It'd be interesting to see the what percentage of the labor billing rate trickles down to the actual workers in the US vs elsewhere.

If the trickle down percentage is equal then the problem in the US is extractive labor unions; if US workers get a smaller percentage of the billing rate then the problem is extractive behavior by contractors. These problems require different solutions, so any attempts at cost control would need to determine which of these possibilities is in force.

US healthcare costs will also almost certainly feed into higher employee compensation for American workers. European employers will be paying into health care in some form or other (either through taxes or private insurance) but overall healthcare costs in Europe are far lower than in the US.

If there’s Federal money involved, most of it does trickle down to the worker.

Each contractor has to report what they paid to each employee so that nobody is screwed. The idea was that the government didn’t want jobs to be done by cheap labor and they set a wage floor that corresponds to local union labor rates.

The wage difference can be quite drastic - floggers pay jumps from $15 Pernod to about $32 per hour where I live.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis–Bacon_Act_of_1931

Pernod?

I assume it should have been "per hour" but autocorrect got creative

per hour

Yeah, but the worker has to be a union member, and they don't let random people join.

> The idea was that the government didn’t want jobs to be done by cheap labor

To be more specific, they didn't want the jobs to go to black workers.

When one talks about the percentage of labor costs that trickle down to the worker. I include the workers expenses in that as well. If you are paying a worker you are also paying his rent, health insurance, and transportation costs. Those are high by world standards.

Remember a bitch by a VC that tech workers weren't benefiting from the high wages he was paying so much as land lords.

That. Financialization and rent seeking in the US acts as a privately imposed tax on real economic activity. That shows in in things like why my company has moved every five years since the early 2000's. Our lease expires. The rent doubles and we move.

Want to fix this; prune back the finance and healthcare industries.

I believe in NYC the underground work is controlled by the labor unions, so hourly wages are actually very high. I believe getting one of those tunneling jobs is like winning the lottery to middle class people in the area.

The more surprising point was the disparity in staffing levels which multiplies the cost differences:

“For example, in New York, the number of workers at the face of the tunnel can be up to four times the number of workers required in Germany or Austria for similar projects.”

The article then also highlights the difference in overtime pay of 2-3x (for the rate) in the US and 'as time' compensation in Europe.

I appreciate 2-3x overtime as a means of encouraging fully filling out the workforce at single rate. Overtime should be for true need, not a factored in norm.

> I appreciate 2-3x overtime as a means of encouraging fully filling out the workforce at single rate.

It should encourage the employer to avoid overtime, but at that rate I would guess it also encourages the employees to do overtime.

More people get well paying jobs, fewer people are overworked, and we pay less overtime? Sounds like killing three birds with one stone.

Inefficiencies like this should be the enemy of both political parties. They’re why Republicans complain about Government inefficiency and waste, and they’re holding progressives back from accomplishing everything they’d like the government to do.

This feels like it’s basically a matter of labor NIMBYs enriching themselves at the general public’s expense.

It's almost as if it's in the union's benefit to artificially restrict supply ...

I expected the downvotes of course, but there's no error in the logic. The role of the union is to advance the interests of it's members. In this case, if the city or transit authority was foolish enough to make a contract so easily gamed, that's on them.

Although to the extent that labor unions finance local political campaigns, one wonders if it isn't perverse incentives all the way down...

Actually, you find that almost all of this stuff is transferral of future cash to current time.

Any multiyear project has political ramifications and your funding could get pulled. Better to be short on staff and bill overtime now rather than have have lots of staff and then get your funding pulled later.

That’s an interesting point. You’re asserting that the fear of government funding falling through is what drives this behavior?

Any input on the impact of guarantees? Is this not something we do? Is it irrelevant because if funding isn’t there, they evaporate?

(I don’t know anything about how this actually works)

> Any input on the impact of guarantees? Is this not something we do? Is it irrelevant because if funding isn’t there, they evaporate?

A lot of government contracting is about the process of extracting the money. Multi-year contracts can be particularly fraught with risk--Can a lawsuit shut you down? Will some Senator come shake you down to score "See how much money I just saved us?" points. Did some other project supersede your priority? Did a budget shortfall take 15% out of everybody?

