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Peter Hartcher on a certain island continent:
It is a developed country that enjoyed faster economic growth than the US over the past decade. Yet it also offers universal healthcare and other social welfare benefits that the US does not. Unemployment is similar to America’s, but without the glaring income disparities that characterise US growth. It is a country that seems to have achieved a sweet spot, combining the vigour of American capitalism with the humanity of European welfare, yet suffering the drawbacks of neither. And it manages this while keeping a consistent budget surplus.
That country, rolling into its 16th year of uninterrupted growth, is Australia.
UPDATE. US reader Aaron: “I’m all about Australia, but there’s still a $10,000 per head deficit with the US in terms of annual purchasing power. Let’s not get too giddy on ourselves now. But best of luck in reaching parity!” True, but Australians care little about such matters. Down here, we’ll happily blow through $40,000 running a stupid blog for a few months. It’s just the kind of happy-go-brokey people we are!
....combining the vigour of American capitalism with the humanity of European welfare, yet suffering the drawbacks of neither.
What a load of sweaty monkey bollocks. He’s never tried to start a business among the morass of over-regulation that infests this nation, or had to fund the burgeoning ranks of the idle and feckless.
The Sweden of the South, that’s fortunate enough to have natural resources that are fetching record prices coming out it’s flabby arse, otherwise it would be Un Zud’s lazy, workshy cousin.
What chance of Peter Hartcher writing something like this in the SMH?
Wouldn’t sit well with the readership.
Posted by The (WHMECDM) President on 2006 05 11 at 10:32 PM • permalink#3- have a read of Janet Albrechtsens piece from Wednesday’s Oz for a comparison between a supposedly free market conservative country and one run by an old school interventionist socialist.
JWH is a very skilled RWDB impersonator.
I’m also ashamed to admit that I’ve now agreed with Paul Keating twice; the senate is unrepresentative swill, and this government has been asleep at the wheel with regard to economic reform.
I’m now donning my brown paper bag.
It is disgusting how Hartcher can gloat about the Australian economy and the rest of you stand around applauding like performing seals while up to 50% of Australians live in conditions that are below average.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 05 11 at 11:02 PM • permalinkWhere there is growth there is decay.
Eg. Jobs lost due to globalization. Individual jobs, people perceiving companies as individuals, decrease in liquid paper etc.
Growth to whom? If jewellery chains can make up growth amount and percentages for rings you are making up an imaginary transaction therefore it is fals.e
Up here, unhindered by the humanity of European welfare as we are, Allah be praised, 50 percent of our people live ABOVE average.
Posted by crittenden on 2006 05 11 at 11:12 PM • permalink#12 This is what Australia should be aspiring to.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 05 11 at 11:16 PM • permalinkHabib,
Albrechtsen’s piece was more critical of state government bureacracy than anything the Feds do. It is a festure of the Federal system that states can still make life difficult for business with too many regulations.
Things could obviously be better, but business is still do reasonably well at the moment. And a good economy, even on the back of mining booms, creates opportunities.
Posted by The (WHMECDM) President on 2006 05 11 at 11:16 PM • permalinkOh yes, Habib - Mr Paul “antique clock collecting” Keating ends the interview that he has never been one of those rich buggers.
Posted by The (WHMECDM) President on 2006 05 11 at 11:25 PM • permalinkThe article seems to give some credit to Hawke and Keating, as well as Howard, for our economic success:
“The partnership of Bob Hawke, prime minister, and Paul Keating, his treasurer, turned out to be a case study in the political management of a dramatic programme of reform. The Hawke-Keating years were followed by a conservative government led by John Howard, who pressed ahead with another wave of economic modernisation.”
It is a developed country that enjoyed faster economic growth than the US over the past decade.
Excellent. Rock on.
Yet it also offers universal healthcare and other social welfare benefits that the US does not.
Well, you can’t be perfect.
I would quibble that “universal healthcare” and “social welfare” are dubiously characterized as “benefits.” The precipitous deterioration of those beneficial effects in societies in Europe and northern North America should serve as a potent example.
Unemployment is similar to America’s, but without the glaring income disparities that characterise US growth.
“Glaring?” Anyway, I’d like to point out that lamenting “income disparity” is a violation of the Tenth Commandment. I personally like income disparity; I can’t think of anything less “fair” than the idea that everyone should earn equally, although perhaps Mssrs. Marx and Engels would disagree with me on that.
