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I have been having similar discussions with my friends. My key takeaway is that if you are in the top 5 or 10%, US is a great place for you. Every place is open

by vaidhy 6y ago

I have been having similar discussions with my friends. My key takeaway is that if you are in the top 5 or 10%, US is a great place for you. Every place is open and your hard work (and a bit of luck) will take you a long way up. However, if you are average, US sucks for you. There is just so much burden to just keep working, even more so, if you have family. Between lack of public transport, healthcare, exploitative workplace and strong victim blaming attitude, you carry on just hoping that your kids will become one of the top 10%. For every example of successful immigrant, I think about the thousands of farm workers and hard laborers who make a trip here, and struggle to make a good life. And yes, they make more money that they make in their homeland.. but that does not make their current situation better.

rayiner 6y ago
Are any of your friends immigrants in America? Because "public transportation" has never come up in any conversation I have had with an average immigrant. This is an anecdote but I think it's illustrative. I met a cab driver in Texas who immigrated from Morocco. He was extolling the virtues of Texas. He and his cab driver friends had been able to buy 3BR houses with pools on their cab driver incomes, put their kids in decent schools, etc. If you go to East Texas, you see tons of working class Latinos who work solid jobs in the booming oil and chemical industries there. It's not fancy, but you see brand new strip malls, shiny new pickup trucks, and big families everywhere. Tons of middle class prosperity among the immigrant population. I'm from Bangladesh, and while my parents immigrated to the U.S. under pretty good circumstances (my dad has a white collar job), not everyone in my family did. And their view of achieving "the American Dream" is very much in line with what this Moroccan cab driver was saying. They want a big house and good schools for their kids. America provides that, including to immigrants. 75% of lawful immigrants have health insurance, mostly through their employer, or through Medicare/Medicaid/ACA. (The rate is over 90% for native-born Americans.) The median size of a new house in the United States is over 2,600 square feet. (Half of Latinos own their own homes, despite a median age of just 30, over 14 years younger than the median age of whites.) The median price of a new car in America is $38,000. This is what most Americans, and most working-class immigrants to America, consider the "American Dream." "Public transportation" is something that only a minority of college-educated elite actually think is a good thing.
- ericmay 6y ago
  > "Public transportation" is something that only a minority of college-educated elite actually think is a good thing. And I would certainly argue that this is a gigantic problem that is hamstringing the competitiveness of the United States for no good reason (like Tom Brady playing with one arm tied behind his back). Paying for those trucks (or cars), new highway construction, auto insurance, healthcare for those injured in car crashes, etc. is largely an unnecessary cost. It's clear that most countries can do just fine without. With that being said, certainly I applaud anyone who is achieving the "American Dream" - I want people to be prosperous, but deriding public transportation and by extension things like sidewalks or bike lanes as though it might be some ivory-tower conversation is in my opinion a bit ridiculous. Everyone should be concerned with the costs and benefits of public transportation as well as buying cars and maintaining the highway infrastructure. It's not free... You might say "the U.S. is so big!!" but I would just say we should largely be living closer together in medium density mixed-use environments (not skyscrapers, and certainly not suburbs). That doesn't mean you can't have a car or a yard, or a garage, but you should probably be walking to work or riding a bike - or at least some of your family members should be.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    > You might say "the U.S. is so big!!" but I would just say we should largely be living closer together in medium density mixed-use environments (not skyscrapers, and certainly not suburbs). That doesn't mean you can't have a car or a yard, or a garage, but you should probably be walking to work or riding a bike - or at least some of your family members should be. Those are a lot of shoulds about how other people should live their life.
    - ericmay 6y ago
      Fair, but let’s remember that we live in a country where that’s the norm. For example: I should pay taxes to support the military to defend the Petrodollar and our allies in the Middle East to keep the oil flowing. People suggest how you have to live your life all the time. The above is a trivial example. I don’t want all this oil to power all these cars putting carbon in the air? Why should I have to live my life this way?
powerapple 6y ago
It depends on where you from. If you are average, you may still be better off in US comparing to where you are from. It is all relative. And if you are top 5 or 10% and still face problems, it is actually good for the world. Which means some people will make a decision moving to another place and create opportunities for everyone to grow.

by vaidhy 6y ago

rayiner 6y ago

Are any of your friends immigrants in America? Because "public transportation" has never come up in any conversation I have had with an average immigrant. This is an anecdote but I think it's illustrative. I met a cab driver in Texas who immigrated from Morocco. He was extolling the virtues of Texas. He and his cab driver friends had been able to buy 3BR houses with pools on their cab driver incomes, put their kids in decent schools, etc. If you go to East Texas, you see tons of working class Latinos who work solid jobs in the booming oil and chemical industries there. It's not fancy, but you see brand new strip malls, shiny new pickup trucks, and big families everywhere. Tons of middle class prosperity among the immigrant population. I'm from Bangladesh, and while my parents immigrated to the U.S. under pretty good circumstances (my dad has a white collar job), not everyone in my family did. And their view of achieving "the American Dream" is very much in line with what this Moroccan cab driver was saying. They want a big house and good schools for their kids. America provides that, including to immigrants. 75% of lawful immigrants have health insurance, mostly through their employer, or through Medicare/Medicaid/ACA. (The rate is over 90% for native-born Americans.) The median size of a new house in the United States is over 2,600 square feet. (Half of Latinos own their own homes, despite a median age of just 30, over 14 years younger than the median age of whites.) The median price of a new car in America is $38,000. This is what most Americans, and most working-class immigrants to America, consider the "American Dream." "Public transportation" is something that only a minority of college-educated elite actually think is a good thing.

ericmay 6y ago
> "Public transportation" is something that only a minority of college-educated elite actually think is a good thing. And I would certainly argue that this is a gigantic problem that is hamstringing the competitiveness of the United States for no good reason (like Tom Brady playing with one arm tied behind his back). Paying for those trucks (or cars), new highway construction, auto insurance, healthcare for those injured in car crashes, etc. is largely an unnecessary cost. It's clear that most countries can do just fine without. With that being said, certainly I applaud anyone who is achieving the "American Dream" - I want people to be prosperous, but deriding public transportation and by extension things like sidewalks or bike lanes as though it might be some ivory-tower conversation is in my opinion a bit ridiculous. Everyone should be concerned with the costs and benefits of public transportation as well as buying cars and maintaining the highway infrastructure. It's not free... You might say "the U.S. is so big!!" but I would just say we should largely be living closer together in medium density mixed-use environments (not skyscrapers, and certainly not suburbs). That doesn't mean you can't have a car or a yard, or a garage, but you should probably be walking to work or riding a bike - or at least some of your family members should be.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  > You might say "the U.S. is so big!!" but I would just say we should largely be living closer together in medium density mixed-use environments (not skyscrapers, and certainly not suburbs). That doesn't mean you can't have a car or a yard, or a garage, but you should probably be walking to work or riding a bike - or at least some of your family members should be. Those are a lot of shoulds about how other people should live their life.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    Fair, but let’s remember that we live in a country where that’s the norm. For example: I should pay taxes to support the military to defend the Petrodollar and our allies in the Middle East to keep the oil flowing. People suggest how you have to live your life all the time. The above is a trivial example. I don’t want all this oil to power all these cars putting carbon in the air? Why should I have to live my life this way?

powerapple 6y ago

It depends on where you from. If you are average, you may still be better off in US comparing to where you are from. It is all relative. And if you are top 5 or 10% and still face problems, it is actually good for the world. Which means some people will make a decision moving to another place and create opportunities for everyone to grow.