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What Armenians should know about life in America (2014)

• keiferski 7y ago
  As an American that has spent years living in various ex-Communist countries: perhaps the single ‘greatest’ aspect of living in the US is that your income has virtually no upper limit. A software engineer, a lawyer, and most other professional occupations can easily earn $200,000 a year a decade or two into their career. This is absolutely impossible anywhere in an ex-Communist country and rare even in Western Europe. While you do have to pay for healthcare, education, etc. I’m not sure it actually ends up costing more when considering the increased amount of income. Theoretically the best plan would be to work in the US then retire/send your kids to school in Europe. For better or worse, the reality is that many of the problems listed in the link become manageable if you have money. As I often tell taxi drivers, America is great if you can and want to make a lot of money. For an average person, the quality of life is likely better in Europe.
  • cpursley 7y ago
    Yep, also living in former soviet block. This is also what I tell people with illusions about America (don't get me wrong, America can be great).
  • betaby 7y ago
    Really tiny proportion of the population make 200k in the US. And if the do, those are in in the expensive cities like NYC or SF and similar.
    • gok 7y ago
      To be precise, about 8% of households earn $200k or more.
      • karatestomp 7y ago
        I bet a good chunk of those are breaking the $200k line with two incomes, too, not with one.
  • StavrosK 7y ago
    Life is good anywhere if you're rich, yep. That having been said, I'd probably prefer doing okay in Europe than being rich in the US, just because of the way of life. Then again, I'm Greek. I don't think I know a single person who emigrated (and I know a lot of those) who doesn't dream of coming back at some point. I guess you can never really stop wanting the things you grew up with.
    • atlasunshrugged 7y ago
      Definitely echo StavrosK's point - I think the key thing is that if you want to try to be superrich and build the next Facebook or something, the best place to have a shot at it is in the U.S. (and really only in a few places there). If you want to have a nice life and are like 99% of people and won't end up the CEO of a major company, then you're better off in Western Europe
  • cheese4242 7y ago
    >and most other professional occupations can easily earn $200,000 a year a decade "Most professional occupations"? I don't buy this at all.
  • ryandrake 7y ago
    Not sure where you get this impression. That $N00,000K is still an upper limit. For the vast majority of jobs, while there is no "upper limit" etched into law, incomes above a certain point probabilistic impossibilities. Most jobs' incomes are distributed within some band with tight standard deviations. A retail worker will statistically never make $200K. A typical vanilla office worker won't make $1M. Anyone who does is a 5-10 standard deviation outlier. The bands are wider maybe for lawyers, doctors, software engineers, but their salaries are not unlimited. I've never heard of a software engineer that makes $10M/yr. Maybe there are one or two in the world? For people who own their own businesses, their income is still limited by how many sales they can make, how many employees they can hire to grow, and how much time in the day they can put into the job. Still not "no upper limit". There are vanishingly few classes of jobs with virtually no upward limit, like CEOs of mega-corporation and Wall Street traders.
• RickJWagner 7y ago
  Thanks to the author for writing this. As an American, I found it very interesting.
• michaelbuckbee 7y ago
  This was great - it's something I wish every American could read.
• oefrha 7y ago
  > The point is that almost all Americans pay rent or a mortgage in order to have a roof. Well that’s just false. About ~40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free.[1] And it is my understanding that outside of select states, properties are generally fairly cheap compared to income, so even if someone’s paying a 30-year mortgage chances are good it’s not a “large proportion of income”. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-17/close-to-40-of-u-s-homes-are-free-and-clear-of-a-mortgage https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-17/close-to-...
  • gramakri 7y ago
    You may be right but this article was written in 2014
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • oefrha 7y ago
      Oh didn’t check; (2014) should be added to the title. That said, the Bloomberg article I linked to has stats going back to 2006; the percentage of mortgage-free homes in 2014 is hardly different from today, and I bet some properties were cheaper (inflation adjusted) back then.
      • prophesi 7y ago
        Regardless, 40% of mortgage-free home-owners are not a majority. The actual majority of Americans _are_ paying a mortgage or rent. The author should replace "almost everyone" with "mostly everyone." That said, the stats are likely inflated due to the fact that people aren't able to buy a house post-education like with the previous generation. They're stuck paying high rent prices with dead-end jobs.
        • oefrha 7y ago
          TFA: almost all Americans... Me: That’s just false.
• dibujaron 7y ago
  I found this very well written and an interesting perspective. I guess I'd have to spend some time in Yerevan to really understand the perspective of the author.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • FabHK 7y ago
    I think it is sufficient to spend some (considerable) time nearly anywhere outside the USA. EDIT to add: Though to understand some points (eg that despite widespread poverty, nearly every household owns an apartment or house), living in a CIS (ex USSR) state would help.
• leetcrew 7y ago
  interesting read. I wish the author had gone into a bit more detail with the cost of living differences between armenia and the example family in fresno. I could certainly look up the the price of flour in both places, but it seemed like the author was on the verge of explaining something more subtle.
  • selimthegrim 7y ago
    His point is things just you might not think indispensable in Armenia (car etc because you have marshrutka) will be indispensable and cost way more
• GuiA 7y ago
  > California state income tax is deductible from the federal taxable income Not anymore ;_; > I don’t know who seeded this meme that Americans pay low taxes. Great question! It comes up all the time in conversations with my friends/family back home (France). They all have it in their head that I must pay 10% in taxes or something, but it’s really roughly the same when you scale for income differences etc. In fact depending on how you model it, I could argue that I proportionally pay more taxes than I would in France at a similar career level.
