Re:U.S. Life Expectancy Drops for Third Year in a Row (2018)
by axaxs on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @01:38PM
(#20346557)
I'm glad you pointed this out as the voice of reason. I can't believe all of the anti-American sentiment in this thread. I still firmly believe that any American who is willing to work hard and avoid drugs can have an amazing life. I'm not even that hard working and do fine. Every super hard working person I've known is doing well, most better than me. I have two cousins who became pipefitters, and both make in the 150-200k range per year. I know a family friend who works package handling part time, and part time he drives a truck and trailer doing hauling, oddjobs, moving, etc. He is nearly a millionaire at this point. None are college educated. The biggest problem USA has is people who expect/demand that since they went to college, they deserve a job and money. Or folks who think that working at all should provide them a nice lifestyle. It may have been that way at one point, but not in a long time. Unfortunately, those are a lot of vocal voices.
For a household with employer-covered health insurance, which is most households, out-of-pocket spending (employee contributions + cost sharing) is about $3,000: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2.... For a median household, the German health insurance tax of 7.5% (employee portion) would be more than that.
Most people in both countries don't go to college. In the U.S., the ones who do have a median monthly payment of $220: https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics. That's about 5.5% of median income for college graduates 0-5 years out.
As to housing, the median new house in the U.S. is twice as big as the median new house in Germany: http://demographia.com/db-intlhouse.htm.
As to retirement, the German pension system is not particularly if at all more generous than Social Security.
Offsetting those benefits is the fact that Americans make a lot more money at the median. Adjusted for purchasing power, the median American makes about $5,000 per year more than the median German. That's enough to pay for the extra out-of-pocket health insurance and student loans, and that's not even accounting for the American's much lower taxes.