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Mmmkay
RN -
Australia is roughly the size of the upper 48, however we have more people in California alone and our GDP is $1.62 Trillion with a "T" as its known has a larger GDP than MANY nations on this earth.
Plus the middle part of the country as I said produces more corn, soybean and wheat than anybody else on the planet and we're loosing farmers on a daily basis because kids don't wanna stay on the farms, they want to work in the cities.
We have been trading wheat for oil with Russia even when it was part of the USSR and still have enough to sell to other countries and for everybody to have at least 4 loafs of bread in the States.
You also have to understand the dynamics of our political system and we have cut back funding on infrastructure since the 1970s. Our schools systems were once the world standard and we STILL teach many of the world's young people at the University level.
I met one Brazilian that goes to Univ of "Mazzu" (Missouri) on a Football (Soccer) scholarship in Germany and met a Univ of Florida "Gators" (Snap, Snap) student from Peru. So while I'll agree that primary and secondary education has leap frogged us, it would only take a grand investment by the federal government to put us right back on top, I say roughly a 1/3 of what's being spent on fighting Iraq.
As Doc said, your qualify of life and what you consider a standard of living may be different than mine. As my Ukrainian lady friend told me, she's happy even though she doesn't have any money to have real options.
I wouldn't mind relocating, however I do like my American TV (what little of it I watch) and I am a car nut, so I can make that work anywhere. For instance I wanna drive on the left side of the car and the right side of the road, so no Australia or British Empire for me. Germany has the mildest climate for the most part, especially the southern half of the country. I just don't know what type of work I would be doing over there and like I said in places like Berlin unemployment is high. You better have an idea of what your doing before you move anywhere.
Plus the women are better looking especially in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. The woman elsewhere aren't really better looking than American women, when you find one that doesn't weight over 200lbs.
I met some Kiwi's while in Sweden and they were quite attractive but not [i]down for the brown[/i] as far as I could tell as they liked hanging out with loutish, heavy drinking, college aged US types.
For those looking long term you need time to invest. The days of you being able to walk into a country and pick from its best women are largely over because local competition has improved and EU membership gives them options they never enjoyed before.
I found an interesting stat not too long ago and its very rough, so take it with a gain of salt.
Roughly .07% of the female population in Russia would consider to marrying a Western man (Europe, Canada and the US). That doesn't sound like much, but according to this guys calculations that means roughly 54,000 women available every year with more turning 18 by the minute.
That sounds about right though because while my lady friend would leave, her other two friends wouldn't do it and she said they were nice. I saw pictures, not that impressive, not ugly either.
So yeah get out there while the gettin is good...
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[QUOTE=Doctor_Skank]Put together a demo, dress nice, go to the top clubs and ask to see the art director, introduce yourself as an LA-based DJ, talk the talk and walk the walk. :)
If they can't help you, they can probably network you to guys that can. You might start at other clubs, but if you are good, you could make it.
Even if you don't get work right away, you'll be meeting the "right" people. Worth a shot... cue Eminem anthem Lose Yourself... :)[/QUOTE]
Awwww man I thought you had the hook up!
I guess I could put a demo together....
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Notice how it all comes back to the car.
That's the biggest stumbling block for an American living abroad. They don't wanna give up the fucking car, no matter how impractical it is where they are going to live. They feel it's an outrage that gas prices are high, costs of cars are high, and there's no parking. That's done ON PURPOSE guys. Too many cars in a city make it miserable for people.
The town I'm moving to (Bogota) by 2015 won't even allow private vehicle traffic during rush hours. I say good for them. And you are NEVER going to get me to drive down there, I'll leave it to the pros.
That's also one of the biggest causes of culture shock for immigrants here, if not THE big cause. The car culture makes us very isolated and anti-social. Not to mention they can't FATHOM a place where you couldn't just walk to the store and pick up a few things.
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Interesting exchange of ideas and opinions over the last few days. I don't have much to add.
