Would be interested to hear people's thoughts on this.
Was at an impromptu gathering of friends - a woman announced that she was moving to Texas. I was quite surprised because both of them had good incomes, kids, and were obviously having to leave a lot behind. It turns out that the husband was born in the US and was a citizen even though both of them had spent their lives there. They weren't struggling, necessarily, but they did have a large mortgage. They were worried what might happen if either of them lost their job. They would rather sell than spend their lives paying off debt. Fair enough.
Someone mentioned the health system in the US. They shrugged and said you could buy top notch health cover and still be ahead compared to Australia, when you factored in how everything else here was so much more expensive. They were already looking at buying a specific house in Austin. It looked very nice. It was 400K AUD. Everyone oohed and aahed at the picture on the phone screen and the price tag like it was a fairytale storybook.
We've seen plenty of migrant friends pack up and move back home (basically like this: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-08/why-these-immigrants-… ) - but this was the first "Aussie" couple in our peer group to decide to leave.
What was interesting was that it became apparent that just about everyone else in our peer group was thinking the same thing. Someone else said: "I have a UK passport, but its no better over there, its quite a bit worse". "My wife still has her Japanese passport, we've looked at it, houses are dirt cheap but I don't know what I would do for work." Another person even admitted that he was seriously thinking about the "spiritual values visa" being advertised by the Russian government.
There is a palpable sense of decline in Australia. I went to the Philippines recently for a couple of months with the children. I stayed in a cheap condo close to the downtown area and caught the ferry every day that left from the wet market. These were desperately poor people by Australian standards, but the children wore clean clothes and were playing with marbles and pogs between the baskets of fish, and the people were unfailingly polite and solicitous. I did not feel unsafe the entire time I was there, and my only complaint was that people were excessively polite and kept referring to me as "sir" even if I was just out walking casually in flip flops. Within two minutes of getting back to Australia, I had to usher my kids to another carriage because someone was having a mental health episode on the train. Im not blaming him, I don't think its a matter of assigning moral blame to any one person. We made a choice to have the kind of society we have.
Would be interested in whether others feel the same way.
This might just be from the perspective of a tourist, but when I was visiting Scotland they seemed even more into Rugby and sports than Australians are. Frankly it seemed like the worst parts of Australian culture, but definitely far richer in culture and history