Australia Still the Richest Country on Earth

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by el_draco

Without reading it, sounds like the same self justification tripe. If you take a gander at most of the mugs you see on the street, they aren't dancing with joy, in fact you're flat out seeing a smirk in most places. Those that are, probably doped on anti-depressants or high on something else. Wealthy? in terms of the all mighty $, maybe, but it's a worthless measure. Bugger GDP; that measures greed. Try a "happiness index" and you'll find we are quite impoverished.

People have a right to get up in the morning, suck a fresh lemon, and go around with a scowl the rest of the day.

When they are affluent, people have the luxury of, and some a propensity for, engaging in irrational thinking to make themselves feel miserable, for example, by constantly telling themselves how the world isn't fair and it should be, and it's corollary about "why does this always to me?" - rather than being happy and acknowledging that the world doesn't give a s##t about them. Also very likely is that they get into the self-esteem trap, trying to get more and more of it, while failing to realize that it is an artificial construct and and that self-esteem and self loathing are two sides of the same coin.

By way of contrast very poor people in most of the world, spend from sun-up to sun-down just trying to make ends meet, and don't get much time to indulge in make-miserable thinking.

That said, I still haven't seen thousands of Australians taking boats to try find happiness in say Sri Lanka.
Cheers,
Renato

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by Irish stargazer

I really hope it doesn't happen in Oz like it did in Europe but the similarities are there. The banks were better regulated than in Europe but you don't really know what has happened behind closed doors.
You have escalating housing prices combined with low interest rates and banks that are willing to lend ridiculous amount so money. Its like pouring petrol on a fire.
A good indicator is the amount of personal debt per capita.

Can you imagine what will happen when the Chinese house of cards falls? Our standard of living is tied to that looming mess and the capitalist bubble will once again burst. The difference next time will be that the cookie jar will be empty to start with.

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by Nikolas

And we pay through our teeth for essential services (sometimes with our lives due to slow ambulance responses) as a result.

I can only compare to where I live in Italy, another fairly wealthy country. If you get sick you either make an appointment to see a Doctor in a couple of weeks, or go to the local hospital emergency area like we have over here, and wait two, three, four .... eight or nine hours till someone sees you.

Essential services like electricity aren't so expensive, because you only get 3.6KW of power into your house (unless you pay big amounts to get 4.5KWor 6KW into your house). So it's pretty hard to spend a lot on electricity, ulike here where you typically get 20KW into one's house (I have 40KW coming in).

I know where I'd rather be living if I got sick, or wanted to keep warm with two 2KW fan heaters.
Regards,
Renato

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by Irish stargazer

I hate to be the prophet of doom, but I saw a similar situation back in 2006/2007 based on over inflated house prices and easy money here in Ireland. An economy not based on output/export is never stable long term. Hopefully it won't crash like it did here and leave many in negative equity and out of work. House prices where we lived in Sydney were getting really silly though. Its one of the reasons we decided to return home.

Mind you, since I came back here in June this year, things have really improved in Ireland. Lots of optimism and unemployment falling. New car sales are way up (always a sign of improving economy). Also had a great Summer.
Dublin house prices have gone nuts again though (will they ever learn)

Wasn't Ireland's problem mainly a banking problem, which wasn't the case with Australian banks?
Regards,
Renato

[AndrewJ]

Gday Renato

I think a lot of the irish problem was all their eggs were in one basket ( bit like their prev effort with spuds :-) ), and they didnt see it coming.
We are going that way by killing off a lot of our manufacturing diversity.
Just remember, in the goldfields, the only guaranteed way to make money was to supply the miners with their various needs for equipment and supplies ;-)

I know where I'd rather be living if I got sick,

I dont think anyone disagrees with you there for now. I think its more down to whether the status quo is robust, or we are living on tick, and it will fall apart ( to some extent ) if china etc goes down.
ie people like Skase, Bond, Groves, Tinkler, Edelstein all looked good when they looked good.

Andrew

[Irish stargazer (John)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Gday Renato

I think a lot of the irish problem was all their eggs were in one basket ( bit like their prev effort with spuds :-) ), and they didnt see it coming.
.
Andrew

According to the Minister for Potato's, our GDP was doing just fine thanks during the crash (gross domesticated potato)

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Gday Renato

I think a lot of the irish problem was all their eggs were in one basket ( bit like their prev effort with spuds :-) ), and they didnt see it coming.
We are going that way by killing off a lot of our manufacturing diversity.
Just remember, in the goldfields, the only guaranteed way to make money was to supply the miners with their various needs for equipment and supplies ;-)



I dont think anyone disagrees with you there for now. I think its more down to whether the status quo is robust, or we are living on tick, and it will fall apart ( to some extent ) if china etc goes down.
ie people like Skase, Bond, Groves, Tinkler, Edelstein all looked good when they looked good.

