This article puts some of Americas financial woes in a different manner. Scay stuff. http://flyoverpress.wordpress.com/2...om-2012-that-are-almost-too-crazy-to-believe/
Yep very scary stuff indeed, unfortunatley I can see Australia following the same path if we do not increase other sectors of employment/income apart from the resource boom atm Big businesses are looking elsewhere as the cost of doing trade in Oz is way too expensive and too much Gillard bullshit red tape. All goverment departments including our welfare system needs to be overhauled, also local goverment and councils need to be combined into one. Theres is just way too much goverment waste of taxpayers $$$ in this country, and all there doing is trying is fudge the numbers. I could ramble on about other things too but would probably get this post removed
Australia has already abandoned production and manufacturing in favour of speculative investment & selling natural resources. It's die has already been cast IMHO.
This morning's paper said that youth unemployment in Australia was now near 20%. I guess the Corruption Party can chalk that up as another failure - I know for a fact that very large numbers of people that used to happily earn time-and-a-half on Sundays now get nothing as owners of businesses now work those days themselves and refuse to put employees on on Sundays at double time. Once the Super ponzi scheme rises above 9% watch the next round of job cuts as businesses decide to fundamentally change their structures to preclude Australian staff in their equations. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...ears-20-per-cent/story-e6freuy9-1226543761159
Thank you OZboy for the link. I think that we both (AUS & USA) better enjoy the purchasing power of our fiat while we still can
Personally i think it needs to happen so that the dumbest people on earth can finally realise that central planning / collectivism DOES NOT work - and that the very expensive lessons from the 20th century can be ignored at own peril!
if you want to force an idea/change, the best time to do it is when there is a disaster/something bad is happening. it is always the nature of people to resist change, until something has happen, whether it is good or bad. whatever the change that is about to happen in US, it is not going to be good to a common citizen.
It's not much fun living in a society where the honest, motivated and productive are shackled by rules designed for the lazy, opportunistic and weak minded.
I'm sick to death of lazy people who are tardy at their jobs (if they do them at all) and businesses for whom "customer service" is something they're lucky to pay lip service let alone partake in. Pro-tip. If I can get something delivered from literally the other side of the planet faster than I can from Melbourne to Brisbane you're not in the running for my custom.
Too bad you can't get tradies, doctors, bus and taxi drivers, police, receptionists, lawyers, and just about every other job from the other side of the planet, they are no less lazy and tardy than retail staff. Lazy useless people are everywhere, why just pick on retailers?
Hey, I never just said retailers. The slack retailers just happen to be very easy to avoid now we're in the internet age. Fortunately for me I don't need the services of the professions you listed. Touch wood I won't need to either. * I know that coppers are notorious for doing their utmost to avoid doing their jobs. The QPS lingo is "flicking" a job, wether that's "flicking" it to another officer or "flicking" it to the bin, just as long as it's not them doing it. * Tradies have enjoyed a golden age because our business leaders engaged in a Paradox of Thrift game where no-one took on apprentices then when tradesman were needed during the debt fueled bubble of the 2000's there just weren't enough around so the tradies could command big dollars. Good on 'em I say. Make hay whilst the suns shining. * Bus and Taxi drivers - who'd be one? They get treated and paid very poorly and work rubbish hours and have to do so using congested infrastructure.
Here's a real life example of what passes as customer service The other day I was looking for a few parcels that were supposedly waiting at the Post Office for me I didn't get "carded" for ANY of the parcels and I didn't have any tracking numbers as they were gifts. So I rock up to one of the local post offices and asked after them. Without a word of lie the guy looks over both of his shoulders* and said "I can't find them". I'm not making that up, I wish that I was exaggerating. So I'm getting a P.O. Box at the Post Office where the staff actually give a hoot. That's money I *shouldn't* have to fork out but I'm forced to because Australia Post doesn't really want to be a Postal Service. I mean, they outsourced their parcel delivery! FFS that's THEIR CORE BUSINESS and they don't want to do it? WTF? EDIT TO BE CLEAR * The guy didn't move his feet! I'm still gobsmacked.
The link is indeed an interesting read, but I'm not so sure about the message, and how "deep" one should follow the further links in order to verify credibility (82% of all people are bored by reading statistics, 17 out of 15 statistics are wrong, and 86.22331234% of all statistics suggest a precision that is not justified by the data collection method ) Without a doubt, the presentation is biased, for whatever reason. For example, number 74 (of the "50 economic numbers from 2012 that are almost too crazy to believe") says That's Arithmetic. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&list=SP6A1FD147A45EF50D&index=1 I guess most of this list may informally be summarized as "Rich people are becoming richer, poor people are becoming poorer, the chance that you're one of the latter is increasing, things are getting worse, and in general, we're all in deep sh!t". This does not only refer to the US. The general development is the same in basically all European countries. And according to the responses so far, it's the same in Australia: What does 'elsewhere' mean, where are the big businesses going? The big winner (for now?) seems to be China. One of the reasons might be that in the US, Europe and Australia, there are too many lazy, opportunistic and weak minded people who refuse to live in a factory shed and work 14 hours per day for $100 per month, in order to produce useless carp for those who can buy this carp using one of their 10 credit cards. But seriously, maybe all this is a "normal" (although undesirable) development?
I'm pricing up a trip to Thailand at the moment to get some dental work done. For all the things I want done, it's going to cost about half the price to go overseas and get it sorted than it would to pay a dentist here. .... and that includes the flights/accom........................ :/
My housemates bro just did that last month to get some teeth replaced, which got knoched out of his mouth some years ago. 18k in Thailand compared to about 80k for the operations here and he's pretty happy with the results.
Thats very interesting. So $80K here in socialist Austalia and $18K in not so socialist Thailand? That seems to give creedance to the belief that when governments get involved in any sector (eg health/medical) then costs will skyrocket.
Since dental is one of the few areas of health care that isn't covered by the evil socialist Medicare program, any such belief would be misplaced. No, dentistry in Australia follows good, old fashioned free market principles so the high barrier to entry and the comparatively few qualified providers around means dentists here can charge high prices. So they do. Yay capitalism!
