4 ms·

I think that exceptionalism rote taught explains a lot of America's inherent conservatism - why change if you're already the best?

rayiner 6y ago
We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. We have the highest disposable income in the OECD: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/14773.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/14773.jpeg. The median household income of a married couple with kids is $95,000. And the taxes are extremely low in that bracket. Our unemployment rate in the midst of Trump’s botched handling of COVID is less than what France’s unemployment rate is in a normal year. Even when you hear complaints about things like healthcare, the debates are more about universal coverage than the quality or affordability of care itself. Americans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their own healthcare: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcare-quite-positively.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar.... (And, Americans being preternaturally optimistic, just assign less value to the security of a safety net in the case they lose their job, etc.) Americans live in houses far larger than the average European: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/comparing_average_house_size_in_us_to_europe https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com.... We have more TVs, more cars, etc. It’s easy to assume that Americans are just ignorant and irrational. But Americans know that Europe has a bunch of services we don’t, and they pay much higher taxes in return. Democrats make that comparison all the time. People are aware of it. But the fact is that the current system works pretty well for your typical voter. A flatter society with more social services would be better for a lot of people. However, your average suburban married couple would take a significant hit to their standard of living if they lived in France instead.
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  > We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. Some of you are. You're only surpassed by Romania, Costa Rica, and South Africa in this chart: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm Romania, Italy, South Africa in this one: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-c... Doing better in this one, in that now you're behind Bulgaria, Turkey, Chile, Costa Rica and South Africa. https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indic... I'm assuming that disposable household income per capita doesn't quite capture the severely unequal distributions of disposable household income. > Americans live in houses far larger than the average European: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com.... We have more TVs, more cars, etc. That's a cultural difference, not at all indicative of anything - European cities are typically built for denser living - far fewer McMansions, far more well built, sound proofed apartments with ample public transport networks, to the extent that one can work and live in a city without owning a car. Although there are a bunch of bicycles. In fact, very few of my German colleagues own cars because they have no reason to, as they all live in major cities. If they need a car for a holiday, they rent one. > Americans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their own healthcare Which is exactly the point I was making, I mean, the country with one of the lowest passport holding rates doesn't really have much to compare their health system to.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Your “cultural difference” point is a good one. More cars and more house and things many want, and I find it baffling. My measure is that I want to vacuum the house from one power point, and not worry what happens to the car.
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Belgium https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu... Fyi, an interesting statistic is that Eg. Houses in Belgium are more expensive to buy and way cheaper to rent.
  - zajio1am 6y ago
    The OECD poverty line is defined as a half of median income, so it is problematic to compare that between countries with much differenent income levels. People on poverty line in rich countries still have higher income (even after PPP adjustment) than median-income people in poor countries.
    - SamReidHughes 6y ago
      Yeah, by plain math, making the working class richer will make your poverty rankings worse.
  - zajio1am 6y ago
    > European cities are typically built for denser living - far fewer McMansions, far more well built, sound proofed apartment Well, here (Prague) you can have small flat in city for the same price as full-sized house with garden in suburbs (villages around Prague), so it is mostly question of preferences.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    I’m not really disagreeing with what you’re saying. My point is that people are voting in their own interest. If you’re employed, 30+, married married, and in the top 60% of the income distribution, then in terms of quantifiable income and consumption metrics you’re probably better off than you’d be in say France. And these are the people who vote. As to housing patterns, I’m sure it’s a combination of preference, availability, and affordability. I know Germans from suburbs in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg and they drive everywhere and enjoy the convenience. These are the same preferences of folks in the US. As to health care: for people who have decent insurance, you’d be surprised by how nice American healthcare is. When my son had chronic ear infections, in sometimes went down to the pediatricians office multiple times a day. It’s not free at the point of use, but it’s cheap enough where it might as well be. It’s not obviously something that needs fixing. Again, it’s not like the American left hasn’t been making the pitch for socialized medicine for decades now. At this point Americans probably have an overly rosy picture of European healthcare. They don’t know that French national healthcare has 20% coinsurance, or that many European countries still have insurance companies. It’s just that most voters either have insurance from their employer, and it actually tends to be pretty good, or they have Medicare, which also tends to be pretty good. The fact that some people don’t have that doesn’t motivate the average voter very much, and they don’t want to pay more taxes. Americans don’t have the same sense of solidarity Europeans have, and are much more individualistic.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Fnoord 6y ago
  Do all of these cars and TVs make you happy? Rhetorical question; if they did you wouldn't need more more more. A minority is rich and comfortable. This elite uses propaganda rhetoric such as polarisation by a platform such as Fox News to manipulate people into a political candidate which, ultimately, does not serve in their benefit but in the benefit of the elite majority. Then there's the other party who are only marginally better. The poor get to pick the best option of two terrible options, and they could have achieved so much more in their life with just a minor bit of compassion from said elite. If greed is one of the seven sins, none of these elites are the devout Christians they claim to be. I normally don't speak out about this; thanks for the inspirational post.
