AUSTRALIA PROGRESSIVE REVIEW? Part III - WHAT WE ARE MISSING

WHAT WE ARE MISSING

Yes, your lead editor has been having fun in and around Sydney, Australia doing things like learning to surf,

hiking around the beautiful cliffs on the coastlines, and photographing and enjoying the natural beauty to be found here on this interesting continent.



Yet, while Mattie holds down the fort at A.P.R.'s Chena Ridge/Fairbanks research centre, I still keep abreast of current events and am keenly interested in learning as much as I can about Australia, while I am here.


I want to share some the things I've learned from talking with the many friendly people I've met here. First though, I want to quote part of this very good article I came across today.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/15-4

"Obama appointed former Sen. Tom Daschle as secretary of health and human services, and director of the new White House Office of Health Reform. Daschle's health care book, "Critical," recalls historical failures to achieve universal care: "Like Clinton, Truman had reason to be confident. His fellow Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and polls showed that Americans were anxious about the high cost of health care and eager for change. But both presidents underestimated the strength of the forces arrayed against them ... (s)pecial-interest lobbyists -- led by doctors in Truman's time, and insurance companies in Clinton's."
Obama knows well the issue -- while his mother lay dying of cancer, she still had to battle the insurance industry. He said in that 2007 speech, "Plans that tinker and halfway measures now belong to yesterday ... we can't afford another disappointing charade ... we need to look at ... how much of our health care spending is going toward the record-breaking profits earned by the drug and health care industry."
Yet Daschle proposes not much more than tinkering -- improving Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Health Administration, all examples of "single-payer health care" -- in which the government is the single payer for the health care -- while preserving the inefficient, multi-payer, for-profit insurance model.
In December 2007, the American College of Physicians compared U.S. health care with other countries', writing, "Single-payer systems generally have the advantage of being more equitable, with lower administrative costs than systems using private health insurance, lower per capita health care expenditures, high levels of consumer and patient satisfaction."
Michael Moore, in his film "SiCKO," includes a recording of John Ehrlichman speaking to Richard Nixon, discussing medical insurance profits: "The less care they give 'em, the more money they (the insurance companies) make."
Obama is in charge now. Who will he emulate -- Nixon or FDR? People across the political and economic spectrum, from big business to the little guy, are dying to know."

As you may or may not know, the U.S. is the ONLY one of the 25 "industrialized" nations without universal health care/access for it's citizenry. Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" was a very good description of why this is, and how it happened, and A.P.R. highly recommends it for those interested.

Here in Australia, of course, like all the other industrialized nations, universal health care is a given, no one I've met even questions it's existence. And, they've expressed shock and dismay when I tell them how it works in the U.S. That if you don't have medical insurance, that you will quickly go bankrupt if a major accident or illness occurs, and even if you are insured, this can happen. The quality of care here is viewed favorably by all I've talked with, which is similar with what people in Canada have said about their system.

What else does Australia have to offer, in common with all the other social democracies, but not the U.S.?

Every worker, from the entry-level janitor or fast-food worker, on up the ladder, receives a minimum of one month paid leave per year. Think about that.

The minimum wage in Australia is $14.38 AUSD, or about $10.50 USD. What is it now in the U.S., $6.25? And remember how long it took to go from $4.35 to that? Eleven years! $14.38 per hour here, gives you roughly the same standard of living that that rate would in the U.S., in USD. I can just hear conservatives howl if they were to read this, that businesses would go bankrupt, and unemployment would skyrocket. Well, there seem to be just as many small stores, delis, restaurants, and other businesses here as in the U.S., with enough staff to give decent service, so they seem to be managing. And, prices for their products/services don't seem to be any higher than in the U.S. Enough said.

Unemployment compensation does not expire here like in the U.S. It is $1543.00 per month, AUSD, which in a fairly expensive city like Sydney would only provide a simple existence, yet you would not starve or be forced into homelessness. Something which several Aussies I've talked with, expressed concern about, seeing the homeless people in the U.S. when they've visited. I've seen very few here. Again, the conservatives will try and give you those thinly-veiled racist stories about "Welfare Queens" milking the system and making out like bandits, using a variety of schemes to collect undeserved benefits. BULLSHIT! Those stories were made up, using that veiled racism they are so good at using on many white Americans, to end social spending programs. No one I've met here expressed concern about people abusing their system, and with proper supervision and oversight, fraud and abuse would be minimal.

What do you call the fact that many of the largest corporations in the U.S. end up paying almost no income tax, due to all the various loopholes in the tax codes? And of course, our 700+ Billion bailout of the criminally greedy financial institutions. How they pleaded, begged, and threatened for assistance when their insane actions led to their potential demise. Yet do they give a rat's ass when they let go 10,000 jobs, or whatever, as they shift operations to an overseas low-wage country? No, their executives get awards and raises for that.

Is there anything else Australia has the U.S. doesn't? How about this. University education is not free here, but tuitions are much lower at both private and public institutions. Everyone who can enroll is able to get NO-INTEREST (yes that's right, NO INTEREST) loans to pay for their schooling. And, payback only begins when you start working, and is wage-scaled, deducted along with your taxes.

Income taxes in Australia are slightly higher than in the U.S., and there is a gasoline tax, such that gas here is about $4.30 AUSD, or about $3.25 USD. No one complained to me, and part of the reason they are higher than ours, is that this country only has 20 million people in it, with a much smaller economy.

WHAT WE ARE GETTING
What are we getting in the U.S. with our tax dollars? Well, for about TWO BILLION DOLLARS PER WEEK for the last five + years, the country of Iraq has been destroyed and over a million people killed, in an unjust, immoral, and unprovoked war. Three to four million people have been driven from their homes and sought refuge in neighbouring countries. The economy of Iraq was destroyed, and unemployment there is still nearly 50 percent. People in Baghdad are lucky to have 2-3 hours of electricity per day, and access to clean water for drinking is very limited.

The U.S. defense budget increases greatly every year, and was over 600 Billion dollars last year. More than the next 10 countries combined. Why?


Are you happy that this is what you are getting with your tax dollars, instead of what social democracies provide?

Do we really need 700 + military installations in over 110 countries?




America lost it's most prominent leader for social justice on April 4, 1968. MLK was born on 15th January, 1929, so he would have been 80 years old yesterday, had he not been murdered.

(April 3, 1968): "We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. I won't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land."

I know you've seen parts of MLK's landmark April 4, 1967 speech he gave in New York, where he publicly came out strongly against the Vietnam war, and which led to his death, exactly one year later. But, these words are more than ever needed to be heard and understood by all Americans. The full text of this amazing speech can be found here:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

"It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered...

...True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring...

...A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Can you imagine what MLK would be thinking of the Bush regime, and what they have gotten away with? And how Israel, with our financial, military, and political support, is engaging in genocidal actions in the Gaza Strip? Just think how different things could have been, had he lived, and were here now at the age of 80. The Vietnam War would have ended sooner, perhaps we could have even evolved into a less militaristic social democracy. But it was not to be...

But, if you read this, as you enjoy your well-deserved holiday of his birth anniversary, remember these words, and his legacy. They are more important than ever now. May he rest in peace.
Cheers.