lol you can't be serious. Australia has had a nice run suckling off of China's teet in recent years thanks to their natural resources, but look at the statistics. US GDP: $15 Trillion. Australia: just over $1 Trillion. Keep working, m8
we have a lower unemployment rate, better healthcare, better judicial system, lower taxes, min wage is 15.96 after checking for over 18, we lose under 10 soliders a year at war, have less government surveillance in our lives, less crime, havent had a gun shooting massacre since 1994, since then no one has guns, have basically 0 terrorism, less people overweight and dying from obesity per 100.. this is just off the top of my head. hows your GDP going now?
lol that's rich. My wife has relatives in Australia, and I've been there, and I actually like the place, despite your rage, chap. that being said it's like going back in time 20 years when I go there. The purchasing power of an average Australian is 25% lower than an American's. So you live much worse than that. (there goes your taxes and wages points) You have no terrorism because you're so small and isolated, yet you follow like a lap dog any time the US goes to war -- where ever that might be. Healthcare? The US has the best in the world if you have money. Most innovation in the space occurs in the US. regarding obesity, yes, we're fatter, because we can afford more food than you poors who have to pay >$10 for fast food. but I do actually like the place!
What do guns, government surveillance, crime, terrorism, and judicial system have to do with economics? Lower unemployment is due to Australia's natural resources and proximity to Asia, minimum wage has already been discussed ( ie. it hurts your middle class who have a lower purchasing power compared to the American middle class). So no, the Australian economy is inferior.
both countries have their positives but i would rather live in an economy which is much more stable and avoided going into a recession when American was falling apart
Wow, unpacking this bundle of cause/effect fail would be such a silly cluster f I don't think it's worth even trying. But yeah all you need to do is get closer to Asia and unemployment falls.
you're missing a huge crux of the argument in your assertions---how a higher minimum wage pushes up the distribution of wages all across the board---therefore impacting middle class jobs. Regardless, I don't think the argument is about making McDs jobs middle class jobs at all. I think the argument is that McDs can pay enough so that their workers live off it (contrary to now where their own financial planning devices suggest employees get a second job), and the economy as a whole could still benefit, so why not?
rigggght. purchasing power arguments aren't exactly great if 50%ish of your nation's personal bankruptcies are because of soaring medical costs, and 45,000 of them died a year because they can't afford insurance. Sure, you can "purchase more", just watch out that you don't fall into ill-health, ever. but as long as you're wealthy, America's a great place to live (duh). not so wealthy? at minimum wage levels? eat your own cake.
you didn't even bother to adjust per capita---for someone sniping at me for economic stat laziness, this has to be the pinnacle of laziness. USA---$49,965 GDP (PPP) per capita Australia---$44,462 GDP (PPP) per capita Murkier. and that's even if you subscribe to this end-all, be-all of GDP stats defining all prosperity, which is archaic in of itself.
