Americans like to measure quality of life is square foot, but I think that’s more a measure of wealth than happiness.
A decent EU quality of living feels unattainable in the larger US cities and is available in the EU for most of the population.
So maybe your basing your position on stereotypes rather than reality?
For your sake let's hope this historically aberrant period of political stability holds forever.
You don't have any such means, even if you own an actual M1 Abrams tank and suitable ammunition: you aren't awake 24/7; you aren't hovering around your family 24/7; and if a criminal planning to attack you already has a gun pointed at you, your reactions aren't going to be fast enough to take them down before you yourself are shot.
The way to be safe is to be in a society which minimises the degree to which criminals have access to guns, and where criminals know that killing someone is going to result in other people hunting them.
> For your sake let's hope this historically aberrant period of political stability holds forever.
I'm also pessimistic about it lasting, but I will consider it a sad day when I need to defend myself against bandits rather than letting the state do it for me.
Think about it this way: bandits and cops are doing it professionally, most of us (I don't know if you're a vet) are just amateurs.
Tell that to the Taliban or the Vietcong.
> consider it a sad day when I need to defend myself against bandits
Personally I'd feel shame if other men died in my defence.
That's my line. Those two kicked the USA's backside despite the superior firepower that the USA brought. Took a while, and they lost a lot of their own in the process, but they won.
> Personally I'd feel shame if other men died in my defence.
Why do you think that's a necessary, or even likely, outcome?
First: well trained forces are much less likely to die in any given encounter than random people in the same encounter. This is also part of why I asked if you're a vet: without that training, you're not really defending you and yours even a tenth as much as you think you are. (And even with: there's a reason the unit size isn't single soldiers).
Second: if you have a society worthy of the name, you can coordinate against bandits, making it harder for them to threaten the lives of anyone including those doing the groundwork of taking down criminal gangs. By way of comparison, the UK is sufficiently safe that even cops are not routinely armed — because they don't need to be.
The issue is, I don't have a great deal of faith in society generally or the people who inhabit it.
We couldn't even manage sharing the plentiful toilet paper resources available during the pandemic. The idea that the, to be frank, mostly obese often self proclaimed mentally ill masses are going to put forward a meaningful defence seems optimistic.
Think of it this way; If you are right, I won't have needed any of this training or equipment. If I'm right, you'll wish you were as prepared as I am. The price of being wrong from my position is much lower than from yours.
And they vote :P
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of dumb in society, and short term thinking does lead to bad choices in democratic elections; but normal people fund police and elect lawmakers — if they're doing it themselves that's called "mob justice" and generally ends badly.
> The price of being wrong from my position is much lower than from yours
Pascal's Mugging.
I can make the same argument for everything that societies do, not just policing: healthcare, firefighting, military defence, food hygiene standards, workplace safety laws, vehicle maintenance requirements and emergency responders to make sure highways don't get blocked by breakdowns, …
Some of those can't be done by individuals because of the way they scale, the rest you can be an expert at one or possibly two, so you can only be safe if someone else can fill in your gaps.
So: if you're right, you're still in a hellscape despite your guns.
My position is to try and aim for a world where society doesn't collapse. Not because I think it can't, but because I think it would be really bad if it does: there's so much more that needs to get done than any individual can manage, that we'd only survive by making a new society afterwards and dividing labour in similar ways, with law enforcement being a job rather than everyone's responsibility.
Europe is better than the US in many aspects, but I wouldn't call safety necessarily one of them. Well, in Western Europe. Eastern Europe is probably one of the safest places in the world.
There are ways to lose your quality of life against which guns are useful.
There are many more ways against which guns are not useful.
More of the latter apply in the US than e.g. Germany (which has very strict gun laws). Does this mean gun laws in Germany are better? Personally I don't think so. But it does mean the preference for guns over thse other benefits has more to do with ideology than realistic risk assessment.
If you want to complain about derailment, arguably OP derailed the conversation already by bringing gun control into a quality of life discussion and I merely recontextualized that. Especially because they were arguing for a practical necessity of gun ownership rather than merely for gun ownership simply being something they see as a quality of life improvement (like having an 8K TV or the newest generation of gaming consoles).
Also, that topic was raised by 3seashells. willcipriano was replying to that point. Then you said:
> Arguably the fact that you think owning a gun makes a practical difference in your own safety although a gun can not defend you against health issues or financial hardship (e.g. losing your job, interest/rent hikes) is a point against you.
You're using against willcipriano that he was addressing a narrower context. But the narrower context was defined by 3seashells. So your criticism is unfair. (Or, perhaps, mis-aimed.)
A significant amount of quality of life improvement has happened as I've grown wealthier over the years. In the form of time alone, I have more personal time to do things I want to do rather than being forced to work for someone else to meet basic needs.
