An Aussie in NY | Hacker News Reader

An Aussie in NY

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64 pointsbhoung30 comments

I think this article perhaps focuses a little bit too much on the negatives :)

I'm an Englishman living in California, and I don't really plan to leave here. I like it here. I like the people, I like the weather, and I like the way things generally work from day-to-day. It's really easy to latch onto things that seem, to my eyes, badly broken, like health care, but forget that otherwise, things are pretty sweet.

Sometimes, people ask me what I think of the US. And I might mention health care or something, and they'll reply, "Yeah, the US sucks, huh?" My usual response is "If I didn't like it, I wouldn't be here."

What I don't really understand is that, at least in California, it seems most people see all the bits that are broken, and know they are. And then you get a President who is actually trying to at least place a band-aid over the wounds, and you get cries of Socialism and Nazis. That's the insidious bit of America that I can't stand: America is a country that constantly wants to, and tries to, reinvent itself. To always move towards betterment, as individuals, and as a country. And yet there are a great many vocal people who succeed in holding it back. The ills of today could be gone tomorrow, but they won't be, and that's a shame for everyone.

>America is a country that constantly wants to, and tries to, reinvent itself. To always move towards betterment, as individuals, and as a country. And yet there are a great many vocal people who succeed in holding it back.

This is kind of a partisan viewpoint. Both sides of the aisle believe that they are working towards the betterment of the country - they just have differing ideas on how to do so.

I think this article perhaps focuses a little bit too much on the negatives :) I'm an Englishman living in California

Well, I can imagine reasons why the experience of an Australian in New York is not the same as an Englishman's in California. For one thing, in my experience the English are really, really happy to be living somewhere with good weather (see the UK's effective migration to Spain). :-)

I think the point that the OP is making is that countries have their good points and bad points, and you need to be aware of that lest you over-praise or over-criticise your own.

It's a pretty spot on comparison. I moved here from Sydney about 3 years ago and feel basically the same. Though I don't have the same aversion to tipping that he has, probably because I (having grown up in the US before immigrating to Oz) understand how to work the system—particularly in bars. As for the unicycle/mustache thing, I lived in Newtown in Sydney, and that sort of thing wouldnt have garnered more than a doubletake there either ;)

Still, I miss my four weeks of vacation and my stress free access to medical care. Oh yeah, and the extremely efficient government agencies. The difference between Aussie immigration (DIMIA) and American (DHS) is striking.

You can pretty much get away with anything in Newtown :-)

I too am an Aussie in NYC, having moved last November for work (in my case, Google).

NYC is an amazing city, particularly if you're willing and able to pay the exorbitant Manhattans rents. Or you're sufficiently socially skilled and/or lucky to partake in the great private welfare system that is rent stabilization (and rent control but that's mostly irrelevant these days).

To me NYC exemplifies Western capitalism, both the good and bad parts. There'd is incredible commerce--and wealth--here. But there's also poverty and homelessness for those tha have fallen through the cracks in the system.

One thing America excels at is service, whether it be retail, restaurants, businesses or whatever. Ther are of course exceptions but for those Americans who complain about service: compare it to most other Western countries and you'll appreciate it that much more.

Despite all that the American experiment seems broken--eve dying. Health care is a disaster (not that I'm necessarily advocating public health care). Social security is a ticking time bomb. Most governments are in serious debt, even to crisis levels. Once you see cities and possibly states default (or just require a bailout) you'll see a fresh eave of financial scandals.

Wall Street seems addicted to debt, to the point of being the engine of financial collapse. Most Americans live beyond their means. America has a number of engineering marvels from the 20th century that look like not being repeated any time soon. They're simply not economical anymore. Think the Moon landings, the Golden Gate bridge, the Hoover Dam, etc.

A lot of the country seems to be in decay. The culture seems increasingly fractured. Honestly it reminds me of the dying days of the Roman Empire. I'm sure there was incredible wealth in Rome the day before it was sacked.

Still, it's hard to argue with a fresh mozzarella slice from Bleecker Street Pizza.

Oh as far as tipping goes, I agree it's strange and I often have to check tipping etiquette in various situations but remember it isn't mandatory (built in service charges in restaurant bills notwithstanding). Example: last week I took a cab from SFO to Mountain View (expensive!) and the driver had no clue. He kept going the wrong way, asking for directions from my phone, ignoring me telling him which exits to take, etc. I didn't feel bad stiffing him on the tip although he still felt entitled to it.