I would just say that each individual has his/her own tastes and preferences. Not everyone American wants to drive aorund in a small car 3 hours a day. I lived in NYC for a few years and a car in Manhattan is a hindrance, not a help. Parking can cost $3,000 a year.
I would welcome living in a city where public transportation was fast enough and reliable enough and taxis were plentiful enopugh and cheap enough for a car to be unnecessary. I have many more things I would rather spend my money on. Sex being foremost among them. Almost every large South American city fits that bill.
@Obepo, "While the Forces of Social Control do their violence against prostitutes in an attempt to prevent we men from having sex, their War on Drugs has an even greater eunichization effect."
I hope you aren't advocating the use of illlegal drugs so that strung out women will engage in unsafe sex!?!?!?!? That would be just plain sick!
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DJ, as you said, Australia has a ridiculously small population. Comparing us to America using total figures, is comparing apples to oranges. To get a true comparison (particularly if we're talking about overall quality of living in various countries) we really have to use per capita figures. I got the following stats from nationmaster.com.
GDP: America's total GDP is by far the largest, almost three times more than the number two country. However, America's per capita GDP is $39,452.74 and Australia's is $31,421.40 - not such a huge difference.
Wheat: In total wheat production, America is rated number 3, Australia number 5. But per capita, Australia is number 1, producing almost twice the amount of its nearest competitor and nearly 6 times more wheat than America, who comes in at number 7. FYI, Australia accounts for more organic cropland then the next 36 countries on the list combined. We're number 1 in gross amount of land devoted to agriculture and America is at number 4. Per capita, we're still number 1 and the US drops down to number 23.
Exports: For total exports, America is number 2 and Australia is down at number 28. Per capita, we both drop waaaay down, but Australia comes out ahead at number 53, with America at number 62.
But anyway, more interesting for you guys - and more on topic! - are the female population stats on the nationmaster site. You can search the number of women in a particular age group in every country, according to actual numbers or percentage of the population.
For sheer numbers of women aged 20-24, for example, the top three countries are China, India and Indonesia. But guess what...America is at number 4! Don't bother coming to Australia to find 20-24 year old women, though. We're rated number 61!!
The top four are the same again for women aged 25-29 (with Brazil at number 5). Australia does only slightly better with this age group, coming in at number 58.
With all the discussions recently about marrying foreign women, this site could be quite handy. You could find out who has the most females in the desired age group and then cross-reference to find info on income, lifestyle, marriage rates, divorce rates, childbirth, education levels, etc. I had lots of fun messing around with it.
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[QUOTE=George90]@Obepo, "While the Forces of Social Control do their violence against prostitutes in an attempt to prevent we men from having sex, their War on Drugs has an even greater eunichization effect."
I hope you aren't advocating the use of illlegal drugs so that strung out women will engage in unsafe sex!?!?!?!? That would be just plain sick![/QUOTE]
Yes, George. That's exactly what he's advocating.
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George that's my point entirely. Most Europeans, Asians, Latin Americans etc are happy to just live somewhere where they dont have to WORRY about driving, because the transit takes them everywhere.
As for living in a house vs apartment, I had a house here in NYC, sold it, THANK GOD, never doing anything like that again. It's condos or bust for me from now on.
There are many things I won't miss about life in the US, the fact that I have no health insurance (I'd be able to pay for it if my move weren't imminent but it would put a serious hurt on me), the crappy food, the fact that you can't do anything but breathe here without paying money to do it, also I consider Bogota's transport system better than the subway here now, the subway COULD be better but it's just not well run at all. Also I love my bicycle and Bogota is full of bicycle lanes.
One thing I will miss about NYC is the way people are so in-your-face and direct, in other words HONEST. I don't think there's anywhere else in the world like it. Here politeness and social convention take a back seat and people just tell it like it is with no regard for protocol or people's feelings. It can be jarring at times but I've gotten used to it and I just love knowing where I stand at all times, not to mention being able to let others know where THEY stand.
