> University is expensive as fck.

One thing that's hard to understand from the outside is that almost nobody actually pays those mind-blowing $60K/year tuition prices. US universities charge on a sliding scale based on the applicants' families' ability to pay.

For an extreme example: Harvard's tuition is nominally $60K per year, but for families earning $200K or less it's $0. Many prestigious universities follow similar patterns resulting in a large percentage of students paying no tuition, the middle ground of students paying some fraction, and a small number of students from wealthy families subsidizing everyone else.

For those who don't attend the prestigious universities with large endowments, average in-state state-run University tuition is under $10K, though again a large percentage of students receive some form of aids or grants to bring that number down even further.

That said, it's entirely possible or someone to go out and sign up for bad investment private university with no aid and rack up $300K of debt by graduation if they're not paying attention to anything, but it's a myth to think that everyone does this.

The average US college student graduates with around $30-40K debt depending on whether they go public or private, which isn't all that hard to pay off when our wages are already significantly higher than other countries. We're especially lucky in tech where our compensation differential relative to other countries more than makes up for the cost of university education.

One thing that's hard to understand from the outside is that almost nobody actually pays those mind-blowing $200K hospital bills. US hospitals charge on a sliding scale based on the applicants' families' ability to pay.

(I don’t mean to belittle your comment about universities which is factual and helpful. I’m just pointing out that US education system is just as fucked up as the US healthcare system the OP is talking about.)

Also very true, and a good point.

Even people in the US don't understand why those $200K hospital bills aren't real.

Insurance providers (including government programs) have a fixed limit for what they pay for procedures. They pay min(billed_amount, allowed_amount) so providers don't want to risk leaving money on the table by having billed_amount < allowed_amount. To ensure this doesn't happen, they bill an arbitrarily high number with the expectation that insurance will lower it down to some much smaller number.

So every time you see posts on the internet where people talk about their "$200K hospital bill" they're always talking about that arbitrarily high value. If you have to pay cash for some reason, they will reduce the value to the cash pay amount which is in line with the insurance paid numbers.

Nobody ever pays those high hospital bill amounts.

That depends a lot on your insurance. For example, our out of pocket for my son's birth was somewhere in the neighborhood of $10k after insurance. I've met tons of people who would be bankrupted by that amount. What you're describing isn't true for people on High Deductible Health Plans, and those plans are a bit of a racket because they're frequently paired with HSAs where the employer gets to pocket anything left in the account at the end of the year. My son was essentially unplanned, in the sense that we gave up on trying to have a kid but weren't using birth control because over the previous 3 years we had not had a successful pregnancy. So an HSA would have been no help for us.

HSAs are triple tax advantaged retirement accounts. Not taxed on contribution, gains, or withdrawals for qualified expenses. In the worst case it becomes like a pretax IRA because after age 65 you will not pay a penalty on non qualified expenses - but qualified expenses tend to increase with age. For many it should be their primary retirement account. Even for people with certain chronic conditions (not in perfect health), depending on how good/expensive the PPO offered by the employer, it might still work out better to do HDHP/HSA. You can get as many basically free HSA accounts from Fidelity.

An FSA really has nothing to do with an HSA.

HSA funds are meant to roll over. Your employer generally should not be pocketing whatever's left over in the account. The idea is that many (most?) people are better off with a lower premium and higher deductible given that most years (for most people) aren't characterized by high medical expenditures; HDHP+HSA is closer in nature to actual "insurance", rather than a structured financing plan for health care.

FSA's not HSA's are use-it-or-lose-it.

If you have a FSA I strongly suggest that you get an HSA instead.

https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/hsa-vs-...

A lot of people with FSAs will have insurance that disqualifies having an HSA.

I have the paranoid idea that they designed FSAs in such a goofy way for budget scoring and it drives me nuts.

>A lot of people with FSAs will have insurance that disqualifies having an HSA.

Which should be illegal. It should be only HSA across the board. Its nonsensical that this is a thing.

I'd love an HSA, but I can't due to my plan (can't do a high deductible plan for $reasons).

I think there may be some loophole in setting up an independent HSA but I haven't looked into it enough, only recently heard of such a scheme

FSA is just a 30%-ish discount on medical expenses. It is useful for eye glasses and such. A lot of QoL services qualify for FSA, including weight loss coaches and therapy.

Heck my (prescription) meta ray bans were paid for in part with FSA funds.

The preceding comment was discussing HDHPs, which depend on HSAs.

You think it's obvious that "lesuorac" was scoping their comment to people that have an FSA with an HDHP?

Doesn't read that way to me.

It's obvious in that they specifically referred both to HSAs (not FSAs), and to HDHPs, which depend on HSAs, not FSAs. FSAs are not a kind of HSA.

So, yeah. Little bit.

Which they? The comment I replied to literally says:

"If you have a FSA I strongly suggest that you get an HSA instead."

Did you mean to reply to them?

You are I are both commenting on a subthread started by a comment that included "What you're describing isn't true for people on High Deductible Health Plans, and those plans are a bit of a racket because they're frequently paired with HSAs where [...]", none of which is true. I don't care about FSAs and am not trying to argue with anybody about them, but that preceding comment is very wrong about HSAs and HDHPs.

