One of the things that is “different” about being a US expat is that the news and imnpresion of how things are going back “home” are very much not the same as the impression of the people still living in my native land.
I say “different’ as a code word for “could be good” or “could be bad”. In today’s environment I have to say the different world view, for outside rather than inside, is certainly good … it’s to my advantage.
First of all I missed all the idiotic and annoying commercials of all candidates in the last election. That alone is a fantastic benefit.
Another thing I like about my current ‘distance’ from the US is my ability to actually go hours at a time without listening to the overblown media tales of woe about how bad things are in the US. “Economic Meltdown” for example. God I am so tired of hearing that phrase from barely literate ‘talking heads’ who are probably getting paid $100K per year to babble on TV about things they barely understand.
Or from executives who get paid $15 million a year to demonstrate management skills that are demonstratively worse than an eight year old with a lemonade stand.
More thna 2,000 auto compamnies have been stood up, run and then folded in the US since the first US cars were buiklt and sold. What makes the current crop of misfits worthy of a handout from our tax dollars? How come Toyota, Nissan and Mazda to name just a few can operate production plants in the USA and employ American workers and make a profit in the current “economic meltdown”? Hmmm? Couldn’t be becuase they looked at what was needed and built what would sell, with better quaity than the “Big Three”, now could it?
Folks I realize some of you have suffered some ‘negative growth’ in your investments. But life is a marathon, not a 100 yard dash. Take heart. This too will pass. And think this through. If you were really in an economic meltdown. you wuldn’t be reading this. You wouldn’t have a computer, a room to use it in or electricity to power it. This hand-waving exaggeration, especially of the bobble heads on TV just sticks in my craw.
As Americans we are entitled to nothing. But we are empowered to be all that we can be. I write often here about ways you can do something with your lives aside from wishing you had a better job, or even a job. A job is just a means to an end … what is your end goal? I found mine … at least partially. I live where I wish, live in a way I decide upon and I am not beholden to any overpaid executive or worse, college-trained showoff managing an investment fund that contains my money, losing it by incompetence and not even saying “sorry”. Why on earth would you even give idiots like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and other incompetents your money in the first place?
I can tell you the answer. You wanted “passive income”. You wanted to retire rich, or at least well enough off, without taking any responsibility for it yourself. Well, that part of life may indeed have suffered a “meltdown” and good ridance.
If there had been a British equivalent of Merrill Lynch at the time of the American Revolution we’d all be speaking the Queen’s English and living upon what parliament granted us for a dole after they paid for every other social program they could think of.
Let me make an observation that I do not want to let descend into political slanging. But it does invokve a family most of you aer well acquainted with. The Bushes. Why are Dubya and his brothers well off? Why is Bush the Senior a rich man? Becuase of Texas oil? Not hardly, the current president never earned a dime from oil, he drilled only dry holes … even I could throw my daddy’s money down a hole in the ground.
Where did Daddy’s money come from? Easy. His grandfather designed and poroduced a piece of equipment that revolutionized the ‘science” of coupling railroad cars together. He hired men (at most lkely the least he could get away with paying) built factories, melted, cast, machined assembled and sold iron and steel that “did’ something … and made America rich along with himself. He didn’t hand his money to some college kid and expect to retire. And if the coupler business was slow he didn’t go, hat in hand to Washington in his private rail car …the Gulfstream business jet of his day … to beg for handouts. He improved designs, cut costs, rejuvenated marketing or even cracked the whip if needed and sold more couplers.
What was my point in going off on this diatribe?
Well, in addition to the US “meltdown” our nearby neighbors in Australia have been doing a lot of arm waving as well. (I will say their media ‘heads’ do a significantly better job of reporting facts without sensationalizing them … if they used an alphabet that included the letter “R” they’d be top flight). Anyone who knows anything, though, knows that there are real economic issues in Australia right now. One huge problem, widely reported, is employment. Australia is a very small country in terms of population and there are not enough jobs to go ’round.
