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Genuine question: Is living in America as horrible as it sounds for the average, non-rich citizen? Impression I get from the media: * Education sets you i

Genuine question: Is living in America as horrible as it sounds for the average, non-rich citizen? Impression I get from the media: * Education sets you in semi-if-not-permanent debt. * Housing is impossibly expensive. * Single hospital visit can be thousand of dollars. * Critical medication is hundreds of dollars a month (or more). * Unpaid, (effectively) mandatory overtime. * Many people work several jobs (as adults). * No paid vacation. * No paid maternal leave. * No paid paternal leave. * Paternal leave is taboo/strange. * Maternal leave is weeks/month or two. From the outside, it sounds like your average American is living in 1930s Poland, not the land of the free.

spoonjim 6y ago
Well you definitely have the wrong idea. About 20% of Americans do live in extreme economic precarity. But things are not out of a horror movie. That’s in fact why there hasn’t been a violent revolution, things aren’t bad enough here (yet?).
- fredrikholm 6y ago
  > 20% of Americans do live in extreme economic precarity > That’s in fact why there hasn’t been a violent revolution You're being sarcastic, no? A fifth of the people are living in extreme economic precarity. Your Capital was stormed by terrorist from your own country. Widespread policy brutality lead to protests over the entire country, culminating in city blocks being burnt down in what, a dozen cities?
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    Americans are pissed about a lot of the things we see around us, yet we also have a political system that, were all of us involved, would likely provide the means to fix many of those things. If you ask an American about, say, the problem of homelessness they will tell you it is awful, and there are more people living in tents, and etc. etc. But, the overwhelming majority of people will not lift a finger to get involved in either nonprofit or public-sector solutions in any meaningful hands-on way. So, we're upset about everything and simultaneously unwilling to put in a collective effort to fix any of it (even though we know we could if we really tried - we were raised on the idea of American exceptionalism after-all). I think that produces a sort of cognitive dissonance throughout the population. We know these problems are tractable, we know we're capable of solving them, but we also know we're not going to do a damn thing about them. The origins of the cognitive dissonance can perhaps can be attributed to the strong mythologic narrative of individualism in the country running up against the erosion of community, the income gap, the increasing complexity of the problems we face, and the inadequacy of out K-12 education system to prepare students to function competitively in the 21st century.
  - liveoneggs 6y ago
    neither of these events brought about change at all.
  - spoonjim 6y ago
    Ask a random American person what happened yesterday. They probably went to work, came back, sat in their backyard, watched some TV, went to bed.
  - covidthrow 6y ago
    > A fifth of the people are living in extreme economic precarity. I'm not sure what this means to you, but "economic precarity" is a meaningless statement without context. For example, in the US, pretty much anyone living in destitution is unwell. It's practically impossible to starve to death in the US. etc So what this means is: economic mobility is limited for 20% of the population. That's not good, but in practice that translates to difficulty creating generational wealth, not a recipe for people starving or living in filth. Mobility would be much better, but it generally correlates strongly with level of education which is a separate chicken/egg problem. (At least until you get into massive student debt without a valuable degree, then that correlation shifts significantly.) > Your Capital was stormed by terrorist from your own country. What happened that day was not good, but framing it as a "terrorist insurrection" is exceedingly dishonest reporting. This is made plain by the kinds of charges that are being filed by the federal government. (Which, under the current administration, has no reason to "go soft" or brush things under the rug.) There were a small number (single digits) of dissidents that wished to engage in... something not well thought out. There were a much greater number of people that trespassed into the capitol. There was an even larger number of people outside that were (as the FBI director put it) "rowdy". All this because the former president insisted that he was cheated. (Which, frankly, there wasn't a lot of effort put into building confidence beyond "trust us!") Wholly inappropriate, bad, but not terrorism. We've experienced terrorism before (from other countries, from our political Right, and from our political Left) and this wasn't that. Anyone who suggests that is misinformed or leveraging it for political purposes. > Widespread policy brutality lead to protests over the entire country, culminating in city blocks being burnt down in what, a dozen cities? There is no widespread police brutality. Again, this is political framing. There are problems, no doubt, but nothing that could even reasonably be colored as "widespread brutality". Just as there were problems of confidence during the election—egged on for political reasons—that resulted in an inappropriate reaction by protestors, there are problems of confidence—again, egged on for political reasons—about our police force. Unfortunately, this resulted in significant overreaction that did, sadly, result in a tremendous amount of damage. But do you notice the underlying theme, here? Political and media framing are largely responsible for exceedingly dangerous levels of division. It's not that Righty Rick is evil or Lefty Lane is evil. It's a game of power by the institutions that control culture. The people are the pawns. So yes, in that regard, we've got major problems: the elite. Not necessarily "the rich" (although they're largely complicit), but almost the whole of the elite institutions. The people are at each others' throats not because there are rampant problems, poverty, abuse, etc. They are at it because the elites are at war. There isn't much to stand for the people engaging in a violent revolution, at least not conditionally. There is, however, if they're poked and prodded enough by the elite class. So no, he's not being sarcastic.
