I’ve been to the US a couple times for work (all over), always travelled around a bit. I found the people to very, very warm and kind everywhere. Racial segregation is sometimes too real in some places but the black people there seem so positively surprised and very kind when you ask them something as a white dude, it’s easy and rewarding to just be the change you want to see in that respect.

The only reservation I’d have is about the healthcare system especially as you grow older. Maybe get well informed about good insurance.

> the black people there seem so positively surprised and very kind when you ask them something as a white dude

Where were you? I live and grew up in the south east, and have always chatted with my black neighbors / clerks / coworkers / etc when out and about. It’s so normal that I can’t imagine a response of surprise.

I'm here in the south too, and the way my friends up north and out west talk, they seem almost more segregated than the south.

I am European, I have stayed in the US many times and I think some parts of Europe have more racial problems than the US. For example, I have some Asian friends who used to work with me in Scandinavia and moved to the East Coast as they felt like second class citizens.

Another big problem in Europe is the way talent is valued. It is much more important to have good connections and to belong to the upper class. Simply compare the salaries between engineers here and there. Only management gets a good compensation. This explains why innovation is somewhat stifled.

Things are changing and there are some exceptions. For example, Switzerland shares many of the desirable traits of EU and US, but few of their issues. Stockholm and Berlin have nice startup scenes, and so on. However, the rate of change has slowed down dramatically due to COVID, the housing bubble and inflation rates.

Private schools--or neighborhoods with a good school system--are basically about segregation. Every single black child I've ever seen--with one notable exception--had a super arrogant streak, in one case it was a one-time thing, in every other case like holy shit (though another one I sometimes had good conversations with, it just varied). Like out of nowhere, spitting in my path in US--that's racial bullying on their part, they're trying to impress white boys--literal white boys, white males under the age of 18--that they can even intimidate white men. So then what? What's the endgame of those underage black boys? What are they trying to accomplish? Whom else are they trying to impress?

And so then you just want to avoid them, because nobody can punish them without undergoing that which Americans and especially Californians are most afraid of--being accused of racism.

California is built with this form of segregation in mind--highways, no sidewalks, no public bathrooms, extortionate rent (huge percentage of income, 40% is common) with the homelessness that is its direct consequence, crazy zoning (you could economically build 60-story skyscrapers anywhere in Palo Alto), concrete everywhere with many places inaccessible except by car, hospitals out to fuck you, firmatage, terrible public transport--all out of fear of harm from minorities which can believe it or not be out to get whites--have that specific intent of harming whites, and they get convicted for hate crimes but those crimes never make the news--which they never punish, only prevent.

We have really good insurance and now that my partner needs treatment for a chronic illness, they are denying the treatment. It’s lowering her quality of life, may lead to her death, and it’s absolutely standard operating procedure for insurance companies. It’s a delaying tactic.

Healthcare is hard here.

The only reason insurance would (legally) be able to deny treatment is if there is no good efficacy data.

If your doctors say there is supporting data for the treatment they are recommending, then filing and appeal is an option.

https://www.healthcare.gov/appeal-insurance-company-decision...

I believe it works similarly in countries with taxpayer funded healthcare. Some group of people at some point in the process decide what is eligible to be paid for by the government.

Federal government literally spends over $1T on healthcare for the elderly.

The healthcare issues in the country have never been about the old.

What are you talking about, health care for the elderly is terrible! I guess you've never had to take care of an old person in the US? And never been exposed to northern European healthcare?

You bring up a good point, even though the US spends the most per capita on health care we actually have the worst outcomes

https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0252_health_outcomes_spen...

Every time this stat is brought up I always think it doesn't convey the full context. Even though its in terms of per capita, it's still an absolute amount, I think a better data point to illustrate if the US was overspending compared to outcomes would be what % of disposable income is spent on healthcare vs outcomes.

For example, let's say the US spent 2x on healthcare as some country, but had 4x the disposable income, would this still be overspending or would it be more efficient given the amount relative to income? The closest I can find is health spending as % of GDP but that doesn't capture what a person's income, since it includes government spending too, so it obfuscates whether or not the inefficiency (if any) lies in private or public healthcare in the US.

Why would that even matter?

Let's say the US spent 2x on healthcare as some country, but had 4x the disposable income, would this still be overspending or would it be more efficient given the amount relative to income?

Healthcare spending in $ per capita doesn't capture how much people earn in that country or how much of a burden it is relative to their income so its kinda meaningless without more context. It's like saying the US economy is better than 85% of the OECD because its in the top 5 gdp per capita.

