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U.S. Is a Rich Country with Symptoms of a Developing Nation

143 points by ForHackernews 8y ago

pjc50 8y ago
I recently started to understand US politics a lot better by realising that it's a global moon-landing superpower and a Latin American banana republic that occupy the same physical space.
sershe 8y ago
From a very long article on healthcare, "High US health care spending is quite well explained by its high material standard of living", I got an idea that neatly explains my experience in the USA and the perception of various groups from outside in (I'm from Moscow, that some people jokingly claim is a separate country from the rest of Russia). It's still not a well-formed idea, just a gist of it. US to me looks like a first world country with a 3rd world country attached to it; with the bleed of culture both ways (making urban-rural divide worse, sort of), and obviously economic effects both ways. It's sort of like if Russia joined the EU as far as people and economics are concerned - it'd still be a hellhole outside few major cities, but overall richer and with lots of angry anti-EU people. The US is like that, and the states are much more integrated than the EU is. The strongest case for this can probably be built by analyzing human capital as well as metrics such as healthcare (like the original article did), crime, etc by county. The weaker case for me personally is that the "feel" (and the norms if online sources are any indication) of rural/small-town places in the US vs urban/rich places in the US, is much more like small-town Russia vs Moscow (except more pissed instead of resigned to their fate), or other semi 3rd world countries, than the same in Europe. I don't actually think that Civil War was a war between those countries, but its interpretation these days by many people seems to cast it as such... and the present-day GOP leadership looks to me basically like United Russia in Russia - it's a party of power, plain and simple, that aspires to unleash the freedom to shear the great unwashed.. a typical 3rd world party of which there are few or no European equivalents. The Dems (and centrist GOP, I guess) are such a bizarre party these days because they, in turn, have to represent almost the entire spectrum of the first-world parties - from Bill Clinton liberal and Christian centrists, to Greens and Socialists.
Shorel 8y ago
It seems it is both the richest and the most unequal among the developed countries. Most issues are a consequence of this inequality.
dgudkov 8y ago
My rule of thumb: if an article has a line chart with non 0-based Y axis it most probably tries to manipulate the reader's opinion by trying to present an increasing/decreasing trend as more significant than it actually is.
crubier 8y ago
From a European point of view, the growing use of GoFundMe campaigns to pay for health care bills in the US feels like a wild capitalist dystopia. Your Facebook friends decide if you'll live or die.
ouid 8y ago
The US is a rich country with the symptoms of a rich country.
devoply 8y ago
When you have a sizable underclass because the upper classes want that sort of thing, then you have these sorts of issues.
- benjohnson 8y ago
  I think we should acknowledge that we accept over a million legal immigrants every year - comprising over 12% of our population. Obviously many of them are immensely beneficial and some are not - but I think this statistic belongs as part of the equation.
  - erentz 8y ago
    I don’t see how they the presence of those legal immigrants is causing the US to stop taking care of its infrastructure or providing services like health care, etc. Your claim is a bit of a stretch and is the kind of typical nationalistic nonsense that distracts people from focusing on the real causes of these problems.
  - Geimfari 8y ago
    A similar percentage applies to many Western nations.
  - tracer4201 8y ago
    1 million legal immigrants comprises over 12% of our population? What exactly do you believe the US population is? I can’t tell if I’m on Facebook or hacker news.
    - ip26 8y ago
      What, you didn't know that the entire population of California was illegal immigrants?
      - tracer4201 8y ago
        Op never called out California by name and made it sound like they’re referring to the whole country.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Symptoms? That makes it sound like being a developing country is a disease.
zeropnc 8y ago
What's with Americans constantly attempting to paint their situation as more dire than it actually is? Is it just a blatant lack of perspective on the rest of the world? Reminds me of an article I read attempting to claim that child mortality in Memphis was worse than in Bangladesh. No, the United States isn't like the "developing world" if you're poor (and since when is Italy, the comparison country, considered "developing world"?) Comparisons like these (which are rather frequent, I've found) are obnoxiously disrespectful to the millions of people actually living in developing world countries. The same millions who would give up their first kid (and often, in many ways, do) to be allowed into the US. We can discuss improving the US while also still acknowledging that, on a global scale, their problems are fundamentally "first world problems". You don't need to spend hours crunching numbers finding some favourable metric to the South Sudan to make your damn point.
- sattoshi 8y ago
  The phenomena you’re describing feels very real. I think it’s a deformed manifestation of a victim complex. I’m not sure. I remember reading an article proclaiming that the United States is the 10th(!!!) most dangerous country in the world for women[0]. [0]: https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/10-most-dangerous-countries-in-the-world-for-women-1.6217212 https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/10-most-dangerous-countri...
- smokeyj 8y ago
  We've all heard of virtue signaling. Meet his ugly brother, "policy shaming". A few days ago a story hit HN about how ISIS is banning single-use plastics. That was very problematic because my eyes almost rolled into the back of my head. One of the few US places that actually resembles a developing nation is San Francisco. Whatever economic policy those people employ, the nation should do the exact opposite.
