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Leaving your 20s and 30s with a career you enjoy, basic benefits such as health insurance, retirement funding, and paid time off, and the ability to afford a re

Leaving your 20s and 30s with a career you enjoy, basic benefits such as health insurance, retirement funding, and paid time off, and the ability to afford a reasonably sized home without falling into tremendous amounts of debt seems less and less likely each year. I have a lot of family who have moved from the EU to the US and back to the EU, I have also lived there myself, and I'm intimately familiar with their day-to-day. If the average American knew what the benefits and lifestyle are like for a middle-class German family, all those totally disconnected accolades about job and GDP growth that our oligarchs like to shower upon us would do nothing to prevent work strikes and riots in the streets.

dv_dt 7y ago
That reminds me of this twitter thread about our healthcare system. There are absolutely heartbreaking stories on there. The one that really sticks in my mind is the parents who were paying off and earlier ER trip and were literally waiting in the parking lot of the ER again with a fevered child, waiting to see if seizures started or the fever broke. https://twitter.com/AllOnMedicare/status/1124042436345569286 https://twitter.com/AllOnMedicare/status/1124042436345569286
wickerman 7y ago
As a south american living in the EU, I grew up hearing people saying "ah, in the US..." and while probably they were thinking back to a time when the US wasn't as terrible as it is now, it's a bit irritating for me to hear that kind of stuff considering that I graduated in the top university of my country with a masters in engineering and had to pay nothing because university is free and for everyone. I've met so many american expats in Europe who basically fled their student debt by emigrating. And that's just one thing, the fact that healthcare isn't free, people avoid calling for ambulances because they cost money, and people are jailed because the prision system has become a very profitable business.
- supergauntlet 7y ago
  Every day I see headlines like this and I think "surely soon enough it will get bad enough that people will support universal healthcare" or really any "socialist" policy. Every day I am mistaken. If people actually did the research they'd see that these policies are just good common sense for them, but too many of our voters are lied to by the media they consume, so I worry things will never change.
  - Frost1x 7y ago
    Assuming the trend continues, at some future time there will reach a tipping point. Historically, once a population becomes so oppressed by those in power that it starts pushing into fundamental needs (food, shelter, etc), the population finally revolts and it's usually not a pretty picture. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately in most other contexts), those revolution level standards of living are tremendously lower than what your average citizen has now even though we complain about home ownership and health care we still have places to live and emergency rooms. I'm not saying I'm willing to accept this level of modern indentured servitude, I'm saying most are. For awhile, we had a generally progressive labor movement in the states where average citizens demanded improvement and progress. It seems to have reached a sort of stagnant state of complacency at some point and began to decline with much of that culture and momentum dying off in the process (not being passed on to future generations). Now, people just shake their heads and accept things the way they are instead of fighting for improvement in their lives. How do you educate the general population and convince them to support movements to continue to increase US workers' standards of living? I don't know the answer to that question. I see an additional problem with the sort of bifurcation trend we're seeing in the middle class where people seem to be shifting to either upper middle or lower middle. The upper middle are typically more educated and so hammered in the rat race trying to salvage what remains for themselves, they can't find the time to support everyone else's rights. The lower middle typically aren't as educated: college is absurdly expensive and cultural + economic trends lead many of our most talented away from teaching (where many should be). This leaves the lower middle to be more susceptible to adopting media manipulation/ideology trends that aren't in their interests. I have a very bright and good friend who recently retired who told me if he was my age, he'd seriously consider migrating out of the country but he's retired and has a family. I hate to say it but sometimes I feel a tendency to agree with his evaluation and that's sad in one of the wealthiest countries in the world that has been a beacon of democracy and growth for many years.
- rubber_duck 7y ago
  In my experience "free" healthcare stops being a thing once you get above certain income level as the service provided by the public healthcare facilities is subpar (waiting lists huge, best specialists often work at private clinics, etc.) so you end up going private but you still end up paying a huge chunk of your income in tax. Eg. impressions of Germany is that it's a nice place and all but they insist on paperwork/formalisms too much (for example apartment rental process is ridiculous) and it doesn't seem to be very upwardly mobile (you get taxed a lot so it's hard to accumulate capital when starting from mid level income for eg.).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - onion2k 7y ago
    In my experience "free" healthcare stops being a thing once you get above certain income level as the service provided by the public healthcare facilities is subpar (waiting lists huge, best specialists often work at private clinics, etc.) so you end up going private but you still end up paying a huge chunk of your income in tax. That's not true here in the UK. People do use private healthcare but they're in the minority and it's usually for expediency rather than quality. Many very rich people still get treatment on the NHS. It's very, very good.