  - sunshinerag 6y ago
    2 cars and 3 TVs seem to be enough. Who said more more more?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Again, it’s easy to tell yourself that Americans are just irrational, harder to reconcile that with the facts. It’s not just a minority that’s richer and more comfortable: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2017/04/24/middle-class-fortunes-in-western-europe/st_2017-04-24_western-europe-middle-class_2-03/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2017/04/24/middle-class-f... A middle income household in the US has $15,000-25,000 more per year in disposable income than a middle income household in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, or the UK (comprising 70% of the EU population). You can say that some of that goes to employee-paid premiums and things like that, which are excluded from the OECD analysis. But for households with employer-paid health insurance (which is the vast majority of middle income households), the typical out of pocket costs for those things is a fraction of the income differential: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/Hayes_households_employer_ins_spend_premiums_OOP_Tables.pdf https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/2019-05... The median spending on premiums and out of pocket costs in the US is $3,700. And note that European countries also have out of pocket expenses of $500-1,000: https://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/OECD-Focus-on-Out-of-Pocket-Spending-April-2019.pdf https://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/OECD-Focus-on-Out.... So at the end of the day, a middle income American household with employer-paid health insurance has $12,000-22,000 more in their pocket each year. (You could adjust for other social services, but those tend to be a drop in the bucket by comparison. For example, the average student, of the minority of Americans that graduates college, is $30,000. Thats a one-time debt, compared to a lifetime of earning thousands of dollars more.) Fox News manipulating people into “voting against their interests” is mostly a myth. The poorest people do in fact vote Democrat. If you look at profiles of Trump voters, they tend to be non-college-educated people who are doing well in places with low cost of living. In my county, the guys that own a little contracting or construction company vote for Trump. This is entirely in their interest. They would not be personally better off paying a lot more taxes to get marginally more benefits. I spent several weeks in East Texas last year. This is Trump country. It’s also quite prosperous. The men work in the oil industry and the women work in healthcare. They have big trucks and big houses and shiny new stores and restaurants.
- oblio 6y ago
  Yeah, but what everybody is pointing out is that your poor are faring worse than poor people in other developed country. And the paradox of that thing is that's happening despite you being: > rich and comfortable That's what baffles everyone. The American social contract seems to be "if 80% of the population can be 20-30% richer than the rest of the world, let's throw the 20% at the bottom under the rhetorical bus". And I should point out that these days those 20% at the bottom are about 70 million (!) people. Plus I imagine that the poverty rate will only go up, not down, considering how US politics are looking.
- tzs 6y ago
  Too bad that poll on healthcare didn't break it down by whether or not you pay for it yourself. I was quite pleased with my costs when I got it through my employer and so didn't actually see the cost of insurance. I'd indirectly see it when every few years my employer would change providers, and then I'd have to worry about whether or not my doctor was in the new provider's network. Co-workers who wanted to add spouses to their plan did have to pay for it themselves on some of the plans, and they grumbled about the cost. Now that I buy insurance myself on my state's health insurance exchange, cost is one of my top complaints.