  - briandear 8y ago
    $77 billion spent on a train from Merced to Bakersfield. I’m sure that money could have easily solved many infrastructure issues.
- 8y ago
dqpb 8y ago
Not surprising. The left is a pro-drug, social issue obsessed, math-fearing, anti-engineering culture. The right is a corrupt, pro-religion, pray that everything works, anti-education culture.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post ideological battle comments to HN. That's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- anthony_romeo 8y ago
  Could you elaborate on “math-fearing”? I’m really curious to hear your justification for its inclusion in your lists
  - orf 8y ago
    I expect it's a dog whistle referring to black and ethnic crime statistics.
    - dqpb 8y ago
      It's not, and I'm not even sure what you're getting at.
      - anthony_romeo 8y ago
        So what do you mean by “math-fearing”?
      - orf 8y ago
        If that's the case then I apologize. It's a common thing to cherry pick out of context and misleading statistics to push a narrative, then say "you must hate statistics/maths/reality" when you point out they are misleading. "The left hates math" = "the left hates our statistics" Perhaps you could elaborate on your comment.
mpweiher 8y ago
The first time I moved to the US was in 1981. Coming from Germany, a lot of it was quite shocking and seemed like a developing nation even back then, relatively speaking. Infrastructure crumbling. Highways made of concrete slabs that go badum-badum at the seams. Can tell if you're going too fast just by following the rhythm. The cars (rigid axle? seriously?). The appliances. The furniture. Windows that don't really close. Power lines on poles. We had an ice-storm once that knocked out power in a 500 mi radius. For at least three days. This was, at the time, one of the wealthiest communities in the country. All that despite a significantly higher GDP/person. Came back in 2007 to the Bay Area. A lot still the same, though the highways are nice and most people drive foreign cars. You have to be really quite well off in order to get things that don't suck, and I determined I could maintain the same standard of living for a lot less income if I moved back to Berlin, which I eventually did. On the other hand you can learn to fly for (comparatively) cheap. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Oh, some of my colleagues at <super-wealthy-top-bay-area-tech-firm> had this idea for an automatic washer-dryer combo: you put the washer on top, then when it's done the clothes drop into the dryer on the bottom. They had a hard time believing that single-unit washer-dryer units have existed for quite some time.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  > They had a hard time believing that single-unit washer-dryer units have existed for quite some time. Indeed, and unfortunately they still aren't good. Just useful if space is a premium (e.g. apartments). I was recently reading extensively on them, and the consensus seems to be that the washer part is roughly as good as a stand-alone unit, but the dryer is significantly worse (slow and inefficient). Often taking twice as long to dry the same loud. This seems to be because the dryer is a condenser dryer (stand alone dryers are typically vented dryers). This means instead of pumping warm-wet air outside, they use a heat exchanger to cool the warm-wet air, causing water to be deposited which is then drained. This results in the combo units consuming water to DRY. Since the heat exchanger has water pumped through it to keep its temperature low, and that water has to be discarded when it gets warm.
- orf 8y ago
  > Oh, some of my colleagues at <super-wealthy-top-bay-area-tech-firm> had this idea for an automatic washer-dryer combo: you put the washer on top, then when it's done the clothes drop into the dryer on the bottom. They had a hard time believing that single-unit washer-dryer units have existed for quite some time. Is this for real? I find it quite funny that they conceived it to require clothes to 'drop' from one section to the next. I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I travelled to Denver for business recently and felt similar things. Outdated fire sprinklers in my hotel (a good one at that) where very strange. That and the absolutley shocking number of homeless people.
jccalhoun 8y ago
I'm reminded of the Breaking Bad Canada comic. "You have cancer. Treatment starts next week. The End." When I see "heartwarming" stories on tv about people donating to people that need help I can't help but think it would be more "heartwarming" to have a government that tried to make sure people wouldn't need to depend on the kindness of strangers for health care.
- robert_foss 8y ago
  That to me is one of the most striking observations from spending time in the US. Good outcomes are singled out and praised, but there isn't a system in place to make sure that good outcomes can be expected. This applies to health-care, funding for universities/hospitals/libraries/etc., or just making sure people have food on the table. To exemplify this, aren't food donation campaigns sort of missing the mark. Yes they provide a valuable service, but the service it self shouldn't be required. And in return for having you most basic needs like healtcare/education/food covered, why aren't people fine with paying some taxes for this? I thought I've had is that the nature of having states 'compete' against each other with lower taxes plays a part in this vilification of taxes. But surely this would only explain a small part of this problem.
  - chooseaname 8y ago
    > And in return for having you most basic needs like healtcare/education/food covered, why aren't people fine with paying some taxes for this? I thought I've had is that the nature of having states 'compete' against each other with lower taxes plays a part in this vilification of taxes. But surely this would only explain a small part of this problem. Because certain people in government convince people that citizens can manage their money better than the government can. Forget about the purchasing power of pooling your money (by way of taxes). Then you have people like Mitch McConnell who calls programs for the less fortunate as "entitlements". The people who need these services don't feel "entitled". Not one bit.