The post I was replying to originally used the word "FSA" in the locations that they currently use "HSA".

My post does seem a bit weird after their edit but at least one person learned something.

HSA is your money like a retirement account is. It’s one of the most tax advantaged ways to save money.

More or less all high income earners who do not have a chronic health issue are better off choosing a HDHP paired with a HSA - especially if the company provides any sort of matching benefit. Keep that account as an additional retirement account and pay out of pocket for most healthcare needs.

Think of it also as actual insurance vs. a pre-paid health plan.

The math of course changes for folks who are not highly paid, or have expensive chronic health conditions that would result in maxing out the deductible each year.

You are likely thinking of a FSA which is use it or lose it.

Note that another word that straightforwardly describes this behavior is "fraud". Medical bills aren't like a bill from a car mechanic where there is a contract (either written or at least implied because the mechanic will readily give you estimates and quotes).

In the medical context, the only contract in the picture is possibly between the medical provider and the healthcare management organization. It would be fine if providers only sent the fake bills to them as they're both willingly playing this perverse game.

But the problem is when they send their fake numbers to patients as if they're some kind of legitimate bill. Medical bills to patients are presented on a "cost reimbursement" basis - helping you cost them this much, so you are responsible for reimbursing them. By inflating the numbers 3-5x they are straight up lying about the costs they incurred. That's fraud.

If the bills aren't real, why are there half a million medical bankruptcies every year?

Why do 41% of Americans have some form of medical debt?

https://www.kff.org/health-costs/kff-health-care-debt-survey...

Yes, but Americans have an incredible amount of student loan debt too. Something like $1.7 trillion. If you can get into one of the best schools in the world that has a huge endowment, then sure, you'll get grants and whatnot. It may even be free, in the case of Harvard. But then there's a long tail of schools that are honestly not that great, charging only slightly less than the top schools per year, with smaller aid packages, and kids sign up for crazy loans because they think they have to.

Personally I think the government should get out of the business of these loans, fully fund state schools to make them all free, and let the private schools and the private banking market deal with the rest of it. We were going down that path in CA until Reagan killed it when he was governor. [1]

[1] https://newuniversity.org/2023/02/13/ronald-reagans-legacy-t...

Public service loan forgiveness (PSLF) exists and a huge number of people in medical professions actually take advantage of it. I know of multiple medical students and residents with over $500k in debt that are in the process of having all of their loans forgiven after 10 years in training and a total cost of approximately $75–150k for their entire education. Sure, that's still a decent amount of money, but it's very much worth the ROI.

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

How successful are those people being?

IIUC, there was a bit of a scandal where the companies the DoE where paying to manage those 10 year forgiveness plans where giving incorrect advice and so a lot of people aren't going to qualify.

https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bece...

Anecdotally, it's worked out for a number of friends and people on /r/PSLF. There's definitely poor communication around PSLF, but it is a real program.

Lots of hospitals are nonprofits, and doctors can make lots of money working at hospitals. There is no income cap for PSLF IIRC, as long as you're working for a qualifying entity (including nonprofits).

American student loan debt skews sharply towards the top income quartile.

Yes, granted it was over 20 years ago, but I came from a pretty broke household in the United States, and I went to a cheap state school instead of a nicer university or private school because I couldn’t imagine borrowing for school. The folks I know who were much more well off, seem to have had no problem borrowing what I considered to be exorbitant sums to both pay for school and live off of.

In a redistributive sense it is very much like American homeowners complaining about their mortgage debt.

Yes, but I also know plenty of people that can't afford the loans that they have. I have friends and family that after a decade or more of repayment still owe the same amount they did when they got out of school. Some aren't paying theirs at all. It's going to be a problem, as only a third of borrowers are actually making payments [1], and debt forgiveness isn't going to solve the root of the problem.

Of course we can blame them for taking $60k out for studying something that will never get them a good paying job, but these are 18 year olds. I was lucky in that my parents are immigrants and were like "absolutely not, this is crazy, go to the flagship state school and study science". I paid off my $24k in loans in a couple years. Many didn't take that path.

[1] Bloomberg archive link: https://archive.ph/IBuzw

> For an extreme example: Harvard's tuition is nominally $60K per year, but for families earning $200K or less it's $0. Many prestigious universities follow similar patterns resulting in a large percentage of students paying no tuition, the middle ground of students paying some fraction, and a small number of students from wealthy families subsidizing everyone else.

As someone from a country (Sweden) that to a larger extent has decreased people’s reliance on their families, and grown the welfare state instead, it’s weird to think that your parents wealth or income should have any impact on things like tuition, once you’ve reached the age of majority

Once I finished high school, my parents had nothing to do with my business as far as any institutions were concerned, and vice versa. But uni was tax-funded and free at the point of use. And when they get too old to care for themselves, it will likely be the government supporting them financially, not me (unless I strike it rich first, in which case I suppose they’ll spend their sunset years in style)

There's always this subtext that Europeans solve these problems just by caring more about human values, but the truth usually involves interesting sets of tradeoffs. So in Europe the norm, besides free university, is extensive tracking: in the US, your choice of major is essentially a consumer decision, where in many European systems it's fixed at a relatively early age by your performance on things like the Abitur.