It is a country that seems to have achieved a sweet spot, combining the vigour of American capitalism with the humanity of European welfare, yet suffering the drawbacks of neither.
With the possible exception of spawning the same smug, Euro-style critics, with their self-sanctification for being so much more “humane” than all those cut-throat Gordon Geckos over in AmeriKKKa.
And it manages this while keeping a consistent budget surplus.
Good on you and God bless all of you for keeping the Man of Steel in power for so long. But I’d like to just point out that as far as the “social welfare” component of Australia’s economic golden age-it’s a bug, not a feature.
But seriously, you guys deserve the accolades.
So as the commercial says, “Where the hell are your carrier battle groups?”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 11 at 11:45 PM • permalink#18 Jeez Rinard, I was going so well until you stepped in.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 05 11 at 11:45 PM • permalinkbut without the (USA’) glaring income disparities
Unsubstantiated opinion masquerading as fact.
If you look at the percentage of total income (for a country) that the top ten percent of all people recieve, you will find in the USA its 30.5%, while in Australia its 25.4%. Hardling glaring.
If you look at the percentage of total income (for a country) that the bottom ten percent of all people recieve, the difference is small, 0.2%.
Incidentally, the country in which the poorest 10% are best off (relative to the average) is Belarus.
Quickest way to get rid of income disparity is to reduce all incomes to zero.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 05 11 at 11:53 PM • permalinkthe humanity of European welfare
Waiting years to get a hip replacement under our universal healthcare system is humane?
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 05 11 at 11:53 PM • permalink#10 MM, I think you mean conditions that are below the median, which nonetheless is an utterly appalling figure. It’s just further proof of the disastrous failure of liberal capitalism and a statistic that must make the Greens feel very smug.
#12 crittenden, you just don’t understaaaand. It’s fine for those in the upper half, but we’ve got to do much, much better than that. We need to create a utopia where everybody is in the upper half and, well, perhaps the only way to do that is to be a little less selfish and listen to the deep thinkers on the Left once in a while. They say they can change not just Australia but the whole world for the better.
#18 rinardman, now that’s just being pedantic.
rinardman is correct that there may be a mathematical issue in there somewhere. quantum physics is not my forte. However, it remains a fact that under heartless American capitalism fully half of our people are doing better than the other half, while as Margosmaid notes, under socialOZm, half of all australians are actually worse off than the other half.
Posted by crittenden on 2006 05 12 at 12:05 AM • permalinkdon’t worry splice, I understand. problem with putting everyone in one half is, it always ends up being the lower one. Been tried, doesn’t work. everyone who used to live there is now a capitalist.
Posted by crittenden on 2006 05 12 at 12:18 AM • permalinkRight there next to Peter Hartcher’s piece (lifted from FT) in the <a >Cut and Paste</a> section in today’s Australian is a more critical view from the Wall Street Journal (Asia) which slams Peter Costello for failing to slash taxes:
All you need to know about Australia’s new budget is that the Labor Party thought it was pretty good. If only that were true. Instead, Canberra skirted politically unpopular, long-term structural reforms necessary to bolster future economic growth in favour of short-term giveaways. If Treasurer Peter Costello can’t push through real tax reform in good times, we wonder, when can he?
<i>Not a word was said about significant income tax cuts or simplification to the code itself, which is sorely needed. It’s been estimated that more than 80 per cent of Australians use accountants to do their taxes. The 2005 TaxPack ran to 140 pages. And that excludes the supplement, which is another 70 pages. Good grief.<i>
Good grief indeed. The big picture might look good but growing red tape makes the place a fucking mess for the people at the coalface actually stumping up the money for the government.
I don’t know about all the statistics, but it’s for sure that you Australians have a great country. But do you think it would be any different if, for example, you shared a border with Indonesia instead of being separated by an ocean? It might make that “universal health care” look a little different. Suppose you spent a few hundred billion dollars every year patrolling the world, trying to keep people free or at least keep them from killing each other? I think that “sweet spot” might not seem so sweet.
But, it’s true: you do have a lot to be proud of.Posted by Frank the Yank on 2006 05 12 at 12:48 AM • permalinkAs I’ve said before- we have the best Labor government in power federally in Australian history.