    - ouid 8y ago
      Except that they are entitled to it, calling them entitlements is not wrong. "Entitlements" is just another word for "rights".
matttproud 8y ago
I am inclined to agree with the article. As an American who has lived abroad for a sizable fraction of adulthood while frequently traveling back, the rising level of degradation — the people, public and private goods — in the U.S. simply can’t be ignored or smugly explained away. The country is rotting. Life looks so hard, the conditions and future tenuous, that my family is making the conscious choice to raise our child abroad. While our American friends miss us to be sure, not a single one has recommended we return — esp. those with children.
- smallgovt 8y ago
  I think people should stop using their personal experiences to support an argument that requires data on a much larger scale. For example, OC claims there has been an alarming rise in degradation of public infrastructure in the US. Does the hard data really support this? If so, I'd love to see it (seriously). Observations from personal travel are virtually meaningless in this context.
  - skh 8y ago
    Do you apply this standard to all beliefs you have? It’s interesting that you wrote what you did when you could have done a search and found some answers. From the third link below: Meanwhile, Americans’ international peers enjoy more efficient and reliable services, and their public investment in infrastructure is on average nearly double that of the United States.....The United States generally lags behind its peers in the developed world. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, in 2016 the United States ranked [PDF] tenth in the world in a broad measure of infrastructure quality—down from fifth place in 2002. That places it behind countries like France, Germany, Japan, and Spain. http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=37562 http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=37562 http://theconversation.com/measuring-up-us-infrastructure-against-other-countries-78164 http://theconversation.com/measuring-up-us-infrastructure-ag... https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure
  - matttproud 8y ago
    Dive down the rabbit hole: https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org The Interstate 35W Bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis 2007, I used that four or more times a day on average shortly before its demise. The story was similar throughout Minnesota and proved poisonous to the then-governor who wanted to starve the state. For us, we based our decision not on infrastructure alone but rather total system health. We need to be able to adequately commit to maintenance and future-proofing our societies, not kicking the metaphorical can down the road.
johan_larson 8y ago
I'd say the obvious comparison is to Brazil. The upper end of Brazilian society lives in first-world conditions. Some of them a really rich. But the bottom end lives in the third world, in gang-run unregulated slums that have dodgy water and power. The US isn't there yet, but that's where things seem to be headed.
buf 8y ago
I grew up in the USA but have lived abroad for many years. After seeing life in Europe and Asia, I agree with this article. Generalization below: Americans are isolated from other countries and from each other. It creates fear insofar as that we don't even let our children play in the front yards anymore, all the while kids in Tokyo ride the metro unattended by an adult. My life is much better outside of America, but yet I remain for now, because of the money I make here. Few more years to go and I'm done.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  It depends on how you define better. I happen to love Tokyo but let's not pretend like it's universally better than the US in all regards. In fact a lot of the countries people would think of as having better quality of life than the US have a higher per capita suicide rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan#/media/File:Suicide-deaths-per-100000-trend.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan#/media/File:S...
  - buf 8y ago
    I regret bringing up any country by name, because every country has at least one issue that is easily searchable on the internet.
    - tzs 8y ago
      That's a favorite trick of politicians for criticizing health care proposals. There are hundreds of different factors that you could use to compare the health care systems of any two countries. When someone proposes some change, and offers country X as an example of a place that works that way, opponents can always find among those hundreds of factors some particular things where we have better care than X, and then that's all they talk about. And of course if you propose a change and do NOT cite places that already work that way, then the opponents say you are trying something that is just theoretical and it would be irresponsible to risk our health on such experiments.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
Shivetya 8y ago
Welcome to the effect of too much government, between Federal, State, and Local, there is so many layers of inefficiency, graft, and corruption, it has become incredibly expensive to get a lot done. Corruption isn't simply down to giving and taking of bribes but the outright placing campaign officials in places of authority and nepotism. County level in many states works out just fine but even they are subject to harassment if not extortion by higher levels of government. We have a government too big it fails. Worse it costs the poorest of our country an inordinate amount due to taxes, fees, and penalties.
- okintheory 8y ago
  And yet there are countries with more government and much better outcomes along many axes, e.g. Denmark. So maybe there's a difference between a big government and corrupt one?
  - seabrookmx 8y ago
