The Nanny State

In some ways, the United States seems like one giant nanny state. The FCC will restrict content shown on over-the-air television, New York City is seeking to restrict the size of a soda that can be sold to a citizen, and vices such as gambling and prostitution are mostly outlawed. Australia, on the other hand, is far less concerned about what decisions adults make for themselves.

I lived walking distance from a mega casino on the bank of the Yarra river. On any given weekend, thousands of adults came, consumed alcohol, and lost money. Yet the casino did not seem to cause any societal harm. I took the kids to the movie theater and some of the restaurants located inside the casino many times. Gambling was advertised during footy games and it was possible to place bets, with moving odds, at any time during the game off of a smartphone. I even got in the spirit and made $25 off a $10 wager during last year’s Grand Final. Sadly, I squandered most of the profits on a bad bet during the Melbourne Cup.

I have walked past brothels with the kids and never really had to explain what was going on. They were tastefully (well, for brothels) marketed. For the record, I was not interested in going inside, but the legal brothels eliminated street walkers (for the most part), reduced incidents of STD outbreaks, and protected the women who chose the oldest profession.

The availability of gambling and sex sins were somewhat shocking to me at first and then I kind of stopped noticing it. At some point, the only reason I brought it up was because there was such a lack of adverse affects on society in general that the way we handled it back home seemed downright puritanical. So it would seem that Australia is freer. However, I would argue on issues that make a huge impact it is not.

Yes, the States acts a bit behind the times when it comes to gambling or sex. However, I am told and have no firsthand knowledge, that there are a bevy of free porn sites readily available to make up for the free-to-air softcore stuff shown in Oz. While the soda ban in NYC seems insane, I still have no problem buying a 44 ounce Big Gulp at the local 7-11 for ninety-nine cents. I wish we had legal brothels so I never had to see a street walker, but there aren’t any prostitutes in my neighborhood. As for gambling, I don’t seem to have a hard time making a friendly wager or finding a poker game amongst friends. Where the US is exceptionally laissez faire is in urban planning and development.

While Australians obsess over keeping their cities “livable” government entities strictly control how much land is released for development. Once released, an oligarchy of developers purchase the land for pennies on the dollar and then sit on it. Meanwhile, the cost of a home in Sydney and Melbourne is over eight times median incomes in a country that has nothing but land. While city planners may have the best of intentions, the results stink.

Since the Aussie planners have their way, the results are live “here” and work “there”. “Here” means an “established” suburb, or someplace close to the downtown area with public transportation, but not actually in the downtown area. So, how does that work out? Well, I lived for almost two years 3.75 miles from the heart of downtown Melbourne. Commuting to work by walking, public transportation, or driving my own private vehicle was time consuming and costly. Seriously, it took between forty-five minutes to an hour to commute to work no matter which tram, bus, or route I took. Parking would cost between $15 and $70 per day and public transportation was not necessarily cheap coming in at $7 minimum per day. I almost could not be closer to work and yet it was that inconvenient and costly to get there no matter which mode of transportation I chose.

Compare that to my adopted home of Seattle which is split it into two different communities do to the giant freaking lake between Seattle and the Eastside. Australians used to ask me how far my home was from the downtown area and the question used to catch me a bit by surprise - I couldn’t fathom why I would want to live next to the downtown area. Yet, in Melbourne, the geographic equivalent of living in Queen Anne and working in Seattle would equate to an hour of commuting each way daily.

Seattle is not planned and as a result there is sprawl. However, I have learned how to embrace the sprawl and realize that it is strangely good. The area considered to be Seattle goes from the port of Seattle and some of the San Juan Islands in the West, to Everett in the North, North Bend in the East (how weird is that?), and Tacoma in the South - this is a HUGE area. Because of the sprawl, I can afford to live in my house. Although firmly an Eastsider, my commute time to any major employer in the area is less than an hour. My current commute is roughly fifteen miles or 3.5 times the distance I used to commute and I can do it consistently in half the time for roughly the same price as public transportation. If I were to work over 20 miles away in Seattle, I could still make the commute in about forty-five minutes and that’s with a giant freaking lake in the middle and all traffic funnelled to a choice of two bridges.