The big problem is that I have always seen NYC as this kind of island of anti-consumerism and in many ways it was just that for the longest, it was really the last holdout against the big corporations, they notoriously fell flat on their faces when they tried to make inroads here through the 70s and 80s (except McDonalds, they did well). Now that's all changed, everytime I see another Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts or another fucking Red Lobster go in I just wanna puke. :(
What does this have to do with AW? I think the REAL problem is exactly this, the absolute imbalance of over-the-top materialism and consumerism that fuels the attitudes of both women AND men here and encourage ridiculously selfish behavior to the point where two people can no longer stay together anymore or even GET together. Modern society here is designed and built to make everybody desire things they don't REALLY want, and we end up losing up on what we REALLY want to satisfy our shallowest of whims.
I hang on a lot of other forums and I see the same song sung over and over again by waves and waves of expats and potential expats. Everybody is crying over what they are missing or what they might be missing, but in the same breath they are bitching about the materialism in America. They see the materialism on the outside but seem to be unaware of just how much of it has been INTERNALIZED. They don't see the blatant irony in the fact that they 'can't stand the rat race' etc etc but apparently it's worse than being crucified if they can't import everly last scrap of shit they've collected over their whole lives, have to give up driving their precious cars, or can't find their favorite fucking brand of peanut butter anymore.
Those are the type of expat who are heading for a severe case of culture shock. They will wake up in a year or two to find that they have been played by the local women and beaten at their own game. They moved because they were smart enough to realize how fucked up their culture was and recognized something they liked in another culture, but then ended up taking their fucked up culture with them and never really had a deep enough respect for their "new" culture to REALLY steep themselves in it and learn it deeply.
Guys like this invariably attract all the gold-diggers from scores of miles around. They complain about shallow women, but they themselves don't have much depth to them. They want their women in tip-top shape but wouldn't see tip-top staring back at them if they looked in a mirror. They make a minimal effort at best to learn the local language, yet are mystified why nobody seems to be able to understand them.
Bogota as a town is a perfect example of this. Although I'm totally looking forward to building a new life there, I would NOT recommend anybody else try it in that particular town, unless they are willing to REALLY understand the language, the culture, the history etc. Bogota is a place where 50% of the people are the most on-point intelligent upright generally cool people you could ever meet and the other 50% are the biggest fuckups and scammers you've ever seen. The locals are constantly playing a sifting game with each other, and if you aren't able to participate in the local culture you haven't got a chance, ESPECIALLY not in relationships, you will end up with the bottom of the barrel inevitably, time and time again.
And then of course you'll go on forums like these and say "MAN MY CITY SUCKS EVERY LAST WOMAN HERE IS A BACKSTABBING *****!" etc. :P
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Many Australian and other Western men are going to Asia these days. Great return on investment in these places. A friend of mine showed me a video he made of a shopping district in Shanghai and I was amazed, the average Chinese woman(at least in that part of the country) looks like Lucy Lui.
In the long run, its going to become a Chinese Asian dominated world, one of the largest Investment Banks in the world is predicting that it will have the biggest economy by 2040 and that is making very conservative assumptions, another former World Bank head says 2025. Guess which country keeps the dollar from collapsing? China. China is also the reason for the rise of the Euro as they have been "diversifying".
There is probably another two decades of economic robustness for the US and Europe.
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[QUOTE=George90]@Obepo, "While the Forces of Social Control do their violence against prostitutes in an attempt to prevent we men from having sex, their War on Drugs has an even greater eunichization effect."
I hope you aren't advocating the use of illlegal drugs so that strung out women will engage in unsafe sex!?!?!?!? That would be just plain sick![/QUOTE]
I'm not advocating the use, I'm trying to suggest a reason why the State expends so much effort in deterring many drugs. Certainly I am pleased that women use them, but my advocacy can hardly have any effect - I'm sure the appeal is in the drugs themselves. They must be quite wonderful, though I cannot say having never sampled any. Or at any rate they will seem, relatively speaking, wonderful to poor people who have little if any enjoyment in life.
