6 ms·

Australians: Do you think it’s cultural, economic, or policy?

by orzig 4y ago

top_post 4y ago
Literally all of the above.
dragonsky67 4y ago
I think as an Australian, it's a bit of each. There is not a great tradition amongst most Australians of trying to "Make it Big.". The Australian dream has been the house on the 1/4 acre block, not making millions in a Silicon Valley style buyout. Add to that the poor regard for those who are seen to be exploiting others for their personal gain and a strong dose of "Tall Poppy Syndrome" where the populous tries to tear down people who seem to be getting too big for their boots and you have a place where American style entrepreneurism is not encouraged. That said, we tend to celebrate those who step ahead in business, but do it in a way that supports their workers and community.
- HappyTypist 4y ago
  How can you even buy a 1/4 acre house without making millions? Those go for $2-5 million in Sydney.
  - dragonsky67 4y ago
    You are so correct, property ownership is now just a dream, however I stand by the cultural inertia of home ownership rather than "making it big" as being an underlying driver in peoples minds. Why else would people take up mortgages at very low interest rates that will be impossible for them to make payments when the interest rates start to rise as they have started to do. My kids (low 20's) still seem to dream that owning a home (well at least having a mortgage) is something that they can aspire to on a normal wage. The one who has given up on this idea is now tending towards "not playing" as being a logical decision with regards to economic participation, and to be honest who could argue with them.
  - cgio 4y ago
    As an immigrant to Australia, the dream is now being able to rent it. Cannot say that I feel that there is tall poppy at work, things can be quite creative and competitive. Schools do give that feeling of subdued expectations. I’d say education is the key factor for subpar performance, with very limited focus on academic achievement and inter generational education segregation partially built into the system. Australia beats significantly below its weight education wise. Weather, language, affluence would have you expect at least a couple globally leading universities. They are good, but nowhere near where they could be, as they focused on the easy money of attracting Chinese students just on the basis of proximity and language. With this source drying up, I see many academics I knew leaving the country (5 out of 5 is anecdotal and explicitly correlated, but hard to not take it seriously).
    - paranoidrobot 4y ago
      > the dream is now being able to rent it I'm not sure that's the dream. For me it's a massive cause of anxiety and recurring stress. I've been renting for my entire adult life in NSW. Despite NSW (and Australia in general) having pretty decent tenant protections - it's getting increasingly difficult to find a landlord/real-estate agent who isn't trying to just outright screw their tenants, because they can get away with it. - Constantly pushing rental rates, at absolutely every opportunity. Owning rental property is no longer just a solid investment that'll pay itself off, no, they're pushing the whole the-most-the-market-will-bear aspect. - Forcing use of rental payment platforms that are privacy invasive and charge additional fees (rather than just free direct-deposit) - Completely ignoring basic tenant requests, unless you force their hand. - Outright abusive and even unlawful contracts and if you protest - well fuck you, find somewhere else to live. You're never able to be totally secure, because landlords are able to just toss you out, no reason or cause - or able to construct causes if you're able to protest them.
      - cgio 4y ago
        I was tongue in cheek. I was just issued a notice to vacate with no grounds a week ago, so believe me I am with you. And no, apparently tenant protection is not decent at all. European countries are much better in tenant protection.
px1999 4y ago
All three. Culturally, tall poppy syndrome prevents successful people from showing their success, and it is seen as a massive problem to fail. These two things alone make up a pretty chilling force. You have few good local VCs (though maybe I'm out of the loop), a tiny stock market that doesn't "get" tech and a high cost of living/wage expectation. At a policy level our economy's geared to property so what money there is goes there, a panel system for government which results in big overseas cos getting a huge edge and general low grade corruption/nepotism which makes the playing field less even.
- _carbyau_ 4y ago
  I don't see the "Tall Poppy syndrome" thing so much anymore. People don't get "cut" simply for being good at what they do. I see it as a combination of: - smack talk. Which if you are that good in your game you will expect. - an assumption you screwed over someone - or many people. You have to demonstrate you are not an arsehole. Until then, if you are successful, it will be assumed you probably are.
  - dragonsky67 4y ago
    I think this highlights one of the major differences between Australia and the US, in the US there appears to be some tolerance to arseholes as long as they are bringing in the $$. In Australia, the arseholes tend to get kicked regardless of how wealthy they are, in fact the more wealthy the bigger the target. In general it appears that bribery (in it's many forms) is less than in the US, wealth in and of itself does not impress people.
HappyTypist 4y ago
47% taxes above A$180k/yr (US$125k/yr). Very little loopholes like in the US that allow you to reduce your tax paid. So considerably less monetary incentive to 'make it big'. For entrepreneurs who want to do that, why not move to the USA and come back to Australia when you want to settle down and have a family?
- entangledqubit 4y ago
  Is the entrepreneurial equity tax picture the same? In the US, it's all about the capital gains rate. Australia appears to have a similar setup where gains from an asset held for more than a year are taxed at half the rate. That would bring it in line with the US rate. Even for the raw income tax rate you cite, any place paying the really high salaries, historically, has been at a similar rate.
joeldo 4y ago
Personally a big factor has been cost of living. Housing prices are out of control in Australia, especially eastern capital cities, and servicing mortgage/rent without a stable salary requires a lot of planning without a grant. The result is that unless you are able to acquire funding, you result to trying to getting something built outside of your job, which is much more difficult to pull off successfully with the limited time available.