I'm not saying the European system is bad. Certainly there's a lot to complain about with a system that asks 18 year olds to make life-defining decisions about both their career and their financial prospects. But the differences do go beyond whether or not you're on the hook for your tuition.

I agree that European schools are heavily tracked, but I’m not seeing the connection between that and the tuition costs.

It seems like these are unrelated issues.

Does the wider freedom of choice in US education somehow cause college to cost more? Because more people want to go?? I don’t get it.

> Europeans solve these problems just by caring more about human values

In the US, to make tuition free, you'd have to answer the question "who gets to enter university programs". In Europe, the answer isn't "everybody".

I can mainly speak for Sweden, but basically the answer there actually is ”everybody who wants to and meets the minimum requirements (essentially having graduated high school)”

Sweden has higher gross enrolment in tertiary education than the US, and a larger proportion of older students (people who go back later in life to progress their education or change paths)

I’ve heard that in countries like Germany people are often ”locked in” by choices they’ve made at an early age. There’s an element of that in Sweden too (more vocationally-focused high school programs may not give you all the courses that you need to enter all university programs), but that is not too onerous to overcome if you change your mind later (you can do ”foundational studies” to bridge the gap, or just sit exams to prove that you’re qualified)

Edit: but it’s maybe also to your point that universities have limited seats, just like everywhere. Maybe your high school grades or score at the equivalent of the SAT aren’t high enough to study mathematics at the top-rated institution even if you’re qualified, because there are too many people ahead of you. But you will be able to go to uni somewhere to study something

I don't quite understand what you mean by "tracking". Speaking of Germany, because you mentioned the Abitur. Yes your ability to enter certain universities and studies depends on your performance during the Abitur. That is to enter e.g. law or medicine at you chosen university immediately (there is a wait time multiplier, so you can wait if you don't get in immediately) requires a certain grade point average. However I don't understand how this is different from SAT scores in the US (except for maybe the ability to bypass SAT requirements by being super wealthy, but I'm not sure that would be a good thing). In my experience kids in the US tend to be obsessed about their university choices much earlier than the ones in Europe.

Also talking about Germany, unless things changed dramatically in the last few years, most natural sciences and engineering degrees don't require a grade point average.

>The average US college student graduates with around $30-40K debt depending on whether they go public or private, which isn't all that hard to pay off when our wages are already significantly higher than other countries. We're especially lucky in tech where our compensation differential relative to other countries more than makes up for the cost of university education.

This is such a weird excuse for bad policy. Making more money[0][1] somehow means its okay to saddle students with an average debt of $30-40 thousand dollars. A downpayment on a first home would be a much better use of that money, for example.

Really, the average US citizen is nickel and dimed to death with this sort of thing, from health insurance, to dental, to lots of other required but not accounted for as required costs (like cars and associated car insurance).

Not to mention, we have little safety net in the US, you're really going to hurt if you have a bad run of luck after job loss. No qualms in allowing people to become homeless as a matter of policy.

If someone were to ask me, I would say that we in the US have it completely backwards in respect to how the average citizenry is expected to live. Its not thriving, its constantly having some kind of lingering potential disaster to plan for.

[0]: which I sincerely wonder about the true veracity of this statistic

[1]: Don't forget too, that more and more struggle to pay their student loans each year and the trend has generally been that its getting worse, not better.

What policy are you referring to? Cost-conscious students can (and most should) stay in-state, do their first year or two at a city/community college (my kids knocked out core STEM classes there --- over summers, not for cost reasons --- and found the teaching markedly better), and then transfer into a commuter university. The "average" student debt owed primarily by the top income quintile in this country and captures the cost of out-of-state selective university, which are a luxury good.

>What policy are you referring to?

The implicit policy that student loans are an acceptable and benign form of debt for the average citizen. Everything said after is predicated on this idea.

I don't think thats good policy.

> almost nobody actually pays those mind-blowing $60K/year tuition prices

This is not true at all.()

You quote tuition at the school with the highest endowment in the country. The college cost situation is absolutely still high at the less endowed second tier, and “ordinary” (non-generational wealth, two full time earner) families are paying full price.

() Except in the sense that “almost nobody” goes to any of these schools, comparing to the 50k enrollment at large public institutions.

> For those who don't attend the prestigious universities with large endowments, average in-state state-run University tuition is under $10K, though again a large percentage of students receive some form of aids or grants to bring that number down even further.

This is an extremely important point that keeps getting ignored. People keep comparing _public_ schools in Europe to _private_ schools in America.

To further your point, just about every place has a community college where you can do the first two years of your education for about half the price of the state school. The total tuition for this route (2 years at community college, 2 years at a state school) is going to average just under $30,000 for 4 years. Which is definitely in the "work your way through college" range.

And this is before any financial assistance, which the majority of students receive.

Foreigners talking about how crazy expensive college is in the U.S., but they're likely mislead by people who took out large loans to go to extremely expensive private colleges. There's an easy way to stop this kind of debt - don't allow federal loans for private institutions. But no one is really interested in stopping it.

