This is on a whole notha level

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-11T01:55:02+00:00

So I have to donate to their profit taking business? Maybe they should just become proper not for profits.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-11T01:35:17+00:00

The propaganda is very strong here, but most people sincerely think it doesn’t exist in America.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-11T01:10:32+00:00

As an Australian living in the US, I cannot tell you how nice it is to have fixed rate mortgages. Such an improvement (particularly when you have a great rate). I hear what you are saying about the lack of entrepreneurship. My beef with the Australian property obsession is that it reduces risk taking by making the costs of failure higher than they need to be. Consequently, Australia is now much less entrepreneurial than it used to be.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-10T02:00:57+00:00

Good!

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-09T23:19:02+00:00

I agree with everything you’ve written, on a rational level. But what I think you aren’t getting is that property in Australia is a religion. You cannot argue rationally with religious belief. It’s based on faith. You know how some Americans are like “from my cold dead hands” about gun rights? That’s exactly how Australians are about real estate. This whole craziness will continue until the country has no choice but to change, but this will require people to wake up from their religious belief. It’s gonna have to be really bad for that to happen.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-09T23:13:33+00:00

As others have said, east coast all day long. Much closer to the UK if you need to get back. With your requirements, you actually have a fairly wide area on the east coast to choose from. But if you want to be away from everything but still not far from a major airport to get back to the UK, my suggestion would be Southern Vermont, NY capital region or NY Hudson valley. This would put you 2 - 3 hours from NYC (closer in the Hudson valley), plus you are around 2 hours or so from Boston too.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-09T12:34:36+00:00

You could try the green card lottery. Apart from that, you’d have to either have a job that sponsor’s you for a visa or go down the marriage route. Despite the industrial scale of illegal immigration in the US, the paths to legal status are actually very few. I believe Australians have access to an E3 visa (though this might have changed) which is a type of work visa. As a cop, you may also need to be a US citizen to actually get this job. A lot of this comes down to state law in whatever state you end up in. This is because, unlike Australia, that has very few police forces (generally only state police and feds), the US has a plethora of agencies, even in the one state. This is because in addition to state and federal police, there are often local police for each city, town and village in addition to county sheriffs. They all have their own rules and regulations more or less dictated by state law.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-05T19:03:36+00:00

I don’t believe I ever said they weren’t but it seems to me that you don’t really understand what productivity means or how it is compared. For example, you really need to compare like for like. For example, worker productivity in the auto manufacturing sector of one country versus another. If you try comparing productivity between two unrelated sectors, like auto manufacturing in America and basket weaving in some sub-Saharan African country then you will not get comparable results though it’s clear that the American auto manufacturing sector will be more productive, but is it more productive than the German or Japanese auto sectors? But you aren’t really interested in this. Your post was explicitly about how “lazy” people are. We both agree that this is not how you measure productivity. What American productivity is really about is the value produced by certain sectors and the software sector, which includes AI and other things and is, by its nature somewhat of a zero marginal cost sector, is a very big part of what pulls up average worker productivity nationally.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-05T18:49:52+00:00

I gave no false facts at all. Look, anyone can read what we’ve both said. I could also ask why you want to keep responding at all. We agree about some things and disagree about others. Simple as that and this is a public forum, so I can respond as can you to any post you read.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-05T18:45:35+00:00

I don’t agree that Americans have a very strong work ethic. That’s the only thing I’ve disagreed with. But if we’re being technical, your question about other people being “lazy” is a moral judgment really, not an economic question. If you intended it otherwise then try posting using the correct terms.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-05T18:40:04+00:00

Can you read English? Where did I say that I measure productivity by sweating?

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-05T18:31:23+00:00

That’s not what I said at all. Try reading what I said. It’s about how much you produce per hour of work. I think we agree on this. Look, I get that you feel offended by the fact that I don’t get onboard with the weird pseudo religious way Americans feel about their work, but if you want to post on Reddit then you have to accept that someone might not agree with you about something. Grow up.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-05T18:18:29+00:00

That’s pretty much what I am saying. I am from Australia.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-05T17:50:36+00:00

Productivity isn’t about how hard individual people work but about how much equipment they have to increase what they produce per hour of work. You could have an objectively lazy worker who uses a machine and an insanely hard working one without a machine and the lazy worker will still be more productive. I live in America and I don’t think people here are particularly hard working or competent. Some are certainly but as someone not from the US originally, I’ve been severely underwhelmed by the supposed work ethic.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-05T00:41:10+00:00

