The Stagnant Working Class

[Bofferbrauer2]

Snoopy said:

Pemalite said:

Sure. Ignore all the lobby groups who pay off your politicians to get things their way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_lobby#Political_influence_in_the_United_States

The USA is also in the top 10.
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/most-expensive-countries-to-live-in/

I don't think you fully get it though... How expensive a country to live in has absolutely zero bearing on their quality of healthcare.
You are conflating two separate issues and pretending it's one.

Remember we spend less GDP per capita on Healthcare, if anything that means potentially less taxes, not the opposite.

A few indexes actually... Such as the "where to be born". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index

A good list can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living

Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide also tends to rank higher on quality of living than any American cities as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey

But here: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/these-countries-have-the-highest-quality-of-life

As for the expense of products... With Tariffs now being rolled out in the USA, you better get used to higher pricing... But guess what, your dollar has higher purchasing power and your nation has shit minimum wage, so it's going to be a bigger hit to the pocket than ours.

Plus our working and lower classes aren't stagnant either... Our minimum wage of $18.93 per hour certainly helps... So who cares if we pay an extra dollar for toilet paper? We can actually afford it.

Nope. That is absolutely false.
Welfare can also help economically, we have businesses here that geared their business to welfare recipients and profited greatly from it...
For example: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-20/radio-rentals-reaps-$90-million-in-centrelink-payments/6333690
Almost half of their revenue came from welfare, not a bad effort.

If your welfare system is a trap that leads people down a road of misery, then your welfare system is probably garbage and needs an overhaul, welfare is there to help the most vulnerable, those who are most in need, there needs to be checks and balances to ensure the system isn't being abused however...

Because here our welfare system will assist people with training/education, drug tests and ensures people are looking for work... And soon if someone has a history of abuse like gambling they may be placed on a welfare card which has a whitelist of where the income can be spent.

It's no wonder we have less homeless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_population

************

Now that I have provided citations for everything, I expect you to do the same going forward.

Australia ranked Second in what exactly? Being too expensive to live in maybe (9th currently http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/most-expensive-countries-to-live-in/). The United States is actually relatively cheap, especially in Republican states. It just certain States like New York and California that is way too expensive because of the democrats in their want of big government. When the government leaves the industries alone, it gets cheaper. Look at Lasik eye surgery and how much cheaper it got when the government-backed off. Also, bringing up lobbyist is exactly proving my point that the federal government will screw the American people for money. So thank you for making my point again. That is why we shouldn't give them more power other than protecting us. 

Minimum wage is for people who put in minimum effort, thus get what they deserve. Raising the minimum wage will increase our cost of living and force automation to replace their job. We have a low unemployment rate and we want to keep it that way, unlike Australia. We have a lot of homeless in mostly liberal areas that have a lot more government control, go figure.

Welfare is a trap because it incentivizes a lot of people to not work and live a depressing life knowing they aren't contributing to society. Also, a lot of welfare recipients end up resorting to criminal activities to make even more money and end up in jail.

At Bolded 1: You are aware that the US are ranked there, too, right? Also, while we're at your link, it says the US rank 17th in Human Freedom and 28th on Personal Freedom. Australia? 4th and 11th, respectively. Also in your link, Australia ranks 10th in the happiness rating compared to 15th for the US.

Because there's nothing there but farmland and cows. Of course it's cheap there, that's true for everywhere where's nothing but pastures. Rural land is always much cheaper, simply because the Terrain is much cheaper. Since you compare those to Australia, how about making it an Apples to Apples comparison and compare those Republican States to the Australian Outback with the Northern Territory, for example?

New York is not more expensive due to Big Government, it's because it's freaking New York, a very big city with limited space. Since Space comes at a premium, anything you want to build there gets much more expensive, and thus shops have to sell much more expensive to compensate that. Even if you remove the government totally here, it would still be much, much more expensive than those rural towns in republican states. If you take any backwater Town and would compare it to Austin, Texas, for instance, then of course Austin would be miles more expensive in every which way despite being in a deep red state.

Minimum wage is to ensure you don't get screwed over by your employer. And automation will come either way, if you bend over let yourself get screwed by your employer with an unlivable wage or not.

For instance, Luxembourg has one of the highest minimum wages, but also one of the richest economies and companies are flocking to the country by the bandwagon, so much that the country has more jobs than inhabitants and half the workforce commutes from the neighboring countries. And they happily do so for a minimum wage, as the luxembourgish minimum wage is much higher than the minimum wage in their countries, and higher than what they would earn for their respective jobs in their respective countries. But the companies wouldn't go to another place with cheaper workforce, and it's certainly not just because of taxes (those are getting harmonized throughout the EU, as a result, Luxembourg is no tax haven anymore).