    - qwsxyh 7y ago
      In fact most private healthcare delegates back to the NHS anyway.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    " it doesn't seem to be very upwardly mobile (you get taxed a lot so it's hard to accumulate capital when starting from mid level income for eg.)." I don't think that's true. You can get free/cheap schooling and health care is always there for you. I would agree it's easier to move upward than in the US where it seems one of the big secrets for success is to have wealthy parents. Coming from Germany and now living in the US I am also not sure if the taxation in the US is that much lower when you add all taxes together. And if you or your partner has any serious health issue it's very likely that this will cost way more than any taxes you pay less.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  The Argentinian government has collected taxes from its 50% child-poverty rate to fund your education so you could leave the country. That is not an example of successful policy.
  - wickerman 7y ago
    If the argentinian government wasn't riddled with corruption and people who literally stole most of public money then there wouldn't be a child poverty rate of 50% and engineers like myself wouldn't dream of emigrating. Nevermind that I was one of those poor children. But yes, the "policy" is the problem. Not the big heads stealing money.
    - conanbatt 7y ago
      The true act of corruption is that the poor pay for the rich. 4% of the national budget goes to public universities, and IVA is half the taxes levied by the federal government. There are no doubts of who is the giving and who is the receiving in this case. IVA is collected 60% on the bottom 50% of the population meaning its slightly regressive. The first thing you can do to help the poor is to stop giving money to the rich: you can lower IVA by 1% if public universities were self funded.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Healthcare in the US used to be a lot simpler and cheaper. But costs continue to rise faster than the rate of inflation for decade after decade and the price started becoming an issue so people had to start complicating and reducing the quality their plans to save money, but those were short term fixes because the costs continue to rise faster than inflation and now we're stuck with plans that are complex and have limited offering and are still unaffordable. Worse, all of the complexity has its own costs which are now just compounding the problem. At this point any sane person should be saying that our private market approach to healthcare is an experiment that unfortunately failed, but the gravy train is too big and too fast to stop quickly. Nobody in Washington or even the state legislatures can get traction on a replacement without drawing the ire of extremely well funded political interests.
bairrd 7y ago
I'd have to disagree about work strikes and riots, given how conditioned this country has been to lick the boots of the powerful, as a large chunk of this country sees itself as "temporarily displaced rich". Hacker News comments are frequently hyper individualist in a way that, outside a few coastal bubbles, makes up the political view of a majority of people in this country, including plenty of self-described liberals. This is only going to change after the massive inverted-pyramid generational demographics of this country shifts, and giving our increasingly anti-immigration policies and a below-replacement birthrate, I honestly believe this country is trapped in a death spiral. Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood...
- cptskippy 7y ago
  > "temporarily displaced rich" So many people in America believe this, that they would be rich or successful if it weren't for X. X is different based on race, gender, and geographic location but the sentiment is the same. The reason politicians like Trump are so popular right now is that they're successfully speaking to that shared sentiment and not to any one specific issue. The political parties are basically comprised of groups with non-conflicting sentiments who are willing to support each other's ideologies.
simonh 7y ago
As a Brit I'm bewildered by the poor state of the basic working conditions Americans put up with. It's more similar to what my relatives in China get than the base line benefits and conditions in Europe.
- brianwawok 7y ago
  On the flipside, I am amazed that Brits put up with going to college for 4 years to be a developer and living in a very high cost of living place like London, to make $50-65k a year after 10 years of experience. Many differences for many different people / lifestyles.
himeexcelanta 7y ago
I’ll probably get downvoted for this, but a strong argument can be made that the European welfare state has only been made possible due to massive US defense subsidies and economic stimulus during the post WWII/Cold War. This doesn’t mean that the US has a good excuse for relatively poor domestic social services vis a vi many European states, but let’s also be real about what allows Germany, France, etc to provide “free” healthcare and other social subsidies. In the particular case of Germany, defense spending is only 1.2% (this stat is easily found via google). I’d rather have Pax Americana (which arguably is in decline) over the past 70 years providing stability in Europe, helping to lift hundreds of millions of East Asians out of agrarian subsistence, etc than slightly cheaper healthcare. Although, tell that fact to someone who receives huge, opaque medical bills for simple procedures in the US and they probably wouldn’t take too kindly to that line of reasoning...
- imgabe 7y ago
  I think the US defense subsidy is underrated, as is generational wealth in Europe accumulated over hundreds of years by plundering, enslaving, and colonizing the rest of the world. Europeans don't want to hear that though, they like to imagine they're just simply more civilized than barbaric Americans.
