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| Pic courtesy GovNews |
Since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, we've been hearing a great deal about our "shared values" when it comes to the USA.
The contrasting attitude to gun control is perhaps the most stark evidence of this. In this country you may own a gun, but generally people only do so if they are hobby shooters or live in rural environments. Gun ownership is not seen as a fundamental right, based on a constitutional amendment that was made two hundred and thirty years ago.
The real world outcome of this would suggest that Australian values on this issue are pragmatically superior, and it hasn't made any difference to freedom across the two countries. At least it didn't when I travelled to the USA a few years ago. If anything, we were trammelled with more petty restrictions over there than we are here, ironically enough, many of them stemmed from precautionary scenarios implemented in a fearful community with almost universal gun ownership.
We don't, for example, need control measures in schools such as single-access points, fencing, or internal door locks to enable teachers to lock shooters out at proven intervention points.
The comparative firearm fatality rate is probably the best example of one result of this different set of values.
Then there's the contrasting attitude towards health care. In Australia we have a system which provides access to health care which isn't directly related to wealth. Not so in the USA. More than two-thirds (73.4%) of Australians reported being satisfied with their healthcare, whilst only a slight majority of Americans (54.2%) said the same.
Apart from satisfaction rates, a comparison of some important statistics is even more revealing. Life expectancy in Australia is nearly four years longer than the USA. In addition, infant mortality per one thousand live births in Australia sits at 3.14, but it's 5.44 in the USA. It seems that the satisfaction rates are based on a realistic appreciation of the situation in each country.
The firearm laws and health systems in each country are based squarely on opposing values of individualism against egalitarianism.
Then there's the contrasting welfare systems. In contrast to the USA, we don't worship the rich and despise the poor. We have created a welfare system that shares the nation's wealth more equitably than the USA whilst still valuing entrepreneurship and innovation. A wide collection of Australian inventions provides ample evidence of that.
Because our immigration system is skills-based, we don't need an endless supply of cheap immigrant labour and we pay wages comparatively higher that those across the Pacific. As of the latest data the minimum wage in Australia is AU $20.33 per hour as against the US federal minimum wage of USA $7.25 per hour.
Travelling in the USA exposes the social divide that becomes evident whenever you walk into a supermarket or a subway. I am beginning to notice the same situation developing here. It's not a positive trend.
My time in Vietnam where we had intermittent contact with Americans made these differences in values stark, particularly when it came to race. I remember being cautioned a number of times by white Americans that socialising with African American GIs when we were on leave was not a good idea.
The irony in this was that the black GIs were far better company that their white counterparts, and their sense of humour resembled ours, which was probably why we gravitated towards them.
And that's another difference. Our laconic sense of humour is a reflection of the fact that we don't take ourselves all that seriously. There is no such thing as Australian exceptionalism.
And that's a very good thing. Shared values? I think not.....
