[atiredturte]

I addressed this in another comment more fully. For this version though, consider that even though it might be possible to do such a thing, the vast majority does not. You could potentially be sneaky about this, but the effort would not be worth the small savings you would make.

The current HELP/HECS system doesn't just work on paper. It's been used successfully for a while.

Remember, we are about repayments starting at 2% at 50k AUD (35K USD) and going up to 8% at $107+ AUD (77k USD). This is not a crazy, crippling payment. It is not worth making substantially less in your job in order to save such (relatively) small sums.

Australia is not a welfare state. We rank 5th in economic freedom [1] (USA is at 18). While the nation does have many problems, I do believe that Australia performs decently at balancing a free market and government support. While we used to have completely free universities, I believe that the current loan program is a decent midpoint between the US and European systems.

[1] https://www.heritage.org/index/

[wolco]

Economic freedom rank is a bit confusing. Comparing Canada to US the tax burden is listed at 65 for the US and 76 for Canada. Comparing income taxes, capital gains, local/provincial/state the US is much lower.

[scarejunba]

It’s fairly comparable at around 200k USD (converted to equivalent CAD). Total tax in SF isn’t all that much lower in the US.