6 ms·

and affordable highspeed internet.

rayiner 7y ago
France has much slower internet on average than the US: https://www.akamai.com/de/de/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/de/de/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... It’s almost as if it’s part of a pattern, where the top 75% in the US do better than France, while the stronger French safety net is better for the bottom 25%.
- Cyph0n 7y ago
  How did you get from "slower internet" to "there is a pattern"? If you scroll two comments up, you'll see the most crucial difference: free healthcare. Healthcare-related expenses can bankrupt an entire family in the US, even with great health insurance... Then there is free education, but let's leave that aside for now.
  - tdhoot 7y ago
    The lowest income people in the US also qualify for free healthcare through Medicaid. It covers ~20% of the US population (that number also includes those with disabilities).
    - negrit 7y ago
      Everyone qualify for healthcare in France, you don't have to take part of a pissing contest about who is the poorest...
    - ineedasername 7y ago
      Medicaid isn't bad, it's better than many bottom-tier private plans, but it's also got some problems. For one, finding a doctor can be hard. Not so much with general practitioners, but definitely with specialists. Also if you're in the higher qualified income band, you can still get stuck with 10 to 20% of the bill, and making 150% of the poverty limit doesn't make you any better equipped to deal with $100,000 in expenses than if you made a little less money... It actually pays to be poorer. Not all prescriptions are covered either, level of coverage varies by state. Sure the pharmacy has to give it to you if you say you can't pay, but you still owe the money and can get sent to collections, have wages garnished, have to declare bankruptcy, etc. Medicaid simply isn't the healthcare panacea for the poor that some make it out to be when they say, "But the poor already have coverage!". And it ignores the fact that there's millions of people just above the income cutoffs whose state of poorness is pretty indistinguishable from those that get coverage, but they're still completely on their own.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        That’s what the ACA is for! For people up to 400% of the poverty line, the ACA caps premiums at 10% of income. That’s what you’d pay in health insurance taxes in France.
        AstralStorm 7y ago
        Actually 7% in France, basing it off budget for 2017. The tax burden is higher because education, public transport, agriculture and social (mostly retirement) are paid in tax rather than mostly privately. US has the private system for retirement plans and it sometimes fails utterly. The nationalized one does not, though it may not be as big of a payout. And education saddles people with debt, as well as causes cost (admin) inflation.
        ineedasername 7y ago
        If we're talking about universal coverage in other countries and the potential for crippling healthcare debt in the US, then pointing to the ACA really doesn't help your argument here. First: 400% of the poverty line is not very high, so premiums for people just over that line can still be very unaffordable. Second and more importantly, ACA coverage is generally not very good, especially at the low silver tier covered in that %10 income cap. Pointing at the ACA ignores the fact than plenty of people with coverage still are faced with insurmountable debt, sometimes loss of home, and often bankruptcy. As long as hundreds of thousands of people each year have bankruptcies tied to medical issues, there's nothing about the US system you can point to, be it Medicaid, Medicare, ACA subsidies or anything else, that can surmount the argument that the US system fails people in this respect when compared to other countries with universal coverage. I'm not saying those countries are always better in every respect, but one thing they have is that they don't cause their citizens to lose their entire way of life, their home, and ability to live above poverty levels when faced with treatable medical issues.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    That’s also consistent with the pattern. 75% of Americans have either employer paid insurance or Medicare. For those people, premiums and out of pocket costs are on average less than the extra taxes they’d pay in Europe for health insurance: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Archives/larry_levitt_powerpoint_presentation_what_is_driving_the_growth_in_health_care_costs.pdf https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch... (page 18, showing 5.2% of household income spent on premiums and out of pocket costs). (Note that France doesn’t have free healthcare. It has a significant 30% co-insurance which is usually covered by private insurance. Non-premium out of pocket costs, which comprise 2.1% of the 5.2% above in the US, are only a little lower in the US than in France.) Now, because the US has a weaker safety net, some people fall into gaps where they make too much to qualify for Medicaid and not enough to have good health insurance, or go bankrupt despite having good health insurance. But that happens to a small percentage of the population. Most people do fine with their employer paid insurance or Medicare, and get to spend their extra money on more consumption. As to free education. If US colleges were like French ones, we could have free college too: https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/styles/max_1160/s3/spending2.PNG?itok=BQM8Zrhh https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/styles/max_1160/s3/spen.... We spend more government money in higher education, as a percentage of GDP, than France. We still have to charge people tuition because our colleges are far more opulent. Most French universities are what Americans would consider commuter schools. Focused on instruction rather than research with most students staying local and living at home. Even then, free college just isn’t that valuable of a benefit. The average tuition at a public school in the US is $10,000 a year. The total cost of a degree is $40-50,000. And remember, most Americans don’t get a college degree (and neither do most French.) Over a career, the value of tuition free college for the average American comes nowhere near the extra taxes and lower income they’d have in France.
