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"The World's Best Countries"

Travel Talk

Josh started this discussion 14 years 3 months ago

The World's Best Countries:
http://www.newsweek.com/content/newsweek/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html

Their wording of the title ("best") is probably intended to provoke comments...

If you click the names of two countries you can compare them.

What do you think about their results?

Finland
Switzerland
Sweden
Australia
Luxembourg
Norway
Canada
Netherlands
Japan
Denmark

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footprints

14 years

Interesting, their figures on Australia are pretty off, we have 7million who are illiterate that is pretty high when you look at the population. Education is pretty woeful and is like being taught in an Australian bubble.

Medical is good although public hospitals are overcrowded
Cost of living is through the roof, and many countries are cheaper

I like how they did not include cost of living, as their choices were pretty much the most expensive countries in the world. I personally believe Germany kicks Australia's ass big time (apart from the winter)

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gordo

14 years

a third of our population is illiterate? I think you may have missed the mark there footprints - we've had historically very high literacy rates ever since we were on of the first countries to introduce free compulsory education. we suck at maths and true, it is often like being taught in a bubble (given the 'are we part of asia or not?' culture wars) but we're not illiterates.

as far as healthcare goes; nobody anywhere, ever is happy with their countries health system. ours will be going through some major reforms over the coming year, now that the states and fed gov have agreed on the new funding arrangements. admittedly that could change should the coalition return to power (unlikely).

the cost of living has gone up considerably in recent years, which is seriously hurting the tourism industry but if you've got a 'low-end' job (as tourism/hospitality is usually considered), the money is a damn site better here than... well... nearly anywhere. i dont get out of bed for less than $18 dollars an hour in australia.

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footprints

14 years

I'll track down the figures for the literacy rate, and it was mentioned only the other day on Insight, as is one of the fundamental reasons they were knocking the constant importing of skilled labour instead of tackling our huge illiteracy rate and training our own. Furthermore it goes to the complete lack of training and standards Australia has, it is known for a country that does not train.

True with healthcare - nobody is ever happy with healthcare in most countries of the world.

What is hurting the tourism industry is a tourism body that seems to have no idea how to market Australia and the more they try and 'fix' the local market the more they are out of touch.

I would like to see your quality of living on $18 an hour living in Sydney or Melbourne or even Brisbane for that matter, it is a fact our food costs are pretty much the most expensive in the world, rents are high, cost of new houses is ridiculous for what you get.

Tax for business has become such an issue that more and more business is moving operations elsewhere as it is becoming increasingly difficult to grow a business in Australia hiring Australian staff.

It's a damn shame if Labour does get in again, as it will be a damn site worse in another 3 years, historically it takes the Liberal government to fix the stuff ups from the Labour Government, although both parties are as useful as tits on a bull.

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Josh Hostels

14 years

Could the number be a "functional illiteracy" number? The US is apparently 14% functionally illiterate even though the official literacy rate is 99%:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy#Prevalence

Google says the population of the US is 307 million so 14% would be about 43 million...

EDIT: Actually, my number "43 million" above is probably wrong. I don't know if the ages used for the census and the literacy rates were the same. The literacy rate probably only applies to adults.

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footprints

14 years

It could be quite possible I know I was stunned when I heard the figure, I knew Australia did have a high illiteracy rate, but was shocked to hear the figure.

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gordo

14 years

it may depend on what constitutes 'functionally illiterate' - having a think 'strine' accent and poor vocabulary doesnt, IMO, constitute illiteracy.

that said, there are an awful lot of retards out there.

I'll track down the figures for the literacy rate, and it was mentioned only the other day on Insight, as is one of the fundamental reasons they were knocking the constant importing of skilled labour instead of tackling our huge illiteracy rate and training our own. Furthermore it goes to the complete lack of training and standards Australia has, it is known for a country that does not train.

true, we've had it pretty good in that regard. low on engineers? plenty of migrants. low on teachers? plenty of migrants. low on fruit pickers? plenty of backpackers.

the biggest issues regarding cost of living are food and rent/property. australia's property market is overpriced and underserviced, theres simply not enough houses being built to cope with the population increase (read: immigration). now, admittedly im a single guy used to backpacking, so i dont need a big house in the suburbs, so my standard of living is pretty high (im not on $18 an hour, just saying thats the minimum i would get out of bed for). ive been on minimum wage in a couple of countries (aus, UK and canada) and the only reason I survived in the UK and Canada was because of staff housing. at the lower end of the pay scale, in terms of purchasing power there really isnt anywhere better to be than australia.

im no fan of labour but I simply could not live with another set of howardeque tories in power again. think cost of living is a problem now? wait till the labour market is completely deregulated and people with lower paying jobs will suffer, a lot. then of course theres this old school conservative mentality on immigration and the environment. labour hasnt turned out a much better (any?) but progress would at least be possible with them in power rather than the liberals (if ever there was a misnomer...). ill be voting green on the weekend and hopefully they'll hold the balance of power at least in the senate with whats looking like a labour majority in the house.

things CAN get better if we end up with that result. whether they will is of course an entirely different matter.