  - aluren 7y ago
    The US defense budget is more than that of the rest of the top 10 combined. There are many things that could be said about it, but underrated is a bit of a stretch, to say the least. You could cut it by two thirds and the so-called pax americana people like to mention wouldn't be threatened in the least. >hundreds of years by plundering, enslaving, and colonizing the rest of the world. This has got to be the most egregous case of pot calling the kettle black I've read in a while.
    - himeexcelanta 7y ago
      Let’s try to consider the arguments in isolation without resorting to ad hominem.
deanmoriarty 7y ago
You can also arbitrage different strengths and weaknesses of countries to improve your quality of life. I was born in EU where I got access to all the benefits you're mentioning, such as free health care, free computer engineering BS+MS degree for myself, and social security providing for my aging parents. However, job opportunities as a software engineer there were ridiculously bad, both in terms of quality of work, and compensation (99% of my college mates ended up, and are still, working in mind-numbing boring consultancy shops paying less than an average skilled blue-collar job). So, as a single, young, healthy and educated person I immigrated to the US, where a massive world of opportunities, not possible in EU, opened up to me. I'm blessed to be earning way more than the EU economy, with all its safety nets, would be able to support. And I'm doing very interesting work. Once I get tired of this, or if a major health catastrophe happens, I will go back to EU with significant 7 figures savings, and keep enjoying the EU benefits. All I'm saying is: I have lived in EU for 23 years and in the US for 10, and the opportunities for personal growth that the US provides are simply unseen anywhere else, so don't automatically discount the US system as bad, romanticizing the lifestyle abroad. Every individual has their own dreams and expectations for their lives, so to each their own.
- marnett 7y ago
  From an Individualistic perspective, as you loosely outlined, the US is unparalleled. However, from a collectivist perspective, which we are discussing in this thread, the US is empirically and emphatically bad.
- john_moscow 7y ago
  Kinda similar thing here. But ironically, this is eroding the country away. Once you get a considerable amount of job seekers that got free education elsewhere and can retreat back for major healthcare issues, the inflation-adjusted salary levels drop to a point where you can't afford those things off your regular paycheck. So North America is becoming a rather weird place that attracts the brightest people from all over the world only to offer them the conditions where they will likely not afford having a family and will not pass their knowledge and traits to the next generation.
- sysbin 7y ago
sampo 7y ago
> If the average American knew what the benefits and lifestyle are like for a middle-class German family In a pure numbers comparison, you tend to get higher salary in the US. I guess an American making $100k in the US would not easily consider a $70k job in Europe, because it immediately seems like a downgrade. Not everyone bothers to go into details, like cost of healthcare, pension, daycare, school fees when applicable, tax rates and whether there is property tax or not, cost of commute, typical cost of a home, groceries etc.
- adventured 7y ago
  > I guess an American making $100k in the US would not easily consider a $70k job in Europe, because it immediately seems like a downgrade. ... Not everyone bothers to go into details, like cost of healthcare If you're making $100,000 at a job in the US your healthcare is being covered - often entirely - by the company you're working for. Somehow this point is routinely ignored on HN in these discussions. Good paying jobs in the US almost always come with great healthcare coverage. Employers cover half the people in the US with health insurance. On average the higher your pay, the more of your insurance cost is likely to be paid for by your employer. That style of higher income healthcare coverage and its tremendous qualities, like very expeditious access that embarrasses countries like Canada (which have superior overall systems), is why the US healthcare system still exists as it does. Higher income voters that don't want to give up what they have.
  - sampo 7y ago
    > If you're making $100,000 at a job in the US your healthcare is being covered - often entirely - by the company you're working for. Zero deductible, zero copayments for you and your family? Well, if you have an insurance where the yearly out-of-pocket that you pay in deductibles and copayments is capped in say $3000, it's not a big dent on that $100k.
loblollyboy 7y ago
Especially since a lot of us Ameticans are already in the streets
dcolkitt 7y ago
I don't think you're recognizing the effective tradeoffs that exist between the German and US economies. In Germany per capita average individual consumption is more than 30% lower than the US. ($25,000 thousand per capita vs. $36,000) That translates into some major differences in material living conditions. The average German home is about 50% smaller than the average American home. Germans have 30% fewer cars per capita. Meat consumption is 20% lower. Many German homes don't have common household appliances that Americans take for granted. 