| Pemalite said: Except... A higher minimum wage doesn't mean there are more bank notes in circulation. |
Higher disposable income = Price raise on common commodities ...
The transfer of wealth affects the supply and demand of goods in uncanny ways ...
| Pemalite said: You could live off $10 an hour in Australia. But living near the poverty line is not living. |
Sure it is, people just choose not to accept lower living standards ...
| Pemalite said: You might have more Purchasing Power. But guess what? You also have to pay for your own education, dental, health... Our systems are completley universal and covers everyone. It also costs each individual significantly less overall, that kind makes up for allot of ground.
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Actually the education system is state subsidized and covers K-12, now if you meant post-secondary education you might have a point but most degrees are not worth subsidizing. (And I also question if it's even worth subsidizing the vast majority of K-12 too.) We don't need dental care either for the vast majority of the population as that is an artifact of the past from the fact that we had very few inexpensive ways to maintain our dental health but with modern toothbrushes and toothpaste we don't need to worry so much about tooth decay anymore unless you consume a lot of acid. Australia is able to afford universal healthcare because it's population is less than 1/10th of America and that the citizens over there have relatively good health conditions and habits too. America is eating itself into diabetes and cardiovascular diseases which puts a huge strain on the health system and that ends with us hiring foreign doctors looking to make big cash off of us. The biggest winners of healthcare is arguably Japan since they pay the least for the highest life expectancy of the super developed countries but had their citizens have been in similar circumstances to American citizens they would probably rethink on subsidizing healthcare. Make no mistake that an American citizens health is a big liability in itself since we're leaders in terms of chronic condition rates LOL ... (I don't think any subsidized healthcare system can help with that.)
It's not a good idea to totally transition away from manufacturing since you can't reap living cost benefits without that sector or become a net exporter which is equivalent to a net profit for a nation. Even Germany keeps manufacturing around or at least high value manufacturing and their doing great cause they can't rely on having precious valuable resources like Australia since their nations reserves aren't as big ...
You need a strong manufacturing sector to be internationally competitive and to keep living costs down as we see in both cases with China ...
