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Comment by 1stop | Hacker News Reader

Australia has the equivalent of a "stipend" for poor, unemployed, students, single parents, etc. Plus free healthcare for everyone.

It is a hugely successful program with a very low percentage of exploitation (i.e using the money for drugs, or contributing to unemployment rate). It has been constantly tweaked for the last 20 years.

You don't need to look at obscure tribal examples within America, you can just look at Australia (a very similar society to the U.S) to see this is a good policy with extremely positive outcomes for society.*

* I'll caveat this with, if you can afford it. Australia is in a super good position with regards to it's GDP/Capita and has been for the last 20-30 years, so it's difficult to say whether this is sustainable in the (even) longer term, or in countries without the same advantages.

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"You don't need to look at obscure tribal examples within America, you can just look at Australia"

You need to look at all the data you can reasonably get. There are a lot of similarities between the US and Australia, but there are certainly differences. The more unrelated tests of the idea we get, the more confident we can be that our conclusions generalize.

Sure, agreed. I guess I meant: Australia would be a more useful comparison.

As Australians I think we should acknowledge that life is still pretty grim in many remote aboriginal communities here. Massive rates of preventable disease, low life expectancy, illiteracy, high domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse etc etc.

Lots of reasons for this of course and I don't know how services could ever be made as accessible to remote communities as they are in our cities. But I think it shows that the availability of a "stipend" clearly isn't enough.

"You don't need to look at obscure tribal examples within America, you can just look at Australia"

Since the tribe is paying a dividend from a successful business to the owners of the business and Australia is transferring money from tax payers to "poor, unemployed, students, single parents, etc.", I do not see how they are equivalent in the first place.

The tribal members are being paid for something they own.

The healthcare isn't free no matter how many times you people say that.

But you're also wrong about Australia being "a very similar society to the US". Maybe at one time, but Australia has some very authoritarian laws these days - from gun control to internet filters, etc..

Healthcare is free in that anyone anywhere can go to a hospital with anything and be treated for it without paying anything. (And everyone who earns enough money pays taxes).

You really want to argue that healthcare isn't 'free'?

Gun control isn't 'authoritarian' it's sensible. Only with a screwed up U.S agg-prop point of view could you construe it as 'authoritarian', there is no mention of guns as a "right" in any of Australia's (or almost every other country in the worlds) constitution or case law... So could you justify how you came to your point of view?

There are no active internet filters in australia... Though there is talk of them, and some ISPs filter stuff... Do I need to remind you about Wikileaks getting it's Amazon servers shutdown... Even if there was a filter in Australia, it would be 'closer' to the US not further in similarities.

Did you mean "agitprop"?

It's been a while since I've seen that. Thanks for the belly-laugh.

Australia is very authoritarian. They actually confiscated the guns. not just made them illegal. They threatened law abiding citizens with prison time for not turning them in.

Here http://rense.com/general81/ligun.htm when other authoritarian regimes have confiscated guns.

Not only that, but crime went up in Australia. Obviously the criminals didn't turn in their guns.

Australia also makes it mandatory to vote. Any kind of forced action like that is very authoritarian.

They made it illegal to own (certain) guns, then offered a buy back scheme, then they confiscated guns from those that didn't bring in... This works much like how 'drugs' are illegal, and the police confiscate them, so the U.S is just as authoritarian (but with drugs) in this regard.

Gun crime reduced dramatically, though when categorised as violent crime, the reduction was smaller and overall the crime rate has decreased year on year... so I don't know what you are referring to.

Mandatory voting is 'authoritarian'... are you kidding me? It stops 'vested interest' or disenfranchisement of portions of your population, and moves closer to real 'universal suffrage', I can see there is valid criticism in arguing it impinges personal freedom, but authoritarian again just seems you are pushing some odd right wing agenda here.

Compared the the U.S, Australia sits well and truly to the left, but the similarities I was referring too, was about the make up of the populations, Australia is a good test case (for the U.S) for assessing policy outcomes, especially when Australia has implemented said policy and has strong correlative outcomes.

You seem to have derailed the thread some-what with your propaganda and pro-gun agenda, which I have sadly fallen for.

My original point stands.

Mandatory voting is more democratic. The US should do the same.

What does mandatory voting mean exactly?

Can I still vote invalid?

What ist the punishment for not voting?

You have to show up (or post) a vote, there is no requirements on your actual vote (it can be completely blank, or a picture of ponies... but you have to put your bit of paper in the ballet box (or postbox)).

Punishment for not voting is usually a fine. Though encouraging people not to vote or to post invalid votes (i.e. subversion), can carry jail terms of up to 12 months (from memory).

Healthcare is free if:

* you need emergency care and make your own way to a public hospital

* you're prepared to wait for a non-essential treatment

* you see a bulk-billing general practitioner

* you earn enough such that the cost of medical insurance (plus out of pocket expenses if you do need treatment, making this calculation tricky) is less than the dollar value of the additional 1.0 to 1.5% tax you would otherwise pay as a Medicare Levy Surcharge. (Ballpark figure is >$120k individual or >$200k as a family)

Only in the distorted, leftist mindset are things free because they just happened to be paid with taxes.

I hate that I'm falling for this[0]

For the poor, (i.e those that earn < 28k in Australia)... they pay no tax. Thus Healthcare for them, is in every sense of the word: free.

For those that earn > 28k, they pay tax, which a portion of goes to healthcare. So from 28k to probably (random guess) about 70-100k, healthcare is heavily subsidised. For 100k - 200k healthcare costs probably about as much as it would if they just paid for it themselves (given the wealthier tend to be healthier). The 200k+ they are probably paying more for it than they use.

But those who need it most (i.e the poor/poorer) get it free/subsidised.

This is called a progressive tax system. If your care about the majority of your society (keeping in mind, in australia the mean wage is around the 50k mark), then it is without a doubt a better (utilitarian) solution.

[0] http://xkcd.com/386/

Only a distorted, rightist mindset interprets ``free healthcare'' as meaning ``healthcare magically appears from the sky'' rather than ``you can walk into a hospital and get treatment without having to pay a bill afterwards''.

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