30% of Germans don't own microwaves. Same for dishwashers. Most Germans don't have air conditioners. Only 42% of German homes have clothes dryers. Only 50% have freezers. It's not just an issue of America being stupid. Things like strong social safety nets, universal healthcare, and free university all come with major major economic tradeoffs. Europeans do sacrifice a lot in terms of middle-class luxuries to enjoy those benefits. You may say that things like bigger houses, fancy appliances and steak dinners aren't worth the stress and struggle, you need to recognize that that's a personal preference. One that many Americans are unlikely to agree with you on. The reality is that Germany is a fundamentally different culture than America. And most Americans wouldn't choose to sacrifice their creature comforts for a Western European lifestyle. I'd be shocked if any more than a small percent of Americans would move into a house half with half their current square footage, even in exchange for free healthcare and eight weeks of vacation. [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... [2]https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/fun-at-home/news/a7654/house-sizes-around-the-world/ https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/fun-at-home/news/a765... [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_... [4]https://www.homeappliancesworld.com/2018/09/18/the-growth-of-germany-goes-on/ https://www.homeappliancesworld.com/2018/09/18/the-growth-of...
- bbbobbb 7y ago
  You should also check the average savings per person in Germany vs USA (both total and percentage). Not buying tons of random shit doesn't always mean you can't afford it. But you are right, it largely comes down to the mentality/preference on how to spend your money. I had just some medical issues that resulted in me being hospitalized for a month (while receiving tons of care in terms of specialists, MRIs, X-Rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, drugs). I can imagine this kind of random thing ruining somebody financially or at the very least eating heavily into their savings. I received majority of my salary during that time and the final bill was $0.30 for 3 months worth of new expensive drugs I have to take. So yes, choose between safety nets or fancy appliances / larger houses / steak dinners (all of which people with decent jobs can still afford any time of course)
Circuits 7y ago
I don't look at insurance in that way at all. Insurance is just another way for the government to tax me as far as I am concerned. If something goes wrong they will find a way to not help me, whatever it takes, they will find a way. They force me to have it and I just assume that money goes directly into their employees pockets and into campaign contributions. The US is incredibly corrupt and if you want to live hear you need to understand that you can't get sick. If you do get seriously sick or injured you are better off blowing your own brains out.
rolltiide 7y ago
Americans are a prideful people that share commonalities such as fear of an unknown and distrust of governing institutions. As such, you cant really gain consensus with them by talking about other countries and what Americans are missing. You have to flatter their ego and avoid bruising it, make ideas seem homegrown. I’ve reintroduced legislative changes in the US modeled after the exact laws that I helped pass in European area countries. In America it absolutely has to appear as an original idea that Americans came up with first and independently. There really is an art to consensus. edit since I am rate-limited for the next two hours: I am referring to the people in power that matter for the next decade
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  FWIW, half of this country desperately wants to be more European in our approach to government, so I'm not sure where your generalizations are coming from. And this site has a healthy population of Europeans who clearly have a chip on their shoulder about American geo-political dominance, so, you know, "both sides..." and all that.
rayiner 7y ago
Do you have much experience with middle class life in the U.S. outside certain dysfunctional big cities? For a household with employer-covered health insurance, which is most households, out-of-pocket spending (employee contributions + cost sharing) is about $3,000: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2019/may/how-much-us-households-employer-insurance-spend-premiums-out-of-pocket https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2.... For a median household, the German health insurance tax of 7.5% (employee portion) would be more than that. Most people in both countries don't go to college. In the U.S., the ones who do have a median monthly payment of $220: https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics. That's about 5.5% of median income for college graduates 0-5 years out. As to housing, the median new house in the U.S. is twice as big as the median new house in Germany: http://demographia.com/db-intlhouse.htm http://demographia.com/db-intlhouse.htm. As to retirement, the German pension system is not particularly if at all more generous than Social Security. Offsetting those benefits is the fact that Americans make a lot more money at the median. Adjusted for purchasing power, the median American makes about $5,000 per year more than the median German. That's enough to pay for the extra out-of-pocket health insurance and student loans, and that's not even accounting for the American's much lower taxes.
- axaxs 7y ago
  I'm glad you pointed this out as the voice of reason. I can't believe all of the anti-American sentiment in this thread. I still firmly believe that any American who is willing to work hard and avoid drugs can have an amazing life. I'm not even that hard working and do fine. Every super hard working person I've known is doing well, most better than me. I have two cousins who became pipefitters, and both make in the 150-200k range per year. I know a family friend who works package handling part time, and part time he drives a truck and trailer doing hauling, oddjobs, moving, etc. He is nearly a millionaire at this point. None are college educated. The biggest problem USA has is people who expect/demand that since they went to college, they deserve a job and money. Or folks who think that working at all should provide them a nice lifestyle. It may have been that way at one point, but not in a long time. Unfortunately, those are a lot of vocal voices.