There’s about as economically rationalist and neo-conservative as I’m a zetan.
(Cretan maybe).
Why doesn’t it ever occur to peanuts who pen these sort of puff pieces that if Australia is doing so well under the yoke of failed experiments in social engineering, welfarism, entrenched entitlement, statist intervention, how peachy would it be if we shed all these relics of Keynsian flat earth economics?
I for one wouldn’t mind one of these to toddle down to the shop in, scattering the few remaining bicycle nazis who’ve survived the perdition of a lack of welfare, gassing them like badgers with a miasma of carbonised avgas and immolated rubber secured from the vestal rainforests of the Amazon.
no kidding, s-dog, not to mention “european”
Posted by crittenden on 2006 05 12 at 12:57 AM • permalinkOh that’s what I meant to say, we can have our cake and eat it because we don’t spend a significant segment of our GDP supporting a global military police force. The worthless, parasitic eurotrash could do the same if they weren’t a bunch of commie serfs addicted to the ample cash-nipple of their flaccid welfare state.
Yes, Mr. Macenroe, and Frank the Yank…
We do not have to spend all that much on defence, ‘cos the yanks have got the bombs. Without the US, Australia could not be in the “sweet spot” that it currently lives in.
This is a fact often overlooked and taken for granted by the softheads of Australia.
On a different but related note: I do find it confronting to see homeless people and beggars when I visit the US. If someone is begging here in Oz (and it is really rare compared to major US cities), then I can happily and guilt-free never give them a cent, knowing that their basic need are taken care of by welfare, and that if they need to beg it is almost certainly for drugs.
The same is not true in the US, where there is a good chance the individual really is doing it hard.
Posted by closeapproximation on 2006 05 12 at 01:30 AM • permalinkTo all of our friends in Oz - good on ya. Continued prosperity.
To those in Oz who would use this to make scurrilous comparisons with AmeriKKKa - believe me, we’d love not to have to spend billions to be the world’s cop and disaster-relief quarterback.*
(* which takes nothing away from Oz’s much-appreciated and invaluable assistance in these areas.)
has any one read Louis Nowra’s piece in the SMH?
I have no idea what he is trying to say, but it sounds like John Howad’s fault, whatever it is.
Link fixed. The Mgmt.
Posted by The (WHMECDM) President on 2006 05 12 at 01:48 AM • permalinkoh yeah its really great down here
even after the changes
The man on $150 000 will still be paying $1200 and the $40 000 man will be paying $183 approx per week.
He earns three times the salary but pays six times the tax.Posted by knuckleheadwatch on 2006 05 12 at 01:49 AM • permalink“it has a chronic current account deficit”
This is actually the price of our success, particularly our success in missing the Asian crisis in the late 1990’s. That crisis resulted in the view that Asia was too risky; Australia is attracting a lot of foreign capital simply because the investment opportunities here are good compared to the rest of the world. There is really no sign that our CAD is the result of a deficiency in domestic saving - as increases in net household worth show.
I think Lang Hancock once said
“the bigger favour you can do the poor is not becoming one of them”
Posted by knuckleheadwatch on 2006 05 12 at 02:07 AM • permalink#21
So as the commercial says, “Where the hell are your carrier battle groups?”
Shucks, we have as many as you do Richard and what’s more all the carriers have names that start with USS ;-)
You see, what we’re trying to budget for is, well, to fill in any gaps. Seriously though, the important indicator of Australia’s global commitment militarily can be found in our actions in support of our allies, rather than simply our defense spend as either a per capita or GDP percentage. In any case, we sure-ass-hell don’t take the same approach as, say, New Zealand with its amazing air force strategic wind-down.
Margos Maid - ROFL at your statistical perception.
But I say! The article was a bit up-oneself, what? When you are on a good wicket, say nothing and try not to look smug, by jove. Don’t want to attract those common and crass types like wronwright, spilling their meade all over the chesterfield! Damn blighter parked his telephone box right on top of Miss Marigold’s petunias. The swine.
Of course don’t tell anyone that we in Oz save a bundle by not having to provide all of our defence & intelligence. Those Yankee dandys mortgage themselves to the hilt just so they can protect us. Damn considerate of them, what? Small price to pay with them pronouncing us ‘Oss-sies” rather than “Ozzies”. Where’s that bloody gin & tonic old girl?
