It’s a seemingly hyper competitive place built on the idea of having money and material possessions = good over all else, including environmental destruction, but to what end ? For the benefit of 1% of the population?
America also seems to need an enemy, there’s something in that.
And cheaper real estate means you are paid less and build less equity in a house. But like the car, people convince themselves they don't want it so they don't have to admit they can't have it anyways.
> and resulting crime, gun violence
A lot of it can be traced to our southern border and gang activity. Something I'm surprised Europeans don't realize considering the rise in violent crimes post 2015 migrant crisis...
I used to have a car when I lived in Ireland because public transport there is absolutely terrible, even in the cities (even Dublin has only mediocre transport).
Here in Spain it's amazing. I really don't need a car, nor the worries of service, repairs, insurance, taxes, fuel costs, parking...
Driving to work in Ireland used to stress me out so much because the road design is stupid there too (too many roundabouts), which causes access roads to congest and people press their right of way really hard as a result. I've had so many near misses. I'm really so so happy I don't need a car now. And 20 euro covers my entire travel needs for a whole month.
And equity is a paper thing. It doesn't actually improve my quality of life.
> A lot of it can be traced to our southern border and gang activity. Something I'm surprised Europeans don't realize considering the rise in violent crimes post 2015 migrant crisis...
Violent crime here in Spain hasn't really increased and this is where a ton of the migrants arrive and still reside. It's more in the Northern countries where they let mafias get out of hand due to budget cuts on policing, and their harbours being big targets of drug trafficking.
If you live in Europe, you often seriously don’t want or need a car. I didn’t have a car for 8 years - even though I could afford it easilt, and it took pandemic and a shutdown of my favourite car sharing company to finally get my own car. Aside from winters, a mix of Lime scooters, trams and Ubers works very well in Poland - and it’s way healthier.
But I don't want to work harder to have more. I have enough to live comfortably. I don't get this whole ratrace thing and most people here don't.
The Americans can have their expensive gadgets and double jobs to pay for it :) Though admittedly I'd love an Apple vision pro, I wouldn't want to live in American society so I could pay for it. There's a few things that I really don't like about it like the heavy income inequality and resulting crime, gun violence, heavy conservatism (eg pressure on gay rights which we can take for granted here - see Florida), lack of cheap healthcare and welfare safety net. The latter two are not things you always need but they're a great peace of mind knowing they're available when you do need them. It makes life less stressful. I don't want a loss of my job meaning I will lose my health insurance as well!
And eventually they'll bring the price of gadgets down so we can afford it, after all the EU is too big a market to ignore.
Ps: according to my American colleagues a lot of the US is economically worse off than we are, it's only a few central spots like silicon valley and New York that are bursting with money and bringing the average up? Here we have less differences in each country, though the difference between eastern European member states and northwestern is still huge.
Ps.2: Sorry I wasn't trying to diss the U.S. but I really wouldn't want to live there. What might be a paradise society for some isn't the same for others.