Mate, I think you're making too many generalizations based on things that feel true, you know, 'cause that's what everybody says.

Statements like "social security is a time bomb" belay a misunderstanding of what you're talking about. SS is just fine, there are many other, more real issues—but I don't want to get into a policy debate. My point is that you've been here 4 months and should give it a few years before making such sweeping, half-informed judgements.

Anyway, drop a line sometime if you want to grab a beer. I live in the WV as well and I can point you toward much better pizza than anything you'll find on Bleecker.

How is SS not a time bomb? In Australia you are required to deposit your retirement money in a super acct. But that acct is yours. It earns interest like an ordinary investment.

In the US you give it to the government as part of your tax and the government spends it on wars in Iraq, interest payments to China, and tax cuts for the rich. When it comes time to collect ... good luck with that.

I certainly agree there are many more issues (healthcare!).

I'd suggest Sydney->NY is not nearly the culture shock that Sydney->almost-anywhere-else in the US would be. I think whoever said Sydney is to LA as Melbourne is to NY was from Melbourne. (Although they do share awful weather in common.)

SS is not a time bomb because we have a rather convoluted accounting scheme for the government. Let me explain by analogy.

Essentially, imagine you have a kid. You start socking away money for your children's college, call this the "college trust fund", which has future obligations of $200k. You also have your "general fund", which pays for food, daily expenses, etc.

Now your kid says "daddy, I want an X-Box." You point out that you can't afford it, but to make her happy, you take money out of her college fund. But she makes you put IOU's into the college fund, and you declare the college fund has no problem. You keep doing this, until the college fund is full of mostly IOUs.

You also have a younger kid, but he's too young to talk or pay attention to the management of your finances.

Eventually, the younger kid gets old enough to talk, and he starts to wonder. "How can we pay for college for me and my sister?" He looks at the price of having a roof over his head + the cost of college, compares it to income, and gets scared. Something has to give, and he describes his big sister's college fund as a "time bomb" that will ruin the family finances.

But his sister says: "Hey, there is no problem with my college fund. It's covered - look, the account is full of IOUs from daddy. Stop being such a jerk, trying to prevent me from going to college."

that's some stealth, anti social-security rhetoric there :-)

Not that I disagree about SS being a time bomb, but I think you're slightly mistaken about where SS revenue comes from (or I could be mistaken; anybody out there who knows for sure should please correct me). What most Americans think of as "federal tax" is actually several separate taxes, and which ones any given individual actually pays varies depending on their employment situation.

There's a specific tax that workers (either self-employed or otherwise) pay that goes to social security (as opposed to the general federal income tax), and as far as I know, those specific funds go to the central social security trust fund rather than the federal government's general fund. Funds used for invading other countries, paying off interest payments, etc. etc. comes from other revenue streams.

As I understand it, the reason SS is potentially in trouble is that, the baby boomers are beginning to retire and draw on the system. This represents a simultaneous large decrease in the number of people paying into the fund and increase in the number of people extracting money from the fund. The precise financial implications of this seem to be up for debate- some people say that there will be sufficient money to cover everybody, while others say that there won't be.

I personally don't see how it can possibly work, but I'm certainly not an economist so what do I know? At any rate, I don't expect to see a dime of it when my time comes. At this point, I view the whole thing as basically a charity for baby boomers, and from that perspective it kind of makes sense- unless we want to let them die/starve in the streets, we're going to end up paying for them one way or another; we may as well make use of the existing infrastructure for helping to support elders.

Again I could be mistaken and would really appreciate correction from someone who knows better by I am much more cynical about the SS trust fund.

As far as I can tell the really scary thing is that that "trust fund" has been largely "invested" in treasury bonds. That is the source of the massive "intragovernmental holdings" portion of the national debt. i.e. the excess income from SS tax has actually been spent on other government needs. http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/retirement/social-security...

Fair enough, but if those treasury bonds don't end up being worth what they're supposed to to be worth, it seems to me that we've got bigger problems than SS going under.

However, I heartily agree with your request for correction by someone who knows better- this is about the full extent of my knowledge on the subject, and I'd love to hear from somebody with expertise in this field.

"Social Security taxes are paid into the Social Security Trust Fund maintained by the U.S. Treasury. Current year expenses are paid from current Social Security tax revenues. When revenues exceed expenditures, as they have in most years, the excess is invested in special series, non-marketable U.S. Government bonds, thus the Social Security Trust Fund indirectly finances the federal government's general purpose deficit spending."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)...