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footprints

14 years

(aus, UK and canada)

Not a great example unfortunately, I cannot comment about Canada I know little about it, but the UK we all know is expensive, jump over the ditch to France and you can get far better property buys then you could dream of in Australia, or lets go to Germany and again very good property market, although the rental market is also superb and would much rather be buying food there and entertainment, of and it has culture.

There are more then enough houses, the issue is where immigration is being released i.e major capitols causing housing issues, it should be regulated better and the property market is being propped up with international money, hence why first home owners are way down, local buyers are way down but clearance rates are still over 75%

Another issue with housing pricing is the government is not releasing enough land to developers to develop which is putting the pressure on the new home market.

I would rather a Liberal government in any day, they sure would not of given millions of dollars away for a scheme that had little to do with the economy being more stable here then elsewhere. (that being said I am a believer it really matters nought who is in power, as at the end of the day it does not affect me.)

If we take it to a simplistic approach Labour looks after the workers and Liberal the business, but without the business all workers are stuffed.

As for immigration it needs to be brought way back, Australia needs to find its feet stabilise and build some infrastructure the idea of a big Australia is a moronic idea, and a false way to prop up an economy, plain and simple the building industry is set to collapse, maybe not today maybe not tomorrow but it is finite.

From living in many countries and constantly travelling, I do love things about Australia, but you need to spend 6 months a year away from the place to stay sane, there is far better living to be had in many other countries, and many other countries could only dream of a living standard as good as Australia, but it certainly is not all it is cracked up to be.

at the lower end of the pay scale, in terms of purchasing power there really isnt anywhere better to be than australia.

This could be true, I am no fat cat, but have never existed on a minimum wage, so I really cannot comment, I do find though I can travel other countries far cheaper than travelling Australia.

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santa klaus

14 years

What, Germany behind the USA!? That´s a joke! :D

There are a few flaws in this ranking:

Only two criteria for "education" (literacy rate and avg years of schooling). Obviously, it would be better to measure and compare functional literacy. The number of years students go to school isn´t saying much about how much they actually learn there.
Only one criterion for "health" - life expectancy. It would have been very easy for Newsweek to do better - the WHO has figures on anything, readily available online. Obvious criteria would be: number of doctors per capita, number of hospital beds, percentage of people with health insurance, percentage of GDP spent on health...
Quality of life: some very arbitrary figures here. Nice to see they have heard of the Gini index, but it is - along with three (of six) other criteria purely about economical wealth, not about quality of life per se. How about the number of McDonald´s restaurants per capita - as criterion for a bad quality of life? ;)
Economic dynamism: the way the criteria were selected produce the best results for countries which suffered most in the last crisis. So - is dynamism really something good? Does the number of patents tell more about innovation or the number of patent trolls? Is a low percentage of manufacturing really better than a high one (i.e. is a pizza delivery guy contributing more to the economy than an assembly line worker)?
Political environment: South Africa gets a better rating here than the UK - Europe´s oldest democracy (as far as I´m aware). That´s obviously utter bollocks, so this ranking can´t be worth much.

Besides that: 98% of all statistics are made up! ;)

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footprints

14 years

What, Germany behind the USA!? That´s a joke!

AWESOME! -

The quality of life was very much my Hmmm Interesting thought on the whole thing - How they put SA above the UK for political stability is beyond me, although it is an American publication yes? That would answer many a question....

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gordo

14 years

just how 'unstable' is south africa though? i mean, theyve had one ruling party since the end of apartheid.

politcally backwards, sure but surprisingly stable.

klaus - given that all health systems are essentially designed to keep us alive, i reckon life expectancy is the best indicator. all the doctors in the world dont mean squat unless theyre keeping people alive longer. so unless you include peoples ability to do situps and run long distance, im not sure what else you want in a health index. complaining about not including the number of doctors per capita is an indicator of health but years spent at school being meaningless when measuring education levels is a bit odd...

all of this kinda reminds me of the 'worlds most livable cities' competitions; how on earth do you weigh 'nice weather' against 'crime levels'?

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