"Disposable income" is undefined, its super vague and we can't determine anything with that phrase

Most people in the US don't have "disposable income" from my perspective

There's a very consistent definition for what that means with plenty of papers and institutions that use use roughly the same definition. Here's one phrasing of it by the OECD[1]. Basically it's just income minus taxes, what part of that is remotely vague?

Discretionary income might be an even better measure but that has more wiggle room on defining what is a necessity and not.

https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm [1]

I still don't see how that's a good metric, in any way, for judging health care costs. "Disposable income" takes nothing else into account such as other costs or predatory behaviors in the healthcare system

Its literally just money after taxes, and most people are living paycheck to paycheck

You can't judge how much of a burden healthcare costs are unless you account for how much of a person's income or some proxy of it healthcare is. Just saying that the US spends more per capita than other OECD countries doesn't say anything without more context. IF you want to show that the healthcare spending isn't efficient in the US you have to at least show that it's not just because everything costs more there or that everyone earns more in the US (gdp/capita is higher than ~85% of OECD in US).

It spends more per capita with worse outcomes

That's the point, where is that extra spending going? What good is it doing? Why is any other question the topic of discussion?

You haven't shown its extra spending with just that one stat. Does $50 USD buy you the same things in the US as $50 USD in Venezuela?

That's exactly what I'm talking about, it doesn't. Why not?

Does Venezuela have a bunch of leeching middlemen at every possible point in their systems due to the massive push for privatization?

Things cost more in some places so you need to account for that variation. A million could pay for 3 / 4 doctors in the US or 30 / 40 in Africa.

You say this like the profit seeking in the US is some sort of natural phenomenon that we can't avoid. We can adjust costs based in cost of living and local currency, profiteering is what sucks resources out of the system

Physicians in the US are protected, there's only a limited number of slots every year in med schools. This is fake scarcity

I bet sugar has a lot to do with it

I think the issue isn’t the wilingness to spend. It’s the lack of willingness to make it effective.

The reason its not effective is because most of the money doesn't actually do anything, that's literally what profit is

Profiteering leeches resources from a system to benefit a small number of people at the expense of the rest of the healthcare system

In my opinion, please excuse my language, but it's fucking insane

In my experience, it’s often even worse - there often isn’t even any significant profit, at least not in any coherent, centralized way. There are a lot of individual players who can be pointed out, but none of them individually is ‘the problem’.

Absolutely massive amounts of value is destroyed (and patients harmed) just doing super inefficient shitty processes because no one has the ability or incentive to do any better at a systemic level.

Everyone in the system who has a degree of control gets paid very well keeping the wheels turning and consuming cash.

You're 100% on the nose. A big part of it is unnecessary middleman companies leeching at every point in the process.

That's why the profit is so minimal, because there are just so many people providing little to no benefit all taking their piece and spreading it over a bunch of salaries while people get denied treatment

Unfortunately it's starting to happen here too. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to make these arguments at the rate we're privatizing and contracting out things... Might end up just as bad here in the long term.

It's the whole reason for the UK tube strikes right now too, and the media is trying to paint the union guy as some Marxist villain when they just want decent wages

The whole thing is totally absurd and short sighted, it's damaging to society. This is why there's more stability in some EU countries. We shouldn't be sacrificing stability for profits, that's a terrible idea. We need a stable populace to make stable progress and have a robust system that lasts for generations

They will just send you home to die when you become a burden to them. Happens all the time, old folks just get told to pound sand and die and no one does shit about it.

Medicare still has costs to the policyholder and it also requires supplemental insurance for coverage of things like eyes, teeth, hearing aids, long term care, etc.

Oh that’s good to hear, I got the impression it was only good as a veteran.

> the black people there seem so positively surprised and very kind when you ask them something as a white dude

In ~1999 I was in New York, walking around with a sizeable backpack and asked around in Harlem where to find the Sugar Hill hostel. I'd asked two men about where to find it when I was approached by two young women who advised me not to ask these questions here as that would not be safe. I was rather surprised by this since I thought that time was past. Maybe it was the location, maybe it was the backpack but it was not what I'd expected. I found the hostel by myself and came to no harm in any way or shape.

I'm "white" (more of a shade of tan, really), everyone else in this narrative is "black" (more of a shade of brown, really).

Funny, I (as white as it gets, melanin deficit disorder) stayed at the Sugar Hill Hostel for a couple of days (around labour day -- found it difficult then to leave the city on bus or train) in '98. An African American man walked me to the hostel in an apparent effort to ensure my safety. He pointed out that there are different shades of black skin, which I found a bit sad (the pointing out part). The area seemed actually fairly safe, but the fellow was nice enough to chat with.

