Human Quality of life seems to flip the natural "evolutionary script" wrt to population growth. Shrinking population = shrinking landlords/bankers/labor/traders/military/scientists etc

In nature, where there is environmental instability/resource scarcity you see a Quantity over Quality reproductive survival strategy (which is similar to what we see poorer regions of the world) that fuels population growth.

On the flip side, where there is resource abundance and stability there is growth in population. But we don't see that happening in the richer/higher developed regions with humans.

Its like advanced human society/culture has worked out how to override biology.

We currently work around falling population(and the shrinking factors of production) with tech/automation, financial/military arm twisting and immigration which gives rise its own social and cultural instability.

Nature has found other population models though. Ants(Eusocial insects) have solved their population/survival issues by have a single Baby factory. There are theories that the Haplodiploidy it produces makes ant societies function smoother. While Meerkats have collective breeding model which is similar to what certain Feminists talk about when they say Make Kin not Babies.

It will take a couple generations of futzing about in unnecessary directions before we solve these issues. So patience with the people who don't know what they are doing is key.

Or you see no way out, feel defeated and see that positive change is impossible or futile. It cuts both ways. Inaction doesn't always mean a rosy life.

The CNCF approach basically says, instead of just running your software in a traditional way, you run it in containers which run in the cloud, mostly managed by k8s which is the most popular even though not the simplest container orchestration platform. So what makes them truly "cloud native" vs "AWS/GCP/Azure-native" is that you can run them on any cloud, even private.

It's fueled by the double standards of those in power who redistribute our tax euros/dollars their way, since it's easy for them to be generous with other peoples' money.

We're being told healthcare and education is lacking funding and doctor and kindergarten spots are scarce and need longer and longer waiting times due to state coffers being empty, but at the same time the state somehow has money to house feed and medically care of millions of illegal immigrants and refugees and their families, and giving billions in aid to Ukraine.

You're right that people wouldn't care you're giving billions away to foreigners and foreign causes if all of their domestic issues would be solved, but since that's not the case and since we're living in troubled economic times when resources are scarce, voters expect their rulers to take care of them first before acting generous with their money.

So obviously taxpayers are pissed with this arrangement they didn't vote for, and would rather see those state billions coming out of their taxes being spent on their own issues, not on the issues of foreigners.

You can only gaslight people so long before they lash out. The solution is to listen to their worries and take action to fix them instead of ignoring them and calling them stupid and fascist from an ivory tower.

But at the same time the state somehow has money to house feed and medically care of millions of illegal immigrants

Do you honestly think the government is literally simply "housing" all the authorized immigrants? As in, literally writing checks to their landlords? And literally paying their grocery bills, each and every week? Do you actually think that's what's happening?

Remember, the rant wasn't referring simply to new arrivals, but literally to all the "millions" who have been here for decades. With the tacit approval of US society at large, for the simple reason that (authorized or not) the vast majority form an indispensible part of its workforce, doing the hard work that most Americans refuse to do.

I'm not saying the migrant crisis isn't a huge, costly mess. But for whatever is happening, I just don't get these weird, distorted and emotionally manipulative narratives.

Yes, you are. That's a large part of the problem.

In my neighborhood, they've moved these migrants into what are essentially concentration camps. (They've used the local military buildings to do it, and in many cases, yes, they're feeding and clothing them with state tax dollars.) We're happy some of these families are getting a chance at a better life. We're happy to see some of them working jobs at the local grocery market. We're not happy to see crime rise precipitously in the local areas near where they're housed. (B & E, stolen cars, kidnapping attempts of local girls...) We're not happy to be told that classrooms are now jammed full of students, many of whom can't speak English, guaranteeing worse outcomes for our children.

It's unlikely that the same people working at the market are the ones committing the crimes, but this population was brought here because of the administration's policies favoring open borders over the security, safety, and hard work of the citizens its supposed to protect.

You know I'm not, and don't see much point in this conversation style.

Your phrase was of the form "I'm not saying... But..." The "but" is a denial of what preceded it. The "weird" narratives are the reasons why it is a mess, the reasons why it is costly. When you deny those, and use your "of course, of course... but" it comes off as a denial of the problem.

I think you misread me there. It wasn't a denial at all.

It was simply saying: whatever the state of the mess -- weird, distorted narratives about the mess don't help us out of the mess. And in fact are a huge part of the mess.

Exactly as you put it.

This is one of those moments I wish people had a way (I guess you could just add it in the notes) to mark their HN account with a region. Are you in the UK, maybe?

The immigration issue sounds very different in the EU vs US, even if many of the sound bites rhyme.

In Europe (including the UK), we have seen an enormous surge in asylum seekers and they're housed, fed, etc, with tax money. I believe the latest annual figure is around £5bn, which is not insignificant.

I don't know what the solution is, as an immigrant to the UK myself I find it difficult to judge or comment, but you need to keep in mind that Europe has a welfare model quite different from your US. We typically pay more taxes and have a higher expectation of public services. When those services are deteriorating, people look for someone to blame.

Immigrants are an easy target.

In reality, it is much more to do with the aging population and fewer in the workforce, but that doesn't mean that we're also not paying a lot of money for asylum seekers.

We’re generally only talking about 50,000 people a year coming in via these routes

Of course Brexit didn’t help with the policing of it all either

That number sounds big, but for some perspective my city (Seattle) is spending more than that to build light rail tracks to one particular (not that very dense!) neighborhood. In

0.42% of the UK budget is spent on helping people who have had everything in their lives ripped away. People who have watched family members get shot, had their houses destroyed by bombs, and for some, their entire homeland turned into rubble.

The UK populace spent decades electing corrupt leaders who purposefully destroyed civic institutions. Of course things are falling apart. Immigrants don't have much to do with that...

This exact attitude is what gets the right wing growing.

> As in, literally writing checks to their landlords?

In some EU countries (where I'm from), yes. A student friend of mine was even rejected by landlord who wanted Syrians because the government would pay their rent.

But thank you for your valuable contribution to this conversation.

Are they there illegally? Or legally?

And are there, in fact, "millions" of illegal immigrants being housed and fed in the EU on public subsidy?

I know you said "illegal immigrants and refugees", so I misquoted you slghtly. But the bigger point is -- why conflate the two, when the numbers and overall situations are entirely different?

The solution is to listen to their worries and take action to fix them instead of ignoring them and calling them stupid

It isn't the concerns of the voters, but the relentless cognitive distortions we keep hearing about push-button topics such as this one (generally promoted by ideologues and pundits, rather than the voters themselves) that are, for want of a better term, stupid.

Not relevant to the political question. The point is there is anger at the number of migrants European politicians let in.

The immigrants by large are coming from the worst imaginable conditions and fighting their way into Fortress Europe. It is the failure of our societies to help the countries like Syria, Afghanistan, etc to be liveable. We are paying the price for this failure.

There were absolutely pro-migration politicians, e.g. Merkel.

> immigrants by large are coming from the worst imaginable conditions and fighting their way into Fortress Europe

Europe continues to have generous refugee obligations, protections and benefits. There also isn’t a robust deportation regime, in part because there isn’t anywhere to legally deport them to. That’s probably what these voters take offence to. (I unfortunately don’t see any non-radical solutions.)

Which in turn further drives and exploits the anger.

That’s a concern. The working poor’s concern is the labor competition from one side and welfare competition from the other.

Of course Russia and China aren’t innocent when it comes to Syria and large parts of Africa

Yet, the government gave 100% free treatment to 48k immigrants that had no information. Many of then pregnant women from Asian countries with complicated situations that coat lots of money. Some illegal immigrants even got right to have treatments with medicines that cost millions.

There is North of 700 000 illegal residents in France alone. So yes, millions in the UE. Here, they have free health care (CMU) costing more than a billion euros per year while the government wanted reduced refunds on medical acts and medicine for people paying for it. How do you justify things like illegal immigrants having a 75% off on their subway pass[1] in Paris (I just paid mine 86€ today for the month) while a French national on unemployment benefits like I am currently doesn't even have a 25% off? It's exactly why people as voting for the so-called "far"-right party, with are still quite leftist in comparison to the ruling parties of countries like Japan, Thailand, etc.

[1] https://www.iledefrance-mobilites.fr/titres-et-tarifs/detail...

So that was my concern -- what purpose is served by promoting a grossly exaggerated characterization of the actual cost of having these people around?

How do you justify things like illegal immigrants having a 75% off on their subway pass[1] in Paris (I just paid mine 86€ today for the month) while a French national on unemployment benefits like I am currently doesn't even have a 25% off?

If it were up to me, I'd stick it incrementally to you-know-who have you also getting a Solidarité reduction. But that's obviously not kind thing the voting public wants to hear these days.

In France, if you are illegal, you get free healthcare.

https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aide_m%C3%A9dicale_d%27%C3%8...

Actual estimates for the total number if illegal migrants (including children) in the UK top out at around 800,000. Yet the commenter above said that your government was paying to house and feed "millions" of them. Last we checked, "milions" means >= 2,000,000.

Do you still think that what the commenter is saying "actually tends to be the case" in the UK?

How about you look up how many refugees European nations are paying to house vs getting emotional and changing the goalposts. I suspect the number is not millions, but this does not include medical care or other humanitarian care.

The GBP/EURO/USD spent is in the billions and the cost was the premise, not necessarily the number of people. If OP exaggerated, correct it and move on to the substance of the argument. It doesn’t make their entire post insipid (your words)

I meant to type "unauthorized", sorry.

I'm not shifting goalposts on you, promise.

That should have read "unauthorized", and without the negating particle the rest makes very little sense.

In this case it seems that the author is pointing out that the incumbents do not in fact have any inferred or conferred ownership of these public spaces.

I decided to treat it as a minor typo and read it as 'people would be able to ignore and excuse the increased prevalence of "foreigners" on their streets' instead. Ie, the foreigners aren't really foreigners, just citizens of non-aboriginal ethnicity.

By putting the word their in quotes the poster is implying the unstated assumption that states aren't legitimate.

I don't think that the economy in general is key, though high immigration does dampen wages and that is mostly felt at the lower end of incomes. I think what we're seeing are the social and cultural consequences of very high immigration from countries of completely alien cultures and whose people do not assimilate in Europe. This has been going on for decades now but completely ignored by successive governments and that only hardens people's reaction against it. This is compounded by the apparent powerlessness to act "because whatever treaty/law" that we seem to have shackled ourselves with...

I don't fully know what's going on in Europe, but in the US we have several TV news networks dedicated to making you upset about the increased prevalence of foreigners. And they've been doing it for 30+ years, so it's working, no matter how good the age is or isn't.

I.e. people voting for Farage are not the ones living next door to asylum seekers.

Maybe it's different in the EU and US.

People see problems (mainly caused by the cost of housing) and hear people like Farage blaming it on the "small boats", and people on the other end of the spectrum blaming it on millionaire landlords.

The reality is it's not caused by the 3 asylum seekers per 10,000 people increasing demand, but instead by essential legal immigration (to perform jobs as the native workforce reduces in number) and crucially the inability to build enough houses for everyone.

This thus pushes up price thanks to the age old supply/demand curve. How else would we ration housing? Nepotism? Sexual favours? Lottery?

