the country does have the means to pay down the debts, especially now that the government has been returned with a majority.
Of course a lot of money was lost when it was invested internationally and people still would have had to postpone retirement for a while. I think part of the reason for our unemployment rate being a bit high in the long term is that employment tends to be strongest in Sydney and Melbourne. These can be very difficult cities for some people to move to, both socially and economically.
I think people often think that if a person really wants to make a lot of money it may be easier in the US. But here it is very comfortable for people with more average aspirations.
I think the biggest problem with Australia is the absurdly high housing costs. I can't understand why a country with so much land would have such high housing costs. It should have the rich world's cheapest housing.
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( just kiddin) 