The Hostel itself was not all that remarkable (other than the lack of air conditioning at that time of the year), but the crowd there was interesting, quite an experience. Thanks for jogging my memories ;-)

After my stay in the hostel I went for a long hike in the Catskills - where a porcupine ate my candles during a night in a lean-to - after which I returned there to pick up a friend from JFK with whom I proceeded to hike around and over Mt. Washington - where a squirrel found the bag of food which I hung in a tree to keep it from the bears, it ripped my sleeping bag stuffing bag to shreds - to return to NYC. From the long night conversations with an 19yo Israeli girl who I managed to talk out of hitch-hiking solo through the US through staying in a rather rickety apartment in the Bronx (large cockroaches in the sink in the morning, etc) with a Brazilian, an Irishman, an American woman and (another) Dutchman, it was an interesting trip. I've staid there on other trips as well, it being (at least back then) an affordable and relatively central location. Never missed the AC, maybe 'cause I'm not used to it being present?

I wouldn't try the same thing today.

Odd comment given how that area of Harlem is much much safer today than it was in the 90s

Yes, because there are no alcohol or drug issues in Berlin!

What an over the top comment. The US regardless of these issues is an enormously successful country, with some of the friendlist people when you visit (I'm from the UK originally but travel a lot).

There's a lot of alcohol and drug use in Berlin, but there are not vast open air drug markets like Kensington in Philadelphia or Skid Row in San Francisco.

The issue is, indeed, "over the top."

> Skid Row in San Francisco.

Literal Skid Row is in Los Angeles[1], the figurative skid row in SF is called the Tenderloin [2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_Row,_Los_Angeles

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_row#San_Francisco

Check Moritzplatz and Schonleinstrasse and come back here..

We could quibble about "vast", but the difference between Berlin's drug markets and the US's isn't really the intensity, but safety. (Don't totally misunderstand - they're still some of the least safe places in Berlin, but nothing like Kensington - which in turn also not as bad as pearl-clutchers would have you believe.)

Thats not even close.

Is this the same Berlin I've been to? Many of the parks are literally open air drug markets?!

How is that's even slightly related to OPs question?

> Stay here, make this moderately good place even better

I think you missed the part about his wife's job in the US which is the reason for the move in the first place.

This comment captures my experience from lowly Eastern Europe as well, even though the US has some exceptional business opportunities.

It's true that money can insulate you from this societal degradation, but because of this approach by the upper class, the income percentile to maintain isolation is getting narrower by the day, until it practically evaporates.

> Stay here, make this moderately good place even better.

or better yet, come to the us and bring your good influence to help get this troubled place back on track. the political situation in the united states is indeed complex and troubled, but the influence and impact of the united states on western nations is undeniable. if it does implode in some horrific way, it's hard to imagine a scenario where it doesn't drag the rest of the west down with it.

If you preach to a voting base who will vote against you at every turn, good influence has no value. You can only go where you are welcome to share, where ideas can be safely and intelligently discussed, and reasonable people can come to some sort of compromise or a solution all can agree on.

US politics have become too polarized, where constituents don't want solutions (evidenced by them voting for representatives who don't vote in the public interest, or who publicly gloat about hurting the other side through policy), and no one person has the power to move the needle (not to mention Citizen's United where the wealthy can pour unfathomable amounts of fiat into races to back their candidates and their politics). Know when to hold them, and know when to fold them.

EDIT: And it's not just the elected. A SCOTUS Justice motivated purely by hate.

https://www.businessinsider.com/clarence-thomas-told-clerks-...

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/27/us/2-years-after-his-brui...

> Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told his law clerks in the '90s that he wanted to serve for 43 years to make liberals' lives 'miserable'

(us citizen leaving for western europe)

Please make sure to keep voting after you move, as much as it might feel like spitting in the wind and yet another annual hassle - you really have to stay on top of both your voter registration, as well as your annual overseas ballot request, at least for Texas (every state has different voting from abroad policies, even different policies for military vs. non)

The official government website to help you navigate this is fvap.gov. The Democrats Abroad one that provides even more handholding and optional nagging: votefromabroad.org. They’ve only ever called to remind me that elections were occurring in Texas, and early enough that I could work out ballot issues, and then a follow-up a week or so before I really need to have that ballot in the mail.

I’m a semi-rural Texas voter who regularly has unsatisfying conversations with Ted Cruz’s snotty staffers and John Cornyn’s slightly politer ones, hanging up the phone to go enjoy the life I’ve made for myself in southern Germany.