It is simply smart behavior to front load payments and back load execution if you are a company dealing with the government. If you get really lucky, you bank a bunch of money, don't do anything, and then the project gets canned. If you get really unlucky, you bank the money, don't do anything, and then the project flares up in importance and you get slammed by the now looming deadline (see: the original ACA government website debacle).

Some if it is also that companies will optimize to the rules. Do bids go to lowest bidder always? Okay, then the companies will optimize to low bid and charge through the roof for change orders. Is the company responsible for maintenance? If not, then you can be sure that the project will be built to the absolute minimum quality that can be countenanced and leave the maintenance nightmare to somebody else.

You get what you actually incentivize even if it isn't what you necessarily wanted.

Speaking without evidence from the frozen wastelands of Canada, it seems that US trade unions are every bit as powerful - if not more so - in specific areas of the economy. But, oddly, worker pay and protections are weaker on average.

Could this strange state of affairs be the result of a political system that is highly polarized and less fundamentally democratic than the Canadian and European system?

New York used to be a mafia town, and the unions were one of their strongholds.

I suspect some of that dynamic lives on.

Can you clarify your comment? It reads to me as ambiguous whether you're saying that worker pay and protections are weaker in Canada or weaker in the US.

Worker pay and protection is weaker in the US? If we’re talking CA and NY, then I would protection is pretty comparable and pay is higher.

That isn't what democratic means. It has nothing to do with which laws are passed, it's about how they're passed.

Yes which is why the United States is not a democracy. There cannot be a law in the United States that suppresses or compels speech no matter how many people want it. The us is a country of freedoms not mob rule.

There is more to democracy and freedom than one (or two if you choose to include guns) sets of freedom.

Practically speaking, there is no differences in the freedom Canadian and European citizens have regarding expression compared to Americans even though EFFECTIVELY certain types of speech are restricted (e.g. holocaust denial)

That is because the list of restricted speech is incredibly miniscule, and there are strong protections in place otherwise that prevent a "slippery slope" situation from occurring. ("First you ban me from freely speaking about the holocaust not happening, next you ban me from criticizing the president!")

Practically, non-US democracies have demonstrated a stronger commitment freedom of assembly and freedom of the press than the US has over the last 4 years.

The only difference is that in the US these protections are guaranteed by an effectively "sacred document" that supercedes all laws (The constitution)

But it is more and more clear that that is a bug not a feature of the system, and is causing legitimate harm as your supreme court is getting stacked with "textualist originalists" who think that the wisdom of slave-owning cotton farmers applies unquestionably to 21st century technology and societal concerns.

And this is before we even get into the question of what it means for something to be "democratic", which is to say there is a "Democratic electoral process", which we're about to find out just how much the US process has been degraded as seemingly HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people's votes will either be not counted, or will be denied the opportunity to vote. What is happening in the US would be impossible in any other Western Democracy.

Point of order: the US is far from unique in having a written constitution. Most developed countries have a written constitution that, among other things, guarantees (on paper) basic rights to their citizens. The only exception is the UK, which does not have a single written constitutional document.

As you say, the commitment to basic democratic rights is considerably stronger in other western countries than in the US. The kind of abuses the Republican party habitually conducts with the aim of disenfranchising Democratic voters would not be tolerated elsewhere; this is reflected by the fact that the US constitution only explicitly prohibits certain forms of electoral discrimination (i.e. it's a blacklist policy) but does not explicitly grant a right to vote.

In Croatia, which is in Europe (and part of EU), you will get fined if you:

1) Post an approving image of weed on Facebook

2) Write ACAB on Twitter (this one also got a journalist arrested)

3) Have a shirt that says "ruling party - thieves" (which, as an aside, is pretty accurate)

4) Are a journalist and publish an article which the court rules has caused "mental pain" to suing party (usually politicians and judges - this happens all the time)

Well as long as the press doesn't mention any of the banned topics and people only gather to support things that aren't banned they are free. All people are free you see but some are more free than others

How can you claim the press is free when you already claimed there are certain topics you cannot broach? Meanwhile the us press is so free they can publish completely anonymous articles critical of the president (the atlantics unsubstantiated veterans comment) and the most they get 'punished' is a critical tweet.

You are delusional to think the European media is freer.

No, it's you who are delusional.

