Out of Pod Experience

While yes, we have a great economy, what's not being seen by outsiders is that it's a two speed rather then a unified one. The only sectors doing well are mining related, luckily I'm in one of them. Our retail center has taken such a dive that they are trying to tax over sea's suppliers because aussie's buy nearly everything online these days due to the sheer difference in cost.

Add onto that homes are ludicrously inflated in price, let me put it this way. A cheap Villa, not even an actual house here, within 30 min of Brisbane, a cheaper and smaller city then say Sydney or Melbourne is $320,000. A 1 bedroom apartment anywhere within 10km of the city, $300,000 Starting price, no car space. Add onto that a 7% variable interest rate, and it's near impossible to buy by yourself until 30/35. Our banks are getting worse as well, they're toted as stable and amazing, you know why? They are totally out of sink with the cash rate. We just had a reserve rate cut of 50 basis points, the banks RAISED their interest rate despite cheaper funding. And yet we sit here eating it up with grumbles and our government does nothing to regulate. Now you'd think, "but just rent then, it's cheaper" The average rent in Brisbane is $350 a week. We have an non-occupancy rate of less then 2%. That's quite literally nearly as much as the mortgage, so the older baby boomer generation we're literally waiting for to keel over and die so we can hopefully redistribute finance.

Tack onto that reduced services in the federal budget released by the Labor Party which will greatly diminish the ability for average workers to afford Health care and we're nearly at your level. Worse still, If I vote the Liberal Party(our version of Republicans) we reduce human rights to nothing. It's rather lose-lose here. Also, bikey wars are now heating up.

We're price gouged here, we produce a lot of beef/steak and lamb, and yet we pay export prices for it instead of local prices. Don't get me started on cars.... I saw your camaro, 23 grand right? So you'd think shipping it here you'd just tack on another 10 grand at most including government charges, maybe another 10 to convert it to right hand drive. Yeah no, retail of a Camaro here is $115,000. Euro cars don't do much better with an Audi A4 on road $62,000. Your price? 32-34,000. Our dollar is worth as much as yours and our salaries aren't that crash hot in comparison.

Hence why I was considering moving. Economically, it may be better for me to save up say, $80,000 which I'm halfway there now with my house deposit, move to the US and simply have a tiny mortgage and live with the lower wage knowing I'm paying far less in cost ratio.

And before we go into unemployment, our actual rate is closer to 14%. Official unemployed is at 5% but they leave out under employed from that as well. We have so many people on the dole/government assistance that it's costing billions to a country with only 25 million people. To make that worse, 3(out of 7) of our main states are billions in deficit and selling off assets which is driving up costs as firms privatise. Public transport for example, we pay $1.50 per Liter for fuel. Bar buying the actual car, it's now cheaper to drive to work, 80km a day(return), then catch public transport at all.

To the poster above me,

My Fiance is trying to get a job for draftsmen, they are hard to come by for juniors at all.