> Please make sure to keep voting after you move

Absolutely. My geography does not absolve me of my responsibility to do so.

Complaining about polarization and people not wanting solutions is fine, but saying "A SCOTUS Justice motivated purely by hate." isn't helping matters. It is just continuing the very thing you are complaining about.

If you are doing something out of malice for decades to a group of people, that is hate, and I will call it out as such. Your false equivalency holds no water, and while I provided receipts in my original comment, I’ll let Rep. Jeffries do some lifting here.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3485737-hakeem-jeffries-t...

> Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) this week blasted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for his stance on a number of issues facing the court, including abortion rights. “Let me ask this question of brother Thomas,” Jeffries said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing this week. “Why are you such a hater? Hate on civil rights. Hate on women’s rights. Hate on reproductive rights. Hate on voting rights. Hate on marital rights. Hate on equal protection under the law. Hate on liberty and justice for all. Hate on free and fair elections. Why are you such a hater?”

See? Hate.

I'm pretty sure quoting somebody who is calling somebody a hater is not proof they are a hater. Even if Thomas is a hater calling him out is just leading to more polarization.

> Know when to hold them, and know when to fold them.

i understand and appreciate the desire to walk away. it's the classic, quiet, dignified and usually effective response to insanity. (and american politics, for the last 6 years at least, has been nothing short of insanity)

but unfortunately i don't think it works that way. i think that leaving only serves to both export polarization and make matters worse. i suspect the us is too big and the world is too small.

This post brought to you by the front page of Reddit.com.

This is either a troll response or you’re outright detached from reality.

This is not exactly a financial response, and that was the context of your question, so forgive the somewhat off-topic aspect of the remark -- yet, the negative aspects of life in the US have both real actual costs and possible future risks. All the talk about civil war might be bluff, but it is still alarming.

no worries, it definitively helps to put things in perspective. We have not made our mind up yet, so these "angles" are super helpful too.

This is a perfectly acceptable view of the United States if you only watch television news.

Not to mention abysmal health and social services.

This is hilariously inaccurate and essentially a stereotype perceived from the Reddit front page. Europe is experiencing legions of issues including runaway inflation, a government and social safety net that is rapidly becoming unaffordable, a migrant crisis that is causing their own racial issues that they pretend don’t exist but are causing huge polarization and the rise of right-wing parties, a business climate that has produced essentially zero large companies in decades, and on and on.

> including runaway inflation

The same as everywhere... due to a war and pandemic.

> a government and social safety net that is rapidly becoming unaffordable

Completely false. Do you even read our budgets? Your debt-to-GDB was literally 3x ours last year. European countries aren't even allowed to deficit spend more than a few percent (which is what got Greece in trouble, for example.)

> they pretend don’t exist

I'm guessing you don't speak any European languages or you'd know this isn't true.

> business climate that has produced essentially zero large companies in decades, and on and on.

Ummm, right... like ARM, Skype, Spotify, Klarna, all the telecom suppliers, not to mention some of the biggest multinationals on the planet (whom you probably think are American)

>The same as everywhere... due to a war and pandemic.

Yes, Europe is at war. Good reminder of the massive social instability occurring on the continent. Scary place to be right now.

The US just took away the constitutional right to bodily autonomy. That kind of internal oppression of ones own citizens is absolutely beyond terrifying, and obviously a bigger worry for social stability.

Europe is not at war. War in Ukraine is due to an external force that affects barely anybody in Europe. What a bizarre nationalistic reply this is, to be so insecure about the landmass you happen to live on.

1) there was never a federal constitutional right to an abortion. Everyone historically knew Roe vs Wade was a stopgap with tortured reasoning in the actual judgement. There is nothing in the constitution that says ‘rights to whatever medical procedures you want’, or even abortion. Instead the presumption is that everything not mentioned is left to the People and the States to regulate.

2) this ruling doesn’t change that for the states most people live in, Abortion is still legal, and has been legal. And hopefully folks in the other states get less complacent and make their voices heard.

It’s a devolution of the issue to the states. Which sucks for a lot of folks, especially young women with few options. But it isn’t banning abortion nation wide or anything.

If anything, this is now way more like Europe.

>The US just took away the constitutional right to bodily autonomy.

Can you point to, say, the UK's constitutional right to bodily autonomy so I can compare? I assume that there will be one as not having a strong constitution guaranteeing these rights is massive internal oppression that is very scary. Also: speaking of the UK and taking away its citizens rights... ever hear of Brexit?

