aussieguy55 wrote:Misstaken I have a work collegue who just came back from Las Vegas. She told me that many people needed to work 3 Jobs to survive there. Our country has a budget in surplus, a good cheap medicine scheme, universal health care, loans for university study, families receive $4000 from the Gov when a baby is born. After that based in income thet receive more money each month for each child. No wonder food is cheap there (America) if the workers get SH pay. Don't you think there is something obscene for a country that is suppose to be the richest nation should have such a disparity in income. I was watching on YouTube some guy had infilerated the Young Republicans and asking them why they were not doing army service. It seems they were busy getting an education. Just promise the poor and blacks a college education to get them in the army to eventually end up in Iraq. I watch Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. Its a treat to watch the Senate questioning the Attorney General and how many "I can't recalls" he responds with. The man is an idiot and he is supposed to be the First Law officer of the US.
What I can't believe about Australia is the price of housing (though I have heard it is going up). An average house over here (UK) costs around £250,000. Not sure what that would be in dollars. That would buy a small, semi-detached 3 bedroom house on an ex council estate within a 50 mile radius of London. Crazy money.
If you want a house in the country with just a little land, no more than 1/4 acre, that will set you back around £500,000 and upwards. Crazy. Crazy.. crazy. And when you die the state takes 40% of your assets over £285,000. We have the NHS here, but I just had to go private at a cost of £4000 for an op that would have taken 10 months to do had I waited on the NHS, and we've paid into National Insurance all our lives. It cost my father his life in retrospect, and I didn't want to go the same way. I do believe in taxation but I do believe also that taxation should be fair and should have limits. What's crazy is that those in the know, like Branson, and even Margaret Thatcher are clever enough and rich enough to hire tax experts so they avoid the very taxes that the majority are expected to pay. Margaret had most of their assets in offshore discretionary trusts, so her tax bill when her husband died was next to nothing...and she was the PM for goodness sake....and the government ministers are becoming reknowned for misuse of public funds for their expenses and second homes etc, yet they don't have the £10,000 it would take to put some traffic calming on the road through our village in order to protect kids walking to school.
I think the Brits have a much more cynical attitude towards America, though they respect it and the government certainly seems to want to keep that 'special relationship' going. In terms of cultural influence what we seem to get is an endless stream of McDonalds and Pizza Huts, on top of that the beginning of gang groups that seem to want to kill each other with guns. I've never been under any illusion about America. It is a beautiful country, but it is also full of poverty and injustice...just as most countries are. I get kind of sick of seeing films out of Hollywood where the goodies are always the Americans and the baddies are the Europeans, the Russians and now of course the Arab countries. If only life were so black and white.
Mary