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Interestingly it seems from this articles figures that the actual disposable income of the middle class and lower class of the US is much higher than in Europe

Interestingly it seems from this articles figures that the actual disposable income of the middle class and lower class of the US is much higher than in Europe [1]. "The United States’ smaller middle income group still earns more than almost all its Western European counterparts. The average disposable income among middle income Americans in 2010 was $60,884, placing it comfortably ahead of Norway, which averaged $56,960. The one exception to Western Europe’s income trends was Luxembourg." [1] https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle-class/524193/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/04/euro-vs-american-middle...

standardUser 8y ago
One would hope so, given the astronomical cost of healthcare and the near-universal requirement that every household own and maintain at least one car in order to work and attend school.
- dmix 8y ago
  What is the average healthcare costs for an American? Aren't the majority of people in the US covered by Medicare or their employers plans? I'm from Canada so I'm curious what the yearly costs would be like. I typically lean libertarian on most areas of gov-run organizations but, much like prisons, public health insurance makes far more sense to be completely centralized vs the US random centralization and countless layers of legislation over their pretend private market. They are wasting money: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Health_care_cost_rise.svg/800px-Health_care_cost_rise.svg.png?1556055036730 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/He...
  - standardUser 8y ago
    Having employer-provided health insurance in the United States does not mean it does not cost the employee as well. Many companies require the employee pay part of the premiums, especially for families, and there are many, many out-of-pocket costs that people must pay even when they have insurance. In the US, there were about 1.4 million bankruptcies every year before Obamacare. There are around 700,000 per year now. But the majority of those are still widely considered to be related to medical costs (though exact statistics don't exist). That should give an idea of the burden most Americans face in terms of healthcare costs. More anecdotally, my own costs this year - as a single adult having employer-provided health insurance - is already about $800 out-of-pocket for a few office visits and tests.
    - dmix 8y ago
      How much does a standard office visit cost? How long do you get? In Canada it's in 15min increments, you have to say beforehand if you need 30min or longer, because they break up the whole day in 15min chunks and bill each the same. Almost every time they are rushing you, so they can hammer out a ton of 5min appointments and bill them all for 15min. Which is kind of annoying.
    - dogma1138 8y ago
      $800 is less than the 15-25% health tax you’ll pay in Europe.
      - majewsky 8y ago
        You forgot to factor in that he's also paying indirectly for employer-provided health insurance. How much is that in comparison?
        dogma1138 8y ago
        Same goes for Europe, my national insurance contribution(which doesn't even technically cover healthcare) is £6,664 a year, my employer pays an additional £17,281.19 in NICS a year. Do you think that you and your employer pay more than $30K a year for healthcare? Don't get me wrong there are a lot of things wrong with US healthcare including the costs for uninsured but Europeans pay through the nose direct and indirectly for their health insurance as well. With marginal tax of nearly of over 50% of your income when you include NI/Health Tax contributions, 20-25% VAT and much higher indirect taxes on everything from fuel to sugar you end up paying for it one way or another.
        majewsky 8y ago
        > Do you think that you and your employer pay more than $30K a year for healthcare? If I add the costs for my grandmother, then that sounds very likely. The important thing about universal healthcare is that workers pay for those who cannot pay themselves, so it's to be expected that a 30yo developer would pay way more than he gets back out. It's only fair, I'm gonna be old someday and I definitely want my health insurance to cover my expenses when I cannot pay premiums anymore.
- pathseeker 8y ago
  You overestimate how much a car costs and you overestimate how many middle-class people are paying for their own healthcare.
lotsofpulp 8y ago
Need to subtract the cash you need to set aside in case if medical emergencies and higher education.
- xienze 8y ago
  It really depends on what kind of job you have. If you’ve worked hard and have a good job (like most people on HN), your health insurance likely means that you don’t have to pay a lot out of pocket. In my case for example, I have a family of four covered with a very, very good plan for $300 a month and $5k max out of pocket. Household income is north of $200k in a low cost of living area. So my max theoretical out of pocket costs of $8600 per year means in the worst possible scenario less than 5% of my paycheck goes to healthcare. Ain’t no way in hell a socialized healthcare system in this country will take as much or less out of my ass every year. And that’s not even getting into concerns that the quality of care won’t be as good (we have the VA as an example of what we can look forward to). That’s why there’s a lot of resistance to socialized healthcare in this country. The rich will be fine, the poor will benefit massively, and the middle class will take it in the rear, as usual.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    There’s a couple costs missing from your analysis. One is the individual’s cost of being dependent on staying in the good graces of large employers. Second, the societal cost of large employers having a competitive advantage due to being able to offer taxpayer subsidized healthcare at lower prices. In the short term, your calculations are correct, for yourself. In the long term, you’re continuously losing negotiating power. And all of that ignores the biggest cost, which is living in a society where we blatantly don’t care about other citizens and their families being destroyed by health issues. The middle class thinks they have a lot to lose, but they’ve already lost it and are hanging on by a thread.
dcolkitt 8y ago
Although the US doesn't have much higher GDP levels than Western Europe, it has substantially AIC (average individual consumption) levels. That is the median American household doesn't produce much more than their European counterparts, but they tend to consume much more. There's a couple of reasons for this. One is that many land is cheap and abundant, which lowers the cost of living. Two is that US multinationals make a ton of profits overseas, which get remitted to mostly American shareholders. E.g. Apple makes a $1000 iPhone in Asia, which doesn't count towards US GDP, but $500 of that revenue gets paid in dividends to American pensioners. Third is that Americans tend to earn much more return on their investments than foreigners. This means that America manages to get by with substantially lower saving rates than other countries. This is particularly true with oil producing countries. A country like Norway has high GDP, but it has to continually reinvest a high proportion of its production back into a very capital-intensive industry. The US's economy is heavily concentrated in services, which require very little capital investment. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_final_consumption_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...
- acchow 8y ago
  > Although the US doesn't have much higher GDP levels than Western Europe GDP per capita: US: $59k Germany: $45k UK: $40k France: $39k 30% higher than Germany isn't "much higher"?