So what does urban planning offer? Extremely small extremely expensive homes all crammed in next to each other with streets that are completely undriveable. It offers volatility in residential real estate and epic boom and bust cycles. While public transportation is nice, so is personal choice. Yet, if all of this is such an obvious result of urban planning, why don’t Australians demand an end to it?

I think there are two components to why this bad policy persists. First, change is difficult and Australians love their “established” suburbs that are extremely close to the downtown district. The level of prestige and envy that they can inflict upon each other by saying that they live in one suburb versus another is a birthright. In Seattle, there is no equivalent. Saying I live in Redmond does not conjure up images of either wealth or poverty, the suburb is fairly diverse. While those that prefer Seattle will look down on my Eastside existence, I am quite happy with it and Eastsiders and Seattleites have long ago come to some kind of truce and stopped trying to convince each other of the superiority of one over the other.

The second portion is that, even for those currently priced out of the housing market, houses still remain the only known road to riches. With bullshit like “house prices double in value every seven to ten years” constantly repeated to the average reader of The Age, the right to a perpetual motion machine that generates 7%-10% compound interest would be destroyed. To a certain extent, house price unaffordability and artificially constrained supply is seen as a positive. For those that dare to dream; virtuously saving a deposit, sacrificing to pay the mortgage, and patience will heap windfall profits upon them. Future homebuyers actually prefer this system as it rewards them and it is the only system they know.

Sadly, I think all of Australia’s problems would be far easier to solve. Abolish urban planning and let the market operate. Sure, there would be a devastating recession as a result of collapsing home prices and a lack of consumer spending that was based on continual refinancing, but it’s going to happen anyway. If one thinks I am being too harsh on my Australian friends, I readily acknowledge this semi-difficult societal change would be relatively trivial compared to the changes needed here in America in the form of sensible gun laws and low cost healthcare.

What Australia Does Better Than Us

“Imitation is the best form of flattery.”

- Charles Caleb Colton

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

- Albert Einstein

I ended my self-imposed exile from the United States three months ago. While I was in Australia, I made the decision that I prefer life in the United States. However, now that I have repatriated, I am convinced that Australia handles some very major components of everyday life better. As a country; it is time that we start looking at other models for handling gun control, health care, and retirement.

Gun Control

I have spoken about this ad nauseum. I am never going to convince some folks. I have seen the impact of a voluntary disarmament. There are those who say that if citizens give up their guns, then “the criminals”, who don’t obey the law anyway, will not. From firsthand experience this is not true. When the act of carrying a gun becomes a crime, in and of itself, people - even “criminals” - stop carrying guns or go to jail.

When you think of how many people are in jail in the US for petty drug crimes, it would probably be an even swap to decriminalize marijuana and fill the jails with people carrying guns. Personally, I would feel much safer knowing someone had pot on them than a gun. Typically, the average stoner is only going to commit a violent act on a slice of pizza, not a person.

Anecdotally, Julie was in the Melbourne Central Business District on a Friday evening waiting for a bus. About twenty feet away, a young man was standing on the street. Three gang members worked together - two grabbed the man and a third slit the man’s throat with a knife and then they all ran away while the man was bleeding on the sidewalk. Obviously, this act of violence was horrible. For the gun proponents, they are probably saying, “See? Take away the guns and the ‘criminals’ will use another weapon! Guns for everyone!” Again, I disagree. Julie was much safer with the gang members using a knife. There were no stray bullets, no chance of her being accidentally injured, and for the most part - gang members make an effort to not involve “civilians”. Had Julie been in that close proximity to a gang target in the States, I believe she would have had a real chance of becoming an accidental victim of gang violence. Australia is not perfect and there is crime, however, overall I felt much safer there. Following the disarmament in 1996, there was no radical increase in home invasion or attacks on civilians by “the criminals”.

For the record, I put the words “the criminals” in quotation marks because I think every time a gun nut uses those words, he really means “blacks and hispanics”.

