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Australia is no picnic. The main cities cluster in the top 10 most expensive places to live in the world. The Australian demographic time bomb is starting to

by brc 11y ago

Australia is no picnic. The main cities cluster in the top 10 most expensive places to live in the world. The Australian demographic time bomb is starting to go off, as well. The amount of healthcare and aged care spending is starting to take off like a rocket and this will-inevitably- lead to reductions in eligibility and payments, including what treatments are avialable from the health system. What Australia does have is a lack of a large poverty stricken underclass, mainly because of the last 50-100 years of the countries history, which includes a lot of prosperity from agriculture and mining so that just about everyone has always had a job and intergenerational poverty has not been able to get a wide hold. Those things are not guaranteed to last forever. Australia might just look like California in the 1950s right now, with a troubled future ahead.

switch007 11y ago
> and this will-inevitably- lead to reductions in eligibility and payments, including what treatments are avialable from the health system. I was in Oz a couple of weeks ago and the government announced they're "reviewing" Medicare. The way they kept stressing that they're working with doctors and it's not a cost-cutting exercise made it painfully obvious they're going to do cost-cutting.
- brc 11y ago
  Various governments of various political flavours have tried stuffing the genie back into the bottle but the public doesn't want any part of it, fanned on by whoever is the political opposite at the time. Introducing a co-payment for a doctors visit (last proposal was $5, I think) was considered to be the end of the world. Of course everyone understands that if you give something away for free, you have to produce more of it, and nobody wants taxes to go up any further, so the can gets kicked down the road. It has to happen sooner or later. You can avoid most things except for demographics.
megablast 11y ago
> The main cities cluster in the top 10 most expensive places to live in the world. This is mainly because the Aussie dollar was so high for so long, things haven't caught up yet. Pay is a lot higher in Australia as well, with a high minimum wage.
grecy 11y ago
How long have you lived in Australia? How long have you lived in the US? I'm not saying Australia is perfect (far from it).. I was pointing out that it's sad and unacceptable to have a society where tens of millions of people are working hard and living below the poverty line, when there are many, many examples to show it doesn't have to be like that (Australia just being one of the many)
- brc 11y ago
  I was born in Australia but have lived in the US on multiple occasions. I agree with your points in general, and choose Australia even though I have the option of either. But Australia started from a different starting point to the US. Adopting Australian policies wouldn't get Australian outcomes because the starting points are so different. That's not to say that, if I were a US citizen, I wouldn't want change, I would, especially around healthcare. Just the same as I would like Australia to change in some ways as well.
- refurb 11y ago
  I was pointing out that it's sad and unacceptable to have a society where tens of millions of people are working hard and living below the poverty line Are you saying Australia doesn't have people living below the poverty line? Wikipedia says 12.5% of the population and 17.5% of children in Australia live below the poverty line. The US has 16% below poverty line and 20% of children. Not that different than Australia.
  - bazfoo 11y ago
    I'm having trouble finding data that is using the same methodologies. The CIA World Fact-book specifically seems to be lacking data for Australia. It would be good to see some solid data, because one thing that surprised me while travelling in the USA was the extreme poverty I saw just down the road from extremely wealthy neighborhoods. Not to say that Australia doesn't have its own set of problems, particularly in Indigenous Communities, but this seems to operate at a wholly different level.
    - 11y ago

by brc 11y ago

switch007 11y ago

> and this will-inevitably- lead to reductions in eligibility and payments, including what treatments are avialable from the health system. I was in Oz a couple of weeks ago and the government announced they're "reviewing" Medicare. The way they kept stressing that they're working with doctors and it's not a cost-cutting exercise made it painfully obvious they're going to do cost-cutting.

brc 11y ago
Various governments of various political flavours have tried stuffing the genie back into the bottle but the public doesn't want any part of it, fanned on by whoever is the political opposite at the time. Introducing a co-payment for a doctors visit (last proposal was $5, I think) was considered to be the end of the world. Of course everyone understands that if you give something away for free, you have to produce more of it, and nobody wants taxes to go up any further, so the can gets kicked down the road. It has to happen sooner or later. You can avoid most things except for demographics.

megablast 11y ago

> The main cities cluster in the top 10 most expensive places to live in the world. This is mainly because the Aussie dollar was so high for so long, things haven't caught up yet. Pay is a lot higher in Australia as well, with a high minimum wage.

grecy 11y ago

How long have you lived in Australia? How long have you lived in the US? I'm not saying Australia is perfect (far from it).. I was pointing out that it's sad and unacceptable to have a society where tens of millions of people are working hard and living below the poverty line, when there are many, many examples to show it doesn't have to be like that (Australia just being one of the many)

brc 11y ago
I was born in Australia but have lived in the US on multiple occasions. I agree with your points in general, and choose Australia even though I have the option of either. But Australia started from a different starting point to the US. Adopting Australian policies wouldn't get Australian outcomes because the starting points are so different. That's not to say that, if I were a US citizen, I wouldn't want change, I would, especially around healthcare. Just the same as I would like Australia to change in some ways as well.
refurb 11y ago
I was pointing out that it's sad and unacceptable to have a society where tens of millions of people are working hard and living below the poverty line Are you saying Australia doesn't have people living below the poverty line? Wikipedia says 12.5% of the population and 17.5% of children in Australia live below the poverty line. The US has 16% below poverty line and 20% of children. Not that different than Australia.
- bazfoo 11y ago
  I'm having trouble finding data that is using the same methodologies. The CIA World Fact-book specifically seems to be lacking data for Australia. It would be good to see some solid data, because one thing that surprised me while travelling in the USA was the extreme poverty I saw just down the road from extremely wealthy neighborhoods. Not to say that Australia doesn't have its own set of problems, particularly in Indigenous Communities, but this seems to operate at a wholly different level.
  - 11y ago