Daring daughter has a friend in Australia, and two more of her friends from Oregon are there now, so we have sources for our rumors. Seems everything is more expensive in Australia, except the schools, but Australia has escaped the recession that the US and Europe are suffering from. Also,
minimum wage is $17 an hour, and lest you think that the Australian dollar is only worth a fraction of the US dollar, it's not. Today it's like 98 cents. For the last four months it's been worth more than a dollar. Several years ago the Australian dollar was worth quite a bit less, but I suspect the recent rampant inflation in the US is what erased that advantage. A high minimum wage is no good if you can't get a job, but daughter's friends found jobs and are working.
Unemployment in Australia is just over 5% right now.
Then I come across an ad for a book:
A Super History: How Australia's $1 trillion+ superannuation industry was made, wherein I found this blurb:
The passion and the politics around the early years of the history make way for the emergence of industry superannuation funds and the growth of the superannuation industry, a sector that was largely credited for protecting Australia from the worst effects of the global financial crisis.
Not pouring a trillion dollars into Iraq and another trillion dollars into Afghanistan might have something to do with it as well. We have some real shitheads running our country.
Update August 2016 replace dead link with one to Amazon.
2 comments:
Maybe not a trillion.
Fourth largest contingent in OIF and eight largest in OEF (and they're not even in NATO), plus they were doing the whole East Timor thing at the time, too.
Damn that George Bush!
Dag nab it! I had such a good rant going, too. Now I have to go do some research. I just hates it when somebody upsets one of my rants with fax. :-)
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