Health Care

Nothing drives me crazier than the local news, except a local news report on the impact of rising gas prices. My SUV gets a pathetic 12 miles per gallon in city driving. I am willingly spending $4 on gas on my daily work commute each way. If gas were to go up another $.25 per gallon, the impact on my work costs would $2.50 a week. If that $10 a month breaks my budget, then I was living way too close to the edge and I made a bad choice in the car I drive, where I live, or where I go to work. All of the above is my responsibility. However, if you listen to the local news reporter nodding sympathetically to the rube talking about how gas price is impacting their life, probably while smoking, you would think that literally hundreds of dollars a month are going out the window.

Yet, with healthcare, it is entirely possible for well meaning, responsible people to come up with hundreds of dollars of unplanned expenses per month. I made sure to buy health insurance before coming back to the US. I pay several hundreds of dollars to insure our family every month, but at least I can plan for it. However, after being back for a week, me and the kids had sore throats. I didn’t want to see a doctor, but I had a feeling it was strep throat and that antibiotics would be the only road to recovery.

So the kids and I went to the local urgent care and I was prepared to pay $50 each for the privilege of having a doctor write us a perscription. Eventually, we were seen by a doctor and we each had our throats cultured, which unbeknownst to me, added $44 each to the bill. Each of us got a prescription for antibiotics at another $15 a pop. By the time we were done with our first course of antibiotics, I had spent $327. Unfortunately, Carson and I needed a second round of antibiotics which meant another trip to the doctor and another round of meds. For those keeping score, the total cost of this fairly common illness came to $457 on top of the money I am already paying for insurance.

With the median household income in the Seattle area at roughly $60,000 per year; I don’t know how the average family can afford healthcare. In Washington, that salary comes to $4,191.87 a month after taxes. Insuring a family of four on a high deductible plan will cost $600 - $800 per month and as my case in point above illustrates, it’s fairly easy to have a month of $500 or more of unplanned expenses in a month. An average household can find itself spending 25% of their after tax income on healthcare!

In Australia, there is a 2.5% medicaire tax that is taken out of every earner’s wages. However, if a worker carries private insurance, they are not subject to this tax. In effect, high earners are better off carrying private insurance, but every citizen and resident is covered. Since Julie and I were not residents, we were required to carry private insurance. We spent $500 a month and had no deductibles or co-pays. We had the option to see private doctors. We even had the ability to have a doctor come to the house when the kids were sick and were reimbursed at 100%. Even though we did not receive public healthcare, we still paid significantly less for better service in Australia. Further, every citizen had basic healthcare needs covered.

And yet “conservatives” are scared shitless of the evils of “socialized medicine”. Again, if I’m the flaming liberal, something has gone terribly wrong. In a society that had semi-socialized medicine, I carried private insurance and I paid less and got more for it. I’m in favor of socialized medicine! Further, when the burden of making the choice between public or private healthcare falls on the individual, the salary package offered to each employee becomes a lot more transparent. I have heard it from so many people that they would like to change jobs, but need the benefits. It is said as if it is impossible to quantify how much the benefits are worth, but they are a necessity that they literally cannot live without. It becomes a bit of a crutch and stops the free market in employee/employer relationships from working properly because both sides cannot figure out how much this necessity is really worth. This is America, we can do better.

Social Security

Anyone who has read my writing knows how often I use the phrase “Ponzi Scheme” and Social Security in America is the mother of all Ponzi Schemes. In what is strangely one of our most regressive taxes, EVERY dollar earned is taxed at roughly 14% (half paid by the employee and half paid by the employer, but in effect employers take that into consideration and that is money that could go to be paying an employee more). That is, of course, until an employee reaches some magical number, roughly $106,000. At this point, the tax completely stops and therefore, “the rich” pay far less proportionally into it.

The money that I have been putting into the system then is transferred to the generation that is currently retired. This worked fine, in theory, when people had an average life expectancy of sixty-seven years and the working generation was bigger than the retired generation. Unfortunately, my Dad and his entire generation are ruining things by being too big and living too long. This is where the Ponzi scheme kicks in... Everything is fine as long as there are new entrants to the scheme, but when that breaks down, bad things start happening.