    - thatfrenchguy 7y ago
      > That’s also consistent with the pattern. 75% of Americans have either employer paid insurance or Medicare. For those people, premiums and out of pocket costs are on average less than the extra taxes they’d pay in Europe for health insurance: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch.. https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch.... (page 18, showing 5.2% of household income spent on premiums and out of pocket costs). (Note that France doesn’t have free healthcare. It has a significant 30% co-insurance which is usually covered by private insurance. Non-premium out of pocket costs, which comprise 2.1% of the 5.2% above in the US, are only a little lower in the US than in France.) I grew up in the lower middle class in France, and I have what's considered great healthcare in the US. In France, I would never think twice before going to the doctor (i.e primary care) when I had a medical issue. In the US, I still think it twice even though my copay is not a big dent in my budget. And that's not counting WTF happens in the US if I loose my job.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    It’s not free. Taxes in France are massive. It’s one of the highest tax to GDP in the world. That and inflexible labour law also comes at an additional cost: high unemployement and sluggish growth even when the whole world is doing great.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      Yes, whole world is doing great, by which you mean China with 6,9%, Romania 6,9%, India with 6,6% and not USA with 2,3%. (Which is better than usual. 2017 numbers.) Growth is not tied to employment policy, but only cost of labor. It correlates almost 1:1 as selfish big businesses move or outsource where it's cheaper. (Including big tax breaks. USA doesn't have these enough to balance very expensive employment.) Example from EU: Poland has 4,6% and France 1,8%. Switzerland 1,1% and Finland 2,6%. The number for France is not too dissimilar from USA and not anything special. Poland has baroque labor (improving) and especially tax laws.
      - xyzzyz 7y ago
        Clearly, it’s easier to grow when you start out poor, as you can play catch up copying the solutions and technologies from rich places. It gets much harder when you’re the leader, and not only you cannot copy tech from others, but you can’t even depend on them using you for cheap labor.
  - gnopgnip 7y ago
    Nearly a quarter of US residents are on medicaid, and have free healthcare. Medical bankruptcy was a big problem, but under the ACA the yearly out of pocket max has all but eliminated these.
    - negrit 7y ago
      there is no such thing as free healthcare, someone has to pay for it...
      - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
        Do you think it is likely that the person you're replying to doesn't know this or are they simply calling attention to the fact that Medicaid recipients receive care that they themselves do not pay for? Is the statement in some way unclear? Care to suggest a rephrasing?
        negrit 7y ago
        I'm fairly confident that the person I'm replying to knows this. A better phrasing would be "subsidized healthcare".
      - wolco 7y ago
        I wonder if we get to the point where you are the product.
    - tzs 7y ago
      > Medical bankruptcy was a big problem, but under the ACA the yearly out of pocket max has all but eliminated these Not any more [1]. The Trump administration has sufficiently weakened ACA that you can now get insurance that isn't sufficient to prevent you from getting a huge bill if you have the temerity to have a heart attack or something else expensive like that. Or you might not even have insurance, since they also killed the tax penalty for not having insurance. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012474
- negrit 7y ago
  OP mentioned affordable not top speed. Fiber optical connexion cost +- 30 euros and "unlimitted" 4G LTE mobile data plan cost +- 20 euros(including roaming). It's a lot more affordable than what AT&T or Comcast offer...
  - dillonmckay 7y ago
    Thank you for reading. rayiner has a tendency miss details on occasion.
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  I also said ‘affordable’.
wereHamster 7y ago
France has far better broadband penetration than the US. https://goingdigital.oecd.org/en/indicator/10/ https://goingdigital.oecd.org/en/indicator/10/
tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
Residential 10 Gbps connections. $50/month. That's not a typo. salt.ch/fiber

France has much slower internet on average than the US: https://www.akamai.com/de/de/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/de/de/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... It’s almost as if it’s part of a pattern, where the top 75% in the US do better than France, while the stronger French safety net is better for the bottom 25%.

