zik

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Even more interesting is how all of Geelong is excluded from Melbourne's count when Gosford's included in Sydney's count, despite neither place being continuously connected to the larger city, Geelong being closer to Melbourne than Gosford is to Sydney, and Geelong having just as large a proportion of daily commuters as Gosford.

The reality is that Melbourne's population outpaced Sydney a long time ago and the boundaries are only just starting to catch up.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I'm literally one of those people who you say is vanishingly small.

It's not even a "the world is bad and I don't want to subject my child to that" kind of decision. It's more like a series of thoughts over the years: "is this the right time to have a kid?" and it's never a good time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I did a double-take at “Australia’s biggest city” referring to Melbourne

It overtook Sydney about a year ago when the ABS revised the statistical areas: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-65261720

Based on these new boundaries Melbourne's had a higher population than Sydney since 2018.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Among scientists there wasn't any significant doubt twenty years ago. It was just spin doctors trying to pretend otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Why not start them off in the way you mean to continue? It's not like there are any significant downsides.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (7 children)

Compulsory is such a good system. It doesn't take long. It's on a weekend so it's not inconvenient. You get a sausage at the sausage sizzle and you do your vote. There's a real holiday atmosphere. And it produces much more representative results. Brexit wouldn't have happened if they had compulsory voting so there's no denying it's valuable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Three hours? Our plumber was "too busy" to show for two weeks running.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

The producer who was lumped with this was horrified and handed in his resignation the next day. I don't think he was happy with the situation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

It's a fair point but my intention was to bracket the possible returns.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

More than an inconvenience - they cost hundreds of millions in additional road wear every year which we all pay for.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I guess I was addressing the "living in poverty" part of the parent comment and the suggestion to downsize in your follow-up. I thought you meant to downsize to get some money to pay the bills. But it seems like you're saying to downsize to get a house which is easier to maintain?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

I worked in the superannuation industry for a while. I wouldn't say that super is exactly a scam but it's a terrible mess and the fees we pay on super in Australia are insane. Basically we have a lot of parasites taking a cut and that ends up making the standard funds poor investments. Median returns on the super funds are around 5.6% pa (over the last ten years for the standard "balanced" option) at a time when stock market tracking funds have appreciated by over 8% pa. A lot of that is being lost in inefficiencies and fees.

By comparison Americans with a 401k invested in the NASDAQ would have made 17.3% pa over the same period.

We're getting a terrible deal with superannuation, and for many it's the difference between retiring comfortably or retiring in poverty.

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