> There are no poor people working here. There are no disappointing dead ends. All jobs here are decent, by general standards. I'm sure that's culturally significant within the company.

I just visited Australia for the first time in 9 years, after having lived there for the first 23 years of my life. I've been living in North America (Canada and the US)

Your comment is exactly how Australia feels. There are virtually no poor people, nobody is left behind. Even people working "dead end jobs" like retail are perfectly happy. I would say they're happier than "career" people in North America.

I went to see some of my cousins in Australia earlier this year (and well, to watch the world cup).

This is what surprised me as well. Maybe it was the weather, or maybe it was the atmosphere of the world cup, but everywhere in Australia felt like a vacation. People were generally happy, welcoming and relaxed. I've never seen anything like that after traveling through more than 20 countries (not in Europe though).

A significant confounder is that resource exports are a major fraction of the Australian economy:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/australia/exports-of-goods-a...

I'm not insisting that policy differences are necessarily less important than that, but it's possible that Australia simply has better outcomes to select from.

Australia has a GDP per capita of around $43,000 while the United States has a GDP per capita of around $53,000 [1]

I suggest the United States has the better outcome to choose from, it just chooses not to.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...