    This. Also it's hard to define "too much government." Too many/too steep of taxes? Too many Government employees? Too much regulation of industry? There's definitely some correlation, but I don't think these are strictly coupled. It would be possible to have France-like tax rates but not employ many government workers by paying private industry to handle tasks like health and education. I'm of the belief that practices like this might be part of the reason the US has so many healthcare inefficiencies though. Corporations are solely focused on making profit and there just isn't enough competition in areas like telecom, healthcare, etc. to keep prices down. I'm Canadian and our healthcare isn't perfect, but it's also not the kind of political talking point it is in the US for a reason.
- dmode 8y ago
  That’s weird, considering the countries that are better off have even more government
tapland 8y ago
Always wanted to move to the US, but having: Crohn's disease MEN-1 [0] and medications for them, and bi-yearly MRIs and CTs as well as expected surguries to remove tumours now and then I have just dismissed the possibility of ever moving there. Here in Sweden I pay less per earned dollar in taxes towards healthcare, and my total healthcare costs (all inclusive) are <$270/year (~half for maxing out pharmacy costs, other half for maxing out medical treatments/doctor's visits etc). How much would insurance cost me per month in the US to make me covered so that I never had to worry about not being able to afford medications or a surgury? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_endocrine_neoplasia_type_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_endocrine_neoplasia_t...
- pbourke 8y ago
  > How much would insurance cost me per month in the US to make me covered so that I never had to worry about not being able to afford medications or a surgury? It’s not the right question. The reality is that you’d never be free from worry due to insurer denials, changes to laws that may affect your coverage, provider network status changes and rate increases, job loss, employer changing insurers, etc. There is no end to your risk in the long run, even when you have “good insurance” at a particular point in time.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Yeah, the system here is such utter shit. I would like to see us start gradually expanding the existing system of "socialized medicine" in the US: The military medical system. I think an extremely moderate position would be to expand medical benefits for life to anyone who has served on active duty, even if they didn't stay in long enough to retire. Currently, you have to stay in twenty years -- or be the dependent of someone who has done so -- to remain in the system. This screws over a lot of veterans and is a travesty. The American military medical system is an excellent system with a lot going for it. We have no need to look at how other countries handle "socialized medicine." We have a perfectly functional system within our own borders already run by our own government. We just need to find a politically viable and practical means to start expanding access to it. Another possible step: If you qualify for Medicaid/Medicare, instead of the current fucked up system, we move you to having access to the military medical system.
burlesona 8y ago
Strong Towns has the best explanation of this phenomenon that I’ve seen: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
PaulHoule 8y ago
I remember when it took almost a year to refurbish a small bridge in downtown Ithaca. There used to people who said the Egyptian Pyramids were built by aliens, but the experience with that bridge made me wonder if the Tappan Zee bridge was built by aliens.
- whatislovecraft 8y ago
  > There used to people who said the Egyptian Pyramids were built by aliens Still are - how many Americans watch The History Channel, thinking they are getting history? Talk about rot. They play Ancient Aliens Declassified or some shit like that all day marathons, doing their best to dumb-down America as fast as possible.
rb808 8y ago
Surely this is just normal for a big country. USA, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia. There are some outliers - Germany, Japan, France, but they're stagnant with falling populations as people want to leave them. There are also some smaller countries Australia, Sweden, South Korea that have done well the last few decades, but we'll see how much longer for.
mindfulplay 8y ago
People have gotten too comfortable. We no longer have the will to care for the things we are surrounded by. We wait for government regulations and lawsuits to make things happen. That was not how this country was built. Once you concentrate power in corporations or in politics, people just don't have the will or say anymore to do anything. It takes too much time to build a bridge, and too many players involved and everyone seems to need more checklists and committees and regulations and vendors and contractors just to build a damn bridge. Private construction/ builders are only slightly more efficient because they don't run for election but due to monopolies or regulations they are ever more inefficient than before. And everything gets amplified a million times through Twitter with not much substance but just generally shouting about things and not actually doing shit.
aquova 8y ago
I've studied abroad for some brief periods, but I've lived almost all of my life in the US, particularly in some of the more rural states. I'm at this weird place mentally where I'm sometimes both exasperated by the economic situation here, while still annoyed by 'outsiders' who draw attention to it. Sometimes I feel that the faults of the US get more negative international publicity than other countries, leading people who don't really know the situation here to constantly try to bring up our issues. At the same time, there is still a Cold War-esque "We're number 1" attitude that makes some people here unwilling to see the faults. In the end, I wish I had an answer. Even more so, I wish I knew what the problem is. As the article says: I'm not surprised that bridges and roads built primarily from the 50s-70s are crumbling and need to be repaired. I'm just surprised that it costs so much to do so, and no one is sure why.
theredbox 8y ago
Sigh I am sad we cant have a productive discussion without going into "grass is greener on the other side".
adrianhel 8y ago
You guys need a good dose of socialism!

