Earlier quoted context omitted.
India does the same. They try to be friendly (or at least on business terms ) with as many countries as they can and stay out of global conflicts as much as possible. They were buying oil from Russia well after the Russia-Ukraine war started. It also worked well for India as they were able to get rock bottom prices. From a purely economic standpoint, this would make sense. Not sure what to feel about the ethics of it…
> at least part of the Russian war bill was footed by the money India paid for Russian oil It's weird India gets held to this standard. Don't European countries still buy some natural gas from Russia?
Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
81–90 of 203 posts
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#82[flagged]
Are we really going to pretend the 51st state rhetoric would be the same with any Democrat in the White House?
> Do we hate giving the uneducated masses a vote?
No, I but I do think they've had some dogshit candidates picked for them, especially recently
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#83As an Australian, I have noticed a shift personally in feeling like I identify more with "European" culture, compared to 10 years ago I felt like we were the 51st state and I felt very close with the US. This seems to be shared by others, I remember reading there was a survey that asked Australians who they felt our closest international friend was. The US was the top answer for over a decade, having stolen the crown…
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#84Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#85It is an interesting position we are in here, I suspect we will do the usual thing and walk the middle road. Australia, is part of the Commonwealth, huge trade partner with Asia and allies with the US. Why not throw Canada into the mix some more. This setup is why I call this place an equal opportunist whore. If we can do business with you, we will. I also call it the worlds largest Mining town, but that just acknowl…
I'm Australian and am increasingly ok with this approach. I'm growing slowly out of a protectionist mindset, toward one of cautious, and considered collaboration. Singapore follows this approach and it has worked well for them so far.
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the American side it felt like we had more cross-pollination with Australia in the 90s than in the decades following. Disney even had a studio out there that animated some of the TV shows it aired in the US (and presumably in Australia too). Not sure what changed.
Apart from the "Crocodile Dundee" and "Men at Work" phenomena in the late 80s, there is no real cultural pollination between Australia and the US, as far as I can tell. It's too far away and there are no real reasons for Americans to visit, nor are there enough internationally notable Australian music brands, films, or products that give visibility to the country, which is one price of being a commodity producing nat…
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#87Can I move to Asutralia now... please
Maybe if Australia created very strong trade ties with Taiwan, we would change the name of the country to Asustralia.
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's fairly well acknowledged, but there is no 'dealt with' that fits into any kind of reality I'm familiar with. My purely observational understanding is that there are fundamental incompatibilities between aboriginal and 'western/British' culture. "Ownership" of land as probably the primary example. I don't know how that gets 'dealt with'.
I don’t know the discussion in Australia, but in Alaska (also having an indigenous population with land ownership) they found solutions. Regional “native corporations” were given large amounts of valuable land, natives were given preferential resource rights (fishing, etc). Not everything is perfect (far from it), but a lot has been done.
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Has had implications on housing affordability, but it's great for GDP statistics. Which high performing economy DOESN'T struggle with housing affordability? >mostly through immigration *SKILLED immigration
The high performing economies that didn't make it illegal to build are high performing because of that. This is why the highest standard of living on the planet, with the highest GDP over the largest population... is in Texas. The fact the people there aren't pathologically conservative/authoritarian in the "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything" sense is the precise reason why that is.
I don't know what metric you're using, but it ranks 37th of the 50 states just behind Arizona on the Human Development Index which ranks health, education, income. Texas at 0.917 is above the EU average (0.915) but below many others including the top Iceland (0.972), Norway (0.970), Australia (0.958), Canada (0.939), Japan (0.925) and the US as a whole (0.938)
So while Texas is indeed the wealthiest per GDP per capital (using your "over the largest population" filter) ($91,594 / 31.71M pop), it has a much lower HDI than countries with much lower GDP per capita, like Japan ($35,973 / 123.29M pop). In other words Texas out-earns Australia per head by 38% but trails it by 0.041 on HDI
HDI uses the log of income, so extra dollars count for less, and Texas lags on the life expectancy and schooling components.
For example, if we take the life expectancy in isolation to see the dragging metric, Texas is ranked 46th in the world at 79.1 years (2022 data), just behind 45th Estonia at 79.3 years (2024 data), but a long way behind 6th Australia (84.1 years) and 3rd Japan (84.9 years).
(edit: I used Japan as illustrative of a large population with a low GDP per capital to highlight that GDP isn't everything, and Australia as that's the country of question in this tread)
Re: Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the American side it felt like we had more cross-pollination with Australia in the 90s than in the decades following. Disney even had a studio out there that animated some of the TV shows it aired in the US (and presumably in Australia too). Not sure what changed.
Apart from the "Crocodile Dundee" and "Men at Work" phenomena in the late 80s, there is no real cultural pollination between Australia and the US, as far as I can tell. It's too far away and there are no real reasons for Americans to visit, nor are there enough internationally notable Australian music brands, films, or products that give visibility to the country, which is one price of being a commodity producing nat…