The U.S. ranks 45th in press freedoms. There are 25 European countries who rank better. Heck, there are even 5 African countries who rank higher.

https://rsf.org/en/ranking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index

This infamous clip from The Newsroom might shed more light on how the U.S. is actually doing in comparison to other democratic countries (all statistics quoted are easily verified if you want to look into it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjMqda19wk

This seems really handwavy.

“Yes you have fewer free speech rights in Europe and Canada but that doesn’t actually matter”

Not any more handwavy than "These countries don't have free speech rights, therefore they're not actually democratic"?

There's no question that the US has more voter suppression issues than Europe, but it's foolish to behave as if it's something that isn't to be worried about.

https://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/european-union/voter-suppr...

Is it completely impopular? It is my opinion that expats should not be allowed to vote. I've asked around and most people seem to disagree, though.

Part of it has to do with the fact that unions have to negotiate for health benefits. In other jurisdictions, primary health insurance isn't a thing, so the union can focus on getting better wages.

Less fundamentally democratic? As in you mean that most views are subsumed into the two big parties? I sympathize with the view that large parties eliminate diversity in political thought but I'm trying to understand what "less fundamentally democratic" means here.

The Canadian constitution is not designed to grossly overweight the views of rural areas over those of populated areas. Canada doesn't have an institution like the US senate, where voters from the least populous state have over 80 times more power than those from the most populous state.

The spread in riding (electoral district) size in Canada only varies by a factor of 4.5 if the (mostly unpopulated) northern territories are included (the three territories have one MP, each, to represent populations of less than 30,000) and a factor of 1.5 among the populated provinces.

Canadian federal governments are generally comprised of whichever party received the largest share of votes nationally. This is not always the case in the US.

> Canadian federal governments are generally comprised of whichever party received the largest share of votes nationally. This is not always the case in the US.

I'm going to disagree with you on this. In Canada, the general votes usually result in 1/3-1/3-1/3 split between the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP. It's our first past the post system for MPs that results in the uneven split at the final tally. The only reason that the system hasn't succumbed to gerrymandering as badly as elsewhere is that district changes must be prompted by a change in the number of provincial seats from the census. The changes themselves are proposed by an unelected third-party with members chosen by the judiciary of the province and the speaker of the house (who is chosen by the MPs through a secret ballot vote). Otherwise, it would be all too easy to gerrymander an election in Canada and end up in the same situation as the US.

A vote in the US matters significantly more or less depending on what state you live in. California has approximately 40 million people living in it and yet it still has only 2 senators which means that in California 1 senator represents 20 million people. Wyoming has approximately 600,000 people and still gets two senators meaning that 1 senator represents 300,000 people. Given that senators are needed to pass laws, your vote has significantly more weight if you live in Wyoming than if you live in California. What this means is that even though republicans have a majority in the senate they represent a minority of the American population. I mean even the president was voted into office with fewer votes than their opponent.

Contrast this with countries that use proportional representation which means everyone's vote basically means more or less the same as anyone else's vote.

The US is currently ranked 25th in the world by "democracy ranking"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

It's worth pointing out that having a Senate based on states not population is not unique to the US, Australia does the same thing. In Australia, the 6 states get 12 senators each, and the two self-governing territories get 2 senators each. This means that Tasmania (with a population of 539,590) gets 12 senators – 1 senator per 44,966 people – whereas New South Wales (with a population of 8,157,735) also gets 12 senators – 1 senator per 679,811 people. So a Tasmanian's Senate vote is worth 15 times as much as that of a New South Welshman such as myself.

On the other hand, we do use proportional representation (single transferrable vote, STV) to elect the senators for each state, which is different from the first-past-the-post method the US uses. In a normal election, half of a state's senators are up for re-election; exceptionally, the government may call a special "double dissolution" election, in which the whole Senate is re-elected, if the Senate repeatedly refuses to pass legislation sent to it by the House of Representatives. Our use of STV means that minor parties (Greens on the far left, One Nation on the far right, various centrist/populist independents and other small parties) end up controlling the balance of power in the Senate. Some people don't like that because these minor parties end up sometimes extracting all kinds of concessions from the government in exchange for letting government legislation through.

