Reich: Higher Wages Aren't Coming Back, and Here's Why

I would not want to live there. They have a big dingo problem and have treated
their native folk worse than we have treated the American Indians.

 

Definitely not moving there. Wife is deathly afraid of spiders.

 

Oh, I have good friends there. Great people, warm-hearted. I could live there. Could probably get a good gig there, too, but I'd be taking a healthy cut in pay and my cost of living would go up.

Cranberry et al. look at the things they like about Australia's political climate and say, see, here's why thus and such is true. But I bet they'd shit a brick if someone tried to, say, partially privatize Social Security. Or if someone tried to treat corporate taxes (or higher education) like Australia does. You wanna emulate Australia, have at it. But you gotta do the whole thing.

 

I pointed out to you that Australia's median wealth is far higher than ours and that they have a better retirement system. They also have fewer people living below the poverty line. But by all means, stick your head in the sand if you want.

 

Just asking what tax dollars we pay in to keep the price low.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/business/imf-calls-for-curbing-fuel-subsidies.html?_r=0

The way I understand it, our gas prices are much less than Europe because the government pays into part of the cost of the fuel. What if we kept the price at $2.50 a gallon by lessening, or stopping, these subsidies. Then we can start working that money in other directions, like paying down the national debt.

I'm just asking what we are paying into this.

And, these low prices are temporary with an even bigger ass kicking coming down the road. So I am against screwing with the added taxes around this at all.

 

Why not just take the best of their ideas and implement it with the best of our ideas?

 

Good luck with that.

 

A thousand times this ...

 

1) Because it's not obvious which of their (or our) ideas/approaches are "the best."

2) Because it's not obvious which of their (or our) ideas/approaches are particularly influential with respect to whatever outcome we've observed.

3) Finally, even if we could find some particular idea/approach that is particularly influential on an outcome we'd like, it's entirely possible we wouldn't get that outcome given so many other things that would be different in a different setting.

 

Because freedom.

 

I don't give a shit about paying down the national debt. The national debt was hundreds of billions before I was born; it will be many hundreds of billions after I die.

I've been paying taxes out the ass for 40 years plus. I ask not what I can do for the government, I ask what the government is gonna do for me.