Or are there?
Queensland needs 120,000 skilled workers
By WILFREDO RODOLFO III/Business Mirror | 12/01/2008 9:28 AMCEBU CITY—While jobs in the United States and Europe are being lopped off by the thousands, the opposite is happening in Australia’s second-biggest state, Queensland, where over 120,000 skilled workers have to be hired in the run-up to 2010.
The state’s Vocational Education and Training (VET) export office recently held a job mission in Cebu to encourage workers to consider working in Australia, particularly in Queensland.
“There are so many investments and development, yet there are not enough people who will take up the available jobs in Australia,” said Katherine Mernane, director for the export office. VET is composed of the local and national government, employers, as well as training providers.
Mernane said workers would be needed in tourism and hospitality, business, accounting, hair dressing as well as in health and community services. Queensland has a 4-million population. ….
How can this be? We “know” Australia is suffering from hard times. People are even lining up at soup kitchens in large cities, and yet companies come all the way to the Philippines to actively recruit workers for jobs they desperately need filled?
I’m sure there will be some insightful comments from my Australian readers, and I do welcome all thoughts on this subject. But I already know one answer I am going to hear from all over the world. I hear it all the time, in the US, from Europe, from Canada, from Japan and yes from “Oz’ too … “those balnkety-bland Filipinos (substitute Chinese or Vietnamese or Sudanese, Mexicans or whatever group you wish) are ruining the country. They’re willing to work for less, they’re stealing all the hobs, they’re taking food from my children’s mouths… the list goes on.
Well are “those” groups “ruining” western nations? Are “those” people stealing jobs by working for less than they should be, or are certain societies holding themselves out as being worth a certain wage below which no “real” citizen should work?
Just what is the worth of a job, or the worth of a worker, for that matter? I’ll have more next post … meanwhile I am sure you out there have a thought or two yourself.
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Anyone going to a soup kitchen in Australia at the moment is likely to have serious mental or physical issues that make them practically unemployable, although that is likely to change next year. So far all that’s happened is that most people’s paper wealth has shrunk, but that will have consequences for employment sooner or later. For the moment, however, the ‘hard times’ are more abstract than tangible.
Changing government programs is like turning a supertanker around. There’s a long time lag. The Cebu mission was probably approved six months or more ago when unemployment seemed likely to stay low forever.
Education is one of Australia’s biggest export-earners. VET is trying to attract fee-paying students by dangling the hope they’ll eventually get permanent resident status. The fine print makes it clear there’s no guarantee of a job and many don’t get one.
Philly,
Let me say at the outset that I agree with most of what you’ve said.
Regarding your views on employment in Australia and advertising for skilled foreign workers, I’d like to offer some background for you. Yes, there are more and more people seeking assistance from charity, but this is not due to unemployment. Most of them are employed. The problem here is that house prices are absurdly high and people are mortgaged (and in other debt) up to their eyeballs.
The recent falls in mortgage rates may have some effect, but this has been a growing problem for a number of years. People just borrow way too much and in order to pay the mortgage they have to spend less on food and hence the need for charity.
There are a lot of skilled jobs available in Australia, and it is not a case of foreign workers taking jobs from the locals. The company I work for in Queensland was recently featured on the News because they are looking for 200 extra IT staff in the next year.
There is certainly no resentment in Australia toward foreign workers, in fact we are more concerned about them being ripped off by their employers or employment agents.
I am a Clinical nurse here in Australia, I sometimes dread turning up from shift to shift because chances are, there will be 1-2 3rd year nursing students in my crew of 7 RNs. I should have 7 RNs in my shift, management always says :”I can’t get an RN, just manage with nursing students”. Yet, because they are only students, I am obliged to give them more supervision than I would have to do with an RN. However, I know that if I have relatives in the Philippines who is a nurse, I just cannot sponsor her/him even though he/she has had years of experience. He/she still have to sit for this VETASSES exam before we can even lodge a sponsorship form. And if he/she is successful, she gets accepted into a hospital, but would be working under supervision for 3 months (depending on which hospital). And we wonder why we couldn’t get nurses?!