>Europe is not at war. War in Ukraine is due to an external force that affects barely anybody in Europe

Ukraine is not in Europe? Also, the original commenter claimed inflation were a result of war and pandemic. So does it affect people or not?

>What a bizarre nationalistic reply this is, to be so insecure about the landmass you happen to live on.

I agree, the Europeans in this thread are bizarrely nationalistic. My sense is that there's a large contingent of political redditors in here.

People are mostly just pointing out the very objective losses to quality of life in the US compared to Europe, which is a fair answer to the original question.

And day to day quality of life has nothing to do with geopolitics for most people. US just simply ranks far lower than Central Europe and the Nordics in these measurements. A lot of it is just city planning and infrastructure.

Norway has 5 million people, insane gas reserves, is a monoculture of ethnically similar people, has basically no immigration to speak of, and owns 2% of every publicly traded country worth a damn. I can’t believe anyone would point to this country smaller than a single metro area of the USA as something that is replicable.

> is a monoculture of ethnically similar people, has basically no immigration to speak

This isn't even true (immigration accounts for half of Norway's population growth) but let's take a more extreme example: Sweden, the country with 7th highest quality of life on planet Earth yet every 1 in 11 people is an immigrant. This single case proves your generalization wrong. Every 16th person is a first generation immigrant originating from outside of Europe.

You seem completely ignorant of the fact that we took hundreds of times more immigrants per capita than any country on Earth yet we all dominate the fuck out of ALL of quality of live rankings.

Norway's population grew under 50,000 which means they welcomed 20,000.. Cities like Toronto are welcoming 10 - 15 times more people from a much wider variety of places.

The ethnicities in Norway are recorded as Norwegian 83.2%, other European 8.3%, other 8.5%

Your vision of Norway and the numbers don't lineup. 92.9% of people are white..

I think you misread what I said.

Ok, take Spain. Quality of life there is just substantially better than pretty much all of the US.

In what way? Do people live on huge ranches / estates, walk through large redwood trees, ski down a glacier, watch professional football/hockey/basketball live? Can they hunt, fish, shoot or run into hollywood celebrities?

Can they even buy a house or do they have to settle for an apartment?

Quality of live might be great in Barcelona if you like to drink and eat and want to work less. But Spain is so small comoared to the US. The US has so much more variety.. deserts, tundra, forests, palm trees, rocky mountains, cities..

> In what way? Do people live on huge ranches / estates, walk through large redwood trees, ski down a glacier, watch professional football/hockey/basketball live? Can they hunt, fish, shoot or run into hollywood celebrities?

What... world do you live in that Europeans* can't do all of that except the last?

> Can they even buy a house or do they have to settle for an apartment?

Of course... wtf? lol 76% of people own their homes in Spain. Home ownership in the US is only 65%...

* Spanish people can go anywhere in the EU with just an ID, no passport needed, just like in the US.

I have lived in Spain. Taxes are high, salaries are low, bureaucracy is a lot worse than the US, most people live in small apartments and they certainly don’t own US sized houses. Cost of living can also be high, if one tries to meet the same standard that he would have in US (electricity, gasoline prices are a lot higher).

I could pick pretty much any US state over Spain and with a US engineering salary enjoy a vastly better standard of living.

Enjoying a materially higher standard of living with large houses doesn't really match how people actually enjoy experience and happiness. The thorough social disconnect in the US, in great part explained because said large houses have to be set up in the relative middle of nowhere, counts far more for "standard of living" in my book as well as those of a lot posters here.

Addendum: used to live in a very wealthy suburb in the US. Said houses are creaky, have constant humidity issues because the mildest of winds would blow out the roof tiles, and have a very low standard of construction coming from other places. More square footage is not indicative of a higher quality of life; many rooms sat mostly empty and did nothing for us.

Spain is much smaller than Europe and houses are much smaller and salaries are smaller and the political divide is much worse in Spain. Two different states want out and after a vote they arrested the head of state for those regions. The legacy of Franco..

Did you check your numbers this time or are you still just making things up? I'm going to trust you know nothing about the politics of Spain and ignore that comment.

> Two different states want out and after a vote they arrested the head of state for those regions. The legacy of Franco..

You must be trolling. You literally had a civil war for the same exact reason... Unfortunately, no state allows any subset of itself to secede.

I see you've never even seen the population of immigrants in Spain.

Can you name a country who hasn't done bad things?

Can you name another country that's done bad things to other countries for every year of its existence aside from a decade?

