13 ms·

Not to disagree with the parent comment (because overall I prefer the European way) but we do have it worse in some ways. Salaries for professionals are marked

by J-dawg 10y ago

Not to disagree with the parent comment (because overall I prefer the European way) but we do have it worse in some ways. Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. I get the feeling that when you're winning at life in America, you're really winning. But when you're losing you're really losing. In Europe the ups and downs of life are more smoothed out.

cmdrfred 10y ago
I live in America and my wife's family is from the UK. We aren't rich by any means but we bought a small house last year and when her family flew in they kept commenting on how big our house was. Our house is about as small as you can get without living in a trailer. I'm a high school drop out and we each make less than the median nation income and I feel we are better off than if we lived in the UK. Though I admit life from 18 - 25 would have probably been less of a struggle there.
- intended 10y ago
  Whats the comparison of sizes like ? Really curious because if the next smaller house in size is a trailer then the UK sizes must be weirdly small.
  - onion2k 10y ago
    Here in the UK houses are tiny compared to the USA, but it's really just because there's far less available land to build on. The entire UK is about half the size of California.
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    Average home size in the UK is less than half that of the US: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house US @ 77 sq meters per capita vs UK @ 33 sq meters per capita.
    - jdietrich 10y ago
      The average new-build British home is 76 square metres; a typical single-wide mobile home ranges from 60 to 93 square metres. We're a crowded island, we have small houses.
      - dagw 10y ago
        We're a crowded island, we have small houses. The UK has a lower population density the than both Belgium and Holland, both of which have larger average houses than the UK. So there has to be more to it than simply being 'crowded'.
        HarryHirsch 10y ago
        Haven't run the numbers, but the impression is that the South of England is much more densely populated. The majority of people lives south of the M62 and east of the M5/M6 highways. And then there's greenbelts to prevent the endless exurbanization.
        dagw 10y ago
        Good point. Greater London, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Essex and Kent all have a higher population density than Holland, and between them count for a significant part of the UK population.
        mrow84 10y ago
        When you go north, and more generally away from population centres, the houses do seem to be quite a bit larger. There, of course, there are other limiting factors, most often wages.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - zelos 10y ago
      Yet in the equally crowded Netherlands, the average house size is much larger. Is it just the house building industry is really poor here in the UK?
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Now let's hope nobody gets ill.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    We both have health insurance, we make too much for Obamacare but we costed it out and we can afford for one of us to stop working if we had to.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      Excellent. Make sure you keep a sharp eye on that and the future developments, this is one of those little things that can really ruin your life. It's bad enough to have a serious health issue, if it gets compounded by a financial crisis then you can go from 'ok' to 'really bad' in a surprisingly short time when there is no safety net.
      - anamoulous 10y ago
        What gives you the right to be so imperious about this?
        jacquesm 10y ago
        I think you are mis-understanding what I wrote. Having seen a couple of lives of states-side friends ruined by what would have been minor (but still serious from a medical perspective) issues in Europe I'm all too aware of the differences in the various health-care solutions. I've also lived in enough places with various levels of health-care and insurance (and lack of insurance) to see this as a potential problem. So, instead of reading imperiousness, how about worry?
      - cmdrfred 10y ago
        We keep one years expenses at all times as well as our mortgage payment is a little less than the cost of a two bedroom apartment so if a finical crisis hit that left us out on the street we would be there regardless. The problem with the housing crisis was people had variable rate mortgages that made their payments quickly balloon up under them. We have a fixed rate so that can't happen.
wiz21c 10y ago
What you describe about really winning/loosing is inequality. I generally think that inequality is bad for populations (you may disagree, but usually, those in favor of inequality are those on the right side of it)
- Pyxl101 10y ago
  I recommend reading: http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html Inequality is the result of people earning different amounts, such being compensated in proportion to the value they generate - rather than everyone earning the same irrespective of that. Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it? If an author writes a really good book, then it will sell and they'll make a lot of money. They earn a lot more than the author who writes bad, unpopular books. That's an example of income inequality. A great comedian will draw large crowds and his shows will fetch a high price. That's an example of inequality too. What's wrong with that? How will anything work if it were otherwise? Inequality is arguably not the right economic easure to care about for social issues. Imagine every human in year 7000 is rich enough to own entire planets, but the super wealthy own 100 planets. Who cares? Why is that a problem? If your concern is about a particular class, then you should look at their standard of living and progress in it over time, not compare against how much someone else has.
  - pcrh 10y ago
    Most people commenting on economic inequality are referring to inequity, i.e. that there are people who receive benefits disproportionate to the value to the work they contribute or the output they create. Few people object to higher rewards for those more talented or harder working.