143 points by ForHackernews 8y ago

I recently started to understand US politics a lot better by realising that it's a global moon-landing superpower and a Latin American banana republic that occupy the same physical space.

sershe 8y ago

From a very long article on healthcare, "High US health care spending is quite well explained by its high material standard of living", I got an idea that neatly explains my experience in the USA and the perception of various groups from outside in (I'm from Moscow, that some people jokingly claim is a separate country from the rest of Russia). It's still not a well-formed idea, just a gist of it. US to me looks like a first world country with a 3rd world country attached to it; with the bleed of culture both ways (making urban-rural divide worse, sort of), and obviously economic effects both ways. It's sort of like if Russia joined the EU as far as people and economics are concerned - it'd still be a hellhole outside few major cities, but overall richer and with lots of angry anti-EU people. The US is like that, and the states are much more integrated than the EU is. The strongest case for this can probably be built by analyzing human capital as well as metrics such as healthcare (like the original article did), crime, etc by county. The weaker case for me personally is that the "feel" (and the norms if online sources are any indication) of rural/small-town places in the US vs urban/rich places in the US, is much more like small-town Russia vs Moscow (except more pissed instead of resigned to their fate), or other semi 3rd world countries, than the same in Europe. I don't actually think that Civil War was a war between those countries, but its interpretation these days by many people seems to cast it as such... and the present-day GOP leadership looks to me basically like United Russia in Russia - it's a party of power, plain and simple, that aspires to unleash the freedom to shear the great unwashed.. a typical 3rd world party of which there are few or no European equivalents. The Dems (and centrist GOP, I guess) are such a bizarre party these days because they, in turn, have to represent almost the entire spectrum of the first-world parties - from Bill Clinton liberal and Christian centrists, to Greens and Socialists.

Shorel 8y ago

It seems it is both the richest and the most unequal among the developed countries. Most issues are a consequence of this inequality.

dgudkov 8y ago

My rule of thumb: if an article has a line chart with non 0-based Y axis it most probably tries to manipulate the reader's opinion by trying to present an increasing/decreasing trend as more significant than it actually is.

crubier 8y ago

From a European point of view, the growing use of GoFundMe campaigns to pay for health care bills in the US feels like a wild capitalist dystopia. Your Facebook friends decide if you'll live or die.

ouid 8y ago

The US is a rich country with the symptoms of a rich country.

devoply 8y ago

When you have a sizable underclass because the upper classes want that sort of thing, then you have these sorts of issues.

benjohnson 8y ago
I think we should acknowledge that we accept over a million legal immigrants every year - comprising over 12% of our population. Obviously many of them are immensely beneficial and some are not - but I think this statistic belongs as part of the equation.
- erentz 8y ago
  I don’t see how they the presence of those legal immigrants is causing the US to stop taking care of its infrastructure or providing services like health care, etc. Your claim is a bit of a stretch and is the kind of typical nationalistic nonsense that distracts people from focusing on the real causes of these problems.
- Geimfari 8y ago
  A similar percentage applies to many Western nations.
- tracer4201 8y ago
  1 million legal immigrants comprises over 12% of our population? What exactly do you believe the US population is? I can’t tell if I’m on Facebook or hacker news.
  - ip26 8y ago
    What, you didn't know that the entire population of California was illegal immigrants?
    - tracer4201 8y ago
      Op never called out California by name and made it sound like they’re referring to the whole country.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Symptoms? That makes it sound like being a developing country is a disease.

zeropnc 8y ago

What's with Americans constantly attempting to paint their situation as more dire than it actually is? Is it just a blatant lack of perspective on the rest of the world? Reminds me of an article I read attempting to claim that child mortality in Memphis was worse than in Bangladesh. No, the United States isn't like the "developing world" if you're poor (and since when is Italy, the comparison country, considered "developing world"?) Comparisons like these (which are rather frequent, I've found) are obnoxiously disrespectful to the millions of people actually living in developing world countries. The same millions who would give up their first kid (and often, in many ways, do) to be allowed into the US. We can discuss improving the US while also still acknowledging that, on a global scale, their problems are fundamentally "first world problems". You don't need to spend hours crunching numbers finding some favourable metric to the South Sudan to make your damn point.

sattoshi 8y ago
The phenomena you’re describing feels very real. I think it’s a deformed manifestation of a victim complex. I’m not sure. I remember reading an article proclaiming that the United States is the 10th(!!!) most dangerous country in the world for women[0]. [0]: https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/10-most-dangerous-countries-in-the-world-for-women-1.6217212 https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/10-most-dangerous-countri...
smokeyj 8y ago
We've all heard of virtue signaling. Meet his ugly brother, "policy shaming". A few days ago a story hit HN about how ISIS is banning single-use plastics. That was very problematic because my eyes almost rolled into the back of my head. One of the few US places that actually resembles a developing nation is San Francisco. Whatever economic policy those people employ, the nation should do the exact opposite.
- briandear 8y ago
  $77 billion spent on a train from Merced to Bakersfield. I’m sure that money could have easily solved many infrastructure issues.
8y ago

dqpb 8y ago

Not surprising. The left is a pro-drug, social issue obsessed, math-fearing, anti-engineering culture. The right is a corrupt, pro-religion, pray that everything works, anti-education culture.