  • axlee 7y ago
    It is very often Americans themselves who seed the "low tax meme" in order to criticize European social democracies. Those profiles tend to be right-wing. They have drunk their own kool-aid.
    • AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
      Well, if you’re referring to places like Denmark, it is true that most Americans pay nowhere near those income tax rates. I can’t see a lot of right wingers in the US suggesting we have low taxes. Conservative talking points frequently address the desire to lower tax rates in the US because they claim they’re too high as it is.
    • umanwizard 7y ago
      Left-leaning Americans do the same thing. “Why don’t we just tax the rich, like they do in Europe, so that the government can provide services!” which doesn’t recognize that the problem is actually different and more complicated. “The US wastes massive amounts of resources for very poor levels of service, and nobody has any idea how to fix it” isn’t as nice of a sound byte.
      • thebooktocome 7y ago
        Not being able to recover revenue from wealthy people who can afford to bend or break the tax code is a problem. The IRS can effectively make money for the federal government simply by auditing the rich (I seem to remember that the marginal dollar spent on enforcement returned six dollars in revenue), but they don't because politics.
• vbezhenar 7y ago
  What I always wonder why Americans don't build solid houses? In Russia and in Kazakhstan everyone builds house with thick (70-150 cm) walls with bricks and with good foundation. Even poor people don't build houses from plywood. But in America it seems that everyone, poor and rich builds extremely fragile houses. Like I can punch a wall with my knuckle. It seems so absurd. Especially with those prices that I'm hearing about, like house costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, up to a millions of dollars. I can build awesome house here for like $200k with very quality materials. Can American build a good house from bricks with very thick walls for a reasonable amount of money?
  • kylehotchkiss 7y ago
    I am temporarily living outside USA in a concrete walled apartment. The concrete cracks constantly, tiles fall off the walls, and the door fitting seems to be totally variable based on temp and humidity. I miss living in houses made of wood. And how easily central air systems are installed in wooden homes.
    • vbezhenar 7y ago
      This is just bad house. I'm sure that one could find comparably bad wood house. Usually nothing like that is happening.
    • cambalache 7y ago
      It seems you live in a shitty apartment then. Plenty of concrete apartments all over the world are well built.
  • cpursley 7y ago
    As an American now living in Russia (in a region with 30% Armenians), I can confirm this. Our construction quality of our house in the US is trash. It's made out of cheap pine and plywood and has terrible thermal properties. We recently had to replace all the siding because it just rotted off. Meanwhile the places in Russia are smaller, but generally higher quality (which I prefer). Also, many Russians don't take on mortgages and pay for property with cash - which is amazing considering how low salaries are vs the West (they're huge savers - at least the older generations).
• projektfu 7y ago
  This parallels some of my experience traveling in Mexico, where salaries are high enough and prices are low enough that the middle class scrapes by, but many things are unaffordable (like a new car). There’s also a large peasant class in Mexico that feeds and houses itself but has no way to earn money. A remittance of $100/month goes a long way for that group.
• kylehotchkiss 7y ago
  I’m an American who’s visited Armenia for fun. I had a lovely time and think your country deserves more tourism and understanding. Yerevan is a very unique city, and I hope to visit again one day. While I understand it isn’t the wealthiest country, I would rather struggle there than other unwealthy countries (The weather in Armenia is comfortable and the views of Ararat are really nice) Outside Armenia, this article was a fantastic introduction to immigration to USA and as I’m working on that process with my wife now, I think what I’ve read here can help me better explain what to expect to her. Thanks for writing this.
• nine_zeros 7y ago
  Wow! As an American with extensive knowledge of other countries, what a read! I cannot add much to it but the one thing that separates America from the rest of the world is that American legal system is truly a "legal system" and not a "justice system". There is just no concept of humanity or spirit of the law. Which leads to interesting corner cases in everything and pretty much every person I know is trapped in some or the other legal trap. It's just stifling. Even our property is always at risk of being taken away. Sometimes it is just so refreshing to go to recently developed countries or even developing countries and just smell the freedom in the air. The freedom comes from a backing of some form of justice.
  • cheese4242 7y ago
    I'm really having difficulty understanding this comment. It seems completely delusional. I very much doubt you have "extensive knowledge" of other countries if you are not aware that the legal system of many countries do not even give the pretext of having fair trials. Can you give an example of the American "legal system" vs this "justice system" in another country?
    • nine_zeros 7y ago
      Great question. "Legal system" is about the letter of the law. Which means that written law has to be precise in dictating exact steps. Failure to adhere to those steps is automatically non-abiding. "Justice system" is about the spirit of the law. Which means that written law is a guideline for judges to use, often strictly. However, judges have room and freedom to make decisions based on individual cases and circumstances. A simple example is alimony. In most states in the US, the spouse making more income the last year is supposed to maintain alimony payments to the spouse with lesser income, often for an unduly long duration. This is letter of the law. In this letter of the law, it missed circumstances that led to one spouse having higher income. An example is, maybe one spouse was a student with paltry income last year. If they get divorced now, letter of law dictates that the current spouse making higher income pays alimony. But maybe in 2 years from the divorce the student graduates and earns $300k a year because they were studying neuroscience. This is not entertained in letter of the law (unless the law is changed with specific handling of all such cases, which is infinite) No exceptions and circumstances are entertained and following letter of the law yields just one kind of result. This often leads to patchwork laws where amendments are appended constantly trying to cover every corner case as an after thought. In a justice system, the judge takes circumstances into account. For instance, in the above example, the judge could allow only 2 years of alimony payment. An example of this is in Singapore. Try to read it with not a letter-of-the-law eyes and you'll see that the Judge has the ability to make independent decisions: https://blog.moneysmart.sg/family/divorce-ex-wife-money/ https://blog.moneysmart.sg/family/divorce-ex-wife-money/ No country has a perfect justice system but the difference in approach defines how the society will ultimately be like to live in.