  - dang 6y ago
    It's bad enough that you started a nationalistic flamewar, but pouring fuel on the flames like this is seriously not ok. Please don't do it again, regardless of which country you have a problem with or indeed whatever the flamewar might be about. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: I'm happy to see that you haven't made a habit of posting like this to HN—your previous comments have been excellent. Please do that and not this.
    - fredrikholm 6y ago
      In hindsight, I shouldn't have posted this in an emotional state (OP post moved me, first child on the way). I realize now how inflammatory those statements where, I am just having a hard time understanding how such events can be brushed off. Thank you, I will stick to those type of posts in the future. Sorry for the inconvenience.
      - dang 6y ago
        No worries. Thanks for the thoughtful reply—I appreciate it!
- stouset 6y ago
  > Well you definitely have the wrong idea. About 20% of Americans do live in extreme economic precarity. I think they do have the right idea. Many of their points stands for even the bottom 80%. We've simply grown to accept that "this just is the way things are". 22% of the population between 18-65 owe student loans, which might not sound like much until you realize that only 40% of the population has a college degree. So over 50% of college-educated adults still have student loan debt. That number is also heavily weighted towards those 40 and younger due to rapidly ballooning costs, and will likely increase to 75%+ of college-educated adults within the next twenty years. 0.35% of adults file for medical bankruptcy alone every year. I couldn't find direct statistics on the total number of bankruptcies, but naïvely this implies that somewhere around 5–10% of the adult population will file for medical bankruptcy at some point in their lifetime. The majority of these bankruptcies were for people with health insurance. Maternal leave is by law unpaid, and few companies offer paid leave and paternal leave is virtually unheard of outside of extremely progressive companies. 59% of the workforce is hourly and thus generally does not get paid leave of any kind.
  - com2kid 6y ago
    > So over 50% of college-educated adults still have student loan debt. So long as the interest rates on student loans is lower than the expected % return from an index fund, smart money is on not paying off those loans. I have friends who could pay off their entire student loans amount, but why would they? Same logic applies to why I took out a 3 year loan at 2% for my last new car. High interest debt? Get that paid off ASAP. But I'd want to see a breakdown of interest rates of student loan debt before I start seeing gloom and doom! > Maternal leave is by law unpaid, and few companies offer paid leave and paternal leave is virtually unheard of outside of extremely progressive companies. This needs to change, and it is on a state by state basis. We are up to 10 states that have mandatory paid maternity leave! Still not nearly long enough in many cases, but progress is being made.