The defenders of the status quo on this thread would not. At least bigtexx admits his orientation is only for the wealthy. Many of the rest have just accepted the spin of those who are paid to devise talking points for the millionaires a nd billionaires way above their own pay grade A Republican: someone who can't enjoy a good meal unless they know others are hungry
Luxembourg---$88,318 GDP per capita (PPP). my point stands, thanks lazy economic analysis. i can throw out teh numbers too with no context
I support increasing the minimum wage. I think if we do make the push to $10.10/hr then it should be done over a 6 year period or so. Year 1 - 7.60/hr Year 2 - 8.00/hr Year 3 - 8.45/hr Year 4 - 8.95/hr Year 5 - 9.50/hr Year 6 - 10.10/hr After that tie it to CPI ex food and energy. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/obama-support-minimum-wage-inequality-speech Obama throws support to minimum wage movement in economy speech Barack Obama warned that a "relentless, decades-long trend" of growing inequality and social immobility posed a fundamental threat to the American dream on Wednesday, throwing his support behind a grassroots movement to address chronically low wages across the US. Attempting to regain the political momentum after a calamitous two months in which his healthcare reforms were plagued by website failures, the president said reversing the growing gap between rich and poor was "the defining challenge of our time". In a speech delivered in one of the poorest areas of Washington DC, Obama said: “The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American dream, our way of life and what we stand for around the globe.” The federal minimum wage currently stands at $7.25 an hour, or about $15,000 a year. Obama renewed his call for it to be increased, and has already indicated he will back a Senate measure to increase the minimum statutory pay to $10.10. Republicans in the House oppose the measure, which they say would be harmful to business. Obama delivered the remarks in Anacostia, one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the capital, the day before hundreds of fast-food restaurant workers in more than a hundred US cities strike in a major demonstration over low pay. The president specifically mentioned fast-food workers – alongside nurses and retail workers – in the speech, describing them as people who "work their tails off and are still living at or barely above poverty". "That’s why it’s well past the time to raise a minimum wage that, in real terms right now, is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office." He added: "I’m going to keep pushing until we get a higher minimum wage for hardworking Americans across the entire country. It will be good for our economy. It will be good for our families." Obama's call for an increase in the minimum wage was not new, and neither, he conceded, were his other proposals, such as investing further in the economic recovery, improving education and sustaining targeted social welfare programs. It has become something of a signature of the president's speeches on the economy for him to deliver rousing remarks about the need to tackle entrenched inequality; critics argue he has proven far less effective at doing anything about it. Rather than focus on new initiatives, Obama pointed to the economic benefits of his healthcare law, passed three years ago. The White House believes it has turned a corner in the disastrous rollout of the new healthcare website. In the kind of upbeat, almost victorious declaration that would have been unimaginable just a few days ago, when the White House was desperately grappling with the website failures, Obama quoted Martin Luther King to extol the virtues of the reforms. "You know, Dr King once said: 'Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.' Well, not anymore," he said. "More people without insurance have gained insurance, more than 3 million young Americans who’ve been able to stay on their parents’ plan, the more than half a million Americans and counting who are poised to get coverage starting on January 1, some for the very first time." He added: "It is these numbers, not the ones in any poll, that will ultimately determine the fate of this law." Obama challenged Republicans to propose improvements to the healthcare law, or other efforts to tackle inequality. "You owe it to the American people to tell us what you are for," he said. The White House is desperately trying to put Republicans on the back foot over the Affordable Care Act, in a sign of a more aggressive strategy from an administration that has come under sustained criticism since crucial parts of the law were introduced in October. With his health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, in the audience, Obama said the acknowledged the "admittedly poor execution" of the law since October, but insisted that people across America were now "signing up in droves" to new healthcare plans. Sebelius, who has come under intensive criticism over the implementation of the healthcare act, was sat beside attorney general Eric Holder and Obama's close economics advisor Valerie Jarrett in the town hall where Obama delivered his remarks, six miles from the White House. Around half of the children in Ward 8 live below the poverty line. Unemployment in the predominantly African American area stands at almost 20%. Obama told the audience that economic inequality could no longer be viewed as a "minority issue". He said the gap in test scores between rich and poor children was now "nearly twice" that between black and white students. "The opportunity gap in American now is a much about class as it is about race, and that gap is growing," he said.
Obama's so desperate to deflect attention from Obamacare now he has only made inequality worse in America
Bullsh!t. The Bush tax cuts all by themselves increased inequality FAR more than everything Obama has done combined. Add in the economic collapse that we saw under Bush and it is clear to those of us who aren't blinded by ideology that the claim you pulled out of your ass here has as much substance as the fart that followed.
you totally ignore the assault that Obama launched on the poor, through food and gasoline price increases spurred by the Fed's actions. The Fed's actions were needed because Obama can't work with Congress to stem our deficits or stimulate our economy through other means.
Very revealing post by the elitist self proclaimed "country club Republican" who said he was too valuable to potentially sacrifice in the wars he loves for American "poors" to fight. What a nice little elitist.