dv_dt 7y ago

That reminds me of this twitter thread about our healthcare system. There are absolutely heartbreaking stories on there. The one that really sticks in my mind is the parents who were paying off and earlier ER trip and were literally waiting in the parking lot of the ER again with a fevered child, waiting to see if seizures started or the fever broke. https://twitter.com/AllOnMedicare/status/1124042436345569286 https://twitter.com/AllOnMedicare/status/1124042436345569286

wickerman 7y ago

As a south american living in the EU, I grew up hearing people saying "ah, in the US..." and while probably they were thinking back to a time when the US wasn't as terrible as it is now, it's a bit irritating for me to hear that kind of stuff considering that I graduated in the top university of my country with a masters in engineering and had to pay nothing because university is free and for everyone. I've met so many american expats in Europe who basically fled their student debt by emigrating. And that's just one thing, the fact that healthcare isn't free, people avoid calling for ambulances because they cost money, and people are jailed because the prision system has become a very profitable business.

supergauntlet 7y ago
Every day I see headlines like this and I think "surely soon enough it will get bad enough that people will support universal healthcare" or really any "socialist" policy. Every day I am mistaken. If people actually did the research they'd see that these policies are just good common sense for them, but too many of our voters are lied to by the media they consume, so I worry things will never change.
- Frost1x 7y ago
  Assuming the trend continues, at some future time there will reach a tipping point. Historically, once a population becomes so oppressed by those in power that it starts pushing into fundamental needs (food, shelter, etc), the population finally revolts and it's usually not a pretty picture. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately in most other contexts), those revolution level standards of living are tremendously lower than what your average citizen has now even though we complain about home ownership and health care we still have places to live and emergency rooms. I'm not saying I'm willing to accept this level of modern indentured servitude, I'm saying most are. For awhile, we had a generally progressive labor movement in the states where average citizens demanded improvement and progress. It seems to have reached a sort of stagnant state of complacency at some point and began to decline with much of that culture and momentum dying off in the process (not being passed on to future generations). Now, people just shake their heads and accept things the way they are instead of fighting for improvement in their lives. How do you educate the general population and convince them to support movements to continue to increase US workers' standards of living? I don't know the answer to that question. I see an additional problem with the sort of bifurcation trend we're seeing in the middle class where people seem to be shifting to either upper middle or lower middle. The upper middle are typically more educated and so hammered in the rat race trying to salvage what remains for themselves, they can't find the time to support everyone else's rights. The lower middle typically aren't as educated: college is absurdly expensive and cultural + economic trends lead many of our most talented away from teaching (where many should be). This leaves the lower middle to be more susceptible to adopting media manipulation/ideology trends that aren't in their interests. I have a very bright and good friend who recently retired who told me if he was my age, he'd seriously consider migrating out of the country but he's retired and has a family. I hate to say it but sometimes I feel a tendency to agree with his evaluation and that's sad in one of the wealthiest countries in the world that has been a beacon of democracy and growth for many years.
rubber_duck 7y ago
In my experience "free" healthcare stops being a thing once you get above certain income level as the service provided by the public healthcare facilities is subpar (waiting lists huge, best specialists often work at private clinics, etc.) so you end up going private but you still end up paying a huge chunk of your income in tax. Eg. impressions of Germany is that it's a nice place and all but they insist on paperwork/formalisms too much (for example apartment rental process is ridiculous) and it doesn't seem to be very upwardly mobile (you get taxed a lot so it's hard to accumulate capital when starting from mid level income for eg.).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- onion2k 7y ago
  In my experience "free" healthcare stops being a thing once you get above certain income level as the service provided by the public healthcare facilities is subpar (waiting lists huge, best specialists often work at private clinics, etc.) so you end up going private but you still end up paying a huge chunk of your income in tax. That's not true here in the UK. People do use private healthcare but they're in the minority and it's usually for expediency rather than quality. Many very rich people still get treatment on the NHS. It's very, very good.
  - qwsxyh 7y ago
    In fact most private healthcare delegates back to the NHS anyway.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  " it doesn't seem to be very upwardly mobile (you get taxed a lot so it's hard to accumulate capital when starting from mid level income for eg.)." I don't think that's true. You can get free/cheap schooling and health care is always there for you. I would agree it's easier to move upward than in the US where it seems one of the big secrets for success is to have wealthy parents. Coming from Germany and now living in the US I am also not sure if the taxation in the US is that much lower when you add all taxes together. And if you or your partner has any serious health issue it's very likely that this will cost way more than any taxes you pay less.
conanbatt 7y ago
The Argentinian government has collected taxes from its 50% child-poverty rate to fund your education so you could leave the country. That is not an example of successful policy.
- wickerman 7y ago
  If the argentinian government wasn't riddled with corruption and people who literally stole most of public money then there wouldn't be a child poverty rate of 50% and engineers like myself wouldn't dream of emigrating. Nevermind that I was one of those poor children. But yes, the "policy" is the problem. Not the big heads stealing money.
  - conanbatt 7y ago
    The true act of corruption is that the poor pay for the rich. 4% of the national budget goes to public universities, and IVA is half the taxes levied by the federal government. There are no doubts of who is the giving and who is the receiving in this case. IVA is collected 60% on the bottom 50% of the population meaning its slightly regressive. The first thing you can do to help the poor is to stop giving money to the rich: you can lower IVA by 1% if public universities were self funded.
jandrese 7y ago
Healthcare in the US used to be a lot simpler and cheaper. But costs continue to rise faster than the rate of inflation for decade after decade and the price started becoming an issue so people had to start complicating and reducing the quality their plans to save money, but those were short term fixes because the costs continue to rise faster than inflation and now we're stuck with plans that are complex and have limited offering and are still unaffordable. Worse, all of the complexity has its own costs which are now just compounding the problem. At this point any sane person should be saying that our private market approach to healthcare is an experiment that unfortunately failed, but the gravy train is too big and too fast to stop quickly. Nobody in Washington or even the state legislatures can get traction on a replacement without drawing the ire of extremely well funded political interests.