Sure, but if you have an inability to produce more housing, how is importing more foreigners helping with the situation of the locals who are already struggling with the housing market?

I'm not defending Farage or his voters, but don't people have a right to be pissed about this situation?

We're having some similar problems in the US, but not at the same scale. It used to be MS-13 was the big foreign crime boogeyman, now it's the Venezuelan gang "Tren de Aragua": https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/its-spreading-americas...

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/migrant-population-charl...

I can't even come up with enough terror attacks in Europe to reach 100 deaths in 2024.

> I can't even come up with enough terror attacks in Europe to reach 100 deaths in 2024.

Go touch grass ffs! Your reply is infuriating to any victim of terrorism. A single death or wounded from islamic terrorism (the only that really exist) is too much already. If that's not enough for you, please line up with your family and friends and sign to be the next victims and we'll see if "not even 100 deaths" is a good thing or not.

I can however name a hundred other things that affect most of their lives daily like inflation, racism, corruption of both the media and political organs by corporate interests, degrading of public infrastructure and institutions that are not aimed at churning out a profit, declining quality of the education system to systemic stress imposed on teachers, etc.

What about pollution? Kills thousands upon thousands of people too! Why are we wasting our time and attention with 24/7 news reports about terrorism every time some nutter stabs someone in the street, when we could be directing our efforts towards eradicating coal, diesel engines, etc?

See where I'm going with this?

Many already are.

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

As a society we must focus our attention to those things which really matter. Terrorism is just trying to get our attention.

I also live in a town of 4m which was impacted in the last 10 years by a single terror attack. Should it affect my life? Should I be suspicious of every member of the ethnic group from which the terrorist comes? I couldn't even identify them.

However, I often think about that drawing where three people are at a table. A blue-collar worker (mine worker or construction worker), a black sad looking black person (immigrant), and a rich guy in suit.

The blue collar worker has a single cookie on his plate, the immigrant no cookies at all, and the rich guy a plate full of cookies. The rich guy with his plate full of cookies, looking at the worker, points to the immigrant. “He wants your cookie”.

It's a very difficult sociopolitical problem, and it has as much to do with psychology as it does headline statistics. Contemporary media dynamics has much to do with the psychological aspect, but it's also corrupting the way people think about these issues across the ideological spectrum.

Or being paid more for the same jobs. Fairer than wealth distribution via taxation but has the same effect.

Labour's share of wealth produced (vs capital's share) has been declining in the developed world since the 1970s, and is now well past Gilded Age levels and still getting worse.

So yes, it's both about better jobs and about distributing away from the rich and towards the working class: these are the same thing.

1) Income share is complicated: https://equitablegrowth.org/labors-share-lost/ There are structural issues, like automation and immigration, underlying those trends. Immigration isn't, per se, irrelevant, especially when you consider dynamics like volatility and displacement. (But, again, it's complicated.)

2) Throughout history vilifying the rich has not worked out well for the poor and working classes, neither in absolute nor relative terms. Where sustainable improvements have been seen, they're the result of a flattening of the social hierarchy (not necessarily in monetary terms!), but in a way that shifts norms to the type of long-term, group management that you see in the upper middle classes, not the winner-take-all, rat race rules of the poor (at least, that they see as governing inter-class conflict, not necessarily among themselves). The cookie metaphor, both in the model it presents and the devious motivations it insinuates, is rat race rules, and rat race rules favor the rich much more than cooperative, inclusive norms. What you want is for the wealthier to identify with the poorer, but that can only happen (if at all) to the extent the poorer identify with the wealthier. If some wealthy person perceives themselves as having been wholly self-made, despite what's obvious to everybody below him, good! That implies he at least values agency and work ethic, norms that in the United States can be and are shared with people below him on the ladder, and therefore a way to sell political concessions as being in his self-interest (psychologically).

3) Wealth (as opposed to income) doesn't work as implied in the cookie metaphor. Elon Musk is a trillionaire, but there's no bank vault with a trillion in gold bullion that he can go to at will. At any point in time--hour by hour, even--his nominal wealth is primarily a function of the future expectations of others, including expectations of social contentment and economic growth. You can't take half of Musk's cookies and redistribute to everyone; it's entirely non-sensical to think that way. Our intuition breaks down at scale; certainly from a process perspective (as opposed to a static context). Just like running a $30 trillion national economy isn't the same as running a small business (for one thing, nobody runs it), the cookie metaphor leads to horribly misguided ideas about the nature of our problems and the viability of remedies.

Yes, inequality of outcomes matters (at least at the margins), it just doesn't provide much if any insight into causes and solutions. Imbibing in zero sum cookie narratives is counterproductive. Like other forms of social injustice, e.g. racism, it's paradoxical--how can you fix something without identifying the effects with an intention to address them; yet, such a fixation has a tendency to solidify (reify?) the divisions undergirding them. If you look at critical theory, especially critical race theory, you can see an admission of this paradox at the core of the literature. People like Frantz Fanon and Derrick Bell came to the conclusion that it's impossible to completely overcome racism--systemic and otherwise. Their perspective is understandable given the seeming intractability of these sorts of problem, I just don't share the fundamental pessimism at the heart of how these issues are framed by contemporary social justice thinking. And it's that framing that I saw in the cookie metaphor. I don't have the right answers, but history has shown us the wrong answers.

The metaphor is not zero sum, and not about handouts.

It's about deliberate diversion of attention, obfuscating the source of inequality to those that experience it. This is something that absolutely happens, both overtly (by endlessly misrepresenting causes of poverty) and covertly (by cultural suppression of socialist ideas).

Kind of like your post.

Money is power. Elon Musk would be a cringe lord if he wasn’t rich. But because he’s rich he gets to play government.

That’s the point of taxation. It’s not to fund anything. The government doesn’t need your money to fund anything.

And those people don't have to be foreign or a different race: just see the anti-tech waves that have rolled through the Bay Area in the past, directed more based on attire and mode of transport than race. And a lot of people here would agree those new workers are to blame for a lot of Bay Area problems, but it's easier to dismiss others as bigoted than wrestle with the reality of winners and losers behind each statistic.

This is happening now. Senegal are following Chad in cutting ties with French military.

[1] https://theconversation.com/cfa-franc-conditions-are-ripe-fo...

(1) Travle posted here on hn months ago, but unfortunately a Webapp that downloads so I can't give you a url

Most parts of the global economy are. If you're selling cars for example, there's a fixed amount of drivers on the road you can sell cars to, so if you're VW, you're now competing with cheaper cars from Asia for those same drivers.

You can't create new drivers out of thin air to expand the market demand for cars. Once the market is saturated, without having any moat, you enter in a race to the bottom.

And that's what Germany's economy is discovering right now and why Europe's share of global GDP has been declining for the past 20 years.

Also, we shouldn't care about Europe's share of global GDP. We should care about how the poor people in our countries are doing. Like I said. We should maintain or improve our quality of life. Producing cars is just a means to an end.

Head to any country without a domestic auto industry to protect and see what new cars people are importing. Sure there will be some rich people buying the brands you recognize, but call an UberX and they're going to show up in a Chinese brand you've never heard of. Or some zombie brand like MG.

Edit: as an exercise, consider the land value of a typical office, and compare to the annual income of the part of the company based there, and the personal income of the employees who work there.

As others allude to, natural resources are zero sum, they are a finite resource, once they are gone, they are gone.

So if an imperial power is mining resources from a 'colony', that 'colony' is being stripped of economic potential with very little to show for it.

They do not both gain economically, like some allude to when maybe it is two countries sharing manufactured goods.

Without innovations and highly profitable industries generating well paying working class jobs, with what will you pay for that welfare and quality of life? Billionaires and corporations certainly aren't gonna pay for it out if their profits, so the working class has to. But if the working class has no more high paying wages anymore due to stagnating growth , then your welfare budget also goes bye-bye.

You can't just vote yourself more welfare and higher public sector salaries and pensions out of thin air without an economic growth to back that up. I mean, you technically can, but it doesn't end well as was proven every single time this was tried.

Innovation is important sure, but also efficient use of resources, including cramping down on negative externalities. That increases welfare and quality of life, ideally with no need to spend an extra dollar.

Yeah it's ineficient but it's the one we got right now. You're not gonna change it with your comments and beliefs. Meanwhile rent is due next month and you need to pay up by using these "ineficient" mechanisms set in place by powers higher than you.

You are welcome to point out flaws in my thinking.

So the thing about jobs is, we really need jobs that actually produce stuff. We don't just need jobs, we need somebody to create the wealth. First it has to exist, then we can worry about how it gets distributed.

So if you have a bunch of people who are not necessary, then the best thing to do is not to let them starve (which is also immoral), nor to give them pointless jobs (which is soul-destroying), but to find something useful for them to do.

This isn’t a production problem, it is a social problem.

Its because the person making the car doesn't want to make one for someone who isn't making something of equal value in return. It makes them a sucker for being the one to make the car.

You cannot legislate, policy change, indoctrinate, or force your way around this. It's why all attempts to do so always have failed. Every single time. Always.

The only way to create actual value is to put in actual work.

I don't think anyone is seriously claiming that there is no innovation whatsoever in the EU. Falling behind the US doesn't mean there is absolutely nothing. I think a lot of people in the EU would be fine with being 3rd on "productivity" if it was enough to maintain a high standard of living and decent competitiveness.

I never said that. Please follow HN rules and reply to the strongest interpretation of one's argument, not the weakest.

The EU economy was at the same level as the US economy 15-20 years ago., now it's only half the US. The EU missed out on all the major technological innovations in that time and therefore missed out on a lot of income for welfare while welfare expenses grew.

>Falling behind the US doesn't mean there is absolutely nothing.

No, it means less money for welfare. Especially with an ever increasing ageing population. If you want to take care of all of those retirees at a high quality of life, it's gonna cost you.

>I think a lot of people in the EU would be fine with being 3rd on "productivity" if it was enough to maintain a high standard of living and decent competitiveness.

They would be fine, if those productivity losses would be eaten up by the corporations, but they're not, they're being eaten up by the working class and the taxpayer who still expects the same welfare quality like in the good ol' days when the EU economy was as strong as the US.

Do you you see how this is unsustainable without economic growth?

> Without innovations and highly profitable industries generating well paying working class jobs, with what will you pay for that welfare and quality of life

Without presumes with none, and you're saying it like it's true.

> The EU economy was at the same level as the US economy 15-20 years ago., now it's only half the US. The EU missed out on all the major technological innovations in that time

Really, all major technological innovations? Why is the leading music streaming provider Swedish (Spotify)? Leading and most advanced airplane manufacturer European (Airbus)? Why are there so many fintechs which are a decade ahead of US counterparts (Revolut, Monzo, MyPOS, SumUp, Bunq, Qonto) and why is finance-related tech so much ahead - you can pay contactless pretty much anywhere in most of the EU and UK, you can accept card payments with your phone and just an app, all banks have to have an API with Oauth to be able to aggregate accounts and whatever? Also I'd like to add advancements in nuclear fusion. Also I haven't experienced healthcare in the US, but from what I've seen it doesn't look like there's anything even close to the seamlessness of Doctolib in France.