Cyph0n 7y ago
How did you get from "slower internet" to "there is a pattern"? If you scroll two comments up, you'll see the most crucial difference: free healthcare. Healthcare-related expenses can bankrupt an entire family in the US, even with great health insurance... Then there is free education, but let's leave that aside for now.
- tdhoot 7y ago
  The lowest income people in the US also qualify for free healthcare through Medicaid. It covers ~20% of the US population (that number also includes those with disabilities).
  - negrit 7y ago
    Everyone qualify for healthcare in France, you don't have to take part of a pissing contest about who is the poorest...
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Medicaid isn't bad, it's better than many bottom-tier private plans, but it's also got some problems. For one, finding a doctor can be hard. Not so much with general practitioners, but definitely with specialists. Also if you're in the higher qualified income band, you can still get stuck with 10 to 20% of the bill, and making 150% of the poverty limit doesn't make you any better equipped to deal with $100,000 in expenses than if you made a little less money... It actually pays to be poorer. Not all prescriptions are covered either, level of coverage varies by state. Sure the pharmacy has to give it to you if you say you can't pay, but you still owe the money and can get sent to collections, have wages garnished, have to declare bankruptcy, etc. Medicaid simply isn't the healthcare panacea for the poor that some make it out to be when they say, "But the poor already have coverage!". And it ignores the fact that there's millions of people just above the income cutoffs whose state of poorness is pretty indistinguishable from those that get coverage, but they're still completely on their own.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      That’s what the ACA is for! For people up to 400% of the poverty line, the ACA caps premiums at 10% of income. That’s what you’d pay in health insurance taxes in France.
      - AstralStorm 7y ago
        Actually 7% in France, basing it off budget for 2017. The tax burden is higher because education, public transport, agriculture and social (mostly retirement) are paid in tax rather than mostly privately. US has the private system for retirement plans and it sometimes fails utterly. The nationalized one does not, though it may not be as big of a payout. And education saddles people with debt, as well as causes cost (admin) inflation.
      - ineedasername 7y ago
        If we're talking about universal coverage in other countries and the potential for crippling healthcare debt in the US, then pointing to the ACA really doesn't help your argument here. First: 400% of the poverty line is not very high, so premiums for people just over that line can still be very unaffordable. Second and more importantly, ACA coverage is generally not very good, especially at the low silver tier covered in that %10 income cap. Pointing at the ACA ignores the fact than plenty of people with coverage still are faced with insurmountable debt, sometimes loss of home, and often bankruptcy. As long as hundreds of thousands of people each year have bankruptcies tied to medical issues, there's nothing about the US system you can point to, be it Medicaid, Medicare, ACA subsidies or anything else, that can surmount the argument that the US system fails people in this respect when compared to other countries with universal coverage. I'm not saying those countries are always better in every respect, but one thing they have is that they don't cause their citizens to lose their entire way of life, their home, and ability to live above poverty levels when faced with treatable medical issues.
- rayiner 7y ago
  That’s also consistent with the pattern. 75% of Americans have either employer paid insurance or Medicare. For those people, premiums and out of pocket costs are on average less than the extra taxes they’d pay in Europe for health insurance: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Archives/larry_levitt_powerpoint_presentation_what_is_driving_the_growth_in_health_care_costs.pdf https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch... (page 18, showing 5.2% of household income spent on premiums and out of pocket costs). (Note that France doesn’t have free healthcare. It has a significant 30% co-insurance which is usually covered by private insurance. Non-premium out of pocket costs, which comprise 2.1% of the 5.2% above in the US, are only a little lower in the US than in France.) Now, because the US has a weaker safety net, some people fall into gaps where they make too much to qualify for Medicaid and not enough to have good health insurance, or go bankrupt despite having good health insurance. But that happens to a small percentage of the population. Most people do fine with their employer paid insurance or Medicare, and get to spend their extra money on more consumption. As to free education. If US colleges were like French ones, we could have free college too: https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/styles/max_1160/s3/spending2.PNG?itok=BQM8Zrhh https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/styles/max_1160/s3/spen.... We spend more government money in higher education, as a percentage of GDP, than France. We still have to charge people tuition because our colleges are far more opulent. Most French universities are what Americans would consider commuter schools. Focused on instruction rather than research with most students staying local and living at home. Even then, free college just isn’t that valuable of a benefit. The average tuition at a public school in the US is $10,000 a year. The total cost of a degree is $40-50,000. And remember, most Americans don’t get a college degree (and neither do most French.) Over a career, the value of tuition free college for the average American comes nowhere near the extra taxes and lower income they’d have in France.