bairrd 7y ago

I'd have to disagree about work strikes and riots, given how conditioned this country has been to lick the boots of the powerful, as a large chunk of this country sees itself as "temporarily displaced rich". Hacker News comments are frequently hyper individualist in a way that, outside a few coastal bubbles, makes up the political view of a majority of people in this country, including plenty of self-described liberals. This is only going to change after the massive inverted-pyramid generational demographics of this country shifts, and giving our increasingly anti-immigration policies and a below-replacement birthrate, I honestly believe this country is trapped in a death spiral. Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood...

cptskippy 7y ago
> "temporarily displaced rich" So many people in America believe this, that they would be rich or successful if it weren't for X. X is different based on race, gender, and geographic location but the sentiment is the same. The reason politicians like Trump are so popular right now is that they're successfully speaking to that shared sentiment and not to any one specific issue. The political parties are basically comprised of groups with non-conflicting sentiments who are willing to support each other's ideologies.

simonh 7y ago

As a Brit I'm bewildered by the poor state of the basic working conditions Americans put up with. It's more similar to what my relatives in China get than the base line benefits and conditions in Europe.

brianwawok 7y ago
On the flipside, I am amazed that Brits put up with going to college for 4 years to be a developer and living in a very high cost of living place like London, to make $50-65k a year after 10 years of experience. Many differences for many different people / lifestyles.

himeexcelanta 7y ago

I’ll probably get downvoted for this, but a strong argument can be made that the European welfare state has only been made possible due to massive US defense subsidies and economic stimulus during the post WWII/Cold War. This doesn’t mean that the US has a good excuse for relatively poor domestic social services vis a vi many European states, but let’s also be real about what allows Germany, France, etc to provide “free” healthcare and other social subsidies. In the particular case of Germany, defense spending is only 1.2% (this stat is easily found via google). I’d rather have Pax Americana (which arguably is in decline) over the past 70 years providing stability in Europe, helping to lift hundreds of millions of East Asians out of agrarian subsistence, etc than slightly cheaper healthcare. Although, tell that fact to someone who receives huge, opaque medical bills for simple procedures in the US and they probably wouldn’t take too kindly to that line of reasoning...

imgabe 7y ago
I think the US defense subsidy is underrated, as is generational wealth in Europe accumulated over hundreds of years by plundering, enslaving, and colonizing the rest of the world. Europeans don't want to hear that though, they like to imagine they're just simply more civilized than barbaric Americans.
- aluren 7y ago
  The US defense budget is more than that of the rest of the top 10 combined. There are many things that could be said about it, but underrated is a bit of a stretch, to say the least. You could cut it by two thirds and the so-called pax americana people like to mention wouldn't be threatened in the least. >hundreds of years by plundering, enslaving, and colonizing the rest of the world. This has got to be the most egregous case of pot calling the kettle black I've read in a while.
  - himeexcelanta 7y ago
    Let’s try to consider the arguments in isolation without resorting to ad hominem.