The EU is indeed falling behind, IMO mostly due to lack of capital, risk/gambling averseness, and the much smaller individual markets. But to say it has missed all innovations, or that it has no innovation is simply untrue. We need more of them, we need to invest into more of them, because there's a lot of potential that needs to be nurtured and grow.

Only if you want to be a sticker and take things literally while deliberately ignoring the context to score a cheap shot gothca, then sure, it then means without.

> Leading and most advanced airplane manufacturer European (Airbus)?

Because of government intervention, and moat of a highly regulated and expensive to enter industry that keeps new players out. Why is SpaceX ahead of EU aerospace companies?

>Why is the leading music streaming provider Swedish (Spotify)?

Spotify wasn't even profitable until recently and only made it where it is today, due to to massive capital investments form the US, not from EU investors.

>Why are there so many fintechs which are a decade ahead of US counterparts

Are they also ahead in earnings/profits too? Because you fund welfare with taxes on profits and on wages. You can't tax innovations that bring you no money.

That's where While you keep blabbering on about Airbus, Monzo and Spotify , have a look at the top 100 companies in the world by market cap and see how many are from the EU and how many from the US and that's case closed. AIrbus, Spotify, etc are the rare exceptions, not the norm for Europe.

“A system of non-competition clauses enforced by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) workforce suppliers is allegedly trapping aerospace professionals who work at ESA’s facilities across Europe in a professional dead-end street” [1].

Europe is absolutely riddled with this crap, and it tends to come top down from the EU.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/esa-workers-face-a-maz...

Here is the data: https://www.voronoiapp.com/markets/-US-vs-European-Stock-Mar...

If Europe is so innovative, why is US to EU stock market cap ratio is on a consistent upward swing by since mid 2000's?

Why do so many people, especially on HN, confuse market cap or GDP growth for innovation? Surely, especially here, people can realise that innovation can come in different forms, and some do not move the needle of a stock market or won't show up in GDP graphs. Is CERN not innovative because it's not a public company whose stock is growing?

It's not confusion. It's rather an acknowledgement to the reality that to fund a generous welfare state, one needs taxes. To tax, you first need a dynamic private sector economy. Taxing public sector is like shifting money from the left pocket to the right pocket.

GDP or stock market caps are just a proxy for the size of the private economy. Europe has lagged on both. Maybe there is something else which would indicate that European private sector is growing fine and dandy. I am not aware of it. Are you?

CERN innovation is awesome but it will need to be translated into private sector economic activity in order for the society to benefit from it; either directly via products and services, or indirectly via taxation and welfare programs based on that.

I gave concrete examples of European companies being significantly better than American ones.

Arguably, Japan has been doing this for two or three generations now. Despite a crazy debt, quality of life in Japan is still pretty great.

"There are four types of economies: developed, developing, Argentina, and Japan."

One must be very careful drawing conclusions for other societies based on Japan as a sole example. I somewhat agree that Japan illustrates that massive infrastructure investment, combined with diligence in maintaining functioning societal systems, does in fact yield a high quality of life that appears sustainable even if the metrics of economic growth look terrible. That's because GDP as a measure of "quality of life" is a shitty indicator IMO, but that's a whole 'nother rabbit hole to go down...

If the US took the entire medicare/medicaid budget and split it evenly per person it would be left with more money than the UK spends on healthcare.

Its not just how much you spend, its how much you waste.

Road infrastructure in the United States might as well be a form of digging holes and then refilling it back up again. Grossly inefficient when we could invest the infrastructure money into world class public transit.

As I recall, after the Chicago suburbs you hit Rockford, Janesville, Madison, Baraboo, Tomah, Eau Claire, Menominee, and Hudson before you get to the St Paul collar communities.

So 9 stops on on a single track running between two major cities, with only 1600 more miles to Seattle. And while the distance between stops increase, the population greatly decreases as you head west.

Now road construction could be better. Because while Illinois has 300k lane-miles of road, it seems like they only have 200k of asphalt and 100k under construction at any given point in time.

Why do people trot this out every time? Driving or traveling across the US isn't particularly relevant to most people's life experience. Ok, I'll bite.

Yes, the United States is big, but some areas are more dense than other and would need good heavy investment in public transit infrastructure. For example, the north eastern corridor would in particular benefit from investment in true high speed rail.

There's also the need for investment in freight infrastructure, especially if we want to take off more trucks off the road. This is a safety benefit too. Less vehicles on the roads just mean less people risking their neck.

Now let's talk more local public transit.

Atlanta for example, really need to expand heavy rail. Traffic there is one of the worst in the country. MARTA at time outpaces cars, even with all the stops they have to make. Rather, a lot of time is eaten up just waiting for the train. A more frequent schedule would help here, but Georgia would need to actually contribute funding to make this possible. If they extend it more into the surburb, I would have less of an incentive to move. As now, I am considering moving because of how frequent I commute into Atlanta.

With the suburb architecture of many US cities, local rail is nearly irrelevant outside the city center

In a typical vehicle that's about 50kg of CO2. 100kg if it doesn't include the return leg.

Not having a dig at you, but this is a big part of our problem. We believe that because we can do something, we are entitled to do it. Not only that, but we've structured our society in such a way that it's actually necessary for people to do these harmful things just to get by like commuting distances that would have been considered absurd 100 years ago. They are still absurd.

It may not have seemed that way in the 1950s, but it hasn't scaled well.

Also, having a walkable city has massive health and societal benefits.

This is not some pearl clutching moralistic argument, but a practical observation based on:

- Transfer of ownership is not necessarily possible. You can't buy a technologically sensitive company because of regulations. Even if you can buy a foreign firm, transferring the talent, operational base etc. might not be possible. A CEO can't sell off his share of stocks even if they're worth billions because the loss of investor confidence.

- Physical limitations on quantities of goods. There is a finite supply of real estate. If everybody in the world wanted a new car suddenly (and had money for it), car prices would go through the roof, and only a small fraction would actually get it.

Imo capitalism is not flawed in the way that it is incapable of handling these situations, but it is very flawed in that money is an increasingly poor proxy for the abstract concept of value.

This flawed nature of capitalism has been long since endemic (and dare I say integral) to the system, much more value has existed on paper than in reality (see banks), but I think there might be a breaking point at which the system might collapse and hyperinflation would set in.

So the fact that you think money is divorced from reality is a very normal, mundane misconception.

- I never wanted to contrast 'capitalism' and 'communism' or whatever. I merely wanted to point out that the fundamental absurdity of capitalism requiring infinite growth in a finite system has been resolved by having the growth of wealth coming from speculation on future unrealized value. Since I (or anyone else) can't predict the future, it might happen that things do not come to pass as they were expected and that future value might not be realized. Money is divorced from reality, it derives its value from the collective trust and belief by the people participating in the system that it can be exchanged for goods and services. In a system of rational and impartial actors, that belief is backed by chiefly existence of said goods (which is the real size of the economic pie) and less by the speculation of future potential that might or or might not happen. So in summary my argument is not between communism or capitalism, but a captialism that is backed by real world value and one that is backed by future speculation. Even if the former can create less economic growth, we can be certain that growth is real.

- Central planning works. Great public works certainly are dreamt up and funded by governments yet they contribute enormously to the wealth of nations and enable a lot of value to be created. The moon landing was centrally planned and executed by a country whose per capita wealth was on par with modern day Poland, yet is considered the greatest achivement in history.

- There are no real 'centrally planned' or 'free market' economies, as all countries employ both concepts to some degree. But if we were to make a argument, we could say that the US belongs to the 'free market' camp and China belongs the 'centrally planned' camp. Both countries are doing extremely well, this very discussion is about finding which one is actually doing better.

A bottle of water might be the same price as a litre of petrol, but the value is vastly different.

We don't pay for the value. We pay for the cost of acquisition (e.g. pumping the oil out of the ground).

Having completely optimised and global logistics and value chains isn’t necessarily good for wages. We can tax the wealthy and fortunes more than we do, and we probably should, but within the current systems it wouldn’t change that much.

So in some sense many European countries are better prepared for economic downturns than the US even though European countries don’t have a lot of major corporations which don’t produce anything locally.

Obviously it’s even more complex than this. Part of what is bringing down the economies in France and Italy is workers rights. Being able to retire at 60 is great, but it was also something that was obtained when people didn’t live as long and have as few children. Though Greece seems to have managed ok without having new public management plunder their country.

Short aside this reminds me of:

In the US, my Boss's neighbor is an 85 year old woman who retired 42 years ago. And still gets a paycheck twice a month (with CoL increases) and full health insurance. She became a municipal clerk when she turned 18, worked 25 years to get a full pension, then retired at 43. The optimism (maybe pessimism?) people had back in the day was wild. I nearly fell out of my chair when he told me this.

But relateedly, US household energy expenditure is enormous compared to other countries and a lot of it is burning fossil fuels to run AC. There's a big money vs ethics tradeoff going the wrong way for emissions, more so from being a huge oil producer.

I'm interested in the numbers behind this. The location and timing of most air conditioning needs correlates strongly with the availability of PV. At this point I would have guessed that heating is strongly reliant on fossil fuels (and will be for many years to come) and air conditioning will be much greener.

> Many Europeans cannot even afford proper AC in summer and heating in winter.

Basically nobody lacks heating in winter, that one is made up. The thing people lack is AC and its just because people aren't used to it so they don't see it as a need.

Edit: Saying this is like saying people can't afford shelter in USA, it is true and there are many homeless but it describes a tiny fraction.

I suspect it's just that Europe is mostly north of the US and AC is more luxury than necessity. Places in the US like Seattle, which is still south of much of Europe, only recently rose above 50% AC prevalence. It's become much more popular as the climate as grown warmer.

A lot of people don't need AC, and heating is a non-issue almost everywhere.

Besides: I'd rather put sedum/green stuff on our flat roof, which also helps insulate a little bit in winter but really really helps in summer.

If the economy falls behind then quality of life will follow at some point. In fact quality of life is already not so great and decreasing.

If only Europeans would accept this truth and wake up that something has to change yesterday.

What's happening to Greece is just the mining canary for what's gonna happen in much of the rest of EU later, if there's no preventive change of course.

Noone claims that people in the third world enjoy great quality of life, for instance. You can't benefit from the advancements of others if you cannot afford them...

> I'm not even sure how this could happen.

It can always happen but it is gradual and takes time. Places like India or China were once the richest areas of the world, only to fall behind and become among the poorest later on because they stagnated while others progressed.

Did you know on GBP PPP Warsaw and Budapest are now better places to live than Madrid, Lisbon and many other Mediterranean cities?

It’s crazy. Perhaps Berlin and Copenhagen are still ok, but even France is on a completely unsustainable path that will explode in the next 10-20 years.

And please make sure to visit some of the Eastern European countries, like Romania or Bulgaria too. They are part of the EU as well.

I’m older with bit more freedom than when I just started out, but this is exactly what I’m doing. My plan is to eventually quasi retire to the house I’m currently renovating.