By the by, what does 'strung out' mean? Seems to me if the individual prefers consuming the drug to abstaining, then everything is great and there's no need to make any judgements or use pejorative terms about their condition.
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[QUOTE=Bango Cheito]Notice how it all comes back to the car.
That's the biggest stumbling block for an American living abroad. They don't wanna give up the fucking car, no matter how impractical it is where they are going to live. They feel it's an outrage that gas prices are high, costs of cars are high, and there's no parking. That's done ON PURPOSE guys. Too many cars in a city make it miserable for people.
The town I'm moving to (Bogota) by 2015 won't even allow private vehicle traffic during rush hours. I say good for them. And you are NEVER going to get me to drive down there, I'll leave it to the pros.
That's also one of the biggest causes of culture shock for immigrants here, if not THE big cause. The car culture makes us very isolated and anti-social. Not to mention they can't FATHOM a place where you couldn't just walk to the store and pick up a few things.[/QUOTE]
You always bang on cars, your a New Yorker you wouldn't understand...
There are 300 of us in a Kmart parking lot every Thurs. Young and Old.
We love cars, cars are fun, they are fast they make great noises.
There 30,000 people on the SRT Forums, 55,000 on Corral.net (Mustangs) and about 15,000 on the Benz forum, it doesn't isolate us from anything. Hardly any of us know our neighbors next door, I find that more troubling than owning a car.
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wheat and women
[QUOTE=Rubber Nursey]
Wheat: In total wheat production, America is rated number 3, Australia number 5. But per capita, Australia is number 1, producing almost twice the amount of its nearest competitor and nearly 6 times more wheat than America, who comes in at number 7. FYI, Australia accounts for more organic cropland then the next 36 countries on the list combined. We're number 1 in gross amount of land devoted to agriculture and America is at number 4. Per capita, we're still number 1 and the US drops down to number 23.
<snip>
For sheer numbers of women aged 20-24, for example, the top three countries are China, India and Indonesia. But guess what...America is at number 4! Don't bother coming to Australia to find 20-24 year old women, though. We're rated number 61!!
[/QUOTE]
Do a lot of Australians leave Australia? I know in sweeping around the web I came across a number that suggested half a million Australians visit the United States every year. It seemed like a very large number; as you may know, a lot of people "visiting" the United States are trying to find work here, or working here under-the-table. I know a lot of girls get captured by the idea of Hollywood. But this 61 number seems low...is Australia exporting it's 20-24 year olds? Are they all partying in Indonesia?
At any rate, the thing about wheat - it's a commodity. The per cap number may say more about Australia, than about the global supply of wheat. Whenever someone "corners the market" on a commodity something is wrong with the marketplace. Something political or even corrupt is taking place that is keeping customers from getting the real (lower) price. I won't labor over this further. The last thing I want is to argue with the farmers daughter.
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The UK Canada Aus and New Zealand ALL have about 10% of their populations living as expats at any given time. That's a pretty normal number for small to mid sized countries actually. Bigger countries like the USA and Brazil and China only have around 1-2% of their population living abroad.
Immigration is a very cyclical thing though, the majority of expats tend to repatriate over time, in general half of them go back home within 5 years.
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[QUOTE=Bango Cheito]
I hang on a lot of other forums and I see the same song sung over and over again by waves and waves of expats and potential expats. Everybody is crying over what they are missing or what they might be missing, but in the same breath they are bitching about the materialism in America. They see the materialism on the outside but seem to be unaware of just how much of it has been INTERNALIZED. They don't see the blatant irony in the fact that they 'can't stand the rat race' etc etc but apparently it's worse than being crucified if they can't import everly last scrap of shit they've collected over their whole lives, have to give up driving their precious cars, or can't find their favorite fucking brand of peanut butter anymore.