  - covidthrow 6y ago
    > So over 50% of college-educated adults still have student loan debt. How much? What's the percentile breakdown? How does it impact their monthly income? What's their economic potential without the degree? Are you suggesting it's higher if most just hadn't gotten a degree? How many choose economically unviable degrees? Who made them do that? You're simplifying a complex issue—and inferring a problem—without demonstrating the problem. The fact that 50% of college educated adults have student loan debt tells me absolutely nothing of substance. I don't understand how you can make a judgement in any regard without that information. > 0.35% of adults file for medical bankruptcy alone every year. There's no such thing as "medical bankruptcy", so I assume you mean "bankruptcy caused by medical bills". For how many of these people is the medical bill the sole cause? A major cause? One of many causes? Again, without identifying this in a more granular way, you're asserting some undefined "problem" which means there's no equitable mechanism to rectify that problem. > Maternal leave is by law unpaid, and few companies offer paid leave and paternal leave is virtually unheard of outside of extremely progressive companies. Here again stating a condition, but not identifying the problem. To what end? What's the cost to the family? To the mother? To the child? The social cost? I can't help but feel you're just regurgitating political talking points which, frankly, aren't designed to solve problems. They're designed to emotionally hook with a voter base and ultimately get the person elected, or the newspaper sold, or whatever self-serving reason someone in power would actively choose to be so vague as to not even concretely identify a problem. It's just the notion of a problem. I'm not saying there's no problems. I'm just saying you spent a lot of words trying to counter the parent post, but didn't say much at all. I'd like to learn more about this, but I can't find much online, and unfortunately your post wasn't very helpful. Do you know more than you said and you're just holding it close to your chest for the sake of brevity?
endisneigh 6y ago
It's unlikely you will get a representative set of answers form this site, which skews towards what you might call "upper-class" individuals. That being said, if you're very, very poor it's not terrible to be a US citizen. - Community college is free via a Pell grant. - Housing is expensive, but you will qualify for Section 8 (welfare) and will eventually get housing for free. - Hospital costs are irrelevant if you're very poor (5th percentile or so) - Life-saving medicine is in the same boat. You would likely qualify for Medicaid if you're dirt poor - You would likely work multiple jobs if you're dirt poor. - You likely wouldn't have vacation if you're dirt poor. - Same thing with maternal and paternal leave. That being said your life in the USA depends very much on where you live. If you lived in Massachusetts, for example, you get maternal and paternal leave. The real struggle in the USA is if you're between the 25th and 50th percentile. Where you're rich enough to not qualify for the things I mentioned above, but not so rich that you're on a more or less guaranteed path to financial independence.
- fredrikholm 6y ago
  That sounds more reasonable, thank you. Your final point applies here too (Sweden), where you're in a position of maximal welfare, where taking a job would disqualify you. Most people end up taking the job to get out of the hellhole that is welfare, but you find the occasional individual that settles and feeds off of the system despite ability and opportunity to work.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  >The real struggle in the USA is if you're between the 25th and 50th percentile. I would say 20th to 80th percentile. You're phased out of benefits, but you're not earning enough to build wealth, especially in higher cost of living areas where the 60th+ percentile earnings are.
  - Domenic_S 6y ago
    Don't know why you're being downvoted, 80th percentile is ~$86k single-earner. As an example, the write-off for student loan interest is completely phased out at $85k.
rhino369 6y ago
America has a high ceiling and a low floor for quality of living. For above average, America is arguably better (with some caveats). For the average person, its better than Europe (in that you can afford more since you are paid more and taxed less, but Europe definitely gets more paid time off / leave). If you are poor enough to qualify for government assistance its roughly on par with Europe--though maybe a bit worse. But there is a bottom 10-25% (where the line is, I'm not sure) that would be a lot better off in Europe. The average college debt (~30k) is about the same as a single year's difference income between high school and college graduates (~30k). They are paying for a personal investment. Housing (not in California, NYC, or DC) is cheaper in the USA than other rich countries). 90%+ have health insurance that covers hospital visits A high percentage will have medicine covered by their insurance Less than 6% of people have multiple jobs. No mandatory paid vacation (but any halfway decent job will get you 2-3 weeks). Europe gets more, but we get paid more. I'd probably rather have the time off, but some people would rather have the money.
