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Old 02-22-2010, 04:06 AM   #16
TraineeHuman
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 174
Default Re: New Australian magazine for truth-seekers

If your magazine is primarily intended for an Australian audience, the sociological profile of Australia is interesting and unique. The Australian market for movies, books, videos, self-education and so on is bigger in dollar terms than that of the entire UK or Japan, and is something like a third of that for the USA. Figures like that may suggest that no other country seems to come close in its thirst for stories, for information, or for culturing of the mind or spirit. Nor, it seems, for excelling at sport, or for being professionally successful in some field of the arts or entertainment.

In three of the four scales by which the OECD measures rich vs poor differences, over 20 years ago Australia took over from the USA and the UK as the country with the biggest overall gulf between rich and poor. This of course runs very much contrary to the egalitarian ideal every Australian claims to subscribe to. On the other hand, the average female wage was over 90% of the average Australian male wage over ten years ago. I understand in the USA and the UK and various European countries it was in the mid-seventy percentile, if that, ten years ago.

Some major sociological/anthropological studies suggest Australian culture is made up of values over 50% of which are Aboriginal in origin, followed by Celtic/Irish influence, then American then English then Asian influence. No doubt the Asian influence, and interest in or affinity with things Asian, is continually rising on many fronts.

Psychologically, Australians often come out in psych tests as more independent-minded than all other countries. In some senses of “independent” or “indivualistic”, the USA comes in top place instead. But these two countries, with New Zealand, are a long way further down that rabbithole than any other Western country, at least.
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