The Diversity Meltdown Down Under
Karen De Coster’s article on “The Standard of Living Bubble” leaves open, inevitably, the question of foreign equivalents to the hoggish economic meltdown that Miss De Coster describes. Still unsolved, for instance, is the mystery of why Australia, so far, has managed (unlike, by the looks of it, France) to avoid the worst of the real estate bubble.
Why should this bizarre outcome be? It is not, after all, as if Australians possess a greater intrinsic virtue than Americans, or that they are any less addicted to spurious “wealth” via plastic cards and deficit financing. Australia’s welfare system is, by every conceivable criterion, far more Scandinavian and cocoon-like than the U.S.A.’s (as well as more centralized; the notion of different rates of welfare payment according to different states is unknown to Australia’s populace). Few with any knowledge of Australia would find it lacking in the entitlement culture. The concept of “owning” one’s own home is as deeply embedded in the Australian psyche as in the American. Always was, even before 1950s prosperity. Moreover, interest rates in the two countries are broadly comparable, and have been ever since the mid-1990s (in late-1980s Australia they went through the roof).
So why have the grotesque scenes of American foreclosure and repossession not been replicated in Australia? When the local news reports carried American stories of ousted homeowners wrecking their premises before the lenders could regain them, the response from Australians was of absolute disbelief. Such things, at present at least, are unimaginable here, except in the case of the occasional drug addict or Aboriginal layabout.
Yet facts are stubborn things. No Australian bank, whether any of the big four (ANZ, Westpac, National Australia Bank, and the Commonwealth) or any of the smaller players, has collapsed. Perhaps more tellingly still, the $700 billion American bailout excited disgust across the Australian political spectrum, to the extent that Australian politics has a spectrum.
The only explanation that comes readily to hand for the disparity between Australia’s situation and America’s is that, in spite of everything, our Third World ethnics are still somewhat less gruesome than your Third World ethnics. American Renaissance writer Thomas Jackson went so far as to say, last January, the following:
Australia has an immigration policy that is like ours stood on its head. The United States is filling up with unlettered Hispanics, who make every social problem worse, whether it is crime, school failure, illegitimacy, youth gangs, obesity, or drug-taking. Australia is importing hundreds of thousands of smart, hard-working people who are streaming into the nation’s best universities and working their way to the top.
This of course brings its own problems, notably the way in which the hard-working are almost as querulous about white “racism” as are the unlettered, and no more proficient at speaking any language identifiable as English. But it might make for less economic friction in the short term. Even ”The Camp of the Saints” might be bearable if it could be marketed as The Ritz-Carlton of the Saints. Of course the unlettered have a way of turning the Ritz-Carlton into a camp anyway; and a camp, moreover, wholly unadorned by such courtesies as are famously encapsulated in a certain Ogden Nash poem.
Incidentally, if you’re a Takimag reader hoping to avoid the American economic Armageddon by settling in Australia, fuhgeddaboutit. Over the last decade for reasons explained here, both the current Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his predecessor John Howard have been–in best Brechtian style–eagerly abolishing the people and appointing a new people.
If, on the other hand, you are a Sudanese rapist illiterate in your native tongue, with half a dozen equally illiterate spouses all under the age of consent, then the solution to your Weltschmerz is clear. Consult your nearest Australian consulate now.
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“If, on the other hand, you are a Sudanese rapist illiterate in your native tongue, with half a dozen equally illiterate spouses all under the age of consent, then the solution to your Weltschmerz is clear. Consult your nearest Australian consulate now.”
This looks almost like the immigration policy in Germany and once we have the Obamacrats in power in the USA as well.
Do I see a pattern here? - and we might want to know, who is pushing such an asinine policy and to what end.
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Your best hope in Canada is to be all of the above mentioned, plus extra points could be gained if you are crippled, have AIDS, AND require 100,000 dollars a year in ‘free’ health care and a ‘free’ electric wheelchair. Nobody uses the manual jobs any more.
Oh, and don’t even immigrate - just show up as a refugee...and bring the whole family!
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This article is premature and probably only correct in small part. I think the major reasons for difference are more prudent lending practices by banks and other lenders, tighter government control, a stronger job market, and differences in laws (ie in Australia you can’t just walk away from your mortgage obligations). However, some of this may change with the currently worsening economic environment in Australia.
“the $700 billion American bailout excited disgust across the Australian political spectrum”
I am not aware of any significant Australian politician who expressed “disgust” (all too scared to say anything that might be interpreted as a slight towards Uncle Sam). Yes, there were some media commentators who noted the injustice of the American bailout, but many more commentators, including our Prime Minister, expressed the hope that the US congress would hurry up and pass the bailout legislation.
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Australia’s relatively still stable economy has been the result of the resources export boon, principally to China. However, if the U.S has a severe recession and imports less and less goods from China, China will produce less of these goods, and hence have a sharply curtailed demand for Australia’s resources.
Australia is only a half-cycle phase behind us.
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Australia has had a relatively high rate of home ownership for some decades.
The US has moved up the international scale of percentage home ownership very rapidly.
The US has only recently “caught up” up to Australia (and maybe surpassing it) in percentage of residents who own their own home.
This recent US advance was at least partially driven by interest rate policies and sub-prime policies.
Whether the recent advances of the ‘ownership society’ will stick in the US is another matter.
The Australian rate of home ownership was achieved over a long period of time and interestingly the tax structure in Australia is not as home owner friendly as the US system. There are certainly no home mortgage interest deductions in Australia.
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I suspect that the “no down payment” push, led by Bush, explicitly to increase the rate of homeownership by minorities in the US, is behind our meltdown. Did you have that in Australia?
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You don’t need to buy “Camp of the Saints,” just download it from:
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDFs/Camp_of_the_Saints.pdf
All the gritty realism of an Ayn Rand monologue. “To the Gas Chambers, go!”
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“I suspect that the “no down payment” push, led by Bush, explicitly to increase the rate of homeownership by minorities in the US, is behind our meltdown. Did you have that in Australia?”
No, except in the case of Aborigines who get all sorts of handouts from the government.
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Australia shares the characteristics of other prosperous social democracies: comparatively low population density, abundant natural resources, rule of law, homogenous populace, and good work ethic. These conditions enable affordable family formation so the tax base keeps up with the government expenditures. This happy picture gets messed up by permissive, consumptive culture, unassimilable immigrants, and deficit spending.
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“The only explanation that comes readily to hand for the disparity between Australia’s situation and America’s is that, in spite of everything, our Third World ethnics are still somewhat less gruesome than your Third World ethnics.”
This is, far and away, the stupidest thing I have read about the real estate bubble. How many of the people who have lost thier homes were “third world ethnics”? Five or ten percent?
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Here’s one of those “gruesome” Third World ethnics trashing his home:
http://thelasvegasrealestateblog.com/2008/06/26/foreclosure-vandalism-on-the-rise/
(I know, I know: he LOOKS white, but he’s really an albino.)
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Home Ownership in Australia: now ‘least affordable in developed counties’. Australian economy “relatively stable”? More like a “house of cards”, with $570bill. foreign debt increasing at $50bill. pa, destruction of manufacturing, agriculture, etc: If by 2015, oil were US$150/barrel, and A$1=US$0.50, Australia’s net oil import cost would be US$123bill. pa, up from $12.8bill. in ‘05-’06. http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2008mar01_cover.html.
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