>People keep comparing _public_ schools in Europe to _private_ schools in America

Not necessarily the case. In Sweden private schools are paid for by the government, assuming they have been approved by the CSN (central agency for study-support(rough translation))

I don't know how that works in the rest of Europe, because I've never studied outside of Sweden. But in Sweden it doesn't really matter if the school is private or public. The only instance you have to pay yourself is if the school isn't sufficiently good to pass muster.

Also, again in Sweden at least, but possibly other parts of Europe as well, the tuition isn't effectively $0. The government will pay any student enrolled in higher education a monthly support. Back in my day it was 10k SEK per month (roughly 1000usd), no strings attached. Not sure how it currently stands but I imagine it hasn't changed much.

This money is meant to ease the burden on students, so that they can put more focus on studies.

"Working your way through collage" over here means you'll have a 20% job to pay for your cost of living minus the 10k SEK mentioned above.

The difference in cost of study is quite real, even taking your comment into account

It's very funny to see the US perspective here. $30-40k debt for a new graduate of an average university sounds crazy expensive to virtually everyone outside of the USA, I would bet. I paid $0 for my university, as did most of my colleagues, but even if I had had to pay the tuition, it would have amounted to $4k total for a 4-year bachelor's degree, or $6.5k total for a 6-year bachelor's + master's, at one of my country's premier state universities (and consider that private universities are a joke here, just diploma mills).

Granted, none of the top universities in my country even makes it to the top 500 in the world, so maybe this isn't a completely fair comparison? Actually, it's expensive by some other EU country standards - public schools in France and Germany, including PSL (ranked 28th in the world) and TUM (ranked 22nd), are free for all EEA applicants, with some nominal yearly registration fees (amounting to $1k in total for a 4-year degree). A more expensive school, like ETH Zurich (rank 7 in the world), is $4500 total for a 4-year degree if you're a Swiss citizen or EEA citizen with a Swiss work permit; it's triple that for an international student.

So yeah, when we say "university is crazy expensive in the USA (and probably UK too)", we're actually talking about the $30-40k numbers you're looking at. $200k and so are almost inconceivable to us.

> $30-40k debt for a new graduate of an average university sounds crazy expensive to virtually everyone outside of the USA

That's the cost over 4 years. Most people will be able to get financial assistance to help pay for that and you easily manage to make 30k (or less with grants) in 4 years to pay for school. People making below 35k per year are going to pay practically zero taxes. You can work about 15 hours a week making $10 per or full time over the summer to pay for that.

There's no need to take on any debt.

People in the US make considerably more money than those in the EU and, generally pay less taxes so there's a lot more disposable income available. I think people here prefer to be able to just get what they can pay for rather than hope the government will let them pursue the education they want (there are aptitude tests and quotas in some EU countries).

It's not really better ir worse, it's just different.

There are aptitude tests of some kind and quotas for all good universities everywhere in the world. Harvard won't admit 100k students in a year if they randomly decide to join, nor will they accept a student without a stellar record (apart from legacy admissions, of course). And I would bet you whatever you want that you'll get a much better salary fresh out of college in Europe with a bachelor's from the Technical University of Munich (total cost: around $2000 if you're a citizen of an EU country), or TU Delft in the Netherlands (total cost: around $9000) than you will in the states with a degree from a random college that doesn't even have to bother with admissions tests.

Sure, if you're a brilliant young mind and can get into Harvard and qualify for assistance with your tuition, you're set for life, basically, in a way no EU university can match. But for the vast majority of the population, the outcomes are significantly better with the EU system.

Also note that the gigantic tuitions at US universities are actually a relatively recent phenomenon (and a similar thing happened in the UK). Even in the 50s and 60s, tuitions were much closer to the current EU norm.

We're not talking about private universities, we're talking about public universities that have plenty of room for whatever major you choose.

Any good university will have a limit to how many students it can absorb. A professor can't teach 1000 students in a class, not well. So you either have a university that can accept ~any number of students and function as mostly a diploma mill; or a university that actually cares about teaching students and thus must have a selection process.

Of course, there is some room between these extremes, especially for unpopular subjects where you hardly even get enough students to fill up a professor's time. And in those cases, you'll also see that EU systems will essentially accept anyone. Typically, for uncompetitive universities and subjects (majors), the only condition is to have passed (gotten at least 50%) for the local equivalent of the SATs - a very low bar.

My mom was a school bus driver and my dad was a laborer retired on disability. I got zero aid except for loans.

I went to a 2nd tier in-state school 20 years ago and even that cost 10k a year by the time housing, food, and books, were paid for.

Plenty of people who can barely avoid it end up paying a large chunk of $.

>> University is expensive as fck.

While healthcare is brought up all the time this is usually ignored. The idea of parents saving a 'college fund' for their child is something I only know from movies. It's such a strange idea that access to education would be something you either need to be able to afford or need to get a 'scholarship' for (another strange concept).

> something I only know from movies. It's such a strange idea that access to education would be something you either need to be able to afford or need to get a 'scholarship' for (another strange concept).

Like most things learned from movies, you're not getting the full picture. Most US universities charge on a sliding scale based on family earnings. For larger universities, tuition can actually be free depending on parental earnings. At the extreme end, some Ivy League universities like Harvard have $0 tuition for families earning less than $200K/year.