Probably it is time for you to learn the plight of fellow Europeans then. The society is stewing for quite some time now, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests

The symbol has become "a unifying thread and call to arms" as yellow vests are common and inexpensive, easy to wear over any clothing, are associated with working-class industries, highly noticeable, and widely understood as a distress signal.

Rise of far right parties across Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, France and many other countries is another clear signal that EU's quality of life may not be great for everyone there.

As for the other party that fits this description they're their own worst enemy, as they're an amalgamation of groups which don't really have common interests aside from a few talking points.

All it takes is another term of pain, and they'll be back.

Case in point, America. A former president who by all counts should have lost the election a year ago, was literally begging on Truth Social for donations, facing numerous criminal trials and convictions, just retook the hot seat.

I've met their voter base. The young, educated, city-dwelling part.

Of course they'll be back, but like every political movement based on cult of personality, they have no coherent plan what to do should Kaczyński die/retire, aside from infighting. Arguably the vultures started circling already. The MAGA party will face the same predicament once their leader inevitably leaves the stage.

My take is that since both Kaczyński and Trump haven't appointed a successor, their political projects will die with them. Their opponents need only to survive until that happens.

I so wish that you are right. I am afraid you are not though. Trump is a symptom of the growing discontent in the society. If not Trump, it would be Bernie or someone else. But the tinderbox is there. Someone just needs to take a match to that.

Also, here in The Netherlands the yellow vests were mostly conspiracy theorists who would pull something to protest against out of thin air. That movement died down pretty quickly.

Protests here are almost always against (perceived) government overreach. In most countries even being able to protest is considered a luxury. That's why you don't see that many in the US.

But there are a lot of other factors in the problem and making it an economic issue really obscures some of the more important factors.

Intellectual laziness, idle brains, idle hands, toxic memes and bad actors making bad use of them.

When we look at magical thinking as one of those light schizotypical behaviors large portions of the population exhibit these symptoms.

They drink from the cup of nonsense to excess.

There should always be room for drinking from the cup of nonsense but too much and its difficult to be useful to yourself and your family.

I may not leave her a lot of inherited wealth, but she may also not really need any to have options.

(That said, my personal frame of reference for why this is better and wonderfully stress-free is years lived in South Korea--that ultra-low fertility rate has reasons--, not so much the US.)

Folks here expect and trust the state to provide for the future, private provisions are easily dismissed as unnecessary. As a result of this the median household wealth of the area I live in is 5x lower than my home country of Australia, despite incomes (adjusted for purchasing power) not being drastically different.

Whether that trust is wisely placed we'll have to wait and see[1]. However I do need to narrow that down a bit, it's not the whole EU, mostly France/Germany. There are other nations moving ahead with private pension schemes etc and much higher household wealth (Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands).

1. My main concern is government investment is inherently slow, politically charged, and pathologically risk averse vs the private sector. This means in the aggregate, over the long term, private household investments will out perform.

Probably explains a good chunk of Germany's and the EUs anemic growth. Simply put, that's 127B EUR that can't be spent investing in the future and growing the economy.

What is a decent pension and where it will come from? I'm projected to get a decent SSA pension (bigger than a median income in top tier EU countries), but I am not counting on it. What gives you confidence that government will be able to support you through retirement?

Laws that obligate the country to do so

The U.S. is filled with homeless people. Even Italy, which was doing economically terrible when I visited, didn’t even have a fraction of the homelessness problem as in the U.S.

Except Finland and Danemark[0]

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Finland

Italy is much lower at 8/100k.

45/100k would be an incredible improvement.

Though looking up Paris, it is ~200/100k, which is still half of Seattle's rate!

The definition of who is homeless and how they are counted varies dramatically between countries to the point where comparing headline numbers is largely useless.

This is such a bias tinted view of reality. There are homeless in all parts of the country including suburban and rural areas. You find the majority of homeless in cities because that is just where people in generally are so if by most of the country is extremely clean you mean most of the country is extremely empty and void of life then yeah.

Let's just ignore the rural areas and suburbs. Let's even ignore party (since most big cities are democrat run at this point).

Even with all of those things held the same, the West Coast cities are still uniquely bad not just in the people without permanent housing but also their lack of ability to do anything.

This particular article points to housing supply. Again, this is a simple choice. For example, my city of Portland, which is very high on this list, makes it impossible to build anything (tree planting requirements, years long waits for final premits, rent control, urban growth boundary, high tax state gov't, etc). It's terrible. At the end of the day though, Portlanders are Americans and will experience the same outcomes should the state just be normal

That isn't a democrat problem, indeed the unwillingness to build new things is, by definition, a conservative tendency to "leave neighborhoods as they are".

Historically Seattle's city council was full of "conservative democrats" who didn't rock the boat much and who worked well with local businesses. The city council may be willing to build bathrooms for any gender, but no way in hell are they willing to rezone "historic" neighborhoods. However they've had no qualms about building large amounts of shelters in minority neighborhoods, devastating many of them. Likewise the police don't bother shutting down open air drug markets in Chinatown, but I'm pretty sure if a few dozen dealers and several hundred customers congregated on Queen Anne the crowd wouldn't last long.

Show me a republican candidate who is willing to run on the platform of "extreme property rights, get rid of all zoning except for heavy industry, do whatever you want on your land." The reality is outside of a few places in Texas, republican controlled cities are just as heavily restricted and zoned as democrat controlled cities.

> The reality is outside of a few places in Texas, republican controlled cities are just as heavily restricted and zoned as democrat controlled cities.

I mean... you're ignoring the largest Republican state for what reason exactly?

But anyway, I think a lot of zoning policy is set by the state.

For example (and this is frankly why efforts like DOGE are necessary), it is simply true that politicians of both parties will seek to maximize their power. State codes typically grant cities zoning powers. They don't have to. But most do. Thus, one can expect that any politician will wield that power.

I've never met a politician who didn't fully exercise their power. Those who do become folk heroes like Cincinnatus -- so rare is the accomplishment.

At the end of the day, we the people simply need to remove the power from the state, one way or another. If DOGE works, it would provide a good model for how this could happen.

From my perspective, I think that every decade, the citizens should elect a 'deregulation' committee whose only power is to remove regulation. Or, randomly pick a group of 12 people to sit on a grand jury to eliminate laws periodically. That's their only power, and they'd be anonymous. Maybe that'd work.

Up until a year or two ago Kirkland had a long standing (and well respected) republican on its city council. Small r republicans used to hold multiple positions in the PNW, but after the party purge post 2016 the Republican party in Washington State has done nothing but run absolutely unelectable candidates. They used to run candidates who ran on a fiscally conservative platform and who didn't engage in culture war stuff.

But aside from that, fiscal conservatives and social conservatives are two different axis, and historically Democrats in Washington have been rather fiscally conservative.

The Seattle city council worked very well with the local businesses communities and they were adverse to adding new taxes.

While the council's behavior has changed in recent years, the history is that up until less than a decade ago, Washington was rather purple when it came to actual policies.

Hell the super liberal local independent newspaper used to put some small r republicans on their voter guide now and then.

As far as they lack the ability to do anything, you're right. Cities are NIMBY trapped and unless they fix that they won't be able to make any real progress on the problem.

The west coast was a great place to live, people moved there, they didn’t build enough housing, people lose their jobs and can’t afford rent, they go homeless.

These are the fastest growing regions of the country. Texas and Florida are going to take several West Coast electoral votes if trends continue.

They’re growing now because people can’t afford the west coast anymore.

They don't care. Meanwhile, 100s of millions were spent on tents.

Again, this is a simple problem where we fix it by funding homeless shelters and getting people off the streets. For a while, due to Oregon's incorporation of Martin v Boise into state law, police weren't even able to force people into a shelter. It's honestly insane.

Interestingly, these are not unrelated. Italy's housing prices are very low because of how badly it's doing economically.

And also... no -- homelessness is one bad problem, but there are other problems. Bad economies cause a myriad, including declining healthcare availability and reductions in life expectancy.

If your kids appreciate your money more than your time is when you know you screwed up.

he should spend every penny he’s got to spend every minute he can with his kids - especially while they are young. and his kids will say the same.

not noble at all - naive, dangerous and downright stupid thinking

Not if you do the slightest bit of planning.

If you will have under $7M in your estate, the slightest is literally nothing. You will not owe a penny of federal estate tax.

If you have over $7M in your estate, it's worth consulting an estate planner, but the basics look like gifting and establishing trusts while you are alive (and ideally while the exclusion amounts are high).

The current exclusion is $13.61M per person, or 2x that per couple and set to drop down to $5.6M in 2017 dollars on January 1, 2026.

If there's a chance that you'll have over $7M and die in 2026, the slightest is gift some of it now [directly and/or via trusts or 529 plans] while the estate tax exclusion is still $13.61M and file form 709.

I understand why you would want higher net income to enjoy a wealthy life, but for "investing in the stock market"? I also understand why you would want to earn more so that your kids can have a better life, but why "after you die"?

If anything, the latter can be turned into an argument for the EU way. Your kids don't need you dead, they need you to be alive and caring. So you have vacations so you can spend time with them, public education so that they have the skills to help themselves, so they don't need your inheritance, and healthcare to keep you alive even if your "stock market investments" are at a low point.

The city just dismantled its gifted program for schools, so if your kid is a high achiever plan on another 40k a year for schooling.

Even swim classes have a huge waitlist and are expensive. Any type of children's activity is absurdly expensive due to the high cost of living.

Housing is absurd, if you have a couple kids plan on spending 4k a month on rent for a place in a nice neighborhood.

Most Americans have around a thousand dollars in savings and that is it. Americans are, by and large, not even able to save up for retirement, with zero hope of leaving anything to their kids.

Tech worker salaries are a small bubble in all of this.

I would suggest, though, that if you didn't grow up in the bay area and have family property here, as a relocation target it should be considered similar to gold mining. You're moving here for work because of the amount you can save [as a result of ludicrous tech compensation] and then use elsewhere, not because it makes sense financially to actually be living here.

I'm third generation here. Although I'm remote, my wife's job is tied to a location here. We both want to live someplace with a strong international community, access to an airport with lots of overseas flights, and that is a reasonably large population center. (IMHO Seattle is still small, and we are lacking many things for it, although that has gotten better over the last decade or so.)

The only other locations that meet our criteria have either garbage politics or garbage weather. (not that I'm happy with Seattle's politics, but at least our city council is mostly incompetent and a little bit malicious, as opposed to mostly malicious and a little bit incompetent!)

Best of luck to you on your endeavor.

I don't want a super low CoL, but I realize that housing prices have gone up in excess of what they should have due to restrictive housing policies.

Seattle used to be 1/2 the price of the Bay Area, or less! Engineers here earned less than in the SF, but we were OK with it because the QoL was great at a much lower cost.

But the city and surrounding areas refused to upzone, to such a degree that the state legislature finally had to force the issue, but even then the laws passed are too little too late.

The reason for the high CoL is lack of construction, plain and simple. Getting simple residential permits can take half a year or more, environmental regulations have limited what even homeowners can do with their own houses, and the majority of the city is still zoned for only single family homes.

The high price of building means that daycares can't open (too expensive to justify), and workers in all fields demand ever higher pay just so they can afford rent, which drives up the cost of everything.