standardUser 8y ago

One would hope so, given the astronomical cost of healthcare and the near-universal requirement that every household own and maintain at least one car in order to work and attend school.

dmix 8y ago
What is the average healthcare costs for an American? Aren't the majority of people in the US covered by Medicare or their employers plans? I'm from Canada so I'm curious what the yearly costs would be like. I typically lean libertarian on most areas of gov-run organizations but, much like prisons, public health insurance makes far more sense to be completely centralized vs the US random centralization and countless layers of legislation over their pretend private market. They are wasting money: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Health_care_cost_rise.svg/800px-Health_care_cost_rise.svg.png?1556055036730 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/He...
- standardUser 8y ago
  Having employer-provided health insurance in the United States does not mean it does not cost the employee as well. Many companies require the employee pay part of the premiums, especially for families, and there are many, many out-of-pocket costs that people must pay even when they have insurance. In the US, there were about 1.4 million bankruptcies every year before Obamacare. There are around 700,000 per year now. But the majority of those are still widely considered to be related to medical costs (though exact statistics don't exist). That should give an idea of the burden most Americans face in terms of healthcare costs. More anecdotally, my own costs this year - as a single adult having employer-provided health insurance - is already about $800 out-of-pocket for a few office visits and tests.
  - dmix 8y ago
    How much does a standard office visit cost? How long do you get? In Canada it's in 15min increments, you have to say beforehand if you need 30min or longer, because they break up the whole day in 15min chunks and bill each the same. Almost every time they are rushing you, so they can hammer out a ton of 5min appointments and bill them all for 15min. Which is kind of annoying.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    $800 is less than the 15-25% health tax you’ll pay in Europe.
    - majewsky 8y ago
      You forgot to factor in that he's also paying indirectly for employer-provided health insurance. How much is that in comparison?
      - dogma1138 8y ago
        Same goes for Europe, my national insurance contribution(which doesn't even technically cover healthcare) is £6,664 a year, my employer pays an additional £17,281.19 in NICS a year. Do you think that you and your employer pay more than $30K a year for healthcare? Don't get me wrong there are a lot of things wrong with US healthcare including the costs for uninsured but Europeans pay through the nose direct and indirectly for their health insurance as well. With marginal tax of nearly of over 50% of your income when you include NI/Health Tax contributions, 20-25% VAT and much higher indirect taxes on everything from fuel to sugar you end up paying for it one way or another.
        majewsky 8y ago
        > Do you think that you and your employer pay more than $30K a year for healthcare? If I add the costs for my grandmother, then that sounds very likely. The important thing about universal healthcare is that workers pay for those who cannot pay themselves, so it's to be expected that a 30yo developer would pay way more than he gets back out. It's only fair, I'm gonna be old someday and I definitely want my health insurance to cover my expenses when I cannot pay premiums anymore.
pathseeker 8y ago
You overestimate how much a car costs and you overestimate how many middle-class people are paying for their own healthcare.

lotsofpulp 8y ago

Need to subtract the cash you need to set aside in case if medical emergencies and higher education.

xienze 8y ago
It really depends on what kind of job you have. If you’ve worked hard and have a good job (like most people on HN), your health insurance likely means that you don’t have to pay a lot out of pocket. In my case for example, I have a family of four covered with a very, very good plan for $300 a month and $5k max out of pocket. Household income is north of $200k in a low cost of living area. So my max theoretical out of pocket costs of $8600 per year means in the worst possible scenario less than 5% of my paycheck goes to healthcare. Ain’t no way in hell a socialized healthcare system in this country will take as much or less out of my ass every year. And that’s not even getting into concerns that the quality of care won’t be as good (we have the VA as an example of what we can look forward to). That’s why there’s a lot of resistance to socialized healthcare in this country. The rich will be fine, the poor will benefit massively, and the middle class will take it in the rear, as usual.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  There’s a couple costs missing from your analysis. One is the individual’s cost of being dependent on staying in the good graces of large employers. Second, the societal cost of large employers having a competitive advantage due to being able to offer taxpayer subsidized healthcare at lower prices. In the short term, your calculations are correct, for yourself. In the long term, you’re continuously losing negotiating power. And all of that ignores the biggest cost, which is living in a society where we blatantly don’t care about other citizens and their families being destroyed by health issues. The middle class thinks they have a lot to lose, but they’ve already lost it and are hanging on by a thread.

dcolkitt 8y ago

Although the US doesn't have much higher GDP levels than Western Europe, it has substantially AIC (average individual consumption) levels. That is the median American household doesn't produce much more than their European counterparts, but they tend to consume much more. There's a couple of reasons for this. One is that many land is cheap and abundant, which lowers the cost of living. Two is that US multinationals make a ton of profits overseas, which get remitted to mostly American shareholders. E.g. Apple makes a $1000 iPhone in Asia, which doesn't count towards US GDP, but $500 of that revenue gets paid in dividends to American pensioners. Third is that Americans tend to earn much more return on their investments than foreigners. This means that America manages to get by with substantially lower saving rates than other countries. This is particularly true with oil producing countries. A country like Norway has high GDP, but it has to continually reinvest a high proportion of its production back into a very capital-intensive industry. The US's economy is heavily concentrated in services, which require very little capital investment. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_final_consumption_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...

acchow 8y ago
> Although the US doesn't have much higher GDP levels than Western Europe GDP per capita: US: $59k Germany: $45k UK: $40k France: $39k 30% higher than Germany isn't "much higher"?