Even worse, this money that has been set aside for the bad idea of generational wealth transfer, has routinely been used for other government expenses. In fact, Social Security takes in more money than it pays out. That is until the plague of locusts known as Baby Boomers collectively start yelling, “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”

The whole system stinks and it makes up a very large component of our existing tax structure. Well, what are the alternatives? Allowing grandma and grandpa to go homeless and starve to death does seem kind of cruel in an affluent society. We could ask people to save, but we like shiny objects too much. Here’s how it works in Oz.... Everybody has 9% of their wages taken from them and placed into a Superannuation fund. These wages are not taxed and the earner has a plethora of choices they can make into various funds in an effort to pursue the risk/reward scenario they are comfortable with. After working for several decades, earners are allowed to tap into their Superannuation to fund their retirement. For those who have squandered their money or not earned enough, there is still the dole which is means tested. However, the goal is to allow each earner to make decisions they are comfortable with and fund their retirement. The more someone works and the better they invest, the better they do later in life. The system ensures that almost everyone from a minimum wage earner on up has enough money to get by, but does not penalize high earners - it merely delays gratification.

So far Julie and I have put in hundreds of thousands of dollars into Social Security. If there is anything left for us, we will wind up with a crappy annuity that would have the same comparative result of 1% annual compound interest since we started working. However, since I will have paid into it for four decades, I’m going to want to claim it, which brings up the debate as to what exactly is Social Security supposed to be? Is it for those who would otherwise be destitute after they are employable? Or is it a retarded savings account? Either way, a monkey picking stocks by throwing darts can do better than 1% and I would very much like to control the 15k a year the government is taking from me and giving to my dad. Social Security sucks!

Little Things

Let me first clarify that I have never paid for sex. Well, nothing more than dinner and a movie. However, I have now lived in a city, Melbourne, where prostitution was legal and regulated. Having never been to a prostitute, I should at best not care. Being the father of a young girl, who if she decided to become a prostitute I would consider it the ultimate parental failure, I should be against it morally. However, I think this is another thing that Australia does better.

It’s called the oldest profession for a reason and women and men have been exchanging sex for money since the beginning of our species. By making it legal and establishing designated brothels, I never had to deal with it or explain it to my kids. Further, the women who chose this line of work had protection from abuse by a client because they could go to law enforcement since the exchange was legal. I really feel bad for the women who choose this profession, but they are much better off if they are protected by law enforcement instead of criminalized. Further, the industry can be regulated to prevent outbreaks of STDs and it’s going to happen anyway. Even though I don’t like it, legalization is much better than the alternative.

Lastly, the lack of censorship on television was refreshing. I once had a conversation about the lack of profanity and nudity on over-the-air channels with a foreigner new to our fair land.

“So how come you can see boobs on HBO, but you can’t on ABC?”

“It’s because HBO is a cable channel which is subject to different rules.”

“I get ABC on my cable box.”

“But it’s also available over-the-air. It’s the public’s airwaves so it’s regulated by the FCC.”

“So someone at the FCC gets to censor content if it’s shown over-the-air, but if it’s on cable then it’s all good? Boobs and swearing for all?”

“Yes.”

Think about it. We have people at the FCC regulating what we can see. Don’t say, “It’s for the children.” I’m the parent. If my children are watching TV, it’s up to me to dictate what they can and cannot watch, not some government agency. I have to tell them to turn the TV off if I don’t like it instead of asking everyone to not watch it.

Most of Australian TV shows really suck with the rare exception of the “Underbelly” series. It was well acted and well produced and as a bonus, full of gratuitous sex scenes. It was shown on a freely available over-the-air channel at 8:00 at night and society did not come to an end. The lack of censorship and reliance on parental accountability was refreshing.

I love this country and there was not a day that went by that I did not feel at least a little homesick. In fact, I truly believe we have the greatest country on Earth. However, as great as I think we are there is still room for improvement. To say, “We’re the best” and not look at other societies to see what they are doing differently would be both arrogant and stupid. We, as a country, have a long history of breaking rules and innovating. Let’s continue in that tradition and make our country even better.