I think some kind of unequal representation – like the Australian and US Senates – is essential for a federal system to work. Look at the United Kingdom – England has almost 85% of the population, so a big enough majority in England can always overrule the other three smaller constituent countries (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland), and there are no constitutional mechanisms to prevent that from happening. That's a large part, I think, of why the UK looks like it isn't going to last, with Scotland likely to break away sooner or later, quite possibly followed by Irish reunification some years further down the track, and once its just England and Wales, maybe even Wales will eventually decide to follow Scotland's example. If the British House of Lords was more like the Australian and US Senates, and gave the smaller constituent countries the ability to block an English-dominated majority, then the UK would be more likely to survive.

Sure, but compare the relative power of a CA state representative or the governor to those of Wyoming. CA environmental or privacy regulations for instance often function as de facto national law because the consumer market is so large. Rectifying the imbalance of senators would almost certainly see CA lose that overwhelmingly undemocratic power (~12% of US population - democrats who write the laws are maybe 60% of that subset so 7 million voters).

edit: CA accounts for 15% of the US GDP

Okay? This sounds like a great trade if your goal is to have a representative government instead of minority rule.

No, it is just another form of minority rule. Why should 7% of the country get to set its environmental policy in exchange for less voice in the national government?

I interpret the writer as referring to the democracy index. [0]

U.S. is at place 25 and is categorized as a flawed democracy, lower than Canada and some European countries (but far from all).

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

This index does not take into account the way some constitutions give certain groups greater say in policymaking, adjucation, or execution.

US Senate (and by extension the federal court system)

Electoral college

Europe, especially Nordics, are funny like that. Menial jobs are costly and they are automated ASAP since human personnel costs are too high. On the other hand experts are quite cheap. No doubt these two effects feed eachother: easier to hire cheap experts to automate expensive menial jobs than to hire expensive experts to automate cheap jobs.

Might be a supply issue with completing a vocational school being seen as much more prestigious and desirable in Europe than in the US.

“47.2 percent—nearly half—of the German population held a formal vocational qualification in 2016”

From: https://wenr.wes.org/2018/06/could-germanys-vocational-educa...

Europe controls wages by keeping the supply of housing high and the price of housing low. Most American cities have an acute shortage of housing and this raises wages. It has nothing to do with unions and their powers.

My experience in Hamburg, Germany was that getting an apartment in the city was waiting for someone else to die. Getting an apartment in Boston took me two weeks. In Germany, it took two months.

Germany, at least, keeps costs low by using the common market to depress wages. Housing supply in the dominant cities is very tight vs. wages. See Berlin and Munich.

Where on earth do you find someone who's qualified (and prepared to take the risk!) of constructing a tunnel that people to go in... for $30/hr? Surely a professional like that can get a better job anywhere else?

There's lots of downwards pressure on construction wages in Europe coming from Eastern European workers.

That's such an interesting observation. The US has tons of poor places full of millions of people -- the Deep South comes to mind -- who could fill many lower-skill construction jobs, putting downward pressure on the industry. But the distance between Mississippi and New York City is much larger than the distance between Poland and Germany -- both in miles and in ease of transit.

Not to mention I think these days Poles and Berliners get along better than Mississippians and New Yorkers. It's depressing to type but it's probably true.

Are there really many qualified tunneling engineers coming in from Eastern Europe? If there are then good for them, but I still don't get why qualified people would accept so little. Surely private engineering works pays much more than that.

> Are there really many qualified tunneling engineers coming in from Eastern Europe?

Yes, why wouldn't be there? Speaking strictly for Romania (from where I'm from) the Bucharest underground in the 1980s and almost all of the big hydro-dams projects (which also require extensive tunneling work) were carried with Romanian engineers only (we received the help of the Soviets in the early 1960s for the hydro works, though). And to be honest that question in itself is a little "orientalist", but I'll just pass over that part of the post.

> If there are then good for them, but I still don't get why qualified people would accept so little

Because wages are still pretty low in countries like Romania (and I guess in Poland and Bulgaria too, to give just a few examples), $30 per hour is more than enough. Plus the engineers themselves alone are no good, the project is based on the people who actually have to dig the stuff out, for them $30 per hour is double more than enough.

> Yes, why wouldn't be there? Speaking strictly for Romania (from where I'm from)

Great specific question! Because Romania isn't a signatory to the Washington Accord, which is the mechanism by which these engineering degrees get recognised for chartership by other countries.

https://www.ieagreements.org/accords/washington/signatories/

It's a simple fact that chartered engineering societies don't accept many overseas degrees! It's very hard to get chartered from overseas unless you've been to a few very notable universities. Even being listed on the European Engineering Education Database isn't accepted.

https://www.engc.org.uk/glossary-faqs/frequently-asked-quest...