[/QUOTE]
Fantastic post, Bango. This reminds me of an American expat I met while I was living in Brasil. This guy had essentially liquidated all his assets and moved to Rio, living the good life, and fucking many beautiful women. We were eating dinner one night at a restaurant in front of Copacabana beach, and what was the topic of discussion? The women? The beautiful weather? The beach? Nope. He was complaining about his ketchup. Apparently, he was unhappy that he was not able to get Heinz ketchup at this restaurant for his fries, and that the local brand was inferior. If guys on here aren't familiar, the ketchup in South America is not as thick as American-made ketchup, and a tad bit sweeter. Apparently, this bothered him so much that he had to complain to the waiter, even going as far as describing, in detail, why the American made ketchup is superior, the thickness, the flavor, etc. Granted, he was a good termas wingman, but that was the last time I ever went out to a restaurant with him.
[QUOTE=DJ FourMoney]
We love cars, cars are fun, they are fast they make great noises.
[/QUOTE]
That's funny, that's the same way I feel about Latinas!
Seriously though, I think you're missing the point. We're not complaining about cars. I love cars too. What we're complaining about is the fact that you HAVE to DRIVE a car in this fucking country if you want to get anywhere! There are no other means of transportation! So esentially, you are dependant on your car, and if you don't have one, you're fucked. No job, no social life, nothing.
What's funny is that a lot of Americans actually justify having to drive by saying that it's "liberating". The "freedom" to drive is just so great because you can "get anywhere you want or need to go", when in fact, it's the exact opposite, you are BOUND by your car, you have NO choice! In addition, it's another form of debt for Americans, with car payments, maintenance, gas, insurance, etc.
You like driving back and forth to work every day in rush hour traffic, averaging 25 mph on the highway because of congestion and traffic jams? Fine with me, knock yourself out. But give me the option of being able to take a bus or metro to get where I need to go, that's all I ask!
Anyways, my point is there is a difference in owning a car as a hobby, which I think is awesome, and ownng a car because you HAVE to, because there is no alternative mode of transportation. That is what we're complainign about on here.
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[QUOTE=Jelly Donut]Do a lot of Australians leave Australia? I know in sweeping around the web I came across a number that suggested half a million Australians visit the United States every year. It seemed like a very large number; as you may know, a lot of people "visiting" the United States are trying to find work here, or working here under-the-table. I know a lot of girls get captured by the idea of Hollywood. But this 61 number seems low...is Australia exporting it's 20-24 year olds? Are they all partying in Indonesia?
I won't labor over this further. The last thing I want is to argue with the farmers daughter.[/QUOTE]
National pride is a dangerous thing sometimes. I'll lay off the patriotism. :)
Our young women aren't going anywhere - we simply don't have any. There's no young men, either. A significant percentage of our population is well over fifty years old. Our ageing population is actually reaching crisis point, with the Government frantically trying to put things in place to cope with the massive skills shortages and pension claims that will occur when all the baby boomers start dropping out of the workforce, en masse. Our Government is even paying out thousands of dollars in 'baby bonuses' to everyone who gives birth (regardless of their income) to encourage us to 'go forth and procreate'.
I don't know that America is a primary destination for Aussies to look for work - although, I'm sure plenty do. But the US isn't very agreeable when it comes to giving out work visas to Australians. (We're not too keen on giving them to American's, either. Not sure where all this hostility is coming from!)Traditionally, Aussies head to the UK and Ireland, where work visas are much easier for us to obtain and the pound is worth so much more than our dollar. We can go to NZ without visas at all, which some people take advantage of for a change of scenery, but their dollar is worth less than ours, so it's not much of a money spinner.
It would be interesting to find out the age bracket that those half a million Aussies visiting the US fit into. With the first stages of the baby boomers' retirements already well underway, we've seen the rise of what we call the 'Grey Nomads' - retirees who sell up, buy a caravan or mobile home and just travel around Australia, indefinitely. Literally thousands of them. A significant number are also travelling overseas. I wouldn't be surprised if they account for a very large percentage of your Aussie visitors.
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Guys!
I love my Lotus Elise. How does the song go? Older whiskey, faster cars, younger women. I live in Queens. The drive home at 80mph on the Long island Expressway clears my head. What's wrong with that?