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Comparing San Francisco to similarly sized Marseille; I would suggest that Europe doesn’t necessarily have to answers either. I lived near Avignon and half of t
by briandear 8y ago
Comparing San Francisco to similarly sized Marseille; I would suggest that Europe doesn’t necessarily have to answers either. I lived near Avignon and half of the storefronts in that town are boarded up. You’ll find a similar story across much of France. Paris, Marseille and Lyon suburbs often look like war zones and while the US has some similar areas, there are still plenty of places that don’t. Those that like to compare Europe to the US often look at the capital cities such as Paris as examples, but fail to look beyond the surface. France has considerable decay and economic malaise. Two of my kids were born in France and while it’s a nice place, the opportunity there doesn’t even come close to the US.
- sveme 8y agoPrime r/shitamericanssay stuff here. Which places in France look like Syria?
- toweringgoat 8y agoUsing France as a representaiton of Europe isn't really sensible. And Europe as a representation of life outside the US even more so. Travelling to France feels similar to travelling to the US to me. Horrible infrastructure (especially Paris IMHO). Similar feelings for some other European countries, Italy at the forefront. Better models are places like the Nordics, New Zealand, Singapore. But more middlingly, Canada, Germany, Taiwan, all outclass life in the US or France. Heck, I'd even say China are doing a lot better in many regards (they have their own issues of course, but many aspects are strong).
- beerlord 8y agoFrance is fundamentally broken. Welfare is 31.5% of GDP and even at entry-level taxes will take up over half your labour. You have a low-IQ non-European immigrant population growing rapidly with all of the attendant criminal problems. France needs to kill the welfare state, and limit immigration of non-compatible cultures, if it wishes to make any improvement. Otherwise the future is just continual decay until some kind of another revolution takes place and the whole setup is violently upended.
- dang 8y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly using HN for political, national, and racial flamewar and ignoring our requests to stop. This is not what HN is for. It's tedious, destructive, and nothing good comes of it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- titanix2 8y agoDownvoted by the SJW crowd for saying the truth. Stop giving the RSA (revenu de solidarité active) to foreign nationals and then look at how the immigration from third world countries will stop by itself. A lot of people feel there will be a push back, and the sooner the softer for everybody. If we let the situation rot 4 more decades this will finish in a bloodshed. The Gilet Jaunes was a first and mild attempt at it. The next time will be uglier.
- dang 8y agoPlease stop posting political, nationalist, racial, and/or flamewar comments to HN. HN is for intellectual curiosity, which is not compatible with political venting. Regardless of how right your views are or you feel they are, please respect the mandate of this site when posting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- meko 8y agoAt some point you have to step back and take a good, hard look at yourself when your ideological 'enemy' fights for justice. Maybe you're the baddie.
- yardie 8y agoI would disagree and say is the best representation of Europe. High output similar to Germany, and Sweden. High unemployment in the realm of Spain and Italy. While other countries sit on various points of different graphs (education, unemployment, immigration, GDP, etc) France just kind of sits near the center of most of them.
- dmode 8y agoHaving spent 10 days in France and driving from Paris to Lyon to Nice, this doesn’t jive with my experience at all. French cities were clean and nice. French villages look pristine and well managed. Unlike some of the broken rural areas in the US.
- microtherion 8y agoI've spent my vacations in rural France every year for the last 10 years or so. There are certainly some problems — smaller places just don't feel very dynamic economically. On the other hand, the French seem to have a vastly better life/work balance, and I really enjoy their unhurried way of life, even though as a customer, it's not always to my benefit. The one place in the US that reminds me most of this is the Big Island of Hawaii.
- ben_w 8y agoOn the other hand, I’ve been to the following places and thought they were pretty good (although the commonality of graffiti in Europe was a big surprise): * Roterdam * Amsterdam * Köln * Hannover * Heidelberg * Magdeburg * Berlin * Frankfurt (both of them) * Suhl * Zürich * Nuremberg * Strasbourg * Luxembourg * Bologne * Venice (even outside the touristy bits) * Barcelona * Torrevieja * Helsinki * Adelaide * Cairns And yes, I know not all of those are in Europe; this is generically “nice places”. I’d name places in the UK if the UK government wasn’t currently digesting its own brain. I’d give Budapest a miss thought. Even the street with all the embassies on is literally falling down and has barriers to keep the pedestrians safe from falling masonry.
- rotterdamguy 8y agoIt's Rotterdam - double t.
- titanix2 8y ago> Paris, Marseille and Lyon suburbs often look like war zones and while the US has some similar areas, there are still plenty of places that don’t. [...] France has considerable decay and economic malaise. Very true, but it is forbidden to talk publicly about the real cause of the economic, social and cultural impoverishment of the country. If we can somehow revert part of the last 4 decades of uncontrolled immigration, the country will improve tremendously on these points, in addition to better security.