- dragonsky67 4y ago
  Australia's population has always been concentrated around the capital cities with good services and reasonable facilities. Rural centres have been growing, but due to reduced services, remoteness and in some cases climatic issues have not been attractive as homes for businesses that are not based on the surrounding industry. In the capitals the cost of housing in inner suburbs (say 1 hour commute) have increased by an order of magnitude or more over the last 20 years with the ability to develop new outer suburbs reaching the limits of geographical constraints and commute distance. With the growth in remote work and working from home, I think we're starting to see a housing boom in the more remote centres as people sell up in the big cities and go bush... Unfortunately this is then leaving the remote locals being unable to afford accommodation. The entire housing market is ripe for disruption, especially if we don't want to see a lot of younger people living out of the back of cars or vans.
  - joeldo 4y ago
    Yes completely agree. - The entire housing market is ripe for disruption, especially if we don't want to see a lot of younger people living out of the back of cars or vans. What kind of disruption are you referring to here? Policy level (I agree) or something else? Curious to hear your thoughts on this.
    - dragonsky67 4y ago
      The concept of housing is changing. Many retired and near retired are selling up their houses and taking to the road permanently in caravans and finding that as long as they are careful their costs are vastly reduced and as long as they don't travel too far and burn too much fuel. This option obviously has limitations and is dependent upon health and the ability to fund the equipment required, however for many it's a way of spending a healthy retirement whilst also feeling like they are achieving something. The added bonus is that these people are spending time and money in more remote areas, providing much needed income to local businesses. Remote area councils, understanding the need are providing places for these Grey nomads to free camp at little or no cost. Facilities may be provided, but most of the travellers carry everything they need with them, just needing somewhere to park. There is currently a movement amongst younger people towards "Van Life". Unlike their older brethren they are not normally running around in caravans, but tend towards self contained vans or small busses. They are taking up a nomadic lifestyle moving between jobs as they become available, many servicing the needs of the Grey Nomads. In a very pragmatic way, this is a way of moving "homeless living out of a car" into a lifestyle choice. I can well imagine how a young employed person or couple, faced with oppressive housing costs could decide to live in a small van in the city, moving around each day or two and with a bit of stealth living from their vehicle. This is what is happening now, and at the moment, it's not causing too many problems and in fact with regard to the Grey Nomads is helping to move money into remote areas. So what does the future hold... We're going to see more and more people, young and old being forced to hit the road, we're going to see an increase in a nomadic workforce, we're going to see the facilities (free camps) provided in remote areas become more stressed as more and more people use them, resulting in calls to shut them down. Now we have a bunch of people on the road with limited funds and no legal place to spend the night. So what is needed? Younger people need a roof over their heads. they need somewhere to store their goods and cook their meals. They want safety and some degree of comfort. They want flexibility of being able to move accommodation easily as and when jobs or life requires. The need access public transport and services so that they can get and keep their jobs. They don't need 5 star accommodation. At the moment the options for a young person are: Live with their parents, Life with their friends in a shared house, Live in a rented room with somebody else, Rent a unit, Rent a house, live out the back of their car/van as described above. Most of these are starting to be, or are already not affordable (or even accessible) to young people unless they are very lucky or earning a high wage. Given that the traditional 4 bedroom brick veneer on a 1/4 acre block is not even a pipe dream for most younger people what are the other options. Seems to me that there is a lot of inner city office space that is currently massively under occupied. In most cases these spaces are designed to be easily remodelled and could be turned into suitable accommodation. You do need to be concerned about not turning these places into ghettos, but with a little thought I think you could provide accommodation that can be occupied on a short or long term with minimal difficulty. Done right, with a AirB&B type setup you could do it in such a way as to reduce the administrative costs. Once you have that sorted, start looking at the nomads living a Van Life. You just need some space, maybe install some toilets/showers pay a resident to keep the place clean and charge a small rental for somewhere for people to park their caravan, car or van. I'm sure this is not anywhere as simple as I make out, you have to deal with zoning laws, tenancy laws, insurance and compliance, but all you need is to get some example sites approved by council and a desire to have them succeed. What is really needed is an understanding that they don't need to extract every $$ possible from their tenants, working with them to ensure that they feel respected and that they will respect the space they are living in.
yawnxyz 4y ago
Australia is very much what I imagine the US was like when there was a strong "middle class". Middle class living is fairly attainable here and it's REALLY comfortable. The train/rail/bus system gets you to beaches and national parks. Even with fairly low grant-funded salaries we can afford to dine out, even though it's fairly expensive, bc we don't have car and other expenses we had in the US. It's a lot like Canadian living — the comfort kind of lulls you into complacency. We were joking that while US startups optimize for product growth, Aussies optimize for work life balance. Because of taxes, even if you have a really high salary, you don't end up pocketing THAT much more money, so there's a negative incentive to work really hard. You kind of get punished for it. And yes, housing is really expensive — my partner and I live in a 1br apartment in the Inner West for AUD$2k/mo, but the costs are comparable to American cities. Everywhere is walkable/bikable though.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  > Middle class living is fairly attainable here and it's REALLY comfortable. That is not going to last very long. High interest rates will pop the Japanese style property bubble.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- paranoidrobot 4y ago