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 05 12 at 02:47 AM • permalinkThis would have been a fantastic investment oportunity.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19112037-1702,00.html
but of course we would have to fix it up first
In the Big Land Way Down Under
You never change your socks
And little streams of alkyhol
Come trickling down the rocks
O the shacks all have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There’s a lake of stew
And whiskey too
And you can paddle
All around it in a big canoe
In the Big Land Way Down UnderUmm.. sure Texas Bob. You pitching for a furlough?
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 05 12 at 05:19 AM • permalink#44 President
Louis Nowra
The Land of the Sweeping Plain has nothing to the Sweeping Generalisation of the Apocalyptic Moonbat:
- Howard stands for values that are ‘no longer relevant’.
- Aussie battlers are ‘second-generation ethnic families, people he knows little about.’
- internationally Australia is ‘merely a piece of interesting driftwood in the tidal eddy of world history.’
- ‘Australians ... have increasingly passe notions of what constitutes our values and national icons.’
- Gallipoli is only a ‘human slaughterhouse’.
- we have a ‘huge and growing underclass’.
- ‘some towns’ are ‘overrun’ by drugs.
- globalisation is ‘fostering tribalism’.
- ‘pornography, homosexuality, S&M and so forth has become mainstream.’
- ‘This generation has to face something no other generation has faced: the burden of the future.’
- ‘This new Australia scares many people ...’
- ‘there is no longer one Australia, but many Australias.’And Nowra would like to warm his hands beside his imagined funeral pyre. There’s a mixture of sourness and relish here that is a little nauseating. Like eating too many of those salt and vinegar chips.
Jeez, you actually read that pap, Inurbanus?
Check yourself in for mental dialysis tomorrow.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 05 12 at 06:01 AM • permalinkDamn, you folks are pretty touchy. I didn’t mean to hammer Australia, which, like I said, has a lot to be proud of. I was just trying to put up a defense of the USA. Every American who follows military/international affairs would agree with splice when he says that “the important indicator of Australia’s global commitment militarily can be found in our actions in support of our allies, rather than simply our defense spending as either a per capita or GDP percentage.” You don’t have a lot of battle groups, but you do have a lot of balls.
I don’t think I agree with closeapproximation that it’s more likely that when a person is homeless in the USA there is “is a good chance the individual really is doing it hard.” Almost all of them have drug, alcohol or mental problems. I don’t know why there seem to be more in the USA than in Australia. Maybe it’s because the courts here repeatedly have ruled that they have the “right” to sleep on the street, making it next to impossible to get them the help/punishment they need/deserve.Posted by Frank the Yank on 2006 05 12 at 06:02 AM • permalinkBah. I agree with Habib. The article is full of phoney assumptions. The state is getting larger in this country as a proportion of GDP, and it will continue to do so. People’s faith in the power of government swells daily, and the beast will expand commensurately. Look at the size of the allegedly “reformed” tax code. How many thousands of pages does it run into - and it’s growing. The Libs did this, incidentally, with their ridiculously overcomplicated GST.
I take issue with the assumption that the US is some lightly governed, laissez faire society - that’s also a bunch of crap. Big government is alive and well in the land of the free - and guess what? It’s getting bigger still, just like here. Europe is just further down the same path as us (and US).
I would also point out that nobody dies due to a lack of health insurance in the USA. This is a left-wing lie propagated to scare the bejeezus out of those forming judgements of the evil AmeriKKKan model. Patients do, however, die because they can’t get to a hospital in time - which also happens here, surprisingly enough. The stories of paramedics and triage staff at private hospitals routinely shaking patients down for a credit card before admitting them is also rubbish - it is actually illegal to do this.
America has a very large government hospital network where all people can get treatment. The drawbacks of using this service are pretty similar to those in Australia - the accommodation isn’t pretty and if you don’t have a life endangering affliction, you’ll have to wait. No other nation spends a larger proportion of its GDP on health - 12% - than the US. A very substantial chunk of that is made up by the public health sector.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 12 at 06:19 AM • permalinkn a different but related note: I do find it confronting to see homeless people and beggars when I visit the US. If someone is begging here in Oz (and it is really rare compared to major US cities), then I can happily and guilt-free never give them a cent, knowing that their basic need are taken care of by welfare, and that if they need to beg it is almost certainly for drugs.