• fxtentacle 7y ago
  This is one of the best summaries of unexpected US oddities that I have ever read. Thank you to the author :)
• Causality1 7y ago
  >How stingy do you have to be to only send back $300 every month Is this an Armenian thing or an immigrant families in general thing? From my perspective that's a breathtaking level of entitlement. If I accomplished the difficult task of establishing myself in a new country and was then generous enough to donate money to my relatives on an ongoing basis, whining about how much I give them would probably result not only in the money stopping but me never speaking to them again.
  • kazen44 7y ago
    This is also a cultural difference i think. The US as a society is highly individualistic. Living on your own at 18 for instance, is considered absurd in a lot of regions of the world because children are supposed to care for their father/mother later in life.
    • StavrosK 7y ago
      You're right in general, but the "because" is wrong. You could say that the causality goes the other way (you should take care of your parents because they took care of you), but it would be more accurate to say that people just take care of family at every turn because that's what you do. As a data point, my family (and most others I know) doesn't consider its member's wealth really separate. My parents consider their wealth as ours (the children's) too, my sister and I would spend all our wealth taking care of our parents if they needed it, etc.
  • FabHK 7y ago
    I’d say it’s not specifically Armenian. In fact, your answer illustrates the cultural differences the author alludes to. 1. Many countries are much more collectivist than the USA. If in your family or clan or tribe or village someone starves, and someone has food (or money), then the expectation is that the food flows to where it is needed. There is much less “mine vs yours”. 2. The difference between market exchange rates and purchase power parity, taking into account the cost of living. A household gross salary of say 72k p.a. in the Bay Area might really not be very much, but 6000 USD per month seem huge for a family in the Philippines or Armenia. So you should be able to give up 1000$ a month easily - it would help the family at home immeasurably, while for you going from 6000 to still unimaginably opulent 5000 should be peanuts. 3. As highlighted by the author, the USA epitomises wealth for many. The reality that many Americans also live precariously or even struggle hasn’t arrived in less educated circles (and most US TV shows consumed abroad don’t help to correct that picture).
• DubiousPusher 7y ago
  > Even so, the quotas on H1B visas are highly restrictive. In the tech sector, at least, there is widespread agreement that the part of the US immigration system that deals with legal immigration of high-skill professionals is in badly in need of reform. Is this widely considered the case? I work for a big ol tech company and I've been on teams where I am literally the only natural born U.S. citizen. I know I'm working in a somewhat unique case but is it so different elsewhere?
  • umanwizard 7y ago
    Half or fewer of the people qualified for an H1B get one in the lottery.
    • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      That might be considered an appropriate feature of the system.
      • umanwizard 7y ago
        Why? If you only want so many people to be able to come, why not make the qualification process more stringent, as opposed to assigning seats via lottery?
        • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
          It would give you the illusion of meritocracy but the reality is it would be almost impossible to administer effectively. You just need to look at the problems businesses have interviewing candidates to see how difficult assessing candidates is.
          • umanwizard 7y ago
            Somehow most other countries manage without a lottery-based immigration system.
• K2L8M11N2 7y ago
  (2014)
• ape4 7y ago
  On suburbs: "You will not take leisurely strolls to admire the scenery, for there is neither admirable scenery nor anywhere to stroll."
  • Mkide 7y ago
    Not to mention, of course, that if you stroll around, you might look suspicious and some suburbanite may call the police on you.
    • nitrogen 7y ago
      Neither the lack of strolling nor the heightened suspicion are true of all suburbs in the US.
      • markbnj 7y ago
        The author nowhere claims that these things are universally applicable, and is careful to note many exceptions. If enough people read it and think the shoe fits, then it probably fits.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    • cscurmudgeon 7y ago
      In the city, you get attacked by "youths". So it gets cancelled out.
      • eropple 7y ago
        > In the city, you get attacked by "youths". So it gets cancelled out. You're showing your true face with this projection and it is a very bad look. Meanwhile, as somebody outside that land of that weird projection: I've lived in some of the "worst neighborhoods" of my city, as an ethnic group that very much did not fit into that area, and have never felt anything but safe walking down the street. To the best of my recollection my SO never felt worried even as she walked a mile-plus to the train every day, either. Crime happens, certainly. It is not some terrifying scourge and it also happens to not be isolated to the racial groups you fear or hate or both--and I'd appreciate if you don't dissemble about this one 'cause let's be honest, you're not exactly showing enough subtlety to not scarequote "youths" and we all know what that means in America in 2020.