deanmoriarty 7y ago

You can also arbitrage different strengths and weaknesses of countries to improve your quality of life. I was born in EU where I got access to all the benefits you're mentioning, such as free health care, free computer engineering BS+MS degree for myself, and social security providing for my aging parents. However, job opportunities as a software engineer there were ridiculously bad, both in terms of quality of work, and compensation (99% of my college mates ended up, and are still, working in mind-numbing boring consultancy shops paying less than an average skilled blue-collar job). So, as a single, young, healthy and educated person I immigrated to the US, where a massive world of opportunities, not possible in EU, opened up to me. I'm blessed to be earning way more than the EU economy, with all its safety nets, would be able to support. And I'm doing very interesting work. Once I get tired of this, or if a major health catastrophe happens, I will go back to EU with significant 7 figures savings, and keep enjoying the EU benefits. All I'm saying is: I have lived in EU for 23 years and in the US for 10, and the opportunities for personal growth that the US provides are simply unseen anywhere else, so don't automatically discount the US system as bad, romanticizing the lifestyle abroad. Every individual has their own dreams and expectations for their lives, so to each their own.

marnett 7y ago
From an Individualistic perspective, as you loosely outlined, the US is unparalleled. However, from a collectivist perspective, which we are discussing in this thread, the US is empirically and emphatically bad.
john_moscow 7y ago
Kinda similar thing here. But ironically, this is eroding the country away. Once you get a considerable amount of job seekers that got free education elsewhere and can retreat back for major healthcare issues, the inflation-adjusted salary levels drop to a point where you can't afford those things off your regular paycheck. So North America is becoming a rather weird place that attracts the brightest people from all over the world only to offer them the conditions where they will likely not afford having a family and will not pass their knowledge and traits to the next generation.
sysbin 7y ago

sampo 7y ago

> If the average American knew what the benefits and lifestyle are like for a middle-class German family In a pure numbers comparison, you tend to get higher salary in the US. I guess an American making $100k in the US would not easily consider a $70k job in Europe, because it immediately seems like a downgrade. Not everyone bothers to go into details, like cost of healthcare, pension, daycare, school fees when applicable, tax rates and whether there is property tax or not, cost of commute, typical cost of a home, groceries etc.

adventured 7y ago
> I guess an American making $100k in the US would not easily consider a $70k job in Europe, because it immediately seems like a downgrade. ... Not everyone bothers to go into details, like cost of healthcare If you're making $100,000 at a job in the US your healthcare is being covered - often entirely - by the company you're working for. Somehow this point is routinely ignored on HN in these discussions. Good paying jobs in the US almost always come with great healthcare coverage. Employers cover half the people in the US with health insurance. On average the higher your pay, the more of your insurance cost is likely to be paid for by your employer. That style of higher income healthcare coverage and its tremendous qualities, like very expeditious access that embarrasses countries like Canada (which have superior overall systems), is why the US healthcare system still exists as it does. Higher income voters that don't want to give up what they have.
- sampo 7y ago
  > If you're making $100,000 at a job in the US your healthcare is being covered - often entirely - by the company you're working for. Zero deductible, zero copayments for you and your family? Well, if you have an insurance where the yearly out-of-pocket that you pay in deductibles and copayments is capped in say $3000, it's not a big dent on that $100k.

loblollyboy 7y ago

Especially since a lot of us Ameticans are already in the streets

dcolkitt 7y ago

I don't think you're recognizing the effective tradeoffs that exist between the German and US economies. In Germany per capita average individual consumption is more than 30% lower than the US. ($25,000 thousand per capita vs. $36,000) That translates into some major differences in material living conditions. The average German home is about 50% smaller than the average American home. Germans have 30% fewer cars per capita. Meat consumption is 20% lower. Many German homes don't have common household appliances that Americans take for granted. 30% of Germans don't own microwaves. Same for dishwashers. Most Germans don't have air conditioners. Only 42% of German homes have clothes dryers. Only 50% have freezers. It's not just an issue of America being stupid. Things like strong social safety nets, universal healthcare, and free university all come with major major economic tradeoffs. Europeans do sacrifice a lot in terms of middle-class luxuries to enjoy those benefits. You may say that things like bigger houses, fancy appliances and steak dinners aren't worth the stress and struggle, you need to recognize that that's a personal preference. One that many Americans are unlikely to agree with you on. The reality is that Germany is a fundamentally different culture than America. And most Americans wouldn't choose to sacrifice their creature comforts for a Western European lifestyle. I'd be shocked if any more than a small percent of Americans would move into a house half with half their current square footage, even in exchange for free healthcare and eight weeks of vacation. [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... [2]https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/fun-at-home/news/a7654/house-sizes-around-the-world/ https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/fun-at-home/news/a765... [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_... [4]https://www.homeappliancesworld.com/2018/09/18/the-growth-of-germany-goes-on/ https://www.homeappliancesworld.com/2018/09/18/the-growth-of...