The same is not true in the US, where there is a good chance the individual really is doing it hard.
Actually, closeapproximation, the beggars and homeless people in this country are mostly not “individuals” who are “doing it hard,” but the same beggars for drugs or drink that you can happily ignore down under. There are plenty of “safety nets” for people who can’t afford to live on their own; homeless people—or more accurately, drunks, junkies, and crazy people who won’t take their medication—tend to prefer life on the streets because they can soak more sapheads (like shocked tourists) for money, and also because homeless shelters tend to have too many “rules” (such as the necessity of bathing, and prohibitions against drinking, shooting up, knife fights, etc.) Then there are the scams—in Miami we had a couple who would beg regularly at a busy intersection I used to pass on my way to work. I read in the paper that it was discovered not only weren’t they homeless, they were clearing several hundred dollars a day.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 05 12 at 06:35 AM • permalinkForgot to add: I have the feeling that the large amount of “homeless” bums exist in my country due to the way ideals like duty and responsibility have deteriorated in this country, and that due to the increasing emphasis on the peoples’ “right” to be taken care of by a nanny government. A lot of these bums collect disability checks every month.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 05 12 at 06:38 AM • permalink#68 sounds like a case of burying one’s head in the sand. The empirical evidence of the expansion of government is manifest and everywhere. What we’re seeing now is the thin end of the wedge. Consider the default popular reaction whenever a social problem is perceived - “the government should do something about this!”
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 12 at 06:55 AM • permalinkSteady on Habib -the fact that Oz supports two thirds of the UnZ Udders among its population means y’all have to make allowances for us…
Just in time for Mother’s Day the Bomber on ABC news.Lowering his bulk precariously and circumventing the hernia zone -he crooned to a toddler “I get my policies directly from Mum”....
Also on ABC news they got seriously stuck into Dubya and the latest SPYING SCANDAL in Amerikka where millions of local calls are being screened.
After the long denunciation of Bush came the last line.
“...and the public obviously agrees with him,this being one of the few programmes of Bush that they overwhelmingly support.”I’ve witnessed, first hand, the wide-spread abuse of the so-called US Welfare system. We now have third and fourth generation hand-out recipients who have come to regard this as a right. I’ve seen people violently demanding their hand-outs as if they had earned them. The system is broken. Politicians in districts that have been re-drawn to maximize the poor population retain their position by dolling out the freebies. The system rewards you for not finding a job, for having as many bastards as your body will squeeze out, and for indulging your drug and alcohol addictions. The tax-payers foot the bill, watching their hard earned Social Security money evaporate, the public school system flushed down the toilet, and all public systems over-run by worthless, low-life criminals. The majority of them are a festering boil on the ass of America.
As our PM says America is doing the heavy lifting on the war on terror but you Yanks do have one big advantage over us on defence spending and that is on the big capital items the money stays circulating in your own economy. If we want to buy something big with all the bells and whistles like joint strike fighters invariably we have to buy it off you guys. Hence we don’t get all the nice multiplier effects on defence spending in our domestic economy that America gets because you guys get all the proceeds.
Posted by the nailgun on 2006 05 12 at 08:49 AM • permalinkWe have a supposedly conservative federal government with control of both houses of parliament, who tax and spend like Clyde Cameron with an arseful of benzedrene and a perpetually replenishing chequebook.
These sods spend on shit that would have had a Labor finance minister like Peter Walsh in a conniption fit- the federal bureacracy has grown exponetially from the supposed heyday of Hawke/Keating, and they keep hiring leak-happy ideologues who hate their overseers and spill their guts at the first opportunity, after signing a lucrative book contract to pen a tome that confirms every conspiracy theory that keeps Webdiary afficianados chewing the carpet on a nightly basis.Fucking bloody Christ on a pogo stick- the yartz/culture commisars loathe every thing about this current government, and the daft pillocks give them a sling to produce bollocks no one sees to publise their loathing; the most feeble attempts at actually make welfare dependants get off their sagging couches and eke out a living for themselves from the myriad job vacancies are met with the sort of hyperbole and vitriol that should be reserved for the real evil of fundamental Islam, and they run like poodles and restore the status quo.