But not everyone on a construction project needs to be a chartered engineer?

The person I'm replying to specifically said 'engineers'.

Did they? The top level post is referring to "construction labor" and "qualified tunnel workers."

I think only you've brought up chartered engineers, which, obviously, not everyone involved in construction labor will be.

Good grief.

Parts of Eastern Europe have had an industrial base since the 1800s. Indeed, the Czechs have been making cars since 1905. Of course Eastern Europe trains qualified construction workers.

But none of these countries are signatories to the Washington Accord?

How are they getting accredited to work in the US or UK?

Haven't even heard of the Washington accord, seems very US centric. All of EU except Ireland is missing.

On point.

They don't need to be, because their exist mechanisms to recognize degrees from other countries inside the EU. Remember they are probably getting jobs in Germany or Spain and not "overseas".

The people making the wages in the article aren't engineers.

I don't believe that everyone who is working on a tunnel needs to be a "tunneling engineer". Like with construction, there's an engineer with a degree planning overseeing stuff, and then there are other guys actually doing the work.

Requiring everyone to have a degree, even to do simple stuff, would be absurd. If you do in the US, then that is the reason for high costs.

The number seems extremely low, especially considering this is completely before taxes, health insurance and retirement ('Arbeitgeber brutto'). The actual net salary after everything is roughly half of that.

The few unions that do exist in the US are surprisingly powerful.

European unions are either dying with dwindling influence (France, Britain, Italy), or just a proxy for social welfare and compensation negotiation (Germany, Netherlands, Northern countries).

The employees in the US are probably making closer to $30/hr than $70/hr, but their time is being billed at the higher rate, with the difference going into "overhead."

I regular work with and PM projects using union labor in NYC. The rates here are about what I would expect for take-home pay. I.e. they take home (pre-tax) closer to $70/hr than $30/hr. One thing not made clear in the article is if the hourly rates they quote are pre or post benefits. When I budget out projects, my spreadsheets have two columns, hourly wage, and hourly + benefits. Depending on the particular union, the benefits can be as high as 60%. So the real cost to me, the PM, is $70+$42 = $112/hour straight time.

Wow, seems like I was misinformed, then. That seems unsustainable to me, but I guess time will tell.

It can certainly be painful from a management standpoint. But actually the biggest pain point isn't the hourly wages -- we all love to earn money, after all. The biggest pain point is labor minimums. If you need to hire from Department A, you need to hire a minimum of 3 people even when only 1 is needed. Or if you need to hire from Departments A and B, then you're required to also hire Departments C, D, and E (all with their minimum crew requirements).

It makes for accomplishing smaller projects near prohibitively expensive. And typically you can't gang together multiple projects in order to optimize labor usage.

Honestly, I have very mixed feelings about the arrangements I have to work with.

So this is the real reason for high costs in construction in the US. Absurd "labor minimums" ? Haven't heard about anything like this here in Europe..

Are those labor minimums union rules or are they imposed by government regulation?

Good question. I assumed union rules, but I could see OSHA being the factor here, too.

For me, they're negotiated union rules.

Why can’t you hire non-union labor? Is it unavailable?

Really? If you're familiar with rate cards, can you read this http://www.local14funds.org/forms/NewForms/Wage-Scale-082018... and tell me what portion actually makes it to the person doing the work?

Seems like you're familiar. Could you share the answer too?

I'm not. I just use that source for me to determine how construction jobs (specifically crane ops) wages are priced. I am not especially informed.

Those wages are what the union members actually receive.

Thanks. What would someone who utilizes this union labour actually end up paying? A little more than this? I'm sure it varies but I'm curious about ballpark. Like 50% more? 250% more?

Cha ching. Here's the issue.

That 70$ 'overhead' charge.

That sort of overhead should frankly be illegal. It's exorbitant. To pay the worker $30/hr, and charge a $70/hr overhead on top of it is daylight robbery.

Is it really? In my experience the overhead for salaried software developers working for contract shops is greater in both raw amount and percentage that that.

This was 10 years ago but I knew developers making $60/hour in salary while being contracted out for 3 times that amount.