We also have community colleges and state-run universities with subsidized in-state tuition. It's still more expensive than free, but the tuition is in the range where as long as you're smart with your degree selection the ROI of getting the degree will more than make up for any loans you have to take on. That said, you can get yourself into trouble if you take out loans to study for a degree that doesn't translate to a job.

And, in fact, the median amount of college debt for adults who don't hold degrees is sharply lower than the overall median (it's around $10k). It's not nothing, but it's also not a life-changing amount of debt.

(By way of policy bona fides: I'd strongly support forgiving student debt for all for-profit schools, but would oppose forgiveness for degree-holders from universities, which would be a sharply regressive policy).

Implicit in all these stories is that "education" means "access to highly selective universities". In-state tuition at Directional State University is much more manageable.

Not really. I went to a public land grant university 20 years ago and paid about $12k a year in state. That same university is now $44k per year.

Both my kids went to UIUC and we paid about $15k/yr, and both my kids graduated within the last couple years. And UIUC isn't a Directional State University; it's the flagship of the UI system. You can just look this up: tuition numbers aren't secret.

Ok I will. This claims the cost of attendance is $36,930-$42,310 per year:

https://www.admissions.illinois.edu/invest/tuition

This claims $21k per semester:

https://cost.illinois.edu/Home/Cost/R/U/10KP0112BS/15/120258...

You just cited the out-of-state cost of the flagship state university in Illinois as if it were the in-state cost of a Directional State University in Illinois. Again: you have an argument here that depends on people not Googling list prices (the prices that nobody actually pays) and seeing what they actually are.

No I didn't, that is in state, it's right there on the page.

Directly from the page:

> Illinois Resident

> Tuition & Fees: $18,046-$23,426

> Food & Housing: $15,184

> Books & Supplies: $1,200

> Other Expenses: $2,500

> Total: $36,930-$42,310

I literally looked at the exact school you used in your example and you are just wrong

Couldn't have been clearer that I was referring to tuition, including the fact that I said that specifically upthread.

Well then as long as the kids don't need housing or books or food or to pay the other fees they'll be set. Luckily those are all optional

They in fact differ wildly between students and between colleges! UIC and NIU are commuter universities where students generally don't live on campus. Students at UIUC live in campus-provided housing for their first year, but not generally for subsequent years. Everybody, whether they're in school or not, pays for housing. So no, the cost comparison you're offering here is not very useful.

Shortly later

I also think you might have to ask around to find a student paying full price for books.

take the L, it's ok

I set up an education fund for my kids when they were 2 and I still can’t be sure it’ll be enough. It’s really bad.

Perennial “What Armenians should know about life in America (2014)” from days of HN past https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777745

And which today must be read via internet archive

https://web.archive.org/web/20200404172130/https://likewise....

Basically explaining to Armenians at home why their relatives who moved to America don’t send better remittances back home despite their $X pay rate. Here’s why …

> University was cheap or free

Ha! I wish. It's not free. You will pay the same that Americans pay for Uni over your life many times over since tax rates in the EU are really high. Healthcare isn't exactly cheap either.

And everything you wrote is just the result of decades of prosperity that are now coming to an end. This will be a shock for many.

> This is why quality of life in Europe, is so superior.

That's very subjective, and I would rather have my freedoms instead of your/their liberties, thanks!

The only major differences I can think of are gun ownership and abortion. What freedoms were you referring to?

Speech?

Can you be more specific? What sort of thing could you say in the US that would cause government action if you said it in Canada? Those freedoms are fading fast under this administration at any rate.

> Also please don't tell me your skin color, I already know.

Also, please don't tell me you live in a major city/vote Democrat/are probably white with a savior complex.

I already know.

If this were true, the number of Americans I have known who moved to Europe would be roughly equal to the number of Europeans I have known who have moved to the US. That's not data, that's anecdote. But what is the European country where more people go there from the US than come to the US from there?

USAians are not exactly famous for commonly speaking most European languages at a level that would allow them to resettle to the respective European countries. This makes for a considerable barrier that essentially doesn't exist in the opposite direction.

I have never heard this term before, but to clarify what I mean (it's so weird to bring race into this!): I have worked with dozens of native born dutch, german, french people etc. and lots of latin people etc. But I know almost very few that I grew up with, went to school with, who moved from the US to another country. I am not saying this is good, the US is good etc. I am saying you have to understand the revealed preference vs what people tell you.

I wouldn't be surprised if this changes in the future, I am talking about the period of my life to date.

> I am saying you have to understand the revealed preference vs what people tell you.

And what they're saying is that this isn't just an indication of how awesome the US is compared to other places, but also of how averse Americans are to learning other languages compared to other people.

Very uncharitable way to phrase that, American second language prevalance is similar to other English dominant countries like the UK or the Australia.

Americans in general don't speak as many languages as Europeans because they already speak arguably the most useful language. I've lived in 20 countries, and in every single one for them I've been able to find someone who speaks English. People are so ingrained with the need to know the language that I've actually met people who are embarrassed about their English talking to me in their own native country.

