"Basically, for startups it’s super expensive to do business in Australia compared to other big cities—wages, compliance, tax and even software costs are high, and to make it even more tough, there’s typically less funding available to meet these costs."
This is what happens when government gets too big and the labor unions are mandated by law.
What type of nonsense is this ? It's super expensive to do business in Australia because it's super expensive to do anything in Australia. It has a high cost of living, high salaries, high property prices, small population and it located far from everyone.
We've seen over the last few months what a smaller government looks like. Moving to a "user pays for everything" model means less take home wages with a flow on effect of less money for startups.
Labor unions are not mandated by law and for all intents and purposes irrelevant for 99.9% of startups. They do serve an incredibly valuable part of society being the only counterweight to large corporations who are easily able to buy their way into politics.
> We've seen over the last few months what a smaller government looks like. Moving to a "user pays for everything" model means less take home wages with a flow on effect of less money for startups.
I don't know much about Australian government, but how is a "user pays for everything" model different from taxation? In your state, doesn't a user still pay for a service through taxation, whether an income tax (less take home wages), sales tax (less money for startups) or some other tax?
Reductions in public services/welfare supposedly matched by temporary levies on high earners. Those levies will be gone soon enough and the high earners will make back any shortfall through super changes anyway.
"It's super expensive to do business in Australia because it's super expensive to do anything in Australia. It has a high cost of living, high salaries, high property prices, small population and it located far from everyone."
Labor jobs pay $16/hour minimum. There is heavy regulations and taxes on businesses. With a company over a certain amount of employees, firing an employee ends up being a court case with the head of the labor union.
Startups can't thrive in an environment like this, which is why we don't see VC firms flocking there. It's no coincidence that they are flocking to the US.
"They do serve an incredibly valuable part of society being the only counterweight to large corporations who are easily able to buy their way into politics."
Labor unions are just as bad as corporations. They destroyed GM in the US and continue to create waste in many other industries (teacher unions creating an environment where bad teachers can't be fired).
It's not a shock to me that I was down voted. The leftists here on HN love unions.
Here's an alternative view: As collective safety nets (unemployment benefits, public housing, Medicare, ..) are removed in the name of lower taxes, it becomes much riskier to strike out on a new venture. With collective safety nets, you can take a risk and know that in the worst case you will have food, shelter and health. Without the safety nets, you stand to loose everything. I'd argue that a reasonable level of tax is a subsidy to founders and a promoter of start-ups.
Yes, but would it be as effective as a universal scheme? Also, there is a chicken and egg situation, whereby only people with the advantage of enough wealth to join in the voluntary scheme could access a safety net, biasing against people who do not have advantage but do have the ability to contribute.
> Why should a startup founder be able to bet on someone else's money?
Because we're all linked by, and benefit from, our societal connections and as a society we've collectively decided that it's the best way forward.
Every system has its own set of drawbacks. A non-voluntary system has the drawback of forcefully extorting money from people with proven capability[1] and then handing it over to possibly incapable / lazy people.
[1]: Assuming an uncorrupted system. Else, all systems are equally bad.
Er... where are unions mandated by law in Australia? I've worked in a variety of industries, and have only been in a union for one of them, which I dropped out of. I have a friend who's worked as a union recruiter, and he was very certain that there was no legal obligation to join a union.
This is what happens when government gets too big and the labor unions are mandated by law.