The USSR. (I know, doesn't exist anymore) but I can't think of a single year of its existence in which it wasn't occupying, invading or repressing some subject foreign nationality or population in some way, usually many of them simultaneously.

UK

Well, that was the British Empire, but I'll give it to you... fair enough.

The UK has continued doing bad things. So has almost every country.

Take a look at the Abortion Act 1967 if you're acting in good faith.

Europe has a patchwork of abortion laws and generally are far more restrictive than the US, which in many places you can abort very late term. While I support a woman’s right to abort up to a point, the issue is now devolving to the states and ideally will result in less national strife, as it was an arbitrary litmus test for presidential candidates.

I live in Boston and groups here are flying women in and shipping pills out to abort their babies. Acting like it’s a dystopian nightmare because of the Roe overturn is hyperbolic.

"barely anybody in Europe"

Nice.

>I'm guessing you don't speak any European languages or you'd know this isn't true.

Am I missing something or did you respond to a person writing in English? English being a language created in a place called England, which last I checked is in Europe.

not any more! thanks UKIP!

The UK is still in Europe. Europe is a continent. I think you are confusing the European Union and Europe.

I find lectures about American society from Europeans, as the parent comment did, exceedingly ironic and misinformed considering the same issues plague both sides. Even more so as American armed forces and weapons (and our tax dollars and political system) are what protect all of you from annihilation.

The grass is always greener but I prefer it here.

I lived in both, each for the same amount of time, and the US is a wasteland compared to this in many ways. Both sides are effected by the global economy and geopolitics, but things are handled much better here.

> Even more so as American armed forces and weapons (and our tax dollars and political system) are what protect all of you from annihilation.

This is delusional. All you've ever done is make the world more insecure for your own gain[1]. You invade and overthrow everyone who ever disagreed with you and scream "freedom" at everyone.

> The grass is always greener but I prefer it here.

You've never lived here, that's why.

1. https://github.com/binka/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md

> American armed forces and weapons (and our tax dollars and political system) are what protect all of you from annihilation.

While this sounds like something Otto said in A Fish Called Wanda, I can assure Europeans that many Americans actually believe what he is saying.

Of course we can look at the history of the US in Europe. Operation Gladio ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio ) was established to start a guerrilla war in Italy or France if the parties elected were not aligned with the rulers of the US (the US barely tolerated De Gaulle). The US intervention in Italian politics in 1948 exceeded Russian meddling in Czechoslovakia that year. The CIA spied on and stole Airbus plans for US business and does this regularly for other industries. And not to forget spying on Merkel's phone calls and all of this...as the US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland famously said in 2014 "fuck the EU".

Also, someone would have to be naive to think the US is acting in the current situation out of enormous benevolence to the Ukraine. It is, among other things, working on accomplishing what it wants to achieve for its own benefit in western Europe.

The parent comment, me, was an American. Yes, the US state offers "protection" to Europeans, gangsters do that too.

Yes - and as an American I support withdrawing all aid so the Europeans can defend themselves and pay for all of its costs.

That's a pretty coarse-grained granularity.

How about: "As a Californian, I support withdrawing all aid, so the east coast can defend itself."

The USA is a country of states. Europe is a continent of sort-of linked countries. I don’t want to pay for them anymore given how much they pretend armed defense is unnecessary. Good luck to them but I don’t think we should be paying for their defense.

> Even more so as American armed forces and weapons (and our tax dollars and political system) are what protect all of you from annihilation.

It's a lot more complex than that and a lot less cartoonish. The US armed forces protect the way the world is structured, which is obviously dominated by the US. This state of affairs has been erected over the second half of the 20th century primarily to further US interests. It's relatively unique in that it has come about with incredibly little bloodshed, though there are some precedents (not at this scale, obviously). This state of affairs has worked really well for the US as a nation state and economy, and it has had a ton of positive collateral effects for many others as well, but of course nothing at this level is ever motivated by goodwill. Protecting the current world order is done out of self-interest.

The European powers have arranged themselves with and taken advantage of this reality pretty well. Yet no one (that matters) is under the delusion that any support or protection on the part of the US happens for any other reason than to further US interests and wouldn't happen if those interests weren't aligned that way. The US are a "force for good" if and only if your interests are aligned closely with theirs; find yourself in the way of US influence or economic interests, and things can get very evil. There are numerous examples for this in relatively recent history (the most recent one is probably the Julian Assange extradition ruling).