  > The train/rail/bus system gets you to beaches and national parks. This is very much a capital-city-centric view, and maybe a few larger cities adjacent to the capitals. Live much outside of the cities, and your ability to get anywhere with PT drops off rapidly.
strken 4y ago
Specifically for tech entrepreneurship, the E-3 visa (to the US) is really easy to get because we never exhaust our quota, US capital markets have been much more willing to hand out cash, and there's a long tradition of any vaguely successful Australian tech startup moving overseas.
mickael-kerjean 4y ago
As a french who live in Australia, it was amazing for me to see you could decide to start a company a Friday at lunch time and make your first invoice 2 hours later in the same day. The barrier to entry is quite low in Australia, if you earn x you pay y in tax, your accountant will just help you lower y. In France, a simple payslip can't be understood easily, it's like the government is asking you to understand their mess before you can do anything. As a result, all the people I know of in France who start a company complain on the system whereas that's not the case in Australia.
cjbgkagh 4y ago
Australians are insanely housing obsessed. It was the only way people made money for a long long time. Even worse, if you missed out on buying a property then you're considered to be doomed to poverty as rents get ever more crippling. What little entrepreneurship is left is actually funded by property winfalls. With rate rises it'll all go to hell. I don't think Australians know what they're in for.
dcx 4y ago
Something nobody has so far is the resource curse [1]. If you compare life in countries with and without this feature you can really feel the difference; it's like a black hole that distorts the reward curve in innumerable ways. (For example, mining projects are typically huge and need lots of workers at certain skill bands, and present an easy target for government attention, which has flow-on cultural effects, etc) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
barrysteve 4y ago
Cultural and economic. We were once described as the "lucky country" which was used to encapsulate advantages Australia benefited from naturally, like distance from problems elsewhere in the world, great weather and natural resources. The origin of that label was a 1964 book The Lucky Country by Donald Horne where the author points out that: Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise. Horne observed that Australia "showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society." When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.' I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a British derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never 'earned' our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits. These quotes hopefully show the underlying Australian attitude through a 1964 lens. All these criticisms are roughly speaking true, though the quality issue is not one of them. Australians can achieve high levels of quality and precision when needed, but it depends on what's 'needed'. The book The Australian Ugliness by Robin Boyd from 1960, also describes a difficulty in Australians performing economic tasks like Art that are not strictly speaking useful or tasks which have risks outside the normal business mode. Most Australians decline to recognize the patronage in the British and American attitude in such enterprises as Vogue Australia or the Holden car, and do not wish to be reminded of the facts that their country is still known abroad as an artistic and intellectual desert, and that they themselves would never be taken seriously without their denying to some extent their Australian upbringing and background, and that highly talented Australians in any of the non-useful fields of art or science have to face a dramatic decision early in their careers. They can stay here in easy-going comfort with their talent and their frustrations both working at half pressure, or they may wrench themselves from their own country in order to develop themselves. The necessity to leave Australia to achieve "full pressure" artistic or talented work, is the most important part of his criticism. Passionate, heart felt, anger and fear driven action you can see in the Americas, does not result in economic activity over here in the same way. Passion and "whims" are more likely to guide an Aussie into the desert, loose and lost in impotent landscape that cannot form a feedback loop to success. There are no Great Plains to manifest destiny across. From day one of the First Fleet landing in Australia, creating a survivable colony was a hard won enterprise where getting the basics like agriculture and resources in place was filled with setback and difficultly every step of the way. The interior land may be full of mineral resources, but sustainable living areas are far fewer than needed to support flights of fancy. So we stick to rivers and lakes on the coast. A naturalistic instinct for sticking to peaceful relationships and useful business has stuck in the heart. The kind of passionate, determined, self-motivated desire for risk taking you see in the USA for nearly any idea you can dream up, is difficult to pull off in Australia. You can't burn relationships here at the cost of a fanciful dream. You can't demand everybody serve your passion in an instant. The economy in Aus is setup to keep the useful businesses going. High-energy, fast-paced startups that need some novel and specific item delivered yesterday, or thousands of man-hours of overtime demanded in the moment to solve a novel problem, is going to struggle badly. The government's stability, centralization and influence over the culture, causes an attitude of wait-and-validate to novel problems and otherwise sticking to tried and true conventions. The USA has a massive advantage in startups over the rest of the world, it can run them like an economic war. Australian startups are more frequently nurtured into existence, if at all, and have a more narrow window of actionable appeal to locals. If you want to innovate you have to go overseas, as can be seen with the international Aussie successes and all the local small startups that make it big when bought out by American companies or move operations overseas. If you want to re-implement a tried and true idea into a solid and safe business, you do it in Australia.