If you grew up speaking Greek, Romanian, or even something like Italian, this absolutely would not be true. Maybe you could find a person or two to talk to, but definitely not dozens casually in everyday situations. So you have to learn multiple languages by necessity. And since European countries are so small, close together and all have their own languages, you also end up picking up your neighbors languages.

> Very uncharitable way to phrase that, American second language prevalance is similar to other English dominant countries like the UK or the Australia.

No. Yours is uncharitable because it has got nothing to do with how many languages you speak. This is not a multiglot competition. The only point being made is that someone with a fair amount of American exposure will have a head start emigrating to America compared to say an American to Latvia. Or France. Or Germany. Just on the language front in isolation/alone.

> Americans in general don't speak as many languages as Europeans because they already speak arguably the most useful language. I've lived in 20 countries, and in every single one for them I've been able to find someone who speaks English. People are so ingrained with the need to know the language that I've actually met people who are embarrassed about their English talking to me in their own native country.

Here’s an alternative explanation. These people were so gracious and willing to communicate with you, a foreigner, that they were flustered and embarrassed that their command of the English language did not allow them to express themselves as clearly as they could. Or maybe they were really just embarrassed to have insufficient command of the Master Language, I don’t know, maybe your version is correct.

> If you grew up speaking Greek, Romanian, or even something like Italian, this absolutely would not be true. Maybe you could find a person or two to talk to, but definitely not dozens casually in everyday situations. So you have to learn multiple languages by necessity. And since European countries are so small, close together and all have their own languages, you also end up picking up your neighbors languages.

For someone having lived in twenty countries you seem as wordly as a North Dakotan having travelled abroad three times. All to Winnipeg.

"No. Yours is uncharitable because it has got nothing to do with how many languages you speak. This is not a multiglot competition."

I was referring to this specific part of the comment I replied to: "Americans are averse to learning languages as opposed to other people". My response is a very accurate explanation of the reasons why this is a) an unfair way of looking at things, and b) not unique to Americans. What aspect of my response is uncharitable? I'm not saying things should be one way or another, just explaining how they are.

"Here’s an alternative explanation. These people were so gracious and willing to communicate with you, a foreigner, that they were flustered and embarrassed that their command of the English language did not allow them to express themselves as clearly as they could. "

The situation I described has occurred to me more then once, even after I tried to communicate in the local language. English speaking is a flex in a lot of the world and poor English is embarrassing. The desirability and prevalance of English may upset you, but it is objectively true. You can get English teaching jobs and find plenty of English speakers all over the planet. The same is not true for any of the other languages I mentioned in my post.

"For someone having lived in twenty countries you seem as wordly as a North Dakotan having travelled abroad three times. All to Winnipeg"

Lmao, why are you so angry? I grew up in Australia and south east asia.

> I was referring to this specific part of the comment I replied to: "Americans are averse to learning languages as opposed to other people". My response is a very accurate explanation of the reasons why this is a) an unfair way of looking at things, and b) not unique to Americans. What aspect of my response is uncharitable? I'm not saying things should be one way or another, just explaining how they are.

Okay that’s fair. I glossed over that part.

> The situation I described has occurred to me more then once, even after I tried to communicate in the local language.

Your interpretation of the chain of events perhaps.

One person goes to a country and meets kind strangers. “Wow, these people are nice to strangers”. Another person has the same experience. “Wow, these people must love me or X attribute.”

> English speaking is a flex in a lot of the world and poor English is embarrassing. The desirability and prevalance of English may upset you, but it is objectively true. You can get English teaching jobs and find plenty of English speakers all over the planet. The same is not true for any of the other languages I mentioned in my post.

I’m very upset that I speak English fluently. It really inconveniences me. fs

> Lmao, why are you so angry? I grew up in Australia and south east asia.

Do you know what a comparison is? I did not call you an American. There’s no reason to take offense.

No, it is not my interpretation. You can be willfully ignorant about this if you want, but you are just plain wrong. I'm talking about countries I grew up in and went to school with the locals with. I know the norms of the people I was around better then you.

If you go to a place that views western culture through a looking glass and is trying to learn English to progress to a better point in life, English is cool, speaking English is cool. Not saying that is a good way for things to be (or that literally every person you will meet will have this mindset), but that is how it is for a significant portion of people.

"Do you know what a comparison is? I did not call you an American. There’s no reason to take offense"

I'm not offended, but your remark was a) clearly intended as an insult and b) demonstrated that you were likely stereotyping me on a very particular way, which runs completely contrary to my actual experience with these matters.

Okay. All fair points. :)

> I have never heard this term before,

> > In Spanish, the Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (English: Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts), published by the Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, recommends the genderless term estadounidense (literally United Statesian)

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

> , but to clarify what I mean

You’re restating your point while not responding to the point that OP brought up.

The two things are not equals. The US has for a western country, relaxed standards for immigration[0], in particular if you were coming from Europe, it's quite a bit easier to establish residency here.

The reverse is not true. European nations aren't very immigration friendly by comparison. On top of that, the US government, assuming you keep your citizenship, does not make it easy to live abroad. US government tax policy for citizens who live overseas is much more aggressive than any other western country, from what I understand.

Combined with the fact its alot harder to go the other way, and the US government does a fair amount to discourage it, I'm not shocked more US citizens aren't moving to Europe.