For the last decade we've built 1/2 as many houses as we've had people moving to the city, and a large percent of new dense construction is rental only, which means money leaving the city and residents not building up any equity (or long term stake) in the city.

Bad policies lead to bad outcomes.

Per the US government's own BLS, the median household has >$1,000 leftover each month after all ordinary expenses. Americans may not save much but it isn't for lack of available income.

America is full of people who are working a job and a half (with a good chance both are 30hr a week jobs that offer no benefits, and may have "flexible" scheduling where the employee is called in to work different computed selected shifts each week), and people who are working in offices earning good money.

In the middle you have some people working trades still.

We switched over from a manufacturing economy that made things and gave people stability and enough money to raise a family to a "service" economy, and then we started telling everyone working service jobs that "those jobs aren't real careers, so of course you are being treated and paid poorly!"

Raising your kids to be able to stand on their own and deal with the harshness of the world is far more important in my opinion.

We start with 19 + 7 days and get 1 extra day per year of service until 5 years. (We also get a 4 week contiguous block once every 5 years.)

Therefore that's 5 less weeks with the kids each year — or about 1.6 years total by the time they leave home for college.

I have 4 weeks of vacation plus 11 federal holidays, which is close to the norm in nearly every professional job I'm aware of.

I use it and make a very healthy wage when I'm at work.

I could consider going to the US to earn some money while young but never to start a family.

If Americans give up on home ownership and luxury items, they too can enjoy a European quality of life; living in an 800sqft rental and enjoying a rich social life.

Americans are much lonelier than their European counterparts.

In addition, lifespans in the U.S. are declining even post COVID relative to their European counterparts, largely due to increases in “deaths of despair” (drugs, suicides, etc).

The idea that Americans have a “rich social life” is not true relative to Europeans. Even the church going etc. is for most people forced upon them as opposed to something they want to do, as evidenced by the increasing number of people saying they’re faithless but onto church anyways.

That doesn’t mean that people with rich social lives don’t exist or even that the lack of such a rich social life is a problem for a majority of people.

What it means is that the U.S. broadly isn’t doing as well as Europeans and further things are getting worse.

It's easy to make a study that shows that the US has more X than some number of European countries—you just compare the entire US to all European countries and then cherry pick the ones where we do worse. But the US is a big place with a lot of variety in living conditions—even if you just broke down the results by broad geographic region rather than state, you would get dramatically different results than taking the US as a whole. What happens if you compare loneliness in the South with loneliness in Denmark? Or what about loneliness across the entire US with loneliness across the entire EU?

This is the cultural aspect.

I have a lot of friends who went the opposite direction of you, and chose a cheaper but more fulfilling life in Europe.

Instead of making 200k a year in the us, they make modest salaries and rent 100-year-old farmhouse flats that Americans would call a slum. They drive economy cars and spend their ample time socializing or outdoors.

My personal opinion is that Europeans simply place a higher priority on social interaction and incorporate it into their daily lives. Many of them have more modest financial aspirations, and don't expect to ever own a house, vacation property, or boat.

I basically explain this by comparing my life (US of A) to my sisters (EU). My sister makes great money - my sister spends ALL of this great money. she lives paycheck-to-paycheck which in US would mean she is poor, in EU she is living large (just came back from UAE, heading to Kenya in a couple of weeks, January Macedonia and Austria…). I make 789x what she does and put away 60+% - been doing this for 25 years now, almost done with working though

However, this kind of whataboutism illustrates my point. There's a near infinite number of places humans can congregate to enjoy each other's company. It can be a park or a coffee shop or a pub or your kitchen table for tea.

The fact that none of these are suitable demonstrates that the desire to get together is not there.

downtown Denver can house minuscule part of the population of the Denver metro area - only those affluent enough to afford it. America (again) is not downtown Denver or downtown SF or downtown anything...

My take is that Americans like to make infrastructure excuse for everything when it really boils down to priorities and preferences.

10 km is a 20 minute bike ride if you're not too obese to fit on one. 10 minutes if you pick a coffee shop, pup, or Park that is halfway. Unfortunately, most people prefer Netflix and the fridge which is even closer

e-bike ? otherwise you have to be riding race type bike with really good dedicated bike lane

Like personally I'm doing great, and so are a lot of people I know, and I'm sure you as well. But I think a lot of Americans are struggling badly with their social lives.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9811250/

The largest contributor according the book's surveys and studies (and I love saying this) is television outcompeting in-person fun. Car dependency is a factor, but IIRC was factor #2 or #3. While this ranking was true at the time of publication, I would wager that time spent on "screens" is likely factor #1, #2, and #3 now.

Please read the version with the 20 year update: https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Commu...

I would wager that many people are fleeing their hometowns to socialize in cities not because they're walkable, but because the density of people increases, allowing you to have better odds meeting real humans who haven't been lost to the allure of the indoors.

I don't think you can have a realistic conversation about American physical or mental health without centering this fact

Also, a lot of american homes seem to need space for luxuries which are simply weird for many europeans.

A bathroom per bedroom for instance? Why not share a bathroom with the entire household,and have a seperate small toilet instead?

American kitchens also seem really large compared to most european one's i have seen, but they also seem to have a more social function then what kitchens are used for normally. (preparing food)

Why would you if you don't have to? It's great to have space.

If you want it to be transactional the same way I buy anything else in life, then pretend I'm compensating them for the fulfillment they gave me.

If parent’s work beyond what they can spend in their lifetime is not given to the children, who would continue to choose to work? Already in Canada you can exceed 50% tax rate and many adults who could see more patients, write more books, take more cases, do more work, choose not to as the marginal benefit decreases.

Older kids will only have virtual needs. They'll have a job and health insurance.

Then, your family will have a choice as to whether to spend that money on you/your spouse or to not spend it on you and to rely on Medicaid.

No one actually pays $50k out of pocket for surgery. Most of it is covered by insurance.

I've watched both my parents go through this, with significant chronic health issues. They had good private insurance on top of Medicare, they routinely had $10-30K annual itemized deductions for health related expenses that were not covered by their insurance. And that was with a daughter who is an MD who invested a massive amount of time and effort to get insurance to cover as much as possible.

There's a special "retirement plan by actions" (PEA) with lower capital gains tax, and the reason why most French people don't invest in the stock market is mostly lack of education around it. For most, real estate is the main way of investing/saving money. The stock market is dangerous and you can lose everything, and many have personal references (their parents/themselves bought stock from efforts such as the Eurotunnel that failed, financially) to that effect.

What's the point of inheriting a life in a corporate hellscape (presuming you live in a tech city).

A fun quote for the europeans here:

"Our land is so wealthy and prosperous that we possess all things. Therefore, there is no need to exchange the produce of foreign barbarians for our own." - The emperor at the height of Qing China

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

You just need the right drugs, in this case, Psychedelics.

India is not even close to replacing the huge European middle class and even if it were it has proven to be a highly unreliable partner. And so far the US exports to India are not even 15% of what is exported to the EU (2022).

The EU middle class comprises around 280 million people. Almost as many as the whole US population. And it is culturally and politically aligned with the US to a large extent. It‘s a huge market to loose.

Nobody would drop 15-20% of their exports to try to save 5% of their defense budget all while loosing influence and power.

To reverse roles in your argument: Imagine if the US put sanctions on EU companies because EU militaries aren't doing enough to help the US fight cartels in Mexico. Seem reasonable?

The US, UK, EU and realistically most developed countries I would say have fairly similar quality of life within margin of error. I've travelled a fair amount and everywhere is basically the same.

For an individual it's really going to come down to lifestyle and what you prefer. Some people like urban living and walkability, if that's you then you probably want Japan or old world metropolitan European cities. Some people want a house on a few acres and national parks the size of countries, if that's you then you probably want the US.

Working cultures are different but then there is no average on that either. People on HN tend to assume everyone is an office worker or something which is actually a fairly narrow slice of the middle of the spectrum.

Equally though, online (you can see it in this thread) there's sometimes a weird focus on the absolute worst outcomes which I've always found baffling. If you're planning to become a poor fentanyl addict then yeah, don't go to the US, find a country with a safety net, it'll be more fun.

Incredibly expensive, low wages, no safety net, car and health insurance are mandatory, homelessness everywhere, gun violence is rampant, and the government is a dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

No one would actively choose to live there if it wasn’t for high salaries in certain fields.

I’ve lived in both EU and US, and EU definitely has the better quality of life for the average person. I 100% agree.

However if you are at all an ambitious youngster with huge dreams, the EU is where dreams go to die lol. EU living is what i’d call “coasting in life”. It’s a safe, sheltered life, the government is very functional and “takes care” of you which i’m sure is comforting for many. It’s not for everyone though.

In other words, I would recommend the typical person moves to the EU if they have the opportunity. Their quality of life would improve and they would be happier. For anyone that’s very ambitious or very talented at something, your efforts will pay off 10x in the US, and you’ll have a better quality of life than your EU counterparts.

I recently got laid off for the 2nd time in 4 years (probably better off than most, to be honest). I'm done with shooting for the moon. I am now strongly considering a "boring" job - the kind that keeps the basics of society running and has government contracts. I can bootstrap my own moonshots over the weekend (I'm probably going to make split keyboards with Rust firmware FWIW).

So, yeah totally, it can even change for an individual pretty drastically.

I’ll share what a quality life means to me. For context, I grew up middle class, my father was a city employee, and my mother was a stay at home mom for a number of years.

• large emergency fund (zero stress about paying mortgage or losing job).

• I don’t have to look at prices when buying groceries or eating out.

• Time and money for 1-2 vacations per year. At least 1 international. My spouse and I love to visit new places.

• I can work remotely outside the US for 4 weeks internationally per year. I typically stay with my dad’s side of the family (in europe) for 3 weeks each year, while working remotely. Great way to spend lots of family time and not burn vacation time.

• No stress about medical care or costs.

• Ability to start a family without money stress.

• Good work life balance, no more than 40yrs on average. Minimum 3 weeks vacation per year.

• Ability to retire earlier, to pursue hobbies, if i wish.

• Easy access (45 min or less) to quality outdoor recreation on the weekends. Things like hiking, kayaking, etc.

A lot of those are luxuries, but certainly feel like a quality life for me. Yes, I realize how lucky I am. MOST people in the US are not so fortunate. I’m just explaining what quality of life might mean to someone… It’s not about buying pointless junk for me.

I cannot see how the US helps here positively unless you are don't mess up; I have got all you listen with very little effort and no risk (if it failed, I would live very much exactly the same) except maybe the family starting part as I never wanted kids. But the rest I have. I don't have a mortgage to care for either; I don't care for goods (like you), so I have a simple abode with a lot of (hiking and kayaking) land, which happens to cost next to nothing here.

I don't know about the EU, but in the UK I know their mortgages are usually fixed for only like 5 years. In the US they are typically 30 year fixed. That can cause a lot of instability when interest rates go up.

You would have to pay me a lot to live there, which explains the astronomical wages for tech workers.

And I disagree about your efforts paying off more in the US. In a couple areas like tech sure, but most people would be better off somewhere else.