  - thatfrenchguy 7y ago
    > That’s also consistent with the pattern. 75% of Americans have either employer paid insurance or Medicare. For those people, premiums and out of pocket costs are on average less than the extra taxes they’d pay in Europe for health insurance: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch.. https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch.... (page 18, showing 5.2% of household income spent on premiums and out of pocket costs). (Note that France doesn’t have free healthcare. It has a significant 30% co-insurance which is usually covered by private insurance. Non-premium out of pocket costs, which comprise 2.1% of the 5.2% above in the US, are only a little lower in the US than in France.) I grew up in the lower middle class in France, and I have what's considered great healthcare in the US. In France, I would never think twice before going to the doctor (i.e primary care) when I had a medical issue. In the US, I still think it twice even though my copay is not a big dent in my budget. And that's not counting WTF happens in the US if I loose my job.
- cm2187 7y ago
  It’s not free. Taxes in France are massive. It’s one of the highest tax to GDP in the world. That and inflexible labour law also comes at an additional cost: high unemployement and sluggish growth even when the whole world is doing great.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Yes, whole world is doing great, by which you mean China with 6,9%, Romania 6,9%, India with 6,6% and not USA with 2,3%. (Which is better than usual. 2017 numbers.) Growth is not tied to employment policy, but only cost of labor. It correlates almost 1:1 as selfish big businesses move or outsource where it's cheaper. (Including big tax breaks. USA doesn't have these enough to balance very expensive employment.) Example from EU: Poland has 4,6% and France 1,8%. Switzerland 1,1% and Finland 2,6%. The number for France is not too dissimilar from USA and not anything special. Poland has baroque labor (improving) and especially tax laws.
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      Clearly, it’s easier to grow when you start out poor, as you can play catch up copying the solutions and technologies from rich places. It gets much harder when you’re the leader, and not only you cannot copy tech from others, but you can’t even depend on them using you for cheap labor.
- gnopgnip 7y ago
  Nearly a quarter of US residents are on medicaid, and have free healthcare. Medical bankruptcy was a big problem, but under the ACA the yearly out of pocket max has all but eliminated these.
  - negrit 7y ago
    there is no such thing as free healthcare, someone has to pay for it...
    - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
      Do you think it is likely that the person you're replying to doesn't know this or are they simply calling attention to the fact that Medicaid recipients receive care that they themselves do not pay for? Is the statement in some way unclear? Care to suggest a rephrasing?
      - negrit 7y ago
        I'm fairly confident that the person I'm replying to knows this. A better phrasing would be "subsidized healthcare".
    - wolco 7y ago
      I wonder if we get to the point where you are the product.
  - tzs 7y ago
    > Medical bankruptcy was a big problem, but under the ACA the yearly out of pocket max has all but eliminated these Not any more [1]. The Trump administration has sufficiently weakened ACA that you can now get insurance that isn't sufficient to prevent you from getting a huge bill if you have the temerity to have a heart attack or something else expensive like that. Or you might not even have insurance, since they also killed the tax penalty for not having insurance. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012474
negrit 7y ago
OP mentioned affordable not top speed. Fiber optical connexion cost +- 30 euros and "unlimitted" 4G LTE mobile data plan cost +- 20 euros(including roaming). It's a lot more affordable than what AT&T or Comcast offer...
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  Thank you for reading. rayiner has a tendency miss details on occasion.
dillonmckay 7y ago
I also said ‘affordable’.

wereHamster 7y ago

France has far better broadband penetration than the US. https://goingdigital.oecd.org/en/indicator/10/ https://goingdigital.oecd.org/en/indicator/10/

tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago

Residential 10 Gbps connections. $50/month. That's not a typo. salt.ch/fiber