rayiner 6y ago

We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. We have the highest disposable income in the OECD: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/14773.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/14773.jpeg. The median household income of a married couple with kids is $95,000. And the taxes are extremely low in that bracket. Our unemployment rate in the midst of Trump’s botched handling of COVID is less than what France’s unemployment rate is in a normal year. Even when you hear complaints about things like healthcare, the debates are more about universal coverage than the quality or affordability of care itself. Americans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their own healthcare: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcare-quite-positively.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcar.... (And, Americans being preternaturally optimistic, just assign less value to the security of a safety net in the case they lose their job, etc.) Americans live in houses far larger than the average European: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/comparing_average_house_size_in_us_to_europe https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com.... We have more TVs, more cars, etc. It’s easy to assume that Americans are just ignorant and irrational. But Americans know that Europe has a bunch of services we don’t, and they pay much higher taxes in return. Democrats make that comparison all the time. People are aware of it. But the fact is that the current system works pretty well for your typical voter. A flatter society with more social services would be better for a lot of people. However, your average suburban married couple would take a significant hit to their standard of living if they lived in France instead.

EdwardDiego 6y ago
> We’re conservative because we’re rich and comfortable. Some of you are. You're only surpassed by Romania, Costa Rica, and South Africa in this chart: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm Romania, Italy, South Africa in this one: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-c... Doing better in this one, in that now you're behind Bulgaria, Turkey, Chile, Costa Rica and South Africa. https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indic... I'm assuming that disposable household income per capita doesn't quite capture the severely unequal distributions of disposable household income. > Americans live in houses far larger than the average European: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ei5f4/com.... We have more TVs, more cars, etc. That's a cultural difference, not at all indicative of anything - European cities are typically built for denser living - far fewer McMansions, far more well built, sound proofed apartments with ample public transport networks, to the extent that one can work and live in a city without owning a car. Although there are a bunch of bicycles. In fact, very few of my German colleagues own cars because they have no reason to, as they all live in major cities. If they need a car for a holiday, they rent one. > Americans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their own healthcare Which is exactly the point I was making, I mean, the country with one of the lowest passport holding rates doesn't really have much to compare their health system to.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Your “cultural difference” point is a good one. More cars and more house and things many want, and I find it baffling. My measure is that I want to vacuum the house from one power point, and not worry what happens to the car.
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Belgium https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu... Fyi, an interesting statistic is that Eg. Houses in Belgium are more expensive to buy and way cheaper to rent.
- zajio1am 6y ago
  The OECD poverty line is defined as a half of median income, so it is problematic to compare that between countries with much differenent income levels. People on poverty line in rich countries still have higher income (even after PPP adjustment) than median-income people in poor countries.
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    Yeah, by plain math, making the working class richer will make your poverty rankings worse.
- zajio1am 6y ago
  > European cities are typically built for denser living - far fewer McMansions, far more well built, sound proofed apartment Well, here (Prague) you can have small flat in city for the same price as full-sized house with garden in suburbs (villages around Prague), so it is mostly question of preferences.
- rayiner 6y ago
  I’m not really disagreeing with what you’re saying. My point is that people are voting in their own interest. If you’re employed, 30+, married married, and in the top 60% of the income distribution, then in terms of quantifiable income and consumption metrics you’re probably better off than you’d be in say France. And these are the people who vote. As to housing patterns, I’m sure it’s a combination of preference, availability, and affordability. I know Germans from suburbs in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg and they drive everywhere and enjoy the convenience. These are the same preferences of folks in the US. As to health care: for people who have decent insurance, you’d be surprised by how nice American healthcare is. When my son had chronic ear infections, in sometimes went down to the pediatricians office multiple times a day. It’s not free at the point of use, but it’s cheap enough where it might as well be. It’s not obviously something that needs fixing. Again, it’s not like the American left hasn’t been making the pitch for socialized medicine for decades now. At this point Americans probably have an overly rosy picture of European healthcare. They don’t know that French national healthcare has 20% coinsurance, or that many European countries still have insurance companies. It’s just that most voters either have insurance from their employer, and it actually tends to be pretty good, or they have Medicare, which also tends to be pretty good. The fact that some people don’t have that doesn’t motivate the average voter very much, and they don’t want to pay more taxes. Americans don’t have the same sense of solidarity Europeans have, and are much more individualistic.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Fnoord 6y ago
Do all of these cars and TVs make you happy? Rhetorical question; if they did you wouldn't need more more more. A minority is rich and comfortable. This elite uses propaganda rhetoric such as polarisation by a platform such as Fox News to manipulate people into a political candidate which, ultimately, does not serve in their benefit but in the benefit of the elite majority. Then there's the other party who are only marginally better. The poor get to pick the best option of two terrible options, and they could have achieved so much more in their life with just a minor bit of compassion from said elite. If greed is one of the seven sins, none of these elites are the devout Christians they claim to be. I normally don't speak out about this; thanks for the inspirational post.