• vsskanth 7y ago
  As a quasi-immigrant to the US myself, I applaud the author for having the courage to write such an excellent and detailed critique of life in the United States. I totally agree that life here has it's pros and cons. It seems that it is expected amongst the native citizens that you be grateful to be provided the privilege of living in a developed nation (my own experience). If you want to critique, you can always go back to your third world nation where you came from ("if it's so bad, why are you still here?"). This article is an excellent showcase for why you can be grateful for the opportunities and still point out what isn't normal by other countries standards and what can be improved. thank you
  • ta847019377 7y ago
    Agreed that it's an excellent article. I'd also agree that it's normal to prefer things about the old country, or the previous job, or the previous anything, and there's nothing wrong with saying so. But, I also think it's normal that sometimes things work the way they do because it's part of the local culture and the natives actually like it that way. Other times, of course, the bad aspect is just dumb, yet also very hard to fix (American healthcare). In the last couple of decades in America, some "thought leaders" have made a serious effort to convince us that "it's like that because we live here and like it that way" is not a valid reason, at least when that reasoning gets in the way of the country being more of a commercial clearing house. In other words, a political trend to convince Americans that if you don't have an economic argument, you don't have an argument. This frustrates many people, and I guess sometimes makes them say reductivist stuff like "if it's so bad, why are you still here?" Edit - typos
  • klipt 7y ago
    And because many Americans are ignorant about how things work in other countries, when they do realize there are some downsides to American culture, instead of recognizing it's an American problem they will usually blame it on whatever group they're politically opposed to. Eg take for example the lonely individualism and lack of community the article talks about. If you discuss that with an American gender studies student, they'll say "oh we have many studies about that, it's called toxic masculinity" which implies it's a global problem with men who need to be "fixed". But actually as the article points out, no such lonely individualism exists for men in many other cultures, so it could more accurately be called "toxic Americanism".
• jancsika 7y ago
  > McDonald’s Corporation really can be held liable if you spill hot coffee on yourself, and maybe that’s good, but if you employ a mechanic and he spills hot coffee on himself while on the job, you might be held liable. There's no easy or accidental way for an independent garage owner to be regularly keeping communally-drinkable liquids at > 82-degrees Celsius. Apparently, the real lesson for Armenians is that American corporations and industry tend to diversify corruption at a level invisible to those used only to corruption at the direct human-to-human level.
• burlesona 7y ago
  I feel like this article should be retitled, “What every American should know about life in America.” (Saying this as an American)
  • StavrosK 7y ago
    The thing with culture is that it's invisible when you're in it. You literally don't know how houses could be built any other way, or human relationships be formed any other way. You might as well be questioning whether gravity should always pull and not sometimes push. Articles like these are great for giving you a taste of what things are like in other countries, and making you see that your way isn't the only way things can be. Travel does that too, and in a much more hands-on manner. One of the things that made an impression on me on a work trip to the US was that I was talking to a colleague and she said something about her not being well in her mental health the previous year, and then immediately apologized to me for "burdening me with her problems". I was speechless at (and still don't fully understand) the cultural factors that lead people to apologize for mentioning a detail of their personal life to a coworker, but it seems to me that life must be much more lonely like that.
    • scottLobster 7y ago
      For example, as an American what struck me most about the article was this line: "I’m just saying that if you are found to have signs of a meningioma and go in for an MRI scan, you might expect eight to ten friends and relatives to take time off work to show up with you and weep in anticipation in the waiting room. You will not find that here, and you’ll feel a sharp crash and withdrawal." Is the author exaggerating, or is this actually a thing in other countries? I'd expect my immediate family and close friends to know I was going in for a scan and to care about the outcome, maybe even wait by the phone for results if they have the time. But to take off work and physically show up in the waiting room just for moral support? What planet is that? I mean sure even Americans can do that for major surgeries/births/etc, at least for those there's some amount of physical care required during the recovery that people can help with. But moral support for an MRI? I actually would feel bad being the center of that much attention. I guess Americans moralize "being useful" more than other countries, or just have a different conception of what "useful" means. Just because I might have cancer doesn't mean anyone else's time is less valuable than it was yesterday, or that I'm some charity case (Is being a "charity case" an Americanism I'm unaware of?). Immediate family and very close friends have some obligation of moral support, but beyond that it's like how a cat grooming another cat is the dominant cat. It's generally seen as less genuine, and even if it is genuine it's seen as putting unnecessary burdens on people who don't have a pre-existing social obligation to said burdens.
• carapace 7y ago
  Oh God, that was brutal. I wonder if Canada is still open? The "problem that has no name" is, IMO, very real: I spent some time living in Lynnwood WA, just north of Seattle, for a job and it was "unrivaled in its monotony and depressing blandness" despite being quite nice in many ways. It was just so empty. Christopher Alexander has done a fantastic job of putting forth a solution (Pattern Language; Nature of Order) and his main site is actually called "Living Neighborhoods". https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm What to do about the rest of it I have no idea.
  • StavrosK 7y ago
    I don't know that Canada is that different. Vancouver, for example, struck me as very similar to SF, and the Anglo culture was similar between the two countries. Montreal is rather more European, but I spent less time there, so I can't say for sure what the culture is like.
    • scottLobster 7y ago
      Considering the vast majority of Canadians live within 100 miles of the American border and there's a ton of cross-border traffic, I don't find it that surprising that the cultures are similar. As an Washington DC area kid who visited Ottawa as a teenager (Canadian relatives), aside from having to go through customs and everything being in French as well as English, I felt right at home.