These are factors common to all (e.g.) Google employees. But the folks cleaning the toilets aren't getting paid as much as the software engineers. So there must be a bit more to it than that. I'm not saying that the factors you listed aren't factors, but they aren't the whole story by any means.

Not sure if that’s true at all, i’ve never been to canada! So take those opinions with a huge grain of salt lol.

What’s my point? I guess that perceptions can be very different.

Anyway since you left canada, I hope you found someplace where you are happier. :-)

I lived in Connecticut for 6 months too for what it’s worth. Awful place.

Canada is much better, but has its problem. These days I live in Tokyo and love it.

The point is that Canadians understand the US far better than USians understand Canada.

maybe i should actually visit canada one day, see it with my own eyes.

[1] https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/number-murders-county-54-u...

Thanks for making it clear I should treat your posts as a regurgitation of terminally online zoomer talking points from here on out.

And I lived in Connecticut too btw, but Canada was longer and more relevant since I visited a lot more of the US while living in canada.

Anybody ambitious would agree it's still far more optimal to work in a USA and build a career there first before moving to Asia as an expat to better negotiate terms. And even then, the supply of interesting jobs there is going be much less.

And Japan actually has more time off for people to enjoy the fruits of their labor too!

As far as moving goes, I wouldn’t be so sure. Plenty of people start off their career in their home country before moving to HK or Singapore or Tokyo, skipping the US entirely.

She's working in London right now and alot more happier, tbh having grown up there in HK most of my cohort have moved to US or Europe.

Tech as an expat is a bit of bubble, most of the "hard work" in building a career is achieved in the less competitive environment. Growing up there in those cities is another matter, the academic pressure and job market can be soul-crushing. If you don't get into a top university many large firms won't hire you. That's not to say similar things happen in USA, but it's relatively easier to get into Ivy League, and outside of Banking or Law most other careers are willing to give you a chance to prove yourself.

This is like saying you almost got murdered in El Salvador and that’s why you don’t go out alone in Nashville.

My commentary as someone on the inside who has also been on the outside looking in:

> Incredibly expensive, low wages

Pick one. Wages trend higher where it’s expensive. Wages trend lower where it’s not.

There are also tough-to-see subsidies like prop 13 and rent control in CA (as an example).

Currently the US appears expensive from the outside due to a strong dollar.

From the inside, it’s more nuanced — specially, the distribution of wealth across the capital class and the worker class is skewing much more towards the capital class than at any time in our lives, but is trending towards a common state if looking at a longer time scale.

> no safety net,

No European-style safety net.

Japan doesn’t have a safety net either. Is it “horrible”?

The US has a substantial safety net via charity. Most of the people seen in the news who need it (e.g., homeless folks) choose not to use it, since it comes with restrictions like not being on drugs.

> car and health insurance are mandatory, homelessness everywhere,

Yay?

Fwiw, health insurance is federally subsidized for low income folks.

> gun violence is rampant,

None of my friends, family, or acquaintances in my entire life have been a victim of gun violence. I know of three people who committed suicide with their own guns (which is counted in “gun violence numbers”), but I don’t think that’s what you’re referring to.

I realize that’s a class issue, and that there is more gun violence in the US than in Europe, but it’s just not part of the day-to-day reality for most people.

> and the government is a dictatorship disguised as a democracy

Objectively not true, at least for now.

The system of checks and balances baked into the US system is failing tragically at the moment, but we are not at the level of a dictatorship yet.

> No one would actively choose to live there if it wasn’t for high salaries in certain fields.

I don’t think that this is universally true.

I know plenty of immigrants who make their money, retire, and choose to stay in the US. Some people go back, but a lot stay, and with purpose.

In another comment he talks about car insurance and food costs as if those are even major expenditures?

For a European moving to the US the only actual difference is health insurance, and even then, at low income you probably end up paying about the same or slightly more as European taxes, at a higher income you come out significantly ahead.

I also don't know a single person in the entirety of Europe/UK who doesn't own a car outside of the megacities like London, Paris etc, so it seems like a daft comparison given that car insurance rates are fairly similar in UK and US.

I don't know where exactly you are located but it sounds like a delusional place. Can't name one first-world country where getting a car is seen as 'a burden' and not 'a massive improvement of one's life'

No, I lived in Canada for 12 years, my family lived in the US for 6 years, and I regularly visited for work and pleasure. My first hand experience is that the US is a shithole.

> Pick one. Wages trend higher where it’s expensive. Wages trend lower where it’s not.

No. Slightly higher wages do not offset the incredible cost of living in cities. And likewise, if you live in a cheap area you still have to compete with everyone else for certain goods.

> Japan doesn’t have a safety net either. Is it “horrible”?

Japan does have a safety net.

> The US has a substantial safety net via charity

lol. Guess I'll die unless Jeff Bezos decides to give me money.

> Fwiw, health insurance is federally subsidized for low income folks.

It should be federally covered for everyone in the country.

> None of my friends, family, or acquaintances in my entire life have been a victim of gun violence

Yes, that's statistics for you. I'm Brazilian but I haven't been murdered even though lots of people are murdered in Brazil.

> I know of three people who committed suicide with their own guns

This is gun violence.

> it’s just not part of the day-to-day reality for most people.

It literally is. A ton of people own guns for "protection", because what if the other person has a gun. There are areas of cities you avoid because they're dangerous. If you get stopped in your car by a cop, there's a non-zero chance you will get shot. Kids literally have active shooter drills in school. It literally is part of day-to-day reality for most people. You're just in it so you don't realize it.

> The system of checks and balances baked into the US system is failing tragically at the moment, but we are not at the level of a dictatorship yet.

Yes you are. You get a choice between two parties who are basically the same. 70% of the country's vote is thrown away in federal elections. A vote in Wyoming counts for 4x more than a vote in California. Counties are gerrymandered so badly your vote doesn't matter even in local elections. Voter suppression is table stakes. That's not a democracy.

> This is gun violence.

Huh? Do you count people who hang themselves as victims of "rope violence"? Are people who kill themselves by sucking on the vehicle's tailpipe victims of car accidents? People who jump off of buildings are counted as construction accidents?

I'm curious roughly how old you are. I grew up in a fairly well off suburb of Seattle and am in my mid 30s. At some point around 2020 I realized that among my friends, parents/kids of friends, and coworkers there had been 8 or 9 incidents of newsworthy gun violence in my fairly close contacts. In a way I would consider myself as having grown up fairly sheltered and so it was a surprising realization.

Newsworthy used to avoid digression about mass shootings vs shootings, as you did about suicide. I think most were reported as mass shootings but I'm not certain now.

*posted from a new account while traveling, I'm not meaning to come off as a troll jumping in to focus on guns as a topic. It just stood out to me as I was reading.

50s.

Note that I grew up around guns, and most areas I have lived in while in the US are gun friendly.

In my family and peer group, gun safety was taught at a very young age, and it was taught strictly — guns weren’t to be treated like toys, don’t even appear to mishandle a gun (e.g., by flagging someone, even if obviously unloaded), and don’t wield a weapon unless you’re willing to pull the trigger and neutralize/kill them (n.b., avoiding the situation or running away is often the best option).

That said, I know of three people (not close to me, but in my wide circle of acquaintances) who have had their guns confiscated by LEOs, each time by a spurned spouse who alleged that they were in danger or the gun owner was a danger to themselves, and each time was a generous interpretation of the circumstances, imho.

> there had been 8 or 9 incidents of newsworthy gun violence in my fairly close contacts.

If you don’t mind me asking, was there a common theme to the incidents, or was it just random stuff?

> I'm not meaning to come off as a troll jumping in to focus on guns as a topic.

Quality comment. Not troll at all, imho.

For the incidents 3 were school/university shootings, 3 were in malls or similar public locations, and 1 was a house party. I don't know of any real common theme beyond gatherings of people. One I included in the earlier post was a domestic incident with several deaths and so it might not belong with the others.

I've noticed my 50-60 year old friends and their children in high school are more concerned about school shootings than I ever was. That may just be excessive concern due to increased news coverage, but I think there is also something about the availability of guns and teenage brains that is a real concern for them.

My personal experience has only been hearing gunshots nearby, although one incident involved a death. I don't think of myself as being in dangerous places but it has happened more than a few times. Guns and gun violence aren't something I think about much at all, but when I do it's surprising by how much it touches my life and my friend's lives.

All that said, one thing I do appreciate about this country is the variety of it. A friend who grew up sheep ranching told me they were allowed knives up to a certain length and guns at his school. Meanwhile mine would have had a lock down if students did the same thing.

As someone who was able to experience both perspectives (immigrated to the US and became a citizen) I cannot agree at all with this statement.

Before I transitioned into software, I had a very a fulfilling life being paid a mediocre salary as a graphic designer, supporting my family for years and investing plenty of time and money into my hobbies.

I don't know how to convince you of the very real experience I and many others here are having, and I don't really feel like it's a good use of my time. Feel free to keep holding onto your theories.

I’m glad your experience was good, but I don’t think that holds true for most people.

Imagine a household of two parents and one 17-year-old dependent. One parent works in this household and the 17-year-old has a part time job working 15 hours a week at $9/hr.

The parent who works has an income of $90,000. The 17-year-old makes ~$6,480 for working 48 weeks in the year. The other parent's income is $0. The median pre-tax personal income of this household is ~$6,480. Is this the right statistic to understand the wealth of this population?

Let's then add a household of one making $38k. Then another with one person making $22k and another making $110k. $0, $6.4k, $22k, $38k, $90k, $110k. So now our median personal income is $22k, but a median household income of $96.4k. Does the individual income really reflect the actual average purchasing power of the people in this community?

Going by the median personal income, you're including people who choose not to work or choose to only work few hours or a non-high-paying job potentially because they've got access to other forms of wealth. You're also including retirees who essentially just get by with a small pension or using their savings because they already own their home or live with family or whatever. Going by household income gives a much better understanding of wealth and purchasing power of inter-related people (even people not officially related).

> Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

I just came back from Chad. I've also spent time in Mozambique, Madagascar, Ethiopia, and South Africa. I'm pretty sure that the quality of life for those at median income is quite a bit worse in all of those places than in the US. So perhaps it's a bit hyperbolic to make a statement such as that, comparing the US to the rest of the world.

This thread is a bit reminiscent of the old days when the East German government used to claim - with a straight face - that the Berlin Wall was there in order to keep the westerners from overrunning the Workers' Paradise of the east.

Revealed preference shows that way, way, way, more people are trying to move into the US for economic reasons than are trying to leave.

Of course people want to move to the US, there’s decades of propaganda that they believe in. If they knew what their life would be like they would want to go somewhere else though.

That's why Bill G, Larry E, Jeff B, Mark Z, and Warren B have all left, because the US is a shithole (your word) and they can afford to go anywhere they want.

*Eritrea being the other...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income#Median_equivalis...

PPP-adjusted disposable income per capita (meaning, after all the necessary expenses) is by far the highest in the world: https://www.statista.com/statistics/725764/oecd-household-di...

Food spending as a portion of total expenditure is the lowest in the world: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-expenditure-share-gd...

Out of pocket health care expenditure as a share of GDP per capita is fairly low in comparison with other wealthy nations. Of European nations, only Monaco, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France are lower (and not by much!).