If you look closely, you'll also notice precisely how the big EU players accomodate for that reality. Obviously the US wouldn't tolerate a European rival and it's certainly much safer to keep those interests aligned, given the scale of US dominance. It would also be a lot harder, geographically, to build a powerhouse like the US on European soil, and an impossibility from a political point of view. So there's no upside to aim for overwhelming force projection capabilities on a global scale; just huge risks and downsides and crippling cost.

Yet France and the UK have nuclear arms and fairly effective militaries that are way, way smaller that the US one, hence not a true rival even on European soil, but cover the important strategic bases; namely a solid capability for limited but effective projection of force abroad and a nuclear retaliation capability. Germany, due to its geographic location, cannot have either, as it must not seem threatening to its neighbours if Europe is to have any kind of stability at all. Poland couldn't possibly chain itself to a Germany poised to pounce at them whenever a hardliner government comes to power and France would have similar reservations, they're highly exposed to attack from the northeast as well. Germany's weakness is why the current state of affairs can exist, with a EU security policy that revolves around the tightly-coupled binary of France with its strong national defense stance and Germany with is baffling lack of strength.

Yet it's widely acknowledged that Germany is a latent nuclear power and could build nuclear weapons and means of delivery very quickly with resources present on its soil if it decided to do so. Even its military, joke of a force that it currently is, is fundamentally built to scale into a very effective modern army relatively quickly (as in a couple of years), they have a lot of expertise, just not a lot of decent hardware or effective organisation. It's likely that they will do some scaling now, depending on how the Ukraine conflict develops further. If they do, it's going to be interesting to see whether that actually works the way it's intended to.

But as long as the US are both capable of and forced to intervene in any major assault in or on Europe, or suffer a huge loss of influence and severe long-term consequences to their economy, being strategically cheap in that department is a pretty solid gamble that brings a bunch of benefits the US cannot enjoy, like being able to treat with Russia and China with a lot less reservations and being perceived as a lot less of a threat (especially in case of Germany). Whether getting cozy with China is a good thing in itself is of course very much open to debate, but the EU powers simply don't have the kinds of interests in the South China Sea that the US have there, that does open up options.

> the same issues plague both sides

Some of the issues are common; most are not, or only superficially so, with what will probably be very different trajectories (by what might well be a large margin). Europe is a very complex place, too, a very old, very cramped constant battlefield (literally; up until recently, there was literally always someone at war there), it is geographically linked to half the world, deeply divided, has few natural resources (left), is perpetually struggling to not lapse right back into constant warfare (that's what the EU is for), has no common language, no common set of ideas or values, no strong common identity and it's chock full of ancient grievances and conflicts papered over very thinly. That gives rise to tensions the US don't share (and vice versa – the unique situation in the US poses challenges that Europe doesn't have).

> Even more so as American armed forces and weapons (and our tax dollars and political system) are what protect all of you from annihilation.

That's one of the stupidest misconceptions Americans have about "Europe" (the EU).

The EU has a mutual defence elements to it. The EU has a nuclear power, France. The EU doesn't need the US, your "tax dollars and (horrifically broken) political system", and should stop relying on it ASAP. Trump showed you can be an incredibly unreliable partner, why risk it?

It’s just so strange that the USA has to provide all the weapons, negotiations, saber shaking, etc. to protect Ukraine when Germany and France are so capable!

You're confounding capabilities with interests. Defending Ukraine (or rather bogging down Russia) has a lot more value to the US than it does European countries who hesitated as long as possible due to their intertwinement with Russia. The world is not as black and white as the propaganda leads you to believe.

Why do you think that all is coming from the US?

https://www.statista.com/chart/27278/military-aid-to-ukraine...

25% comes from the US, but if you order by GDP(second graph), US is fourth. So overall a very big contribution, but far from "all". And about "negotiations" specifically, you're simply wrong - the ones keeping an open line with Putin (for zero gain so far) are Macron and Scholz (both say it's with Zelensky's approval, and he hasn't disproven them so they're probably not lying).

I would fully support withdrawing 100% of our aid and support and letting the EU defend itself. Very tired of giving my taxes to you guys.

Aren’t we mostly giving that money to US defense contractors?

Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing are getting the bulk of that $40 billion.

Nothing like giving away the ‘about to expire’ food (I mean missles) to refresh the pantry - and all for a good cause of causing grief to historic opponents who are acting somewhat comic book evil at the moment.

We don’t talk about Iraq of course.

Are you under the impression that Ukraine is a part of the EU or that helping Ukraine defends itself means anything for the defence of the EU? Both of those are untrue.

We are all helping Ukraine because it's the right thing to do (being invaded by a genocidal regime is not a nice thing to happen to anyone).