dang 8y ago
Please don't post ideological battle comments to HN. That's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
anthony_romeo 8y ago
Could you elaborate on “math-fearing”? I’m really curious to hear your justification for its inclusion in your lists
- orf 8y ago
  I expect it's a dog whistle referring to black and ethnic crime statistics.
  - dqpb 8y ago
    It's not, and I'm not even sure what you're getting at.
    - anthony_romeo 8y ago
      So what do you mean by “math-fearing”?
    - orf 8y ago
      If that's the case then I apologize. It's a common thing to cherry pick out of context and misleading statistics to push a narrative, then say "you must hate statistics/maths/reality" when you point out they are misleading. "The left hates math" = "the left hates our statistics" Perhaps you could elaborate on your comment.

mpweiher 8y ago

The first time I moved to the US was in 1981. Coming from Germany, a lot of it was quite shocking and seemed like a developing nation even back then, relatively speaking. Infrastructure crumbling. Highways made of concrete slabs that go badum-badum at the seams. Can tell if you're going too fast just by following the rhythm. The cars (rigid axle? seriously?). The appliances. The furniture. Windows that don't really close. Power lines on poles. We had an ice-storm once that knocked out power in a 500 mi radius. For at least three days. This was, at the time, one of the wealthiest communities in the country. All that despite a significantly higher GDP/person. Came back in 2007 to the Bay Area. A lot still the same, though the highways are nice and most people drive foreign cars. You have to be really quite well off in order to get things that don't suck, and I determined I could maintain the same standard of living for a lot less income if I moved back to Berlin, which I eventually did. On the other hand you can learn to fly for (comparatively) cheap. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Oh, some of my colleagues at <super-wealthy-top-bay-area-tech-firm> had this idea for an automatic washer-dryer combo: you put the washer on top, then when it's done the clothes drop into the dryer on the bottom. They had a hard time believing that single-unit washer-dryer units have existed for quite some time.

Someone1234 8y ago
> They had a hard time believing that single-unit washer-dryer units have existed for quite some time. Indeed, and unfortunately they still aren't good. Just useful if space is a premium (e.g. apartments). I was recently reading extensively on them, and the consensus seems to be that the washer part is roughly as good as a stand-alone unit, but the dryer is significantly worse (slow and inefficient). Often taking twice as long to dry the same loud. This seems to be because the dryer is a condenser dryer (stand alone dryers are typically vented dryers). This means instead of pumping warm-wet air outside, they use a heat exchanger to cool the warm-wet air, causing water to be deposited which is then drained. This results in the combo units consuming water to DRY. Since the heat exchanger has water pumped through it to keep its temperature low, and that water has to be discarded when it gets warm.
orf 8y ago
> Oh, some of my colleagues at <super-wealthy-top-bay-area-tech-firm> had this idea for an automatic washer-dryer combo: you put the washer on top, then when it's done the clothes drop into the dryer on the bottom. They had a hard time believing that single-unit washer-dryer units have existed for quite some time. Is this for real? I find it quite funny that they conceived it to require clothes to 'drop' from one section to the next. I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I travelled to Denver for business recently and felt similar things. Outdated fire sprinklers in my hotel (a good one at that) where very strange. That and the absolutley shocking number of homeless people.

jccalhoun 8y ago

I'm reminded of the Breaking Bad Canada comic. "You have cancer. Treatment starts next week. The End." When I see "heartwarming" stories on tv about people donating to people that need help I can't help but think it would be more "heartwarming" to have a government that tried to make sure people wouldn't need to depend on the kindness of strangers for health care.

robert_foss 8y ago
That to me is one of the most striking observations from spending time in the US. Good outcomes are singled out and praised, but there isn't a system in place to make sure that good outcomes can be expected. This applies to health-care, funding for universities/hospitals/libraries/etc., or just making sure people have food on the table. To exemplify this, aren't food donation campaigns sort of missing the mark. Yes they provide a valuable service, but the service it self shouldn't be required. And in return for having you most basic needs like healtcare/education/food covered, why aren't people fine with paying some taxes for this? I thought I've had is that the nature of having states 'compete' against each other with lower taxes plays a part in this vilification of taxes. But surely this would only explain a small part of this problem.
- chooseaname 8y ago
  > And in return for having you most basic needs like healtcare/education/food covered, why aren't people fine with paying some taxes for this? I thought I've had is that the nature of having states 'compete' against each other with lower taxes plays a part in this vilification of taxes. But surely this would only explain a small part of this problem. Because certain people in government convince people that citizens can manage their money better than the government can. Forget about the purchasing power of pooling your money (by way of taxes). Then you have people like Mitch McConnell who calls programs for the less fortunate as "entitlements". The people who need these services don't feel "entitled". Not one bit.
  - ouid 8y ago
    Except that they are entitled to it, calling them entitlements is not wrong. "Entitlements" is just another word for "rights".