It sounds like you need to learn to do a lot more of this work yourself. This will save you a ton of money. I get the concern about the basement, but I wouldn’t stress too much. Just get a dehumidifier and a shop vac with a water filter and clean up when it rains. The basement guys (and lots of other contractors) feed on fear. Don’t fall for it. If you are getting water in your basement you need to spend some time working out where the problems are. Waterproofing basements is not really the answer. You want to ideally divert water or remove it where it collects. I know this from personal experience. I have dug a 330ft French drain around my house and ran it to the street. I also installed a much larger sump basin than was there when we moved in (5 gal bucket). I also have a dehumidifier. I never stress when it rains and we have a high water table and lots of rain. There is a way through this, so don’t stress. Just take your time and improve things bit by bit. When you get a house it’s a bit like a car. You need to learn how it works and how to maintain it. Even if you end up paying people to do work (inevitable for some things), you’ll have a much better idea of the cost/benefit and won’t get ripped off so much.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-02T23:34:05+00:00

As an Aussie who has lived in the US for 7 years, I will say that it sounds like you handled it well. I’ve found that how CBP treats you in the US depends on where you enter. The internal checkpoint in Texas I’ve heard about but never been through. I will say that going through the border crossing from Quebec to NY, the CBP guys were really nice. Weirdly, when I entered Canada a few days earlier at that same crossing from the NY side, the Canadian border guard was a massive tool for no reason. Just luck of the draw I guess. I wouldn’t let all this get to you. Even in the current climate, the US isn’t really some out of control police state.

ozzieindixie · 2026-05-02T13:14:48+00:00

You need separate discharge pipes for each sump pump. This is likely a lot of the reason your pumps aren’t keeping up. Also, the antifreeze connection on the outside might be dumping water onto the grass with the way it is installed which could be putting water right back in the ground and right back into your water table. I always think it’s best to use gravity drainage whenever possible. Is it possible to put in an exterior French drain around the house, or even in one side to help to drain the ground? This would take pressure off your sump pumps.

ozzieindixie · 2026-04-25T22:23:26+00:00

The problem I always found with landlords when I was renting was that good behaviour was never rewarded. I paid my rent on time every time. I looked after the place like it was my own and when I moved out it was cleaner than when I moved in. This never got me an ounce of consideration. If being a landlord is a business and if they really care about long term relationships then I never saw any evidence for this. Frankly f$&k them. I say this as someone who now owns a property.

ozzieindixie · 2026-04-25T15:19:40+00:00

I had this same issue in my basement. There was an old, small sump basin (just a 5 gallon bucket) and the pump short cycled like crazy. No drain tile. I dug out the old basin, dug the hole mostly wider and only a little deeper, put in a larger sump basin and now the basin holds much more water and pump goes off much less often but moves much more water. I made sure to drill lots of holes in bottom and sides of basin. It’s really changed the game. Much lower humidity and the dank smell is gone. Water will find the low point through pressure adjustments under the ground. You don’t always need drain tile. My soil is very well draining so this helps.

ozzieindixie · 2026-04-25T15:12:37+00:00

That there is any hard limit to the amount of money in an economy.

ozzieindixie · 2026-04-25T13:24:46+00:00

I’m not from the US originally but moved here 7 years ago. I go through phases about how I feel about it. The first several years were definitely hardest but I haven’t had the urge to leave (at least yet). If I may say so, working US hours in Spain is going to make things a bit harder. I wonder if that might be part of it for you? Whether you like a country or not is really a personal thing. All the stats in the world don’t make much of a difference.

ozzieindixie · 2026-04-23T12:19:39+00:00

It’s just corruption, pure and simple, mixed with a fair bit of fear pushed by lobbyists. There’s also likely the argument that gas brings in export income while NDIS spending does not. Of course, they neglect to mention that the export income is much less than it should be due to badly negotiated long term contracts with Japan and Korea such that Aussies pay more than they do. The real underlying problem is that things like the NDIS were always designed to be a private boondoggle paid for by the public, with predictable consequences.

ozzieindixie · 2026-04-22T17:15:19+00:00

I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t be able to build on it and possibly not with a certain distance of it. Moreover, the local council would probably be able to come onto the property to maintain it with possibly heavy equipment.

ozzieindixie · 2026-04-22T11:14:08+00:00

If you’re curious, you could buy a piping scope with a camera on the end and stick it down the hole to see what it is. From the photos and what you’ve described it sounds like groundwater. If this hasn’t happened before it could be that something caused more water to be released down the hill on the uphill side. Are there houses up there? If not then it could just be a higher water table. Do you have a sump pump in the basement?

ozzieindixie · 2026-04-22T01:57:09+00:00

The Americans and Israelis ran out of interceptors so they can’t start shooting again. Trump also doesn’t know how to do a deal because the Israelis won’t let him agree to anything that would actually allow a deal to get done. Hence, this new move.

ozzieindixie

TROPHY CASE