    • carapace 7y ago
      It was mostly a joke. I spent some time in Canada, and yeah, it's "America, but civilized." ;-) The main cultural difference is that they never threw off English rule, they're still technically subjects of Her Majesty the Queen of England (or something like that.) Quebec has this dual culture going on where the French were overthrown by the English and are still a little huffy over it from time to time. I don't have any idea how CA stacks up to the USA on all the points the article raised though.
      • 7y ago
• gok 7y ago
  > Americans spend more time commuting to work than almost anyone on Earth. American commute times are actually the third lowest in the OECD.
  • morelisp 7y ago
    Do you have a citation for this which includes part-time jobs, and breaks out self-driven vs. public transit?
  • robert_foss 7y ago
    Citation needed
    • gok 7y ago
      http://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF2_6_Time_spent_travelling_to_and_from_work.pdf http://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF2_6_Time_spent_travelling_...
  • cscurmudgeon 7y ago
    But let us not let data pollute a mildy disguised US hate fest.
  • graeme 7y ago
    That figure is debateable. Citylab raises three issues: 1. American commutes tend to be by car. Other countries have more walking, biking and transit commutes. (Note that foreign transit tends to be more relaxing than American transit). And a walk or bike commute is exercise, which americans have to go to the gym to do. 2. In cities, American commutes are much longer than average. The article was talking about urban centers where immigrants go, so it would be instructive to compare to foreign city commutes. 3. Other datasets show the US having longer relative commute times. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/10/american-commute-times-so-difficult-to-measure/307/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/10/american-comm...
    • dchyrdvh 7y ago
      Gyms are now closed. The thing about suburbs is that you can be anywhere anytime, thanks to your car and garage space to store bicycles and various recreational things. If I lived in the city, I'd likely have neither and would be bound to my city block (parking isn't cheap there).
• seem_2211 7y ago
  This is a great piece. I immigrated from New Zealand to America. It's interesting being in the US and hearing people exalt New Zealand. Same thing, some pros, some cons.
  • Xcelerate 7y ago
    I mean, as an American, it's really hard to argue against the views and scenery in New Zealand...
  • atlasunshrugged 7y ago
    Would you go back? What do you view as the pros vs. cons of being in the US versus NZ?
    • seem_2211 7y ago
      Probably - I think raising a family will probably be a catalyst. Pros: pretty, relatively relaxed lifestyle, much lower pressure than the US, minimal gun violence, healthier attitudes towards childrearing, good public healthcare, relatively good education systems, (mostly) competent government. Cons: low wage economy, distant from everywhere, overall ambition of people is low, high taxes (top tax rate isn't crazy high, but kicks in very early) Note, when I talk about 'the US' I'm talking about SF / LA / NYC type cities. I don't have any intention of living in small town USA.
  • refurb 7y ago
    I'm an immigrant to the US as well. I chuckle a bit when I hear people say how great my home country is and how they wish they could move there from the US.
• gidam 7y ago
  With the lack of empathy another very sad thing of living in USA is to discover how almost all the people measures success in life with the size of the paycheck/bank account.
  • threatofrain 7y ago
    How many people can find success in life in the absence of money, such as with mathematical glory on the secret of the primes? Without money I think unto the future of one’s children. In the opposite direction, the degree to which you have money is the degree to which you can be morally effective in your community. The very poor and the very rich, IMO, have a different slew of interesting moral choices.
    • burntoutfire 7y ago
      > How many people can find success in life in the absence of money, such as with mathematical glory on the secret of the primes? This question itself is quintesentially American. Here in Poland, I don't hear ANYONE EVER talking about wanting success. I think people here just want contentment and some sort of balance.
      • LeoTinnitus 7y ago
        If you said that to a stereotypical conservative here, they'd call that liberal garbage. The thought is that if you aren't working to an absurd degree, you aren't useful.
    • davidgh 7y ago
      > How many people can find success in life in the absence of money, such as with mathematical glory on the secret of the primes? Yes, a certain measure of wealth is required to find happiness. Without basic needs being met, it is hard to find much more than misery. Of course, most people want more money than they have, but different cultures place a higher emphasis on the acquisition of money than others. And studies have shown that beyond a certain point, additional money adds very little incremental happiness. On the other hand, living in a culture that places high worth on money has significant side effects, such as people who have sufficient means spending much of their time, energy and worry on things that really don’t give them the happiness they are looking for, to the detriment of things that do (relationships, hobbies, etc.).
• aerovistae 7y ago
  This is an unbelievably well-written and fascinating article. If you don't have time to read all of it, I strongly, strongly recommend you read the section titled "Suburbia, layout, and transportation". It makes a point I had never thought about before and changed my view of the US in a small way.
• 886 7y ago
  "Like many people, Armenians have a tendency to compare the worst aspects of life in Armenia with the best aspects of life in America, or elsewhere abroad." This is usually the case in America vice versa, comparing the best aspects of life in America with the worst in other countries. In reality, an individual living an ordinary life might actually be happier than those in America.
  • swimfar 7y ago
    This definitely depends on who you spend a lot of time around, and where you consume your news/media/entertainment from. I experience the opposite. Where I only hear mostly negative things about the US, and positive things about most other countries. Of course, some perception bias could come into play here too.
    • plandis 7y ago
      Yes, this is my experience. I rarely if ever read anything good about the US on HN.