In fact this is the first year that SS has to get payments from the general fund ~50 Billion IIRC. As more and more of our taxes go to entitlements either 1. taxes will need to raise or 2. benefits will be reduced or 3. government services will be reduced

Your use of the phrase "the American experiment" is pretentious, especially when you call it broken.

We're a country and people with fundamental, albeit continually debated, beliefs. We have a governance system with which people can engage directly and peacefully to affect almost any aspect of their lives. Hence, the saying "thing's are broken" is entirely empty. The magic of America is that you can shape the system; it's a matter of persistence.

Things are not perfect, but we're riding on a solid foundation and I wouldn't bet against that.

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"the American experiment seems broken--eve dying"

That's the exact way it was used and it is pretentious, because it dismisses our culture and country as something fleeting.

The phrase "the American experiment" may be a common phrase, but it doesn't say "we are fundamentally unique compared to other democracies;" it simply says "our exact experience is unique." Same can be said, with meaning, for any country.

As far as decay, this has been a long term thing. Outside of major urban centers where people rely on public transit, most of America is based around car culture. To sum it up, Main Street USA didn't die because of big box retailers, it died because the parking sucked and the affluent went where their cars took them. If the buildings are ratty, we build newer, cheaper ones and drive to them.

This is nothing recent, it started in the 50s and 60s with white flight and has been on a slow, slide downhill ever since because of cheaper constructions methods and cheap gas. Take those two things away and Americans just might go back to monolith building, if for no other reason that the need to work.

Forget manhattan, outer boroughs are much better.

The outer boroughs are different, not better or worse (except Staten Island, that's worse).

I love Brooklyn and Queens, but I am very happy living in Manhattan. It doesn't have to be a pissing contest, NYC is a big place with a whole fuckload of awesome going on; it'd be silly to limit yourself either way.

OK, I see your point, as long as we can all agree new jersey really sucks.

Ha! Agreed :D

the reverend bruce would disagree

I'm a not born Aussie who lives in CA.

The post was fun to read and I can pretty much agree with everything.

One difference that I spotted was the accent barrier. For non English speakers Australia can be painful it doesn't matter how good your English is you find yourself repeating your sentences, or spell out every name in the family including my boys English names (no Aussie could understand the name Dean when it came out out of my mouth). In California no such issues (I felt vindicated when I moved over here) only comments that my English is too British (which is the result of the effort I put to get Aussies to understand me).

Another thing that I miss about Australia is that life aren't serious, every man is with in his right to make an arse of himself any now and then and that's just fine.

One thing that I don't miss is the property obsession, everything in Australia is about the property. We don't build proper highways because we can stuff in a few more units, we don't build a railway because it will generate noise which will hurt the property market in that area. If you want to build a startup it will sense only if it will: speed up building property, help people pay the mortgage on the property, help banks claim the mortgage on the property etc...

All I want to add is that I do wish the Health / Education to be here as in Australia.

Uh, you might have missed it, but there isn't much usable land in Australia. That's why we're obsessed with property: There's not much for it.

Starting housing prices in the greater Brisbane area are about $400K. You can go down to $300K if you're willing to live an hours drive out of the city (Which means 1.5 --> 2 hour commute when there's traffic).

Sydney is worse, much worse. Housing prices all over the country are insane, and not going to get better any time soon. When I hear about housing prices in America pre-collapse, I just laugh.

As an American who worked in Australia, I can vouch that you guys (luckily) don't share our same crazy work ethic. I was practically alone in the office of a large corporation once the clock struck 4pm on a Friday. I think you'd fit in well in New York though because they have the same teasing sense of humor that I found everywhere down under.

As an Australian in California, and having lived and worked in two European countries too, I'd say that Australians work less hours but actually are more focused when they do work. I see a lot Americans at work, but not doing work. Long lunches, chatting to colleagues around the office, browsing websites etc. seems to be far more prevalent in American workspaces.

Interestingly, I once read a study that said that Aussies do the most overtime of any western nation, which seemed off. Shrug

As a Brazilian who has worked with Europeans and Americans, I have to tell you that we work a lot more down here. Workdays are usually 8h30 to 18h15, as we have 44h weeks and lunchtime is not included!

On the other hand, we do have 30 day vacations plus the holidays.

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