Australians: Do you think it’s cultural, economic, or policy?

by orzig 4y ago

Australians: Do you think it’s cultural, economic, or policy?

top_post 4y ago

Literally all of the above.

dragonsky67 4y ago

I think as an Australian, it's a bit of each. There is not a great tradition amongst most Australians of trying to "Make it Big.". The Australian dream has been the house on the 1/4 acre block, not making millions in a Silicon Valley style buyout. Add to that the poor regard for those who are seen to be exploiting others for their personal gain and a strong dose of "Tall Poppy Syndrome" where the populous tries to tear down people who seem to be getting too big for their boots and you have a place where American style entrepreneurism is not encouraged. That said, we tend to celebrate those who step ahead in business, but do it in a way that supports their workers and community.

HappyTypist 4y ago
How can you even buy a 1/4 acre house without making millions? Those go for $2-5 million in Sydney.
- dragonsky67 4y ago
  You are so correct, property ownership is now just a dream, however I stand by the cultural inertia of home ownership rather than "making it big" as being an underlying driver in peoples minds. Why else would people take up mortgages at very low interest rates that will be impossible for them to make payments when the interest rates start to rise as they have started to do. My kids (low 20's) still seem to dream that owning a home (well at least having a mortgage) is something that they can aspire to on a normal wage. The one who has given up on this idea is now tending towards "not playing" as being a logical decision with regards to economic participation, and to be honest who could argue with them.
- cgio 4y ago
  As an immigrant to Australia, the dream is now being able to rent it. Cannot say that I feel that there is tall poppy at work, things can be quite creative and competitive. Schools do give that feeling of subdued expectations. I’d say education is the key factor for subpar performance, with very limited focus on academic achievement and inter generational education segregation partially built into the system. Australia beats significantly below its weight education wise. Weather, language, affluence would have you expect at least a couple globally leading universities. They are good, but nowhere near where they could be, as they focused on the easy money of attracting Chinese students just on the basis of proximity and language. With this source drying up, I see many academics I knew leaving the country (5 out of 5 is anecdotal and explicitly correlated, but hard to not take it seriously).
  - paranoidrobot 4y ago
    > the dream is now being able to rent it I'm not sure that's the dream. For me it's a massive cause of anxiety and recurring stress. I've been renting for my entire adult life in NSW. Despite NSW (and Australia in general) having pretty decent tenant protections - it's getting increasingly difficult to find a landlord/real-estate agent who isn't trying to just outright screw their tenants, because they can get away with it. - Constantly pushing rental rates, at absolutely every opportunity. Owning rental property is no longer just a solid investment that'll pay itself off, no, they're pushing the whole the-most-the-market-will-bear aspect. - Forcing use of rental payment platforms that are privacy invasive and charge additional fees (rather than just free direct-deposit) - Completely ignoring basic tenant requests, unless you force their hand. - Outright abusive and even unlawful contracts and if you protest - well fuck you, find somewhere else to live. You're never able to be totally secure, because landlords are able to just toss you out, no reason or cause - or able to construct causes if you're able to protest them.
    - cgio 4y ago
      I was tongue in cheek. I was just issued a notice to vacate with no grounds a week ago, so believe me I am with you. And no, apparently tenant protection is not decent at all. European countries are much better in tenant protection.