Hi Zaalti,
The exam and probationary supervision is the norm for most countries employing skilled overseas workers.In particular hospitals are always aware they can be sued if medication/surgical errors occur,therefore have to be cautious.
Some years ago a friend of mine from Malaysia decided to work in the UK.
She was a Staff nurse of many years experience on neuro surgical wards.
For the first year she was only allowed to work as RN until her work was assessed.
She was not happy but had to accept it.
When her contract was up she returned home,she did not feel the opportunities coupled with the very high cost of living in the UK was worth it,although she did learn from the experience.
regards Chas.
Thanks for the comment Chas. Funny thing is, the nursing councils are very strict with nursing qualifications and competencies. And yet, we bring doctors from all over the world, mostly from Africa, India who are semi-competents. I’ve had an African Consultant ask me whether I feel a certain medication should be increased for a patient! We often have to dictate to doctors what prns to use, negotiate the dose, etc. One day, I had an Indian Doctor ask me how to spell “Simvastatin”!. We nurses pick a lot ot medication errors writen by Doctors, it’s not funny anymore.
@Ken Lovell: Thanks for a real-world update, Ken. After all, all I know I get from the ABC.
You don’t want to get me going on the education ‘business’. It’s a huge problem here in the Philippines and in the US as well …suckering in student after student with the clear message that a college degree is an entitlement to a certain salary or status.
A degree may or may not be worth it, but it is not an entitlement. I get this viewpoint a lot from some of my Filipino friends … ‘But I have such and such a degree, so I should get a job at a certain level’.
The manager may have a masters degree but the didn’t get his current salary becuase he got that degree, he got his salary for what his degree helped him earn for the company. Frankly I’m very sour on degrees except for areas like nursing where they are likely a necessary entry level ‘license’. I think it’s ludicrous for young people to go directly to college and stay there until they earn a masters or even a doctorate.
They emerge as over-educated elitists and a company has o spend years teaching them the real world of business before it becomes clear is they can actually live up to their potential. I dropped out of college when I realized what a scam it was and other very successful people I know did too … Bill Gates would be a shining example
@Laurence: Interesting update, Laurence, thanks. It’s really interesting how jobs sort of migrate from country to country. One spect of the current ‘crisis’ is that it is often a case of the willing worker and the job vacancy are not in the same place. Americans in particular are ‘culturally educated’ that there’s no place for them to work except the US.
There’s work, but you may have to travel to find it. Obviously the Filipinos have this down to a science.
I’ve always been around aviation. I have some professional pilot friends. With the current airlines turmoil good piloting jons are hard to come by in the US and Canada … yet there are a lot of opportunities in Asia and the Middle east. Last year the Philippine legislature was even trying to pass a bill to force pilots trained in the Philippines not to take jobs in other countries. If an American wants to say, “not me, I am only working here”,fine … but don’t tell me there are not good jobs in aviation … you just have to be flexible.
Hi Philly,There is a misconception in the world that we get paid by the hour,this is just a convenient measure.In reality we actually get paid for our worth to our employer.We get promotion/paid more when we add more value to the job and thus become more valuable to our employer.I agree 100% with your reply in#3.There are so many young people with academic papers these days who expect to walk in to top jobs with no “on the job” experience.They should be taught that pursuing a career is like climbing a ladder,in order to climb the ladder you have to start at the bottom rung and climb up the ladder one step at a time to reach the top.Also at certain times in our lives when things go wrong we may have to come down a rung or two when jobs are scarce in order to survive,regards Chas.
Hi Philly,Enjoyed your post comments re “Bush’s”.Today it was reported that the big 3 auto manufacture’s in the US flew to a meeting with gov,t,begging bowl in hand,in their private jets,causing huge embarrasment to themselves,and the anger of the general public.They have announced that for the next meeting they will travel by car.Maybe they got the message at last,regards Chas.