Transportation spending is indeed higher in the US than most of the developed world, but it doesn't eat away much at the increased disposable income per capita -- proportionate to household income we're talking about a few thousand dollars higher, and most of that is a very recent development as costs went way up over the last few years.

Ah yeah, surely that doesn't get insanely screwed up by America's near top of the list inequality?

The average salary for 9 homeless people and 1 CEO is $100k! Americans are definitely better off than Europe!

So while expensive holds, the low wages does not.

> no safety net There are safety nets in the US, just not one singular one nor is it always easy to apply or get benefits.

> car and health insurance are mandatory What countries don't have mandatory car insurance? Which ones don't have mandatory health insurance?(Universal health care doesn't count, as that is mandatory and taken from taxes.) Further, you can eschew health insurance in the US. Many people do(for various reasons, cost being one of them), it is just not that wise of a move as healthcare here is very expensive.

> gun violence is rampant We have pockets of areas where violence, not just gun, is rampant. I think a fairer analysis shows that it is the intersection of poverty and also drugs but I can not speak fully to this topic.

>the government is a dictatorship disguised as a democracy. Is this talking about the current government(Joe Biden?), the future administration(Donald Trump) or the administrative government(deep state?)?

I would agree that our government is not functioning as well as it could, I am also not sure if I have seen any other governments do any better.

Japan: Due process with police holding suspects and trying to force confessions.

South Korea: Recent Martial Law issue

France: Numerous protests occurring

Great Britain: Prime Minister just told all farmers "If you don't like the changes we have implemented, you can leave." Protests and counter protests with violence on both sides but police seem more focused on arresting people for social media posts.

I can't think of any recent issues from the Scandinavian countries but that is more likely due to my lack of exposure to media than lack of issues.

Please let me know which countries you find to be great.

Yes, Japan has a problem with allowing police to hold suspects for 3 weeks with no outside contact. But the reality is that very few people are ever arrested, to the point that nobody is afraid of police.

The same can’t be said for the US, where black parents have to tell their kids to not trust cops.

In my experience Japan is pretty great, so that’s where I live.

Other places I consider top tier are Holland and Scandinavia. Western Europe and developed Asia is tier 2, some of Eastern Europe and Canada are tier 3, USA and most of South America are tier 4, and any other countries I wouldn’t live in.

There is a good reason: profits and management pay. And greed is good, right?

> the problems are fixable

Fixable in theory. The US would first have to fix the underlying issue, which i.m.o. is government, media and even judicial capture by financial interests. Billionaires are now openly buying "shares" in those. I don't see any sign of it changing anytime soon. It only seems to get worse.

I think pharmaceutical, hospital, insurance and legal companies take all the money.

Then these folks can contribute to the economy constructively, somewhere else instead of being a giant helksink of cost. A win-win for everyone

I tried to find a health care CEO to comment, but they're all busy hiding from assassins.

Of course there's also a certain amount of waste, fraud, and abuse that inflate our costs.

https://peterattiamd.com/saumsutaria/

And there are no long queues for healthcare where I live. Service is cheap and insurance is nationalized.

It literally does. The costs of producing drugs are mostly borne by the US market, allowing drug manufacturers to charge less elsewhere while still investing the billions of dollars necessary to develop the drugs.

If it’s not for the benefit of the world, then it’s for its own benefit. Someone is profiting from this. There’s no charity happening here.

In fact, there are European-HQ'd pharma companies that also make the lion's share of their profits in the US - so that's certainly not benefiting the US.

If your government wants to give even more profits to big pharma then go ahead, just don’t claim everyone else should be thankful.

They did not claim that.

>> it’s good to let people die because they’re poor

They didn't say that either.

What dishonest responses...

- Why doesn’t this happen in other fields? Why don’t we pay 10x more for iPhones?

- When did the american public chose to engage in this magnanimous largesse?

More likely it’s a scam and regulatory capture

So it's a mix of pharma lobbying and also altruism.

For example the prohibition on importing drugs from other countries, or the rules that prevent medicare from negotiating price for drugs

After many years as a SWE without a college degree, I was able to buy a large 5 new 5 bedroom house within ~25 minutes of my employer in a beautiful city, I have a full time nanny for my children, a luxury car, padded retirement, and plenty of other money to buy what I want.

Where else can a smart, hardworking person achieve that who didn't come from generational wealth?

I'm not so unique either, I have some friends I've known who similarly didn't come from money and have been able to build up careers that support a wonderful lifestyle.

More importantly though, I have this lifestyle due to a job, one that is quite common (software engineer). I didn’t luck into some unique position or business opportunity.

And yes, software engineers stand to profit from moving to the US. There’s very few other jobs like it though.

When I was at a multinational corporation we had people from our EU and Asia offices fly out to the United States for a couple weeks at a time (their choice).

We'd go out to lunch every day and some of us would have them over for dinner at our houses to get to know them.

Many of them were young and had developed their idea of the US from Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok. They'd show up thinking they were walking into a hellscape of a country because that's what they saw on Reddit.

It was a rite of passage for all of them to slowly realize that the US in person is different than the US according to Reddit or TikTok.

One example that came up frequently was minimum wage. Reddit talks about the federal minimum wage all the time as if Americans everywhere are making minimum wage. We'd have to explain that our state minimum wage was significantly higher than the federal minimum wage. We'd also explain that it's basically impossible to find a job paying that minimum wage right now because even the post office and local fast food places were hiring at higher wages.

The list went on and on. I remember several coworkers who went from thinking the US was a horrible country to asking us to sponsor their moves to the US.

> No one would actively choose to live there if it wasn’t for high salaries in certain fields.

That's a chronically online take, but it's completely wrong. Immigration demand to the United States is extremely high, even for jobs that don't pay high salaries.

And of course your multinational coworkers want to move there. They’d make a lot of money to insulate them from the awfulness. Not to mention a huge raise compared to working in their home country.

How long did you live in the US? And what part of Canada did you live in to be near the US?

Most of the Canadian border is sparsely populated on the US side. So I can't see how being in Canada would give you much of a feel for median/mean U.S. life.

And Canada is relevant because I visited the US multiple times per year for both work and pleasure and got to see what living in different cities would be like. And it was awful.

I would complement that it's completely wrong as long as you're unaware of the hidden health hazards the US poses (which are a consequence of low regulation). These won't affect your day to day life and thus are easily overseen, and are invisible - unless they start affecting you years down the line. Most people are uneducated in terms of en

Examples are the superfund sites in California, the high sugar added to most foods, etc.

Even if you live in the top 1% it's hard to escape these - if your company office is near a superfund site (eg Nvidia HQ) then good luck, your money won't help with that. Yeah you can buy organic foods but if you're going to a restaurant with friends you'll still have to deal with bad quality ingredients.

I'm often amazed how nad the internet it is too when I talk to friends in Silicon Valley.

Bottom line: your high earning salary can only get you so far to offset and insulate you from the health hazards living in a low regulation society impose

https://www.statista.com/chart/30815/top-destination-countri...

Nationalistic flamebait in particular is not welcome here (regardless of nation).

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Having lived in the EU (Netherlands) and the US (California), I would say the inequality in the US is much worse. Especially in larger cities. To the point where I sometimes wonder if I'm living in a "developed" country.

The thing I tend to always fall back on is the last part of my comment. You don't want to be poor in the US; there is no bottom. Whereas if you're poor in Europe usually there's a minimum standard that you'll fall to.

For most people the relevant factor I think is what the QoL in their cohort is like. I say it's a bit of a wash, because basically, if we limit the discussion to EU and US, if you're well off the US is probably better, if you're poor Europe is probably better, if you're in the middle then there are trade offs.

If I had a passport for the US, I’d move yesterday.

I'm saying as someone from Asia having lived equal number of years in both US and EU.

How do you figure? US has SNAP, Medicaid, UI, TANF (for families with children), Section 8 housing, SSD, SSI, Childcare Assistance amongst other programs.

These aren’t much of course but are something.

Ahem... Have you seen the standards in the UK get diluted year after year post-Brexit?

There's more to the story than the listed examples.

Environmental standards dictate your risk of developing various diseases later in life so are a big difference in quality of life. E.g., if you drink tap water from UK vs other countries, with high PFAS levels, where it essentially comes from a spring in the mountains - that's a huge difference.

Another difference is job security which again has a huge impact. Consider France: If you get an unlimited contract at a company you're essentially set for life (unless the company goes busy, or you mess up in a very bad way). Compare that to the scare many US dev employees hat to ensure in spring 2023 when all the big tech companies were doing layoffs. Also, France had a much shorter work week.

So, no, quality of life doesn't even compare remotely between these countries. Only perhaps for the upper 3% it is similar - if you're an average tech dev, your life will be much much nicer in Paris than in a random SF/LA suburb.

I do think that if you're going to live in a Big City(tm) then the old world just does cities better. Then again I haven't visited SF, just NYC.

Job security isn't something I've ever cared about in my life. Starting from zero (no parental wealth), beyond about age 20-22 I've always had a minimum of six months savings, who cares, just find another job. It's business, you're not married. If you're an actual adult and you need a job continuously to get by you've fucked up somewhere.

It kind of just feels like a leverage decision, anyone middle class or above has a net worth in the x00k's, it's just about whether you have anything liquid vs locked up in home value etc.

If you have 0 in the bank then unless you're in North Korea or something you have bigger issues than "which country has better QoL" in my opinion, you need to work on yourself first.

Also, for most folks here its trivial to be independent and successful financially if alone, past decades have been good in ways mankind has not experienced ever before. Get 2 or more kids into the equation of life with everything that they bring and challenge goes up tremendously. But as said, there are rewards, and most of them can't be achieved in any other way (that is coming from somebody doing fair amount of extreme sports, mostly in mountains).

Also, these matters are not within margin of error. Quality of life is way more important than cashflow once one is not poor. Also in Europe extremely expensive matters like universities for kids or more intense healthcare are simply non-topic when it comes to finances, you simply need less money to have similar quality of life and peace of mind. You are always just 1 error, often not even yours, to have quality and quantity of your remaining life massively dependent on quality of the healthcare, or just bad luck with genetic lottery. If you feel invincible now, give it a decade or two and you will reconsider.

Its also really uneven. It contained in 2016 6 of the lowest GDP per captia regions of the entire EU.

However we should of course treat GDP as a suspect measure of living standards. Whilst those people living in those areas will tend to have curtail life chances, they did at the time have access to _good_ healthcare and housing (in certain circumstances)

An underrated benefit of the markedly higher standard of living in the US is that people can choose to trade standard of living for quality of life if they wish. American culture seems to preference maxing standard of living but that is optional, and there are plenty of people that make other choices.

The US is an incredible place to live if you have valuable skills, and a below average place to live if you don't.

Look at what's happening in France for proof that this is just not sustainable. The US has a massive advantage tough,their currency is the global currency accepted and needed everywhere that is backed by the US army. Much less so the Euro.

The cost of all these social programs has to come from somewhere and currently the majority of these costs are shouldered by the middle class that is being squeezed to the max and speaking as someone from the middle class, I can assure you that having a couple of extra weeks of holiday and more job safety (if you are into that sort of thing) is not worth 55% to 65% of my gross income.