px1999 4y ago

All three. Culturally, tall poppy syndrome prevents successful people from showing their success, and it is seen as a massive problem to fail. These two things alone make up a pretty chilling force. You have few good local VCs (though maybe I'm out of the loop), a tiny stock market that doesn't "get" tech and a high cost of living/wage expectation. At a policy level our economy's geared to property so what money there is goes there, a panel system for government which results in big overseas cos getting a huge edge and general low grade corruption/nepotism which makes the playing field less even.

_carbyau_ 4y ago
I don't see the "Tall Poppy syndrome" thing so much anymore. People don't get "cut" simply for being good at what they do. I see it as a combination of: - smack talk. Which if you are that good in your game you will expect. - an assumption you screwed over someone - or many people. You have to demonstrate you are not an arsehole. Until then, if you are successful, it will be assumed you probably are.
- dragonsky67 4y ago
  I think this highlights one of the major differences between Australia and the US, in the US there appears to be some tolerance to arseholes as long as they are bringing in the $$. In Australia, the arseholes tend to get kicked regardless of how wealthy they are, in fact the more wealthy the bigger the target. In general it appears that bribery (in it's many forms) is less than in the US, wealth in and of itself does not impress people.

HappyTypist 4y ago

47% taxes above A$180k/yr (US$125k/yr). Very little loopholes like in the US that allow you to reduce your tax paid. So considerably less monetary incentive to 'make it big'. For entrepreneurs who want to do that, why not move to the USA and come back to Australia when you want to settle down and have a family?

entangledqubit 4y ago
Is the entrepreneurial equity tax picture the same? In the US, it's all about the capital gains rate. Australia appears to have a similar setup where gains from an asset held for more than a year are taxed at half the rate. That would bring it in line with the US rate. Even for the raw income tax rate you cite, any place paying the really high salaries, historically, has been at a similar rate.

joeldo 4y ago

Personally a big factor has been cost of living. Housing prices are out of control in Australia, especially eastern capital cities, and servicing mortgage/rent without a stable salary requires a lot of planning without a grant. The result is that unless you are able to acquire funding, you result to trying to getting something built outside of your job, which is much more difficult to pull off successfully with the limited time available.