• ericmay 7y ago
  Absolutely beautifully put. Cars and suburbia are destructive: "Few people can prepare themselves for the degree to which Americans have, in the last half-century or so, taken this entire corpus of human experience and thrown it completely into the trash, with the exception of a few older cities–not the places where the majority of Americans live. What has replaced it is a surreal moonscape. For those accustomed to the traditional urban civilisation, the primary question in America is: where do I go? What do I do? Looking around leads to an intangible but intense realisation of emptiness. "
  • cscurmudgeon 7y ago
    > Cars and suburbia are destructive: That may be the thing which saves the US in a pandemic like this. Gotta love the constant car hate that is usually coupled with an anti-development NIMBY attitude that prevents denser cities.
    • ericmay 7y ago
      It is likely to help, of course, but it's a happy accident and doesn't come close to making up for the amount of pollution, deaths, and money spent on this unnecessary structure.
      • cscurmudgeon 7y ago
        There are other ways of reducing pollution and deaths without making us live on top of one another. Also, not everyone can afford to live in dense cities. Cities may be even worse in terms of pollution if we cared to look at data rather. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-sustainable-city/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-s... Urban areas are usually celebrated for their energy efficiency and low per capita carbon dioxide emissions, but such accounting ignores how and where they acquire their resources Poor people commute for miles to denser cities for jobs everyday not because they want to pollute but because they have no other choice. It is usually the poor racial minorities who end up commuting for hours daily. https://www.abc10.com/article/traffic/she-commutes-from-stockton-to-san-francisco-for-work-shes-not-alone/103-545961772 https://www.abc10.com/article/traffic/she-commutes-from-stoc...
• Scoundreller 7y ago
  > In the large public university that I attended, easily 80% of my courses were taught by graduate students not much older than I was. How typical is this? It doesn't match my Canadian large public university experience, but maybe that's because I took clinical/tech programs? Or that our class sizes can be bigger? What would one prefer, classes of 300 with a full professor, or 30 with a grad student?
  • joey_bob 7y ago
    Not typical in the US afaik. In my undergraduate, I had one course taught by a graduate student, and he was somewhere around twice my age. Recitation is typically taught by a graduate student, but taught is a loose word. Seems like recitation is really group office hours with one of the professors graduate students.
  • bobthepanda 7y ago
    Some institutions definitely have this problem much worse than others in the US, and in certain subjects; while my CS courses were generally taught by professors, the CS labs were definitely run by grad students, grad students did all the grading, etc. For niche elective courses that I took to complete my humanities requirements, those were definitely more likely to be taught by a grad student. But YMMV; talking to peers from secondary school, it seemed like certain institutions (Harvard, Berkeley) were more likely to have this problem. Can't really verify that hearsay though. On the topic of large class sizes, there is definitely room for improvement in the US system; being at a poorly-funded mid-tier public university, we had several courses that were so large that there were overflow rooms with a camera pointing to the main lecturer in the main room, and these were lecture halls that could easily hold 400.
  • asdff 7y ago
    Very typical in the U.S. for the professor to do the 300 person lecture twice a week, and have a TA go over homework, proctor quizzes, or run labs in smaller sections of ~30 people. At my undergrad, smaller classes that are lower division would be taught by a grad student to like 30 people, upper division seminars are usually faculty though.
  • 7y ago
• lynguist 7y ago
  A question to the Armenians: Would I as a Turk with a Turkish name but a European passport face any difficulties or danger when visiting Armenia?
  • orthoxerox 7y ago
    As long as you agree that Armenian genocide was a terrible atrocity you will be fine.
    • lynguist 7y ago
      I was the first one in history class to speak up naming and condemning the Armenian genocide. I find that both the treatment of the Armenians and the Greeks during the time of the fall of the Empire and rise of the Republic was an enormous mistake on all possible accounts and by not allowing that plurality to happen in Turkish society they lost out on innovation.
  • tehwebguy 7y ago
    No, people of the world know that modern day Turks have nothing to do with the Armenian Genocide. Erdogan, however, should steer clear of Armenians IMO.
  • abalashov 7y ago
    Hi — author here. The answer is no. At least, I’ve never heard of such a case.
• joey_bob 7y ago
  You could change the title to be "What Americans should know about life in California" and the conclusions would still be largely accurate, with the exception of Healthcare and Jobs.
• harrydehal 7y ago
  For those interested in a bit more about the Armenian diaspora in Los Angeles which is particularly unique, through a food/cooking lens, Chef Marcus Samuelsson just did an episode on his PBS show last week, "No Passport Required: Los Angeles." It was full of history, stories about the Armenian immigrant experience, and a look at the older and younger generation in LA: https://www.pbs.org/video/los-angeles-gzlrby/ https://www.pbs.org/video/los-angeles-gzlrby/ https://la.eater.com/maps/los-angeles-armenian-restaurants-food-marcus-samuelsson-no-passport-required https://la.eater.com/maps/los-angeles-armenian-restaurants-f...