Even universal healthcare is crumbling now.

At some point the EU will need to get it's productivity up and become competitive once again or all this quality of life will have to go as it won't be financially possible to continue on this path.

I feel like this is only the case for a very narrow demographic - the young, bicycle-riding, sex-having mid-20s college grad still trying to figure out their calling in life while living frugally without a care.

It really sucks being 40 and still earning like 57k EUR or whatever.

Is this a joke?

60k in France means you earn more than 92% of the population.

60k in Italy means you earn more than 96% of the population.

60k in Germany means you earn more than 80% of the population.

There is no rule that life should only suck for a minority of people and that most people are happy. It may well be that the 90% of people earning <60k EUR live generally miserable lives, and for the top 10%, "the EU is number one" and they post about it on Hacker News.

Why? If that's enough money for the quality of life you want for the cost of living you have, what does the number matter?

I'd imagine that Europe is at or near the peak in terms of its quality of life.

At least some of the European lifestyle has been due to peace on the Continent. Up until now peace in Europe has been funded by US taxpayers. The situation in Georgia and in Ukraine is what you get when European affairs are left to Europeans. Without the US providing military aid to Ukraine, Ukraine would have fallen and you'd have Putin banging on your back door.

Additionally, the EU's inability to supply Ukraine with basic military equipment such as artillery shells is indicative of how Europe is devoid of industrial capacity and couldn't rally in its own defense if it had to.

What are you smoking?

>Additionally, the EU's inability to supply Ukraine with basic military equipment such as artillery shells is indicative of how Europe is devoid of industrial capacity and couldn't rally in its own defense if it had to.

https://www.president.pl/storage/image/core_files/2024/11/12...

I was talking basic equipment like: 155mm artillery shells. In that case, unfortunately, the facts are not on your side.

The majority of 155mm shells that are sent to Ukraine come from the US. The US has increased production of 155mm shells 6x this year alone. The same is true for body armor and small arms. Europe cannot ramp production in almost any category.

Then there's this. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1364467/ukraine-weapon-d...

PPP suffers from the same problem that "basket of goods" CPI suffers from in that it doesn't account for differences in quality:

- of course a car costs more today than it did in 1980, it's a far better car

- of course a loaf of bread costs more in California than it does in India - I have certain guarantees about the pesticide levels in the wheat, the accuracy of the labeling, and my ability to seek damages from the legal system in case I chip my tooth on a stone, that I don't have in India

At best, PPP tells you something about the differences in cost of labor. But labor isn't everything you buy.

A maxed out iPhone costs RMB 13999 in China, which is about USD 1925. The same iPhone costs USD 1599 in the US. In Brazil it costs the equivalent of USD 2565. PPP is still very much relevant.

PPP is useless misleading nonsense.

So PPP usually is a boost to the poorer countries. The post you're responding to claims that this is less and less relevant because the things they want to buy are global in nature. The fact that these things cost more actually reinforces that point.

Those 600 million cannot afford to buy real estate even at the crashed price.

The going rate for a 2bhk in a tier 2/3 is still $100-300k, which is still unaffordable given that median urban household income is $6k and median rural household income is $3k.

And this is the crux of the problem in China - all this "overproduction" isn't necessarily due to some grand strategy, it's due to a lack of consumers because salaries are too low.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not a communist. But it’s clear to me, especially when you look at how the middle class is struggling worldwide, that capitalism in its current form isn’t sustainable.

What we need is some kind of “Capitalism 2.0” or “Capitalism++”.

It makes no sense that someone with 300 billion dollars pays less (or even nothing) than a person that makes 100k per year. And this happens on ALL countries.

EDIT for those downvoting: just watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM and then tell me why I am wrong.

You did especially well if you had assets bought with borrowed money since your gains were leveraged and your loan principal inflated away.

They are models.

And even on an individual level, PPP struggles with accuracy, because things are only ever roughly equivalent. There's a reason why so many individual people are trying to move from China and India to the US and EU, despite all the personal financial disadvantages of doing so.

But the point stands that market-exchange GDP matters more when it comes to comparing the relative strength of countries, rather than individuals, since it endows the government with greater purchasing strength. An era of trade wars might test this theory, but the ramifications of absolute isolationism would be far more complex than that.

It's important to point that if you were moving into Russia as an expat, you've already avoided much of the opportunity costs of building your career there first and instead going in having "made it" in another country.

If you are starting out in China or Russia, it's much harder relatively to climb to a similar position within those countries than in USA. Alot of expats might like how much their money goes in China with good CoL, but I'd be suprised if they were to send their children through the conventional route of the Gaokao and ultracompetitive Chinaese University Admissions and labour market. Getting into the Ivy or Berekely or a State Flagship and then FAANG is cakewalk in contrast.

?

That's demonstrably false cause the global super-powers (i.e. the US, Russia and China, maybe India, too) mostly depend on their internal markets only when it comes to their war industry and to paying their soldiers. When it comes to that PPP is a lot closer to the truth on the ground.

By "what a country can accomplish on the world stage", I meant a more holistic view of what a country can do, such as investing, R&D, exploration, etc. (and also military).

This is what people seem to misunderstand about PPP. PPP applies for daily/internal market goods. The cost of milk, eggs, clothing, etc. Which is definitely important. On a more macro scale it also compares a VW Vento in Mexico with a VW Jetta in the US...two particularly different cars with ~6000usd gap in price.

In other words, it compares basic goods for living; fudges some basic "luxury" goods, and pretends that that's representative of lifestyles. It ignores (in Mexico, for example) the fact that consumer electronics are ~20-40% more expensive (if available at all), access to truly equivalent basic luxuries (a VW Jetta for a VW Jetta) is still slightly more expensive, access to equivalent security/infrastructure/business guarantees nigh impossible to receive, and just the vast gulf of wealth inequality that exists, etc.

PPP GDP is useful to compare, particularly politically because if the cost of goods in a country is lower people are more likely to be healthy / comfortable with less income. I think it is a little dubious when you use PPP to compare th3e size of two economies because 1) you are taking two approximate measurements and multiplying them 2) countries with lower GDP / person typically have higher relative purchasing power.

In "rich country" (high GDP /person) you can charge a lot for a cup of coffee. In "poorer country" you are likely to charge less. Therefore you can say that person in the poorer country is not as badly off as the absolute numbers suggest. However, if "poorer country" got to the same GDP / person purchasing parity might end up being almost the same. Or, countries with lots of poor regions will have a better PPP, but the cost of living in the places where people have high income may have similar costs.

And in general the most valuable purchasing power differences don't happen for the most valuable and traded goods. An equivalent airplane is going to cost as much in India as the USA, on average. At some point the absolute number is also important.

I like energy production and consumption a lot more, modern economies pretty much come down to using energy to either transfer or modify goods, services or data.

Of course the per-capita numbers favour the US still. But by absolute figures, the crown goes to Asia. And per capita the Europeans can realistically be said to be behind China for policy making purposes, the trends are clear.

which is all well and good, except when you have increases in efficiencies in energy consumption, which would show up as a drop.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

So yeah, we are getting poorer by the day and on the brink of a major economic crisis. Just look at what is happening in Germany.

Currently this also simulatenously gives those contries more money, so they can be even bigger pain in the ass in the future.

The sooner this flow can stop, the better.

European ICE vehicles are losing out in China because people there don't want to buy any more gas vehicles, at least most people are getting there. VWAG is losing marketshare in every segment that I see. It's not green power that is killing them, it's not many good cheap vehicles that are killing them - gas or EV.

Gas prices in europe are no joke, and considering we are basically in a hybrid war with one of the biggest oil producers for europe, getting rid of energy dependence would be great for europe, and having cheap EV's would be key to that.

American car companies have gotten addicted to selling huge more expensive cars as a way to keep profits up.

PPP is cope.

Russia literally talks about taking over the countries around them, bites off pieces and then subverts the countries that are left. That was all before the first piece of Ukraine was taken, Crimea.

NK - goal to destroy SK, has a big army and nukes. Worth trying to stop them.

China - Chains says the mere existence of Taiwan is worth destroying them. Also taking over the south china sea on the stupid dashed line that says they own the ocean down there. Dictatorships can't stand a functional democracy right next door.

India - if they don't plan to destroy the countries around them and take them over, then good on them. The US has been basically ignoring the fact that India is on a slow road to make their Muslim and other non-hindi citizens fail in every way in their society.

India said FU to the world and has been happy buying a lot of Russian oil that's under embargo. No one attacked them. The world isn't so simple as "western countries destroy all large growing competitors".

PPP in the real world is a bit of a fraud, at least in the way people commonly use it. A lot of things you compare between two countries are in fact very different in reality. You might actually end up paying a lot more in nominal dollars for a lot of things in countries which are supposedly "cheap" to get not even the same quality. I find that the cost to maintain the same quality of life between different countries ends up being much more similar between countries than the statistics would have you believe.

I'm in a relatively poor country at the moment. On paper meat costs a fraction of what it does in the US, but what you get at the local market tastes absolutely terrible, uneatable to my spoiled western standards. I think they literally feed the animals trash. To get quality meat you need to go to specialty stores in the rich neighborhoods that caters to the country's elite. There it's actually about 10% more than what I pay at a US supermarket and it still is not as good. The same thing goes for housing, household goods, clothes, etc. In many countries you pay a huge premium for goods imported from the west, and the selection is often quite limited.

This has been my experience everywhere in the world. Excluding a few cities where you pay a premium just on the basis of the local job market, you more or less get what you pay for no matter where you go. The differences that don't fit into spreadsheets are quite significant and almost fully account for the pricing differences from location to location.

My point is that the cost of things is more similar than people think, not what you should or should not buy as an individual, and that these adjusted PPP numbers do not make for valid comparisons. 99% of the time when PPP is used in the popular press someone is trying to bend the numbers to distort the real economic situation to try to further whatever narrative they're pushing. You will never see these people making the argument that Alabama is poised to overtake New York economically because on the average salary you can afford a larger apartment in Mobile than in Manhattan. To me these arguments sound equally ridiculous.

GDP PPP is meaningless for both geopolitical power and what it means for the average citizen.

The average citizen in EU is much better than the one in China/India despite what the PPP numbers suggest as GDP per captaincy matters more.

China and Russia resort to bartering due to US sanctions because GDP matters, and not GDP PPP [1].

PPP should be used to compare only similar countries like USA/Canada/UK or those in EU. Or countries in SEA.

[1] https://www.intellinews.com/china-russia-to-reintroduce-bart...

I mean, the PPP numbers say the average citizen in the EU is way better off thant he average in India or China, so eh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

Rent was also super cheap.

On the other hand iPhones were pretty expensive. Enchiladas were super expensive too.

These aggregated stats have to guess what you’ll buy and base their estimate off of that. Your actual financial situation will be very dependent on what you need to buy.

The history books say Western countries abandoned conquest many decades ago. The leaders who initiated colonialism are long dead. Nowadays all we have are handwavey analogies to colonialism when someone wants to be provocative.

Countries aren't people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXz0kbMKPu0