> making $60/hour in salary while being contracted out for 3 times that amount

Those devs should have listened to patio11 (Patrick McKenzie)'s advise, and directed built a relationship with the companies they were being contracted out to.

Unfortunately both California and can the contracting companies are opposed to this. Most companies are not interested in working with sole proprietorships due to the legal liability.

I personally found it very suspect but looking in Denmark it seems to be correct - https://www.studentum.dk/job-loen/byggearbejder it's in Danish, but roughly comes out to slightly higher than 30 dollars an hour (and Denmark generally has higher wages than lots of countries)

I believe that is probably has something to do with what the state provides vs what the labor has to get for themselves. Cost of living is also expected to affect the rates that are charged.

Is $70/hr fair market value, or are the contracts negotiated via corruption and cronyism?

why would $70 per hour not be fair for working underground boring a tunnel? What does a software developer make in California?

on edit: added in California.

The question is whether it's fair market value. So if there were competent people willing to do the work for $60 an hour, then $70 would no longer be fair market value.

The laborers don't make $70 an hour, that's what the project bills their rate as. They make closer to $20, the difference accounts for management salaries, times when the buisness has to pay the employees when they don't have work but don't want to lay off (because they are expecting work) and benefits (sick time, pto, parental leave, training etc.)

This is simply not true. See plenty of other comments in this thread talking about actual rate cards.

It is true for me. My employer charges the government $142/hr for my time and pays me $43

> What does a software developer make in California?

Yeah, not the best example to go with. If the numbers on HN are at all accurate, it's not uncommon for a FAANG employee to make more than a DOCTOR in North Carolina.

>it's not uncommon for a FAANG employee

that's why I chose it as an example to compare with the wage of somebody who does hard physical labor underground with a significantly higher chance of injury https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4667042/ - relevant quote:

"However, there is still a relatively high incidence of labour accidents during tunnel construction when compared to incidence rates in the construction industry in general. During tunnel construction, rock fall events at the cutting face are a particularly characteristic of the type of accident that occurs."

Obviously the latter

Would you say the same thing about CEO salaries? Why or why not?

I would. It's a racket similar to police unions: upward pressure on $ and benefits because not to do so will result in a collapse of the larger operation (company, society), or so the rhetoric goes.

What do you think

Sentences like these are fascinating wedge issues.

A conservative/republican commentator would take this as evidence/proof of the indisputable superiority of the American system - truly it is a land of opportunity where people can make 2-3x more than in supposedly rich Europe.

A progressive/democratic commentator would instead point out that the LIFESTYLE a laborer can have in Europe at 30$/hour is in many ways superior to that of the equivalent American worker - they have full healthcare coverage, a prolific public transit system, and free university tuition for their children.

Then the counter-counter argument would be that the American worker could have a full house, 3 cars, and the FREEDOM to choose to spend money on their healthcare vs something else for their lifestyle, whereas the European laborer is in a system where a lot of choices are made for them.

Pretty interesting stuff.

Yes. This is why Americans have so much hatred of labor unions. They cause extremely high labor costs.

Americans love labor unions it's just that you can get fired for supporting them so people have to remain silent.

That's illegal, so not actually the case.

No it's not I've seen dozens of people fired just for talking about labor unions, it's extremely common. Just google it.

Germany isn't a high labor rate country, they have one of Europes largest low wage sector thanks to the Hartz IV laws implemented by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a Non-profit foundation to evade taxes.

If we had an education system like in Germany that tracks kids into $30/hr trade jobs, sure.

You could reframe it as, “every German tunneler is paying a $40/hr non tax compulsory payment to someone’s kids in Germany’s ownership class.”

Aren't subways generally public goods?

There is some European fantasy that exists in the United States.

Anyone who travels to Europe is shocked at home, food, and car sizes. Sure there is beauty and history, but the standard of living seems significantly worse off.

There may be something to be said about safety nets, but it sure was a wakeup call for me.

Edit- don't get hung up on the sizes comment, it's merely an expression of wealth differences.

I find it very American to define living standard by the size of the car, size of drink and home size. I much rather do it by the quality of entertainment and culture I have easily accessible, while choosing to live maybe a little bit smaller but much more connected at any time of day.

Signed, tested a year in Dallas.

