Thread

1. nl · 1789602253 · focus · HN ↗

   Just to be clear on this - Australia is primarily interested in methods of reducing trade barriers, not any sort of political union.

   Australia is economically served well by free trade: most of its production is low cost, high quality primary production of mining outputs and agricultural goods (grains, wool and meat) where if price and quality are the primary selection criteria it wins.

   The downside of this is that Australia hasn't really got any significant manufacturing or advanced technology industry.

   But it has made Australia one of the best performing economies of the past 25 years.

   1. someperson · 1789603920 · focus · HN ↗

      A big part of what makes Australia a better performing economy is maintaining high population growth rate of 1.5%, mostly through immigration.

      Has had implications on housing affordability, but it's great for GDP statistics.

      <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrotrends.net&#x2F;global-metrics&#x2F;countries&#x2F;aus&#x2F;australia&#x2F;population" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macrotrends.net&#x2F;global-metrics&#x2F;countries&#x2F;aus&#x2F;aus...

      1. PorciiVorbesc · 1789604945 · focus · HN ↗

         &gt;Has had implications on housing affordability, but it&#x27;s great for GDP statistics.

         Which high performing economy DOESN&#x27;T struggle with housing affordability?

         &gt;mostly through immigration

         *SKILLED immigration

         1. qball · 1789607378 · focus · HN ↗

            The high performing economies that didn&#x27;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&#x27;t pathologically conservative&#x2F;authoritarian in the &quot;build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything&quot; sense is the precise reason why that is.

            1. pinchydev · 1789609847 · focus · HN ↗

               Texas has the world&#x27;s high standard of living?

               I don&#x27;t know what metric you&#x27;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 &quot;over the largest population&quot; filter) ($91,594 &#x2F; 31.71M pop), it has a much lower HDI than countries with much lower GDP per capita, like Japan ($35,973 &#x2F; 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&#x27;t everything, and Australia as that&#x27;s the country of question in this tread)

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