I have a fairly large yard and used to maintain it, it took a lot of time and wasn't something I enjoyed (just the final aspect of it). I now pay people to maintain it, I enjoy having a well kept yard by simply paying for it. When I had less wealth, a significant amount of brain cycles was spent looking for ways to reduce or optimize some cost around something. Now, unless I see a big price difference to where it may impact other aspects of my life, I don't fret a few dollars here and there.
When I had less wealth, even with healthcare, I'd probably push through work vs taking a day off because the risk of not having enough sick + PTO days off should I get more sick. Now, if I feel sick, I don't hesitate to use sick leave. Wealth also affords me more overall bargaining power in employment negotiations. Having enough "FU" money let's me dictates my terms with more authority leading to more enjoyable work environments.
Overall wealth allows me to pay a lot of things away I'd otherwise have to do. It also affords me opportunity to do things I want I might otherwise not. I take more international vacations since I became more wealthy and it's been great, just returned from a nice vacation. Part of that trip involved splurging on some nice dining options, paying for luggage delivery/management, and having more comfort in my transit options. With my new found increased time wealth bought my, I exercise frequently and my health has improved or at the very least, my overall feeling throughout the day.
There are a lot of things people get diminishing returns of in terms of quality of life vs wealth where it doesn't matter. My bed is just as comfy, I've been fortunate enough to never be short on food, and so on. If you're single, it can make you more attractive especially to women but it's not everything, physical looks and personality are still more important to most people (at least the people I'd want to meet).
So while wealth isn't a direct indicator of quality of life, it's certainly correlated and I'd argue for many, a strong correlate. It won't get you everything, some things wealth won't help you with (I still have to exercise my own body, I can't pay that effort away but at least it enables me to do that more readily and on my own terms, for example).
Or by not getting the wealth in the first place. I work 32 hours per week and not one hour of overtime; if some day I land a better paying job or the kids move out I'll work 24. That directly translates to better qol without becoming wealthy. Wealth mostly just means you can buy more useless crap.
most likely i earn a bit less than what i'd earn if i had an identical doppelganger twin in the u.s. - i mean, i earn a lot less right here than i could if money was the ultimate objective. i just value other things more, mostly time with my family and hobbies, peace of mind when it comes to external factors where the expensive social safety net comes in.
also, as a middle class earner i much prefer my lower class neighbors having a good social safety net and other guarantees because i really don't want my neighbors kids go hungry. not only because that's bad in itself, but the wealth and security disparity would also create a worse local environment (crime, drugs).
In the US kids don't go hungry. The truly poor have food stamps and other aid so I don't get this comparison.
https://apnews.com/article/free-school-lunch-child-hunger-7d...
It may not be any better for European kids, but it’s inaccurate to say that US kids don’t go hungry.
Case in point, earlier this year's my company laid off thirty percent of us.
Now to Europeans, they are worried about what we're going to do for healthcare, etc. Some of my colleagues paid out of pocket, thousands of dollars. This would seem crazy to Europeans..
It's also crazy to Americans. Because for me, at my mom's behest, I did not pay. Instead I applied for government aid. Now, despite making over 300k usd a year, I got free Medicaid for my family. Free.. no cost. Way better than Canadian or European health care because it's basically a private ppo plan the state pays for. If you can afford it, the American health care system is the best. And while I was unemployed it was free (just like it was while working, when I factor in company contributions, etc). I also got substantial unemployment.
Now we're going to have a baby and... There's paid leave.
In America, there's whole swaths of people who don't believe these programs exist and don't bother applying. It's really weird. I told my colleagues about Medicaid and they thought it wouldn't apply to them (it does) of wouldn't cover something (it covers everything. No cost).
That's a strange method to consider something better or not. It seems to lead to overpaying for stuff. And it seems to suggest that private is better without explaining why. Plus assuming that paying more is better without explaining why.
I'm in the same boat. Have lived and worked in both and definitely don't see this drastic difference that's always espoused on here between the US and EU QoL. They're both pretty good places to live, with some differences in how you manage things (less taxes in the US, more things you have to buy for yourself).
You're obviously going to do better in a nation/state with more social services if you're in a very low-income manual labor/blue-collar field. People here pretend that that's 100% of the American/European populations in their weird ego-flexing comparisons.
Either way, it's not worth arguing the point with people on the internet. If Europe is so great, go live there. And vice versa.
it ain't that easy bro. even with money and 133t programming skills.
But if skills are your only option, get one less easy to attain than programming, of which they have plenty of.
I found the last WP stories on life expectency and cronic illnesses very enlightening, in a non-pleasant way but still.
As a dual eu / us citizen that's not my observation. What do you base this on? An average American feels wealthier than an average European to me even comparing to just western Europe.