The only thing that’s really going for the Liberal party federally is the obvious fact that federal Labor would be much worse (although some of the mutterings about tax reform from the right of the party shows promise) and a Green minority government would be year zero.
I think it’s about time to purge the Libs of the baby boomer social democrats and stock it with some real new conservatives with the cohunas to take on the welfare lobby, the environazi lobby and all the other minority fuckheads whose clout far exceeds their popular support, or kick off a whole new organisation.
Unfortunately government has a vested interest in its own survival and expansion, and no mainstream political organisation is going to introduce policy that will send it into well deserved irrelevance.Texas Bob — Damn son, first they steal our navy and now they’re stealing our folk songs!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 05 12 at 09:25 AM • permalinkThe system rewards you for not finding a job, for having as many bastards as your body will squeeze out, and for indulging your drug and alcohol addictions.
Yes, that’s the permanent welfare class that the welfare state created. Wonderful work, do-gooders.
Social welfare - never has so much bad been perpetuated in the name of good.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 12 at 09:43 AM • permalinkall the other minority fuckheads whose clout far exceeds their popular support
Sort of, Habib, however the real problem is the widespread faith in government. Even those that think the Greens et. al. are full of shit believe in government action - as long as it’s a government peopled by their kind. These people (I believe) constitute the majority, and they are simply the other side of the same coin vis’a'vis the Greens. We are kidding ourselves if we think Howard and his crew wish to dismantle the remaining edifices of the failed planned economy but are only pausing due to political expediency. The red tape you complain about is not some vestige of a protectionist, Keynesian past - in fact, it’s not at all out of place in Howard’s Australia.
I support Howard simply because he and his mob are the best of a bad bunch. Where is the Australian version of the NZ Act party?
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 12 at 09:54 AM • permalinkThe Liberal Democrats aren’t a bad start- I’ve also been approached by a US based organisation who are promoting the establishment of a Swiss canton/federal system, which has much merit- I’ve been too busy to link it from my site but will do so in the next few days. Meant to do so in the wake of the anniversary caterwauling about Port Arthur- it’s a classic example of the failure of expansive government.
(Everyone between the age of 18 and 45 in Switzerland is armed, and with full auto and ammo, as part of national service. After that age you get to keep the weapon anyway. They have the lowest murder rate and general crime rate in the world, and 90% of the violent crime is from “undocumented citizens”).I thought they were talking about Cuba.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2006 05 12 at 10:06 AM • permalinkYes, and I believe that the Swiss see firearm ownership and competent handling as a civic responsibility. Brilliant.
It’s a cliche - but I still fail to understand why anyone* feels comfortable with the fact that the government has a monopoly on the guns.
*especially the Left who HATES our current government, but appears happy to put up with the latent threat of firearms-enforced utter subjugation from their ideological enemy
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 12 at 10:13 AM • permalinkAll they did was introduce what the left had been slavering for for years- I notice a likewise slapping of lips over the evil of motorcycles*. I’m surprised it’s taken this long- these pricks hate anything that has any sort of danger (and individual responsibility) about it, and would love to see us all ensconsed in useless hybrids or more to the point creaky, ugly and inneficient public transport.
The Berlin Wall may have fallen, but the politburo survives.*Fatalities have gone up for motorcycle users- it doesn’t differentiate however the number of peabrains on ugly scooters who’ve been beaned as they career out of control in peak hour traffic with no riding skills, or silly old farts having a mid-life crisis and buying a Harley despite never riding anything more powerful than a rider mower for the last forty years.
63 Frank the Yank being frank
I don’t think I agree with closeapproximation that it’s more likely that when a person is homeless in the USA there is “is a good chance the individual really is doing it hard.” Almost all of them have drug, alcohol or mental problems.
There “is a good chance” that he’s packing heat or a blade or has two friends behind the dumpster, too. Watch your ass around the next USA panhandler you meet, unless he’s like, old and wretched, and maybe even then. No disrepect is directed here toward homeless-looking panhandlers of other nationalities.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 05 12 at 10:41 AM • permalinkBugger this, I’m heading out on the tiles
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 05 12 at 11:10 AM • permalink#85 SDD, Damn straight! The crack-heads who try to force a window wash on you at the Peachtree Exit off of I-20 in Atlanta will also try to cut or shoot you if you don’t pay them for smearing your windshield with muck. I ran the stop-light there a couple of times to keep from having to run over them.