bbbobbb 7y ago
You should also check the average savings per person in Germany vs USA (both total and percentage). Not buying tons of random shit doesn't always mean you can't afford it. But you are right, it largely comes down to the mentality/preference on how to spend your money. I had just some medical issues that resulted in me being hospitalized for a month (while receiving tons of care in terms of specialists, MRIs, X-Rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, drugs). I can imagine this kind of random thing ruining somebody financially or at the very least eating heavily into their savings. I received majority of my salary during that time and the final bill was $0.30 for 3 months worth of new expensive drugs I have to take. So yes, choose between safety nets or fancy appliances / larger houses / steak dinners (all of which people with decent jobs can still afford any time of course)

Circuits 7y ago

I don't look at insurance in that way at all. Insurance is just another way for the government to tax me as far as I am concerned. If something goes wrong they will find a way to not help me, whatever it takes, they will find a way. They force me to have it and I just assume that money goes directly into their employees pockets and into campaign contributions. The US is incredibly corrupt and if you want to live hear you need to understand that you can't get sick. If you do get seriously sick or injured you are better off blowing your own brains out.

rolltiide 7y ago

Americans are a prideful people that share commonalities such as fear of an unknown and distrust of governing institutions. As such, you cant really gain consensus with them by talking about other countries and what Americans are missing. You have to flatter their ego and avoid bruising it, make ideas seem homegrown. I’ve reintroduced legislative changes in the US modeled after the exact laws that I helped pass in European area countries. In America it absolutely has to appear as an original idea that Americans came up with first and independently. There really is an art to consensus. edit since I am rate-limited for the next two hours: I am referring to the people in power that matter for the next decade

toasterlovin 7y ago
FWIW, half of this country desperately wants to be more European in our approach to government, so I'm not sure where your generalizations are coming from. And this site has a healthy population of Europeans who clearly have a chip on their shoulder about American geo-political dominance, so, you know, "both sides..." and all that.

rayiner 7y ago

Do you have much experience with middle class life in the U.S. outside certain dysfunctional big cities? For a household with employer-covered health insurance, which is most households, out-of-pocket spending (employee contributions + cost sharing) is about $3,000: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2019/may/how-much-us-households-employer-insurance-spend-premiums-out-of-pocket https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2.... For a median household, the German health insurance tax of 7.5% (employee portion) would be more than that. Most people in both countries don't go to college. In the U.S., the ones who do have a median monthly payment of $220: https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics. That's about 5.5% of median income for college graduates 0-5 years out. As to housing, the median new house in the U.S. is twice as big as the median new house in Germany: http://demographia.com/db-intlhouse.htm http://demographia.com/db-intlhouse.htm. As to retirement, the German pension system is not particularly if at all more generous than Social Security. Offsetting those benefits is the fact that Americans make a lot more money at the median. Adjusted for purchasing power, the median American makes about $5,000 per year more than the median German. That's enough to pay for the extra out-of-pocket health insurance and student loans, and that's not even accounting for the American's much lower taxes.

axaxs 7y ago
I'm glad you pointed this out as the voice of reason. I can't believe all of the anti-American sentiment in this thread. I still firmly believe that any American who is willing to work hard and avoid drugs can have an amazing life. I'm not even that hard working and do fine. Every super hard working person I've known is doing well, most better than me. I have two cousins who became pipefitters, and both make in the 150-200k range per year. I know a family friend who works package handling part time, and part time he drives a truck and trailer doing hauling, oddjobs, moving, etc. He is nearly a millionaire at this point. None are college educated. The biggest problem USA has is people who expect/demand that since they went to college, they deserve a job and money. Or folks who think that working at all should provide them a nice lifestyle. It may have been that way at one point, but not in a long time. Unfortunately, those are a lot of vocal voices.