mateo411 6y ago
Education can be really expensive. However, there are many great state schools, and there is also a lot of financial aid. Many people get a great education and are not saddled with debt. Housing is impossibly expensive in metro areas where people make a lot of money. The US is a large country and there is a lot of variability to housing costs throughout the US. A single hospital bill could be thousands of dollars or 0 if it's covered by your insurance. If you are really poor then you get insurance from the State. If you have a good job, then you get insurance through your work. It could be or it could be not very much depending on the factors described regarding hospital visits. Unpaid, effectively mandatory overtime applies to salaried people with well paying jobs. It's a bad situation, but if this applies to you, then the other issues aren't as bad. Many poor people work more than one job. Working class people need to get paid more. Maybe the minimum wage will be raised at the Federal level, but probably not. Minimum wage is also location dependent, so it's already higher than $15 in some locales. People with good jobs get PTO. Working class people in bad jobs do not get paid vacation. States provide some benefit for maternal and paternal leave. It's not 100% of your wages though. I don't think Paternal leave is taboo or strange. I don't think that's part of the culture. Maternal leave depends on the State and the company that they work for. If you have a good job, then you will get more Maternal leave. I'm sure there were a lot of rugged individuals in 1930s Poland.
tnkhonethk 6y ago
* My education left me with 12k USD of debt, but provided significant earning opportunities. For me, it was worthwhile. I did elect to forgo a graduate degree, despite my above-average grades and desire to obtain one, because it would have incurred upwards of 50k USD of additional debt. One of my friends graduated with nearly 80k USD of debt to obtain a masters degree of engineering, and has not paid it back fully after ten years. Another person I knew graduated with a bachelors of fine arts from the most expensive institution in my state, with nearly 200k USD worth of debt. It has ruined her financial life forever. So, there are many possible outcomes. Meanwhile, my mother worked part-time during the summer holiday and was able to use those wages to fully pay for her own tuition and board at an excellent state school. In general, I believe the extension of easy credit, un-dischargeable in bankruptcy, has encouraged schools to raise prices without limit. * Housing is highly location dependent. Many communities have been utterly deprived of income-producing work, and housing there can be had for a pittance. Places with opportunity to work are flooded by those seeking out the few remaining opportunities. In the past, companies and individuals would go to less-populated areas to establish manufacturing or farming ventures, making profitable use of the cheap land. with those sorts of industries leaving the country or being consolidate by conglomerates, the few remaining opportunities to earn income are consolidated into a minority of cities. Cheap credit here, too, has allowed the desirable land in these areas to be consolidated into a few financial-real-estate instruments. In other words, there is historically extraordinary demand for a commodity which is practically monopolized. * Single hospital visits are always thousands of dollars. In the past, the American Medical Association lobbied congress to increase the cost of medical care, because they were embarrassed that the poor were able to afford the services of physicians. See the history of "friendly societies" in the US for details. Then, also, medical insurance began to be offered by companies to their employees as a way to increase tax-free wages. When this practice became common, some politicians viewed it as politically convenient to force these insurance companies to cover non-emergency procedures and doctors visits as well. This is an economic problem called "third party payer" which always results in rising prices. Medical practitioners cannot legally have two pricing tiers for the insured and the uninsured, so the high prices are what sticks. * As for medications, take note that the previous president edicted that the prices of certain medications be lowered. The current, mainstream, president rescinded those edictions in less than one month. It is in the interest of the powerful and wealthy in this country that these prices remain high. * The way employees may be treated depends on their classification. Hourly wage employees are legally required to be paid a premium for overtime work. Salaried employees are considered exempt from such requirements. This creates an incentive to classify employees such that they are exempted from the overtime protections. See also the practice of classifying employees as contractors to exempt them from legal protections, or preventing hourly employees from working enough hours to qualify for certain legal protections. * The previously mentioned employee classification system is the direct cause of many people having to work multiple jobs. The people I know that had to behave this way would have preferred to work longer hours at a single employer but that would have caused their employer to provide them with the legal obligations for a full-time employee. * Paid time off for any reason is a feature of many positions but not all of them. In practice, employers would just work to re-classify employees such that their overhead per employee was at a level they considered acceptable, regardless of legal obligations, as stated previously. Life in the US is largely controlled by the very wealthy (oligarchs) rather than by democratic processes. This has been the mainstream political order in this country since at least the 1970s, but has been present to a smaller degree for some time before that. I will further note that there are exceptionally vast cultural, moral, practical, and ideological differences between different parts of the country, and your individual experience depends heavily on that fact.