  - pyrale 10y ago
    > Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it? Let us make an experiment and drop Paul Graham in a rainforest to see how much value he manages to extract. Then, once he has starved to death or died from some random infection, let's think again what makes IT jobs more valuable than garbage collector jobs.
gommm 10y ago
In France, it's mostly the middle class and smaller companies that face a heavy tax burden. The really rich have a lot of ways to reduce their tax burden. It creates a system that disincentives creating a small company because of how tough it is. At a lower level, the welfare system sometimes create situation where people would lose money if they started a part time job instead of not having a job. So, there are some problems. That said, I still feel that the system is better than the US system, there's less inequalities, less worry of disasters because you know that you'll be protected by the system and brilliant kids have a chance of getting a good education even if their parents are poor.
onion2k 10y ago
Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. I get the feeling that when you're winning at life in America... If having more money and a bigger house is winning that's true, but many people don't see life that way. Being happy, having time to enjoy life with your friends, doing worthwhile and interesting things, raising your kids well, etc are also ways to win. In general if you talk to an older, wealthy person, they say those are things that should have done instead of working so much.
- shokunin 10y ago
  Yeah, try enjoying your time with friends and long vacations with no money in your pocket. Fuck Berlin.
  - onion2k 10y ago
    try enjoying your time with friends and long vacations Try enjoying your time with friends and long vacations when you work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week! Ah, you can't! See! There's a balance to be struck. Having no money isn't fun, but having no time isn't fun either. If you talk to people about their regrets, it's much more common to hear people lament working longer hours than not having had enough money.
    - vilmosi 10y ago
      It's not called a work-life balance for nothing.
  - ionised 10y ago
    Nobody in Berlin has any money? That's awful.
    - usrusr 10y ago
      That's awfully untrue. Except for the part where having no money as a lifestyle choice is a very Berlin thing to do. I have literally met people who switched from full time in a smaller city to part time remote to fulfill their dream of having little money in Berlin. (Berlin also has its share of genuinely poor people, but those are not the less-than-silicon-valley-wage developers we are talking about)
k-mcgrady 10y ago
It's that attitude that is the problem though. Poorer American's generally don't want change to help them because they believe it's only a matter of time until they are 'really winning'. Taking your two points: would a larger house and higher salary make significant improvements to your quality of life or will it provide short term satisfaction of having nicer/bigger/more expensive possessions?
alkonaut 10y ago
> Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. This is an age old debate, and it's very hard to compare one vast continent to another. Regional differences between US cities and European cities are at least as large or larger than the difference between the avereages of US and European salaries/living standards etc. The difference between central manhattan and rural Apalachia is just like the difference between the fancy parts of Stockholm and rural eastern Europe. There is just no comparison in Salaries, Life expectancy etc. When it comes to those of us that are "winning", the difference is there, especially for some professions like doctors who can basically make a killing in the US but not in Europe. That is probably to do with that it's an economic risk/investment to get the MD in the US, whereas in Europe it's normally free. When you are a finished doctor you aren't entitled to a fancy car - we just paid your MD so you better get to work and be thankful ;) To make a fair comparison between me (a software dev) and a comparable person in the US (in a similar metro area of ~1M people) you'd have to make a pretty tricky calculation involving costs of healthcare, childcare, money saved for retirement, pensions etc. On the bottom line I think the US person would make a bit more money, but on the other hand would have a worse work/life balance.
- J-dawg 10y ago
  > whereas in Europe it's normally free While we're correcting misconceptions, in the UK it's most definitely not free. But I believe it's still a lot cheaper than the US. The universities are capped on the fees they can charge, and your student loan is regulated by the government (you only start paying back when you're earning over a threshold).
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    When I look at the UK from Scandinavia, it seems to me that it's basically "50/50 continental Europe and the US". Wage inequality, parental leaves, employment security, higher education etc.are decidedly "non-european" in the UK. So yes when I talk about "Europe" in the context of "Europe vs US" I think the UK needs to be considered separately.
    - 10y ago
kingkawn 10y ago
You have been colonized by American propaganda
prolly_a_moron 10y ago
>In Europe the ups and downs of life are more smoothed out. When a substantial portion of "success" (especially monetary) can be attributed to luck, isn't this the sort of environment you want?
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  The philosphical tool called "The Veil of Ignorance" suggests it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
>I get the feeling that when you're winning at life in America, you're really winning Depends on what you mean by winning. If by winning you mean having lots of money to buy your family a bunch of stuff, then yeah. However, if by winning you mean having the time to build a strong relationship with your family and maintaining your own physical and mental health, then you might have a more difficult time with that.
eeZah7Ux 10y ago
> much smaller houses When people spend most of their wake hours in a cubicle smaller than the bedroom where they sleep in something is very wrong.
namlem 10y ago
Rent is also lower in Europe, and house size has pretty rapidly diminishing returns.