- sunshinerag 6y ago
  2 cars and 3 TVs seem to be enough. Who said more more more?
- rayiner 6y ago
  Again, it’s easy to tell yourself that Americans are just irrational, harder to reconcile that with the facts. It’s not just a minority that’s richer and more comfortable: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2017/04/24/middle-class-fortunes-in-western-europe/st_2017-04-24_western-europe-middle-class_2-03/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2017/04/24/middle-class-f... A middle income household in the US has $15,000-25,000 more per year in disposable income than a middle income household in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, or the UK (comprising 70% of the EU population). You can say that some of that goes to employee-paid premiums and things like that, which are excluded from the OECD analysis. But for households with employer-paid health insurance (which is the vast majority of middle income households), the typical out of pocket costs for those things is a fraction of the income differential: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/Hayes_households_employer_ins_spend_premiums_OOP_Tables.pdf https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/2019-05... The median spending on premiums and out of pocket costs in the US is $3,700. And note that European countries also have out of pocket expenses of $500-1,000: https://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/OECD-Focus-on-Out-of-Pocket-Spending-April-2019.pdf https://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/OECD-Focus-on-Out.... So at the end of the day, a middle income American household with employer-paid health insurance has $12,000-22,000 more in their pocket each year. (You could adjust for other social services, but those tend to be a drop in the bucket by comparison. For example, the average student, of the minority of Americans that graduates college, is $30,000. Thats a one-time debt, compared to a lifetime of earning thousands of dollars more.) Fox News manipulating people into “voting against their interests” is mostly a myth. The poorest people do in fact vote Democrat. If you look at profiles of Trump voters, they tend to be non-college-educated people who are doing well in places with low cost of living. In my county, the guys that own a little contracting or construction company vote for Trump. This is entirely in their interest. They would not be personally better off paying a lot more taxes to get marginally more benefits. I spent several weeks in East Texas last year. This is Trump country. It’s also quite prosperous. The men work in the oil industry and the women work in healthcare. They have big trucks and big houses and shiny new stores and restaurants.
oblio 6y ago
Yeah, but what everybody is pointing out is that your poor are faring worse than poor people in other developed country. And the paradox of that thing is that's happening despite you being: > rich and comfortable That's what baffles everyone. The American social contract seems to be "if 80% of the population can be 20-30% richer than the rest of the world, let's throw the 20% at the bottom under the rhetorical bus". And I should point out that these days those 20% at the bottom are about 70 million (!) people. Plus I imagine that the poverty rate will only go up, not down, considering how US politics are looking.
tzs 6y ago
Too bad that poll on healthcare didn't break it down by whether or not you pay for it yourself. I was quite pleased with my costs when I got it through my employer and so didn't actually see the cost of insurance. I'd indirectly see it when every few years my employer would change providers, and then I'd have to worry about whether or not my doctor was in the new provider's network. Co-workers who wanted to add spouses to their plan did have to pay for it themselves on some of the plans, and they grumbled about the cost. Now that I buy insurance myself on my state's health insurance exchange, cost is one of my top complaints.