• cryptica 7y ago
  I get the feeling that the idea of "If you work hard and work smart, you will succeed" is more true in America than in the rest of the world. Living in Germany, I think this might explain why I get into arguments with people on HN when I comment about the unfairness of the system. There may be a mismatch between our experiences. It seems that working hard does seem to lead to success for most people in America. I think it could be that there are fewer cracks in the system and therefore fewer people tend to fall through them as they do in Europe... That said, as few cracks as there may be in the US system, those that do exist seem to run deep; people who fall through them may have a much harder fall; it doesn't surprise me that the US has a homelessness and opioid problem - That's what happens to people who fall through the cracks; you don't see them on HN complaining about how unfair things are (as I tend to do - Complaining is an activity reserved for partial losers, not complete losers). In America, the winners get to shoot rockets up into space. On the other hand, the only things that losers shoot up are schools and heroin...
• acjohnson55 7y ago
  My favorite part of this already great article is where the Armenian guy referred to the US tax system as Byzantine. Bravo!
• gridlockd 7y ago
  Of all the things that might contribute to an epidemic to suicides, architecture is high on my list of suspects. The link between long commutes and depression has already been shown[1]. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214140518306169 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221414051...
• hash872 7y ago
  An entertaining, informative read, and I agree with 60+% of it. I'm still going to nitpick the stuff that I don't think is correct. Also I read the piece on his front page via HN last year, about how it's literally impossible to scale a consulting business past a size of 1 employee, and thought- good, entertaining writer but a bit of an exaggerator: I don't believe that overall US tax rates are the same as Western Europe, sorry, especially as he seems to add in every line item that he can find (excise tax, etc.) Aside from the fact that European income tax rates are consistently described as significantly higher- there's a 20-25% VAT to consider, yes? To be fair if he lives in California I can see how it's approaching European rates. I also do agree we get less for what we pay for. The US does have a huge problem with most of the best jobs & human capital being concentrated in a very small number of cities, and I agree that this does contribute to high rent/real estate prices. (And some people are determined to maintain this system because of some handwavey idea that this is a desirable state of affairs). But you can definitely have a quality lifestyle in a tier 2 US city with a professional career, and I'd suggest everyone- immigrant or native- who thinks the Bay Area/LA/NYC/Seattle/Boston/DC are too expensive to move. You don't have to live in an area where the average house price is $1-2 million. Suburbia is dreadful and has been criticized in the US for decades & decades now, but it is definitely not true that the vast majority of Americans live in a suburb. I share his desire for walkable, medium-density cities. The US legal system is also extremely bad/overly punitive, but I philosophically disagree with whatever he's trying to say that judges or prosecutors should have more discretion in the interests of a higher ideal of 'justice'. Way too much to fit into an HN comment, but rule of law societies should be procedural/formal/rigid- when we give government functionaries broad discretion to use their subjective 'judgement', they're just or more likely to abuse it and be unfair, racist, even more punitive, etc. (This is in no way a defense of how over-criminalized the US is, but the solution is to change the laws- not gives judges & prosecutors more arbitrary, discretionary power and hope that they choose to be nicer with it)
  • abalashov 7y ago
    Your critique is appreciated and taken constructively! I also readily concede this wasn’t a quantitatively rigourous research study. I would say that some small amount of exaggeration—as long as it doesn’t amount to material misrepresentation or outright counterfactual statements—is highly necessary for engaging writing, and both that and entertainment in general are key rhetorical devices. Slight exaggeration can put the contours of something in sharper relief when illustrating a broad idea. It’s hard to do good human interest writing while spending half one’s time qualifying statements or labouriously reminding the reader of the empirical proportions of things to other things. A portrait is not a photograph. As the author, it’s not for me to say whether I hit the spot on “entertaining and informative, but a bit of an exaggerator” for everyone, but I can tell you that’s what I was going for in both articles you read. So, thank you — I think? :) In view of the foregoing: 1. I agree that overall US tax burden is lower than Western European tax burden; my intended point wasn’t at all that it’s equal or higher, merely that a) it’s not _so_ much lower, an order of magnitude lower, or anything like that, and more importantly, that b) given what difference does exist, the much larger difference in government services and social safety net does not correspond. I think this point could have been easily lost had I spent time on a more comprehensive of tax rates, or belaboured tirelessly that US tax rates are, in the end, somewhat lower. 2. I don’t think I lavished excessive attention on the living cost structure of major cities. The point was instead to explain to hypothetical immigrants where a lot of Americans’ money goes, no matter where they live, including in most tracts of “Middle America”, “flyover country”, “Omaha”, whatever you want to call it. I live in Augusta, GA myself nowadays (which, for all intents and purposes, approximates a kind of “Omaha”), having lived in Atlanta for ten years and in Athens, GA for a good chunk of my adolescence and adulthood. Much of what I said in the article still applies, I think—the criticism of vacuous suburban layout more so. I don’t know quantitatively whether “most Americans live in a suburb”, but I would readily and decisively say, on the strength of extensive experience living in and travelling around the US my whole life, that “most places in America conform to suburban layout”. They really do. Some Americans seem to want to quibble with the idea that Irving, TX, or Alpharetta, GA, or Bethesda or whatever are “suburban”, but in terms of the critical lens here, they absolutely all are. The places I have been to in the US that don’t conform to the Standard Suburban Layout are exceptionally few—so few that they can be individually enumerated—and the overwhelming preponderance of US “municipalities” and “communities” do. 3. The procedural emphasis of American jurisprudence definitely corrects for a lot of deficits in the venal systems that preceded it, and there are certainly two sides to this argument.