matttproud 8y ago

I am inclined to agree with the article. As an American who has lived abroad for a sizable fraction of adulthood while frequently traveling back, the rising level of degradation — the people, public and private goods — in the U.S. simply can’t be ignored or smugly explained away. The country is rotting. Life looks so hard, the conditions and future tenuous, that my family is making the conscious choice to raise our child abroad. While our American friends miss us to be sure, not a single one has recommended we return — esp. those with children.

smallgovt 8y ago
I think people should stop using their personal experiences to support an argument that requires data on a much larger scale. For example, OC claims there has been an alarming rise in degradation of public infrastructure in the US. Does the hard data really support this? If so, I'd love to see it (seriously). Observations from personal travel are virtually meaningless in this context.
- skh 8y ago
  Do you apply this standard to all beliefs you have? It’s interesting that you wrote what you did when you could have done a search and found some answers. From the third link below: Meanwhile, Americans’ international peers enjoy more efficient and reliable services, and their public investment in infrastructure is on average nearly double that of the United States.....The United States generally lags behind its peers in the developed world. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, in 2016 the United States ranked [PDF] tenth in the world in a broad measure of infrastructure quality—down from fifth place in 2002. That places it behind countries like France, Germany, Japan, and Spain. http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=37562 http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=37562 http://theconversation.com/measuring-up-us-infrastructure-against-other-countries-78164 http://theconversation.com/measuring-up-us-infrastructure-ag... https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure
- matttproud 8y ago
  Dive down the rabbit hole: https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org The Interstate 35W Bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis 2007, I used that four or more times a day on average shortly before its demise. The story was similar throughout Minnesota and proved poisonous to the then-governor who wanted to starve the state. For us, we based our decision not on infrastructure alone but rather total system health. We need to be able to adequately commit to maintenance and future-proofing our societies, not kicking the metaphorical can down the road.

johan_larson 8y ago

I'd say the obvious comparison is to Brazil. The upper end of Brazilian society lives in first-world conditions. Some of them a really rich. But the bottom end lives in the third world, in gang-run unregulated slums that have dodgy water and power. The US isn't there yet, but that's where things seem to be headed.

buf 8y ago

I grew up in the USA but have lived abroad for many years. After seeing life in Europe and Asia, I agree with this article. Generalization below: Americans are isolated from other countries and from each other. It creates fear insofar as that we don't even let our children play in the front yards anymore, all the while kids in Tokyo ride the metro unattended by an adult. My life is much better outside of America, but yet I remain for now, because of the money I make here. Few more years to go and I'm done.

malvosenior 8y ago
It depends on how you define better. I happen to love Tokyo but let's not pretend like it's universally better than the US in all regards. In fact a lot of the countries people would think of as having better quality of life than the US have a higher per capita suicide rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan#/media/File:Suicide-deaths-per-100000-trend.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan#/media/File:S...
- buf 8y ago
  I regret bringing up any country by name, because every country has at least one issue that is easily searchable on the internet.
  - tzs 8y ago
    That's a favorite trick of politicians for criticizing health care proposals. There are hundreds of different factors that you could use to compare the health care systems of any two countries. When someone proposes some change, and offers country X as an example of a place that works that way, opponents can always find among those hundreds of factors some particular things where we have better care than X, and then that's all they talk about. And of course if you propose a change and do NOT cite places that already work that way, then the opponents say you are trying something that is just theoretical and it would be irresponsible to risk our health on such experiments.
  - malvosenior 8y ago

Shivetya 8y ago

Welcome to the effect of too much government, between Federal, State, and Local, there is so many layers of inefficiency, graft, and corruption, it has become incredibly expensive to get a lot done. Corruption isn't simply down to giving and taking of bribes but the outright placing campaign officials in places of authority and nepotism. County level in many states works out just fine but even they are subject to harassment if not extortion by higher levels of government. We have a government too big it fails. Worse it costs the poorest of our country an inordinate amount due to taxes, fees, and penalties.