To be fair, you chose Dallas

To be fair to Dallas[1], the city itself has begun to rapidly densify and build up rather than out – it looks like a real city in many more parts than it once did (I grew up there).

Would I move back there in the near future? No. Is it comparable to any first-class European city? Definitely not. Is it on par with NYC/SF/DC? Not really. Los Angeles (where I currently live)/Seattle/Atlanta? Somewhat. Heading in the right direction? Definitely.

[1] Unless you're talking about DFW suburbs. In which case, once you cross the city line, try not to lose your soul in all the cookie cutter subdivisions.

Yes, depends what you value more. Ford Expeditions and Chevrolet Suburbans and F150s or not worrying about your family’s healthcare.

I’d wager that the average HN reader already doesn’t worry much about healthcare; health insurance at high end tech employers tends to be pretty good. Of course many people in tech want universal healthcare for the benefit of others, but it’s not a compelling argument to e.g. personally move to Europe.

Can modify it to this:

Yes, depends what you value more. Ford Expeditions and Chevrolet Suburbans and F150s or not worrying about your fellow citizens’ healthcare.

> Anyone who travels to Europe is shocked at home, food, and car sizes

I'm trying to understand this comment. I'll flip it the other way as a European Brit visiting the US.

Homes: You have an entire continent, with only 400 years of (European) habitation, so you have a lot of space. Your home building is also largely after the invention of the motor car. In Europe we have, are, and will, walk everywhere. So everything is closer together, and so are the houses.

Food: not quite sure what the issue is with European food, but as a European in the US, I'm astonished at how little fresh food and meat there is. If it's wrapped in plastic, I have no idea how old it is. Ugh. If I ask a butcher for a cut of meat, I know that meat has only been hung for a certain time, and on display for a certain time. Similar fruit and vegetables, and fish, and bread and so on. A massive bag of chips, or a gallon of high fructose corn syrup is not an achievement.

And then car sizes. European roads are historically dictated by horse and cart. In the US, you have Eisenhower and the freeways... after the invention of cars.

Don't get me wrong, I like the USA. I've spent about 5 years of my life, cumulatively in the USA. I think the European fantasy, is seeing America, and realising (from a European perspective), how much the USA could benefit from doing some European things. I want to just walk to the shops, or cycle down the road.

High speed rail would be an absolute game changer for you guys. Connecting up SF and LA, or NY and Phili, but you (or rather your politicians) just don't get it.

>Anyone who travels to Europe is shocked at home, food, and car sizes. Sure there is beauty and history, but the standard of living seems significantly worse off

It's not the first time I've talked about it on HN, but from an EU point of view making a connection between house/car/food size and standards of living is baffling.

>>>from an EU point of view making a connection between house/car/food size and standards of living is baffling

Humanity has probably spent ~5,000 years with the aristocracy upgrading their dwellings to something larger and more permanent than a closet-sized hovel. Same for possession of personal conveyances larger and more capable than one's own two feet. We can debate whether it is healthy, or philosophically ideal, but it certainly isn't a uniquely American phenomenon, and shouldn't be baffling, when viewed in the context of human civilization's habits of material acquisitiveness.

That's a very idealistic view of Europeans.

Yeah nothing screams high standards of living like driving a gigantic 4x4 (hint: those are pretty useless in most European cities) and the size of the portions at Taco Bell.

As for the housing... you can buy a cheap big house in bumfuck nowhere or a smaller place in the city. I guess just like in the US.

>Anyone who travels to Europe is shocked at home, food, and car sizes. Sure there is beauty and history, but the standard of living seems significantly worse off.

Did you live somewhere in Europe, or did you just visit on a holiday?

I'm super curious where you live in the USA.

I'm euro and I agree, it seems people who never set a foot here fetishize it. Americans have insane amount of disposable dollars compared to Europeans and they also spend like crazy :)

> I'm euro and I agree, it seems people who never set a foot here fetishize it.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

> Americans have insane amount of disposable dollars compared to Europeans and they also spend like crazy

That's the other side of the fence. Most Americans you noticed had insane amount of disposable income, the ones you don't register possibly don't. In average the disposable income is higher in the US than in Europe, but so is the income inequality.

There are up-sides and down-sides to each systems.

Well, the average cpc cost tells a good story of averages and who is willing to spend - America is the first by a mile.