• dhruvkar 7y ago
  >> The problem is more insidious, though; the way that we build our settlements has deep implications for our civic life, our communities, our patterns of interaction, the relationships we form, the company we keep, and ultimately, the purpose and meaning we find in our lives. I've been waiting for this view to be shared by anyone else. I've been in the US for 20 years, since I was 11 years old. Midwest -> West Coast -> Midwest. In the Midwest, it's hard to live anywhere but suburbia. Five years in California, and the best time I had was two years in a 300 sq ft in-law apartment in Berkeley, squashed in between friendly neighbors, cousins and frequent visitors. I've lived in India, China and traveled many other developing nations including Brazil and parts of Africa. The stark difference to mental and emotional well-being is scary. At this time, I don't know if the conveniences of American life are worth the hit. Suburbia is harmful to mental and emotional well-being and it's unavoidable for the vast majority of Americans.
  • dchyrdvh 7y ago
    Harmful for some, good for others. Not everyone loves crowds and noise.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • dhruvkar 7y ago
      Absence of suburbia != crowds and noise. There's a level of isolation in the suburban US that's hard to put into words if you haven't experienced any alternatives. That may also be true for other developed nations, I don't have first hand experience.
      • dchyrdvh 7y ago
        I have experienced alternatives a good part of my life. The words I'd use to describe American suburbs are: quiet, green, peaceful. I get that many people are scared to be alone, but that's entirely in their heads.
    • crdotson 7y ago
• plandis 7y ago
  The author treats the European way of life as the gold standard that shouldn’t be questioned and then chastises the US for not being a part of the same group think. Typically one tries to understand before critiquing but the author has clearly not bothered to do so. Their description of American life in their short amount of time here is so vastly different than my lifetime of experience here.
  • mercer 7y ago
    Well then go write or link to a blog post to provide us with an actual counter-point maybe?
  • vsskanth 7y ago
    There is absolutely no implication that the author's views shouldn't be questioned. Would be great if you could also share some detailed thoughts on why you think the American way of life is better.
• fallingfrog 7y ago
  There is a school of thought that says, with some justification, that the American suburb was designed specifically to destroy community ties, for the reason that without community ties it is hard to form the kinds of labor organizations that can oppose capital, and also owning your own home, even if it’s really the bank that owns it, makes you more sympathetic to the interests of the property owning class. It certainly is true that the advent of the suburb happened at the same time as the decline of the socialist movement. After all if you’re living cheek to jowl in dickensian conditions you might be inclined to see the boss as your enemy, but if you leave the workplace everyday and head back to your own property in a suburb, where the boss has a house nearby, with your 401k being your retirement plan, then perhaps less so.
  • papeda 7y ago
    re: "designed specifically", I can see how suburban living might be an obstacle to labor organization, but who is doing the designing here?
• sparrc 7y ago
  I grew up in suburban America and 100% agree with the author's take. It was certainly comfy but I found it unbearably bland, boring and suffocating.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• papeda 7y ago
  It's interesting to take the featured article's bit about the Bill of Rights and think of the procedural emphasis of the USA criminal justice system as a flawed attempt at reconciling the USA's many different constituent cultures. Like, we have no bedrock agreed cultural principles, so we're just going to settle for codifying how the process works rather than the abstract ends ("justice") it should achieve. That's disquieting.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• kyuudou 7y ago
  That the Turks probably won't genocide them over here
• AvImd 7y ago
  Some highlights: 1. Suburbia is very distinct from European-style cities. It is monotonous, very sparse and requires a car to live there. Most of the people in the US live there! 2. The life there is very lonely for someone accustomed to less individualistic societies. And for Americans as well, so they heavily medicate their mental problems which would probably just not show up in more close-knit societies. 3. The legal system is obsessed with letter of the law and disregards its spirit. For-profit prisons lead to the highest incarceration rate in the world. Plea bargaining practice also contributes to codifying unreasonably harsh punishments. It can be traced back to the Bill of Rights that sets basic procedures and not basic principles. 4. Compared to Western Europe, the taxes are on average somewhat lower but the services provided by the state are much worse. 5. Healthcare is costlier than either a truly free market would provide or a socialized system. 6. The war on drugs is fought brutally from all sides, and you are very likely to suffer some damage from it. 7. It is a good place for you if you are young and entrepreneurial. It can provide you with great opportunities but it's hard to lead a stable and calm life there.
• rollpapier 7y ago
  Does anyone know of such an article written for immigrants in Western Europe? I’d find it interesting to have an “outsider’s” view on the culture I live in.
• abalashov 7y ago
  Author here; I was very surprised to find this ancient (from my POV — I wrote it in Dec 2014) article at the top of HN, but am pleased at the discussion it has generated, whether you agree with my perspective or not. I’ve been back in the US a while now and things have changed both here and in Armenia. I don’t think the big picture on offer is much different, but perhaps there’s room for a sequel.
  • vsskanth 7y ago
    Thanks for sharing your perspective, looking forward to the sequel.
  • andralex 7y ago
    Would love a sequel!
  • lobotryas 7y ago
    I am enjoying exploring your blog and reading old posts. Hope you and your family are well and that you will be able to return to posting on your blog soon.
    • abalashov 7y ago
      That is very kind! Thank you -- I think it is time to get back into writing...
• purplezooey 7y ago
  "...payments are direct from patient to medical provider, and so prices are constrained by what the market will directly bear. " This nice gross oversimplification is how, maybe, it was envisioned in the 1960s when we should have fixed it, but bears no resemblance to how it actually works today.