okintheory 8y ago
And yet there are countries with more government and much better outcomes along many axes, e.g. Denmark. So maybe there's a difference between a big government and corrupt one?
- seabrookmx 8y ago
  This. Also it's hard to define "too much government." Too many/too steep of taxes? Too many Government employees? Too much regulation of industry? There's definitely some correlation, but I don't think these are strictly coupled. It would be possible to have France-like tax rates but not employ many government workers by paying private industry to handle tasks like health and education. I'm of the belief that practices like this might be part of the reason the US has so many healthcare inefficiencies though. Corporations are solely focused on making profit and there just isn't enough competition in areas like telecom, healthcare, etc. to keep prices down. I'm Canadian and our healthcare isn't perfect, but it's also not the kind of political talking point it is in the US for a reason.
dmode 8y ago
That’s weird, considering the countries that are better off have even more government

tapland 8y ago

Always wanted to move to the US, but having: Crohn's disease MEN-1 [0] and medications for them, and bi-yearly MRIs and CTs as well as expected surguries to remove tumours now and then I have just dismissed the possibility of ever moving there. Here in Sweden I pay less per earned dollar in taxes towards healthcare, and my total healthcare costs (all inclusive) are <$270/year (~half for maxing out pharmacy costs, other half for maxing out medical treatments/doctor's visits etc). How much would insurance cost me per month in the US to make me covered so that I never had to worry about not being able to afford medications or a surgury? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_endocrine_neoplasia_type_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_endocrine_neoplasia_t...

pbourke 8y ago
> How much would insurance cost me per month in the US to make me covered so that I never had to worry about not being able to afford medications or a surgury? It’s not the right question. The reality is that you’d never be free from worry due to insurer denials, changes to laws that may affect your coverage, provider network status changes and rate increases, job loss, employer changing insurers, etc. There is no end to your risk in the long run, even when you have “good insurance” at a particular point in time.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Yeah, the system here is such utter shit. I would like to see us start gradually expanding the existing system of "socialized medicine" in the US: The military medical system. I think an extremely moderate position would be to expand medical benefits for life to anyone who has served on active duty, even if they didn't stay in long enough to retire. Currently, you have to stay in twenty years -- or be the dependent of someone who has done so -- to remain in the system. This screws over a lot of veterans and is a travesty. The American military medical system is an excellent system with a lot going for it. We have no need to look at how other countries handle "socialized medicine." We have a perfectly functional system within our own borders already run by our own government. We just need to find a politically viable and practical means to start expanding access to it. Another possible step: If you qualify for Medicaid/Medicare, instead of the current fucked up system, we move you to having access to the military medical system.

burlesona 8y ago

Strong Towns has the best explanation of this phenomenon that I’ve seen: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

PaulHoule 8y ago

I remember when it took almost a year to refurbish a small bridge in downtown Ithaca. There used to people who said the Egyptian Pyramids were built by aliens, but the experience with that bridge made me wonder if the Tappan Zee bridge was built by aliens.

whatislovecraft 8y ago
> There used to people who said the Egyptian Pyramids were built by aliens Still are - how many Americans watch The History Channel, thinking they are getting history? Talk about rot. They play Ancient Aliens Declassified or some shit like that all day marathons, doing their best to dumb-down America as fast as possible.

rb808 8y ago

Surely this is just normal for a big country. USA, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia. There are some outliers - Germany, Japan, France, but they're stagnant with falling populations as people want to leave them. There are also some smaller countries Australia, Sweden, South Korea that have done well the last few decades, but we'll see how much longer for.

mindfulplay 8y ago

People have gotten too comfortable. We no longer have the will to care for the things we are surrounded by. We wait for government regulations and lawsuits to make things happen. That was not how this country was built. Once you concentrate power in corporations or in politics, people just don't have the will or say anymore to do anything. It takes too much time to build a bridge, and too many players involved and everyone seems to need more checklists and committees and regulations and vendors and contractors just to build a damn bridge. Private construction/ builders are only slightly more efficient because they don't run for election but due to monopolies or regulations they are ever more inefficient than before. And everything gets amplified a million times through Twitter with not much substance but just generally shouting about things and not actually doing shit.

aquova 8y ago

I've studied abroad for some brief periods, but I've lived almost all of my life in the US, particularly in some of the more rural states. I'm at this weird place mentally where I'm sometimes both exasperated by the economic situation here, while still annoyed by 'outsiders' who draw attention to it. Sometimes I feel that the faults of the US get more negative international publicity than other countries, leading people who don't really know the situation here to constantly try to bring up our issues. At the same time, there is still a Cold War-esque "We're number 1" attitude that makes some people here unwilling to see the faults. In the end, I wish I had an answer. Even more so, I wish I knew what the problem is. As the article says: I'm not surprised that bridges and roads built primarily from the 50s-70s are crumbling and need to be repaired. I'm just surprised that it costs so much to do so, and no one is sure why.

theredbox 8y ago

Sigh I am sad we cant have a productive discussion without going into "grass is greener on the other side".

adrianhel 8y ago

You guys need a good dose of socialism!