tejohnso 6y ago
Financially, it sounds pretty bad and unstable: > more than a third of Americans said they could not cover an unexpected $400 home repair or hospital bill without going into debt > a third of U.S. adults say they are having difficulty covering everyday costs such as food, rent or car payments > survey after survey for years has found that most people in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/16/941292021/paycheck-to-paycheck-nation-how-life-in-america-adds-up https://www.npr.org/2020/12/16/941292021/paycheck-to-paychec...
- bluGill 6y ago
  I know couples where both are doctors - household income it closer to a million/year - who still live paycheck to paycheck and have problems covering everyday costs like food and the car payments. You understand that the car payment are high end luxury cars. They also have the boat payment, the mansion payment. Even at that they might be okay if they weren't buying other toys every months with everything that might or might not be leftover. Understand too that trouble paying for food means the cheap takeout joint instead of the most expensive restaurants. The point is if you don't take care there are a lot of things to spend money on. The poor in my experience tend to do slightly better with savings - they too have harder problems, but having had to live with nothing - instead of what feels like nothing but is really a lot - they will attempt to have some backup plans for when the money doesn't reach the end of the month.
- conductr 6y ago
  It's frequently the people that are unstable because they just don't save. I always think of my brother in law when I see stats like this. He would definitely answer truthfully YES to all 3 points while I would say NO to all 3. BUT somehow, > He buys every new apple product on release day > He's had 3 brand new cars while I've driven my current car (my car is 8 years old now) > We can plan a family vacation 18 months out and when time comes he can't manage to pay for a <$1000 flight > He gets an inheritance and immediately posts pictures about shopping trips (it was ~$40K) while not being able to pay for flights I mentioned above > His only kid goes to a private school that he can't afford so has to be on payment plan which cost 10% more > He does "debt consolidation" then maxes out his credit cards > His household income is about ~$150K and they live in a small affordable town Also he's in 40s and married with a kid. I think this is pretty "average" behavior unfortunately for Americans though.
bluedino 6y ago
40% of us have iPhones, it can't be that bad.
ALittleLight 6y ago
There is definitely a "sweet spot" where things could be very uncomfortable for you, if you're doing well enough to not qualify for government assistance but poorly enough to need some kind of help. In general I think a lot of stories are somewhat sensationalized and that our culture is more enthusiastically self-critical than Sweden's. Schools are an example, how you always hear about the ruinous costs of expensive schools, but it forgets all manner of grants, academic assistance, and the existence of much cheaper schools (everything from in-state to community colleges). A greater portion of American citizens have tertiary education compared to Sweden[1], so it would be weird if education were effectively/relatively more expensive here. Healthcare is similar. It's provided free to people who can't afford it and people with good jobs will get health insurance from their jobs. There is a window, the sweet spot I referred to, where people can "technically" afford healthcare so it isn't given free by the government, but affording it is a genuine hardship for them or an unexpected illness crushes them financially. You can also shrug off lots of medical debt by declaring bankruptcy or telling the hospital you will declare bankruptcy unless they negotiate better terms for you to pay - and hospitals can't turn you away in an emergency. Housing is impossibly expensive only in some areas and incredibly cheap in others. Go on Zillow and look at houses in Houston, for example. I expect you'll see large and luxurious houses for relatively good prices. Houses in some cities (Seattle, New York, SF) are expensive but not in all/most. Regarding overtime it depends how you get paid. If you're paid by the hour then unpaid overtime would be illegal. If you're paid salary then the expectation is that you do your job if it takes 8 hours a day or if it takes 12 (or if it takes 4). Some jobs exploit this but again, it's right in the sweet spot. High end jobs either compensate you enough so it