“No other nation spends a larger proportion of its GDP on health - 12% - than the US.”
Many Australians and most Europeans, who spend much less on their healthcare, see this as a BAD thing. Harry Clarke, usually a sensible fellow, and always very nice, tried to use this point to make the case that US healthcare was inferior because we spend more on it than others spend. As though I would think it was bad to spend more on healthcare. Apparently knowing that every expense has been spared on your healthcare is a good thing and something Americans should want to emulate.
Australia, a great health care system as long as you have private coverage.
This from The West Australian
Cancer patient waited a year for diagnosisCATHY O’LEARY
When Stephen Carrivick, a Karrinyup grandfather of 16, was sent to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital for a biopsy to check if he had prostate cancer, little did he know it would take a year to get the answer.But by the time it was confirmed a few weeks ago that the 83-year-old did had cancer, it had already spread into his bones, greatly diminishing his chances of recovery.
Four urological surgeons who have quit the hospital in disgust at long waiting times and lack of resources say patients like Mr Carrivick are the real casualties of a health system bogged down by bureaucracy.
“How do I feel? I’ve had the disappointment of the cancer of the prostate breaking through, after all this time waiting when it should have been attended to ages ago,” Mr Carrivick said yesterday. “It’s not good enough, you just get lost in the system.”
Tom Shannon, one of the four surgeons to resign, stood firm on his decision yesterday, accusing health administrators of knowing for more than three years about dangerously long waiting times and lack of resources.
He said letters had gone back and forth between health administrators requesting approval for equipment and services but the doctors had been continually stymied by red tape.
Dr Shannon warned that prostate cancer patients were not the only ones getting sub-standard care. Emergency urology cases and kidney transplants were also being affected.
“We’re seriously running down these big hospitals and the solution is always to take money from somewhere else to try to get something solved,” he said.
“I think what we want and what the politicians want is probably the same but there’s a huge hill between us.”
Cancer Council director of education and research Terry Slevin said the average wait of nine months for a prostate cancer diagnosis was too long but it was vital that experienced doctors stayed in the public system.
Health Minister Jim McGinty, who will meet the surgeons next week, said he believed they had common ground but there was no point pouring more money into a bottomless pit.
“We have to drive efficiencies into the system and I want to make sure operating theatres are operating at peak capacity and maximum efficiency,” he said. “I want to work with surgeons to see patients getting their operations earlier.”
Director-general of health Neale Fong claimed that several of the issues with the surgeons had been resolved.
“We need to work closely with our surgeons in order to give our patients the best possible care and access to surgery,” he said. “The targets now set for elective surgery waiting times are the most aggressive in the history of WA health, meaning patients will get their surgery sooner.”
US reader Aaron: “I’m all about Australia, but there’s still a $10,000 per head deficit with the US in terms of annual purchasing power. Let’s not get too giddy on ourselves now. But best of luck in reaching parity!”
Not one to miss a long dead thread.. but next year the Australian dollar will reach url=http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/aussie-may-catch-us-next-year-pundit-says/2006/05/12/1146940732609.html]parity[/url] with the US dollar and then we’ll learn you. Our GDP per head based on exchange rates will then equal that of the US..and I’ll hear no more about PPP sissy boy approximations.
Oh nice one Tex, now you’ve really gone and done it! The Cold War arms race was nothing compared with the global proliferation of sandwich spreads of mass destruction (SSMD) you’ve just set in motion.
Let’s not forget the hard lessons we learnt years ago when the Brits leaked their marmalade technology. The stuff traveled around the world faster than a tea-ballasted clipper ship. Containment failed and now the sun never sets on the stuff.
You can forget the problem of uranium enrichment, buddy. When the Iranians get news of this catastrophic security failure, it’ll mean the prophesied black yeast-paste of death that heralds the end of time.
On my way home from work, I see various bums/beggars on the one median—they use the same sign, and just alternate days!
I was at Bowie Towne Center(e), a pretend “towne” that’s mostly a big shopping mall, and this beggar/bum demands, “Give me some money.” I walked past, not looking or answering, as I don’t want to get stabbed or whatever, and he calls out after me, “Next time, wear a bra!”
What the fuck…?
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Williamson and Leunig are going to be sticking pins in his little wax doll, that’s for sure.