by J-dawg 10y ago

cmdrfred 10y ago

I live in America and my wife's family is from the UK. We aren't rich by any means but we bought a small house last year and when her family flew in they kept commenting on how big our house was. Our house is about as small as you can get without living in a trailer. I'm a high school drop out and we each make less than the median nation income and I feel we are better off than if we lived in the UK. Though I admit life from 18 - 25 would have probably been less of a struggle there.

intended 10y ago
Whats the comparison of sizes like ? Really curious because if the next smaller house in size is a trailer then the UK sizes must be weirdly small.
- onion2k 10y ago
  Here in the UK houses are tiny compared to the USA, but it's really just because there's far less available land to build on. The entire UK is about half the size of California.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Average home size in the UK is less than half that of the US: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house US @ 77 sq meters per capita vs UK @ 33 sq meters per capita.
  - jdietrich 10y ago
    The average new-build British home is 76 square metres; a typical single-wide mobile home ranges from 60 to 93 square metres. We're a crowded island, we have small houses.
    - dagw 10y ago
      We're a crowded island, we have small houses. The UK has a lower population density the than both Belgium and Holland, both of which have larger average houses than the UK. So there has to be more to it than simply being 'crowded'.
      - HarryHirsch 10y ago
        Haven't run the numbers, but the impression is that the South of England is much more densely populated. The majority of people lives south of the M62 and east of the M5/M6 highways. And then there's greenbelts to prevent the endless exurbanization.
        dagw 10y ago
        Good point. Greater London, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Essex and Kent all have a higher population density than Holland, and between them count for a significant part of the UK population.
        mrow84 10y ago
        When you go north, and more generally away from population centres, the houses do seem to be quite a bit larger. There, of course, there are other limiting factors, most often wages.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - zelos 10y ago
    Yet in the equally crowded Netherlands, the average house size is much larger. Is it just the house building industry is really poor here in the UK?
jacquesm 10y ago
Now let's hope nobody gets ill.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  We both have health insurance, we make too much for Obamacare but we costed it out and we can afford for one of us to stop working if we had to.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Excellent. Make sure you keep a sharp eye on that and the future developments, this is one of those little things that can really ruin your life. It's bad enough to have a serious health issue, if it gets compounded by a financial crisis then you can go from 'ok' to 'really bad' in a surprisingly short time when there is no safety net.
    - anamoulous 10y ago
      What gives you the right to be so imperious about this?
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        I think you are mis-understanding what I wrote. Having seen a couple of lives of states-side friends ruined by what would have been minor (but still serious from a medical perspective) issues in Europe I'm all too aware of the differences in the various health-care solutions. I've also lived in enough places with various levels of health-care and insurance (and lack of insurance) to see this as a potential problem. So, instead of reading imperiousness, how about worry?
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      We keep one years expenses at all times as well as our mortgage payment is a little less than the cost of a two bedroom apartment so if a finical crisis hit that left us out on the street we would be there regardless. The problem with the housing crisis was people had variable rate mortgages that made their payments quickly balloon up under them. We have a fixed rate so that can't happen.

wiz21c 10y ago

What you describe about really winning/loosing is inequality. I generally think that inequality is bad for populations (you may disagree, but usually, those in favor of inequality are those on the right side of it)

Pyxl101 10y ago
I recommend reading: http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html Inequality is the result of people earning different amounts, such being compensated in proportion to the value they generate - rather than everyone earning the same irrespective of that. Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it? If an author writes a really good book, then it will sell and they'll make a lot of money. They earn a lot more than the author who writes bad, unpopular books. That's an example of income inequality. A great comedian will draw large crowds and his shows will fetch a high price. That's an example of inequality too. What's wrong with that? How will anything work if it were otherwise? Inequality is arguably not the right economic easure to care about for social issues. Imagine every human in year 7000 is rich enough to own entire planets, but the super wealthy own 100 planets. Who cares? Why is that a problem? If your concern is about a particular class, then you should look at their standard of living and progress in it over time, not compare against how much someone else has.
- pcrh 10y ago
  Most people commenting on economic inequality are referring to inequity, i.e. that there are people who receive benefits disproportionate to the value to the work they contribute or the output they create. Few people object to higher rewards for those more talented or harder working.
- pyrale 10y ago
  > Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it? Let us make an experiment and drop Paul Graham in a rainforest to see how much value he manages to extract. Then, once he has starved to death or died from some random infection, let's think again what makes IT jobs more valuable than garbage collector jobs.