Andrew

Hi Andrew,
I think you'll upset a lot of Irish about the potatoes. The destitute peasants were utterly oppressed and had no choice but to eat potatoes. It was the same story in much of Scotland and the only reason they didn't have huge famine casualties was because some people took pity on them and organized relief.

I still think Skase was very hard done by. I remember seeing an interview with him in Spain saying that the Channel Seven assets would cover his debts. As I recollect it, the banks foreclosed on him and sold off Channel 7 at $2 a share and took a loss on the debt. In almost no time, the shares doubled to $4. At that price, Skase would easily have paid all his debt and had tens of millions of dollars left over.

But I take your point about manufacturing. Australian industry policy has been a dog's breakfast. Places like France and Germany had policies to make sure they were competitive internationally. Germany for example has the government sitting down with industry and creating tight national standards and requiring all industry to work to those tight standards, and thus create economies of scale - which helps whichever manufacturer comes out on top. Whereas in Australia, people get together and create standards that are broader and which encompass what everyone is producing. What the German's do would be considered as unwarranted government interference in Australia.
Regards,
Renato

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by Nikolas

One helicopter aint the issue. you are looking at it rather simplistically

Yes perhaps you are right but living in the bush on 200 acre dark site 80 Klms from a hospital to pursue my passion for astronomy does cause me to be a little simplistic so I do like the idea of helicopter rescue.

The opening post indicates we are a wealthy nation and I tend to agree.
Some folks complain about stuff like your reference to ambulance service or people looking sad but the fact seems to be we are the wealthiest .

I am just a mug and I am doing ok and looking around all I see suggests that we have it pretty dam good.

I thought your post trivialised just how wonder
ful this country is and was not fair comment upon our wonderful ambulance service

[AndrewJ]

Gday Renato

The destitute peasants were utterly oppressed and had no choice but to eat potatoes.

I dont disagree.
My comment was specifically linked to what can happen very quickly when your economy is too narrowly based ( for whatever reason )
I always liked this as a good example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxfzm9dfqBw

Andrew

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

I thought your post trivialised just how wonder
ful this country is and was not fair comment upon our wonderful ambulance service

Tell that to the people that wait up to 40 minutes in regional Castlemaine.
Mates neighbour died because of the long wait.
Happens a lot in Victoria, maybe not in your state.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Iceland seems to have a great way of dealing with the banks, they jailed the bankers when their economy nosedived. Now they are coming back hard.

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by Nikolas

Tell that to the people that wait up to 40 minutes in regional Castlemaine.
Mates neighbour died because of the long wait.
Happens a lot in Victoria, maybe not in your state.

A negative personal experience can give one a distorted view of the overall picture.
I have heard there is public concern on response times.
Do you have figures that indicate average response times as such figures may show if there is an overall problem or if folk focus on stuffs upa.d.
There is no point in me telling stuff to folk my response was to your post and can be limited to that.
My concern is that you may let the odd negative cause you to be sad rather than see all the good things.
My original post was an attempt at humour to lessen the negativity I saw in your post.
So have a nice say and be happy

[Nikolas (Nik)]

It's not an isolated case, Ambulance response times across metropolitan rural and regional Victoria are a joke. That is fact backed up by solid evidence from the state auditor. I just illustrated a case in point.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Oh as for my own personal circumstances? I'm pretty comfortable and happy.

[xelasnave]

Thanks Nik for those links.
I hope things improve.
Alex

[raymo]

I just tried to have another look at the figures shown at the beginning of
this thread, and it says that the organisation has had it's certificate revoked; does this mean that I should take their figures with a pinch
of salt?
raymo

[Nikolas (Nik)]

the page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.

bahahahahahahahahahahaha

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by raymo

I just tried to have another look at the figures shown at the beginning of
this thread, and it says that the organisation has had it's certificate revoked; does this mean that I should take their figures with a pinch
of salt?
raymo

Their main research page is at
https://www.credit-suisse.com/au/en/...lications.html
and I get the same message as you when I click on "Download PDF".

I also tried it on Chrome, which suggests the site may have been attacked.

The report is only 4Mbytes in size, so I can email it to you if you PM me your e-mail address.
Regards,
Renato

[raymo]

Thanks Renato, I'll do that.
raymo

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

Here in Oz, we ask a question like "what car do you drive?"
That results in a "I drive a xxx and my partner drives a xxx"
If you ask the question in Indonesia it may result in "our family has a 250cc m'cycle"
In Africa it might be "our village has a weekly bus"
It's relative, "are you happy?" is where wealth is measured.