@Chas: Thanks Chas. And thnaks to all who didn’t jump on the politcal defense bandwagon. I have no care what party Bush is, it’s just aprime example of a major flaw in the way US society has developed. The original family members made their money buy actually building things and selling to the world. Today the measure of success seems to be if you can buy paper with promises on it and then quickly sell that paper to someone even more gullible before the house of cards crumbles.
I know a fellow who started a business in Loveland, Colorado. he sells a high-tech, very important safety devise he invented for railroads. he has sold exactly _none_ of them to any US railriad, yet he does very well … his largest customer? The Chinese National railroads. They saw the safety potential and buy essentially his whole production. A huge percentage of American companies who profess to actually make a product will tell you … you can’t sell to the Chinese or other countries. Like Henry Ford used to say, “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
@Chas: exactly. I wish everyone success. And everyone has the right to earn as much as they are able too. But I get a bit short tempered when people tell me what they are ‘entitled’ to … just a grouchy old man I guess.
Hi Dave, with today’s technology, you can pretty much handle your accounts and investments through the internet. I know some cruisers do not even trust their own relatives, hence they use the brokerage houses to manage their accounts for a fee. Like you said, even trust them to decide which options to make to earn passive income – again for a fee.
But really, you don’t need to, as what I am doing. I can trade stocks, move funds, pay bills, etc through the internet. I think some still has this fear that the internet is dangerous – yes, that could be. But you can set it up in such a way that fund transfers are only allowed to certain accounts that you specify with the bank beforehand. I also take precautions – i.e. not in questionable internet cafes, erasing cookies, etc. If I can’t do it by internet, then my trusted sister does it for me.
But – to each his own, whatever you feel comfortable with. And, whatever you decide to do, ONLY YOU are responsible for it, whatever happens.
@Ellen:
Exactly. The Internet makes it possible to go pretty much completely portable … and facilitates the dream many have of living part time in one location and part time in another. I feel as you do that most of the hoola thrown about about security is based on unfamiliarity and the ‘Urban legends” which circulate so freely … I do all the business I can via the Internet and earn a non-trivial income from it as well … and of course I pay my taxes via the Internet too … even the US government agenices I draw pensions from have the annual 1099 forms online so I don’t have to wait for anything in the mail and the IRS dosen’t require sending a paper form to duplicate what they already have on file … and when they pay me my refund, which I am sure I’ll be due (fingers crossed), it goes directly into my savings account in a matter of days, not weeks as we used to wait ij the US. The Interenet has changed my life tremendously … especially since I met the love of my life there as well
Hi,
This & live in the philipines are really top sites so 1st I got to say thanks.
I’m 32 & only went to the Philipines for the 1st time last Oct & its definately the place I plan to retire.
Met a lot of ex pats who quoted the $1500 as the min they recommend you nedd with the cost of living increasing.
Have a question though about house prices at the monent over there as I bought a two bed town house for 1.4m in Las Pinas & have no idea if it has gone up or down?
Cheers
Michael
Hello Michael, thanks for the comment. There really isn’t a ‘real estate market’ here in the sense we have one in the US, so any person’s knowledge is a bit localized.
My wife and I watch forecloed properties every week in the newspaper, looki9ng for ‘deals’. I see birtually nothing falling, and new condo ads which there are pahes of every week are still climbing. I predict the market may take adip, becuase Hong Kong and Singapore have taken some real esyaye hits, but I don’t. personally, it will be anydeep hit … mainly becuase there are very few “upside down” loans like the US is full of.
Philippine banks operate very strangely. They make buyers come up with downpayments, theydon’t loan more thna a fraction of home value, and they charge enough interest to make aprofit, instead pf hoping to make a profit reselling “derivative” papaer.
As you have already seen, it’s a different worlsd here. But the short answer is, I have seen little or no change in the past year except a overall small rose.