dragonsky67 4y ago
Australia's population has always been concentrated around the capital cities with good services and reasonable facilities. Rural centres have been growing, but due to reduced services, remoteness and in some cases climatic issues have not been attractive as homes for businesses that are not based on the surrounding industry. In the capitals the cost of housing in inner suburbs (say 1 hour commute) have increased by an order of magnitude or more over the last 20 years with the ability to develop new outer suburbs reaching the limits of geographical constraints and commute distance. With the growth in remote work and working from home, I think we're starting to see a housing boom in the more remote centres as people sell up in the big cities and go bush... Unfortunately this is then leaving the remote locals being unable to afford accommodation. The entire housing market is ripe for disruption, especially if we don't want to see a lot of younger people living out of the back of cars or vans.
- joeldo 4y ago
  Yes completely agree. - The entire housing market is ripe for disruption, especially if we don't want to see a lot of younger people living out of the back of cars or vans. What kind of disruption are you referring to here? Policy level (I agree) or something else? Curious to hear your thoughts on this.
  - dragonsky67 4y ago
    The concept of housing is changing. Many retired and near retired are selling up their houses and taking to the road permanently in caravans and finding that as long as they are careful their costs are vastly reduced and as long as they don't travel too far and burn too much fuel. This option obviously has limitations and is dependent upon health and the ability to fund the equipment required, however for many it's a way of spending a healthy retirement whilst also feeling like they are achieving something. The added bonus is that these people are spending time and money in more remote areas, providing much needed income to local businesses. Remote area councils, understanding the need are providing places for these Grey nomads to free camp at little or no cost. Facilities may be provided, but most of the travellers carry everything they need with them, just needing somewhere to park. There is currently a movement amongst younger people towards "Van Life". Unlike their older brethren they are not normally running around in caravans, but tend towards self contained vans or small busses. They are taking up a nomadic lifestyle moving between jobs as they become available, many servicing the needs of the Grey Nomads. In a very pragmatic way, this is a way of moving "homeless living out of a car" into a lifestyle choice. I can well imagine how a young employed person or couple, faced with oppressive housing costs could decide to live in a small van in the city, moving around each day or two and with a bit of stealth living from their vehicle. This is what is happening now, and at the moment, it's not causing too many problems and in fact with regard to the Grey Nomads is helping to move money into remote areas. So what does the future hold... We're going to see more and more people, young and old being forced to hit the road, we're going to see an increase in a nomadic workforce, we're going to see the facilities (free camps) provided in remote areas become more stressed as more and more people use them, resulting in calls to shut them down. Now we have a bunch of people on the road with limited funds and no legal place to spend the night. So what is needed? Younger people need a roof over their heads. they need somewhere to store their goods and cook their meals. They want safety and some degree of comfort. They want flexibility of being able to move accommodation easily as and when jobs or life requires. The need access public transport and services so that they can get and keep their jobs. They don't need 5 star accommodation. At the moment the options for a young person are: Live with their parents, Life with their friends in a shared house, Live in a rented room with somebody else, Rent a unit, Rent a house, live out the back of their car/van as described above. Most of these are starting to be, or are already not affordable (or even accessible) to young people unless they are very lucky or earning a high wage. Given that the traditional 4 bedroom brick veneer on a 1/4 acre block is not even a pipe dream for most younger people what are the other options. Seems to me that there is a lot of inner city office space that is currently massively under occupied. In most cases these spaces are designed to be easily remodelled and could be turned into suitable accommodation. You do need to be concerned about not turning these places into ghettos, but with a little thought I think you could provide accommodation that can be occupied on a short or long term with minimal difficulty. Done right, with a AirB&B type setup you could do it in such a way as to reduce the administrative costs. Once you have that sorted, start looking at the nomads living a Van Life. You just need some space, maybe install some toilets/showers pay a resident to keep the place clean and charge a small rental for somewhere for people to park their caravan, car or van. I'm sure this is not anywhere as simple as I make out, you have to deal with zoning laws, tenancy laws, insurance and compliance, but all you need is to get some example sites approved by council and a desire to have them succeed. What is really needed is an understanding that they don't need to extract every $$ possible from their tenants, working with them to ensure that they feel respected and that they will respect the space they are living in.

yawnxyz 4y ago

Australia is very much what I imagine the US was like when there was a strong "middle class". Middle class living is fairly attainable here and it's REALLY comfortable. The train/rail/bus system gets you to beaches and national parks. Even with fairly low grant-funded salaries we can afford to dine out, even though it's fairly expensive, bc we don't have car and other expenses we had in the US. It's a lot like Canadian living — the comfort kind of lulls you into complacency. We were joking that while US startups optimize for product growth, Aussies optimize for work life balance. Because of taxes, even if you have a really high salary, you don't end up pocketing THAT much more money, so there's a negative incentive to work really hard. You kind of get punished for it. And yes, housing is really expensive — my partner and I live in a 1br apartment in the Inner West for AUD$2k/mo, but the costs are comparable to American cities. Everywhere is walkable/bikable though.

cjbgkagh 4y ago
> Middle class living is fairly attainable here and it's REALLY comfortable. That is not going to last very long. High interest rates will pop the Japanese style property bubble.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
paranoidrobot 4y ago
> The train/rail/bus system gets you to beaches and national parks. This is very much a capital-city-centric view, and maybe a few larger cities adjacent to the capitals. Live much outside of the cities, and your ability to get anywhere with PT drops off rapidly.

