Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Speaking of affordable living, did you know that the American dollar is worth 1.92 Australian dollars at today’s exchange rate? So, if you have an income from the US and lived in Australia, you could indulge in mighty high living.
What do you think, Australia — would you like more yanks in your neighborhood?
Of course, there’s a few hitches along the way. First, Australia has one of the most restrictive immigration policies in the world. If you read the Sydney Morning Herald, it frequently has stories about the refuge problem in Australia, including this one about refuge children in today’s edition.
For some reason, technology people are particularly interested in moving to Australia. I know I was seriously considering it – until I found out how difficult it is for people to move there, especially in these troubled financial times. If you’re interested, I’ll point you to web sites with information on the topic.
I wonder if techies want to go to Australia because we have this impression that the country is the last frontier, the land of the truly free, where any Joey or Jenny can carve their own niche without government intervention. Wake up, Babees! As you’ll read at Jonathon’s weblog as well as this opinion piece about South Australia’s censorship bill and the impact on P2P technologies I did for O’Reilly Network, Australian has some of the most restrictive laws on acceptable Internet content.
Still, there are all those people with them sexy Australian accents…. growrrrrr!
Update: Thanks to Zem for clarification and additional information on censorship, and to Jonathon on the issue of immigration not being the same as a difficult boat people situation.