[0]: At least before Trump returned to office, I'm unsure how much of this has changed.

    > The US has for a western country, relaxed standards for immigration

My comments will only concern skilled migration, e.g., you are a computer programmer or something STEM'ish and you want to work in a different country.

First, let's start with the "Anglo-American sphere" (my term): US/UK/CA/AU/NZ. Of those five, US is the hardest to get a working visa for skilled individuals. The rest are "points-based" system where you can apply for a working visa even before you have a job (95% sure about this -- pls correct if wrong). They are much more friendly. Also, the rules are simpler, clearer, and applied more consistently.

I know much less about other OECD-level (and G7-level) nations, but anecdotally, overall, the process is much more straight forward compared to the US. What the rules say, the rules do. Not so much in the US where they randomly delay or reject applicants without good reason. (Also: Google to find horror stories of what happens when you lose your job in US as a foreigner who does not have PR. Fucking nitemare.) You hear this much less in (to name a few): Ireland, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland. (I don't hear as much about Portugal, Spain, and Italy, but quality of life looks awesome!) All of those countries are wealthy, highly developed and have excellent quality of life. All of them welcome skilled migration and have clear programmes (you can Google about them) to get a working visa. Again, strictly anecdotal: The US immigration system is much more adversarial compared to all of the other countries that I mentioned. Oh, and I forgot to add Japan: After PM Abe changed the rules, it is way easier these days to get a skilled worker visa in Japan.

Last point:

    > European nations

I see this over and over again on HN. I want to repeat: Europe is enormous -- like continent-sized -- with ~50 countries. It doesn't say much to say "in Europe". Are we talking about Belarus, Albania, Germany, or Italy? All of them are culturally and economically much more different than anything in the US (comparing US states / regions). Immigration/healthcare/public school/public safety/retirement all looks very different in those nations. Advice: It's better to say something like: "the Nordics" or "Benelux" or "GBR/FRA/GER/ITA" (the four economic giants of Europe). The best comments are when people comment about specific European nations, like "I lived & worked in Belgium for 7 years and this happened."

>My comments will only concern skilled migration, e.g., you are a computer programmer or something STEM'ish and you want to work in a different country.

This circumvents the original predicate, which did not have such a limitation. I know many countries have priority / helpful pathways for STEM career individuals as well as capital investors, but that wouldn't apply to everyone.

Even the US has very different pathways to citizenship depending on various factors. Last time I looked into it as research in depth, there alot of common limiting factors across Europe. Their policies are much more strict once you dive into the nuance.

That said, the US immigration landscape is extremely lopsided, thats a fair point.

>Europe is enormous -- like continent-sized -- with ~50 countries.

I realize, though as a US citizen I also realize that when most US citizens say this, they mean a much smaller contingent of countries, rightly or wrongly. I'm sure Europeans dislike how loose we use the term, but as a US citizen, it usually means cold war boundary countries, so Germany and what was considered western Europe before the iron curtain fell. Thats been my experience. People also generally forget about Portugal and a few island nations. Its a safe bet most people mean the Nordics, France, Germany, the UK, Netherlands and Denmark most of the time, conceptually.

However to be specific, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Nordics, all have strict general requirements to have a path to citizenship. I don't think the average US citizen would be able to meet them.

That's a fair point. But until recently you could move to a lot of countries in Europe for an investment less than a house in California. But I accept that could be the true reason.

>That's a fair point. But until recently you could move to a lot of countries in Europe for an investment less than a house in California.

That alone is enough to put most people out of grasp of doing this, for a multitude of reasons, of which not having the capital is only part of the equation, as you would also need to have a suitable investment on the other side to put said money, not a promise. I'm sure there are other nuances involved too.

Thats before the fact that the cost of a house in California would price most people out of the equation to begin with.

High fractions of Europeans speak English, eg Poland has 50% of population speaking English (for those of working age it’s probably much higher) whereas the fractions of Americans speaking non-English European languages is much lower (0.25% for Americans speaking Polish).

If 50% of Americans spoke Polish by the shake of a wand, I bet there’d be more Americans in Poland than Poles in Poland.

OK, but by that logic lots more USA citizens should be moving to the UK, Ireland, Spain than the other way around. That's just not the case, at least until very recently.

I could see that the appeal of Ireland can be increasing and Poland sounds cool. I'm not saying that the USA is great, it has tons of problems.

Net migration US/Ireland is positive to Ireland.

UK numbers yes, though maybe gloomy weather plays a role? Just kidding. That said, Brits are slightly more likely to move to Spain than US despite it being a tiny country in comparison and not necessarily easier to move to after Brexit.

Spain, not sure. It’s tricky to compare since non immigrant Spanish speaking population in US is probably significantly lower than Spaniards speaking English. But yeah, you probably have a point on that one.

America has around 42 million fluent Spanish speakers (based on # that speak Spanish at home).

Spain’s entire population is 48 million.

I have never met an American that migrated to Spain.

Well America is pretty freaking cool, so I guess I don’t blame them.

Maybe you’re an exception but this place’s demographics probably does not have a wide Latino-American network compared to other demos.

Your wand would also need to erase the reason people speak (or don’t speak) the languages they do, otherwise what you said would already be true for the UK, Australia, etc.

Would it? People don’t exclusively learn English to migrate to the US.

What language do you think Germans and Spaniards use to do commerce with each other? There needs to be a common language, there’s no bandwidth to learn all languages, so due to historical and modern reasons, English prevailed.

Re Australia, Australians have highly preferential options to move to US which is not reciprocated.

Same for NZ, Canada, UK…

So you are already saying it isn't just language, your wand would also need to erase "preferential options" facilitating the direction of migration. Which is what I said but in different words.

All the benefits OP lists are at or below mandated minimums for Western EU countries. It’s trivial to lookup and confirm for yourself.

In software the money difference you still end up ahead of where you would be on an equivalent salary in the EU. Also last time I was considering a move to the EU job market was weaker than the US. Also you still need to get all the necessary work visas which aren’t automatic. Even as a dual citizen I can’t just show up to work at a company in the EU.

> If this were true, the number of Americans I have known who

People only live in one unvarnished (more or less) reality at a time. Americans live in America and get told stuff about “Europe”; Europeans live in Europe (or their respective countries if we want to get anal about it) and get told stuff about America. Only a very very small number of people get to live in multiple places and for long enough stretches of time to be able to compare them pretty fairly.

In what kind of dream reality do people come to have such perfect (I’m being hyperbolic) information about other places that they then are able to base their move-or-not decisions on? This is just not reality. People know what their own place is like. They “know” other places through propaganda, mostly.

But Americans are so propagandized that you have to teach them about their own propaganda.

In tech, 3-4 weeks vacation not usual for senior roles. Often “unlimited” but in practice far more than 10 days. That might be for new/inexperienced hires in crappy companies.

For comparison, 4 weeks is the absolute minimum for any full-time worker here in Australia, and that’s less than people in the UK/Europe get.

Wow, sounds nice. Started at 2 Weeks at beginning of career. Had even a bit less due to 3-5 days of mandatory shutdowns during Christmas time.

It's evident that you're saying this as a non-European, as there's no "European healthcare".

Many (most?) European countries have private healthcare systems. Switzerland has it and offers some of the best healthcare in Europe and in the world. Similar systems work great in many other European countries as well. The problems with American healthcare are not because it's market-based, it's because how that market is managed.

Some other countries have public universal healthcare. It can work well, but it requires a high-income country with both wealth in abundance and significant government efficiency. It only truly works well in Scandinavia so far. This is not "socialist healthcare" as some will dubiously claim, it's sort of the opposite, which is why it works.

> University is expensive as fck. Health care is expensive as fck.

University isn't near as big of a problem. That's not something the blindsides you like health care expenses. Nobody is making you spend $300k on university. Got my engineering degree at a public university for ~$100k in total and had it paid off 5 years after graduation. But a $195k hospital bill is something I'd never be prepared for. Nobody chooses to go to a hospital.

For $100k, you could pay the tuition fees for 4-10 (depending on exact school choice) of the best universities in Europe outside the UK combined - and I'm talking of the foreign student fees, not the much lower tuitions that EU citizens get.

That's great, but you've missed my point. I get payed more in the US, so I can afford the extra cost for university. And once that university bill is paid, I can pocket the extra.

There are still reasons why high university costs can be a problem. Teachers, for example, don't get paid near enough to be able to cover university costs in a few years like I was able to. But becoming a teacher requires just as much investment.

But even then, the cost of college loans is far more manageable for even teachers than an unexpected $195k visit to the hospital. University cost is a problem in the US, but I don't think it's comparable to the problem we have with health care costs.

That's true for a handful of jobs, but not so much in general. Sure, in CS and medicine and Wall Street you get salaries that are huge compared to typical EU salaries. But this doesn't apply at all to all white collar work - certainly not at the 10x - 100x difference in college tuitions.

Not to mention, I also gave the example of the tuitions for a Swiss university, and Swiss salaries are typically at least comparable to US salaries, even in CS.

> certainly not at the 10x - 100x difference in college tuitions.

The full time tuition rate at the university I got my engineering degree from is currently $11k /yr. I can't imagine that's even 10x a typical EU university - let alone 100x.

My local community college's full time tuition is currently $5.8k /yr. Either way it's a lot of money, but lets not exaggerate things too far. We're worried about affordable access to education here - not getting everyone into Harvard.

The tuition rate for any public university in France (for EU citizens) is €250/year. So your tuition was not 100x, it was just 44x what you'd pay for those.

Let's say that's unfair, since the state pays your tuition (though this is the common experience for most French students!). In Amsterdam, one of the best universities in the world, TU Delft, charges €2k/year tuition. Your tuition was less than 10x this, true, but not that far from that. Also, for a common 4 year bachelor's degree, that's €8k in total - your $100k total is more than 10x this.

My $100k total includes much more than tuition. I probably had ~$40k in actual tuition.

Again, it's too much. But it's not comparable to emergency medical bills without insurance.

> Healthcare is cheap

Is it? I pay 13.5% of my income as healthcare 'tax' for public healthcare. Overall, it is cheaper than US healthcare (as a percentage of GDP), but individually it is still a significant expense.