strken 4y ago

Specifically for tech entrepreneurship, the E-3 visa (to the US) is really easy to get because we never exhaust our quota, US capital markets have been much more willing to hand out cash, and there's a long tradition of any vaguely successful Australian tech startup moving overseas.

mickael-kerjean 4y ago

As a french who live in Australia, it was amazing for me to see you could decide to start a company a Friday at lunch time and make your first invoice 2 hours later in the same day. The barrier to entry is quite low in Australia, if you earn x you pay y in tax, your accountant will just help you lower y. In France, a simple payslip can't be understood easily, it's like the government is asking you to understand their mess before you can do anything. As a result, all the people I know of in France who start a company complain on the system whereas that's not the case in Australia.

cjbgkagh 4y ago

Australians are insanely housing obsessed. It was the only way people made money for a long long time. Even worse, if you missed out on buying a property then you're considered to be doomed to poverty as rents get ever more crippling. What little entrepreneurship is left is actually funded by property winfalls. With rate rises it'll all go to hell. I don't think Australians know what they're in for.

dcx 4y ago

Something nobody has so far is the resource curse [1]. If you compare life in countries with and without this feature you can really feel the difference; it's like a black hole that distorts the reward curve in innumerable ways. (For example, mining projects are typically huge and need lots of workers at certain skill bands, and present an easy target for government attention, which has flow-on cultural effects, etc) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

barrysteve 4y ago

Cultural and economic. We were once described as the "lucky country" which was used to encapsulate advantages Australia benefited from naturally, like distance from problems elsewhere in the world, great weather and natural resources. The origin of that label was a 1964 book The Lucky Country by Donald Horne where the author points out that: Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise. Horne observed that Australia "showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society." When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.' I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a British derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never 'earned' our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits. These quotes hopefully show the underlying Australian attitude through a 1964 lens. All these criticisms are roughly speaking true, though the quality issue is not one of them. Australians can achieve high levels of quality and precision when needed, but it depends on what's 'needed'. The book The Australian Ugliness by Robin Boyd from 1960, also describes a difficulty in Australians performing economic tasks like Art that are not strictly speaking useful or tasks which have risks outside the normal business mode. Most Australians decline to recognize the patronage in the British and American attitude in such enterprises as Vogue Australia or the Holden car, and do not wish to be reminded of the facts that their country is still known abroad as an artistic and intellectual desert, and that they themselves would never be taken seriously without their denying to some extent their Australian upbringing and background, and that highly talented Australians in any of the non-useful fields of art or science have to face a dramatic decision early in their careers. They can stay here in easy-going comfort with their talent and their frustrations both working at half pressure, or they may wrench themselves from their own country in order to develop themselves. The necessity to leave Australia to achieve "full pressure" artistic or talented work, is the most important part of his criticism. Passionate, heart felt, anger and fear driven action you can see in the Americas, does not result in economic activity over here in the same way. Passion and "whims" are more likely to guide an Aussie into the desert, loose and lost in impotent landscape that cannot form a feedback loop to success. There are no Great Plains to manifest destiny across. From day one of the First Fleet landing in Australia, creating a survivable colony was a hard won enterprise where getting the basics like agriculture and resources in place was filled with setback and difficultly every step of the way. The interior land may be full of mineral resources, but sustainable living areas are far fewer than needed to support flights of fancy. So we stick to rivers and lakes on the coast. A naturalistic instinct for sticking to peaceful relationships and useful business has stuck in the heart. The kind of passionate, determined, self-motivated desire for risk taking you see in the USA for nearly any idea you can dream up, is difficult to pull off in Australia. You can't burn relationships here at the cost of a fanciful dream. You can't demand everybody serve your passion in an instant. The economy in Aus is setup to keep the useful businesses going. High-energy, fast-paced startups that need some novel and specific item delivered yesterday, or thousands of man-hours of overtime demanded in the moment to solve a novel problem, is going to struggle badly. The government's stability, centralization and influence over the culture, causes an attitude of wait-and-validate to novel problems and otherwise sticking to tried and true conventions. The USA has a massive advantage in startups over the rest of the world, it can run them like an economic war. Australian startups are more frequently nurtured into existence, if at all, and have a more narrow window of actionable appeal to locals. If you want to innovate you have to go overseas, as can be seen with the international Aussie successes and all the local small startups that make it big when bought out by American companies or move operations overseas. If you want to re-implement a tried and true idea into a solid and safe business, you do it in Australia.