My grandfather did stand not far away from moscow with his platoon... give germany a few years without you yankees and i am pretty sure we would do better this time ;-)

This is a life experience, my friend. I don't use Reddit. Anyone who lives in one of the non gamma social levels in Europe knows that life here is better: the bargain made with the metasystem is superior. Only for alpha pluses is the US better, sounds like you are an alpha plus aspirant, good luck.

>This is hilariously inaccurate and essentially a stereotype perceived from the Reddit front page.

I can't pick what was more brain cells-killing to read: bshepard's initial rant, his later claim that he doesn't use Reddit despite having written a comment that could be pulled from /r/politics or /r/worldnews every single day, or eertami's claim that the Ukraine war affects "barely anybody in Europe". Honorable mention: kkfx's claim that a lawyer is needed to get a gym membership in the US.

> Europe...a government and social safety net that is rapidly becoming unaffordable

Germany has had national health for 140 years, and people have said it is "rapidly becoming unaffordable" for 140 years.

I talk to older people who get US health care. It is incredibly expensive compared to other countries (which few deny), and nowadays they can barely get ahold of their doctor.

> a business climate that has produced essentially zero large companies in decade

Cisco hoovers up many network companies, FAANG hoover up startups, US mobile and land is basically either Verizon or AT&T, the ad agencies, accounting firms, media firms and on and on are all consolidating into a small oligopoly, I can't think of any major sector around a few decades where this has not happened. Europe is not much different.

Europe is not a single country and even the EU doesn't cover all of it, so it's kind of hard to generalise.

Many of the things you mentioned are not generally true of Switzerland, for example. And OTOH, in Germany, the far right has stagnated and doesn't seem to make further inroads, large companies do continue to be successful but there are especially a lot of mid-sized companies (what's this obsession with growth at all costs?), etc. (let's not forget that one of the mRNA vaccines was developed here).

Yes, there are problems, sometimes even major ones, but I do think you're stereotyping just as much as GP.

Is it really that bad in the US? Makes me wonder if I should continue to invest in the US stock market...

No. The US is more stable than Europe will ever be. However, the US makes lots of drama (both TV series and politics-wise, heck even in its industries). The average US-person can't shut up. Also the OP seems to be a white guy, which is cool for Europe as it's a place with unrecognized racism and discrimination.

The US on the other hand is very welcoming to foreigners (socially). Your neighbor, the barman and people on the street will talk to you. I think it's part of the reason why the US managed the integration of new people easily. It's easier to leave your way of doing things back when you are welcomed. Foreign societies in European are segregated (culturally) even though they live door to door with other Europeans.

Oh, the US _economy_ is incredibly strong, opportunity abounds, and looking at the headwinds other economies around the world will face in decades to come I would guess it will only get better in comparison to the rest of the world...it just kind of sucks to live here in most places, and the ones that don't are crazy expensive. Think of the US as a farm for humans.

More folks than usual are hating everyone after years of lockdown and burnout from an overheating economy + Covid due to a decade and a half of fed pumps, but it’s still a small portion of the population.

The ‘everything in the US is global news’, and the end stage ‘ramp up the blood and panic’ from the media companies trying to get more revenue before they go bankrupt doesn’t help.

No. It's hyper localized. So someone in SF may think the US is turning to crap because they see an increase in homeless, drug use, etc.

In all the areas I've lived here, which are not big cities, you see none of that.

The success of the US stock market and the US as a society are not exactly related, and may in fact have an adversarial relationship, so continued investment in the US could be wise.

The US is vast, things are great where I’m at.

That's not a problem if you have money.

If you don't want kids.

If you do, it's always a factor. Do you want your kids to grow up in a stable culture, or in a declining one? Surrounded by polarization, extremes of all kinds, instability? I consider moving to the US for a couple of years for the money, but the second that kids are on the horizon, I would book a plane ticket to Europe.

I get that you may want to move here if you want to have kids, but isn't Europe declining at least as fast as the US?

European fertility levels are lower than the US, so they are declining faster.

Fertility rates are not the only factor in a declining society.

No

Depends what you mean by "have money". Plenty of small business owners with a few million dollars in savings and assets have had to liquidate them to pay for healthcare for themselves or their family members. It can cost over $1 million to survive a heart attack in the US, and the disability of oneself or family members can easily cost millions of dollars in healthcare expenses over a lifetime.

For that purpose 'having money' is not the kind of money that a typical immigrant from Europe will bring with them, especially not if they still have to work for a living.