gommm 10y ago

In France, it's mostly the middle class and smaller companies that face a heavy tax burden. The really rich have a lot of ways to reduce their tax burden. It creates a system that disincentives creating a small company because of how tough it is. At a lower level, the welfare system sometimes create situation where people would lose money if they started a part time job instead of not having a job. So, there are some problems. That said, I still feel that the system is better than the US system, there's less inequalities, less worry of disasters because you know that you'll be protected by the system and brilliant kids have a chance of getting a good education even if their parents are poor.

onion2k 10y ago

Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. I get the feeling that when you're winning at life in America... If having more money and a bigger house is winning that's true, but many people don't see life that way. Being happy, having time to enjoy life with your friends, doing worthwhile and interesting things, raising your kids well, etc are also ways to win. In general if you talk to an older, wealthy person, they say those are things that should have done instead of working so much.

shokunin 10y ago
Yeah, try enjoying your time with friends and long vacations with no money in your pocket. Fuck Berlin.
- onion2k 10y ago
  try enjoying your time with friends and long vacations Try enjoying your time with friends and long vacations when you work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week! Ah, you can't! See! There's a balance to be struck. Having no money isn't fun, but having no time isn't fun either. If you talk to people about their regrets, it's much more common to hear people lament working longer hours than not having had enough money.
  - vilmosi 10y ago
    It's not called a work-life balance for nothing.
- ionised 10y ago
  Nobody in Berlin has any money? That's awful.
  - usrusr 10y ago
    That's awfully untrue. Except for the part where having no money as a lifestyle choice is a very Berlin thing to do. I have literally met people who switched from full time in a smaller city to part time remote to fulfill their dream of having little money in Berlin. (Berlin also has its share of genuinely poor people, but those are not the less-than-silicon-valley-wage developers we are talking about)

k-mcgrady 10y ago

It's that attitude that is the problem though. Poorer American's generally don't want change to help them because they believe it's only a matter of time until they are 'really winning'. Taking your two points: would a larger house and higher salary make significant improvements to your quality of life or will it provide short term satisfaction of having nicer/bigger/more expensive possessions?

alkonaut 10y ago

> Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. This is an age old debate, and it's very hard to compare one vast continent to another. Regional differences between US cities and European cities are at least as large or larger than the difference between the avereages of US and European salaries/living standards etc. The difference between central manhattan and rural Apalachia is just like the difference between the fancy parts of Stockholm and rural eastern Europe. There is just no comparison in Salaries, Life expectancy etc. When it comes to those of us that are "winning", the difference is there, especially for some professions like doctors who can basically make a killing in the US but not in Europe. That is probably to do with that it's an economic risk/investment to get the MD in the US, whereas in Europe it's normally free. When you are a finished doctor you aren't entitled to a fancy car - we just paid your MD so you better get to work and be thankful ;) To make a fair comparison between me (a software dev) and a comparable person in the US (in a similar metro area of ~1M people) you'd have to make a pretty tricky calculation involving costs of healthcare, childcare, money saved for retirement, pensions etc. On the bottom line I think the US person would make a bit more money, but on the other hand would have a worse work/life balance.

J-dawg 10y ago
> whereas in Europe it's normally free While we're correcting misconceptions, in the UK it's most definitely not free. But I believe it's still a lot cheaper than the US. The universities are capped on the fees they can charge, and your student loan is regulated by the government (you only start paying back when you're earning over a threshold).
- alkonaut 10y ago
  When I look at the UK from Scandinavia, it seems to me that it's basically "50/50 continental Europe and the US". Wage inequality, parental leaves, employment security, higher education etc.are decidedly "non-european" in the UK. So yes when I talk about "Europe" in the context of "Europe vs US" I think the UK needs to be considered separately.
  - 10y ago

kingkawn 10y ago

You have been colonized by American propaganda

prolly_a_moron 10y ago

>In Europe the ups and downs of life are more smoothed out. When a substantial portion of "success" (especially monetary) can be attributed to luck, isn't this the sort of environment you want?

ZeroGravitas 10y ago
The philosphical tool called "The Veil of Ignorance" suggests it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

wu-ikkyu 10y ago

>I get the feeling that when you're winning at life in America, you're really winning Depends on what you mean by winning. If by winning you mean having lots of money to buy your family a bunch of stuff, then yeah. However, if by winning you mean having the time to build a strong relationship with your family and maintaining your own physical and mental health, then you might have a more difficult time with that.

eeZah7Ux 10y ago

> much smaller houses When people spend most of their wake hours in a cubicle smaller than the bedroom where they sleep in something is very wrong.

namlem 10y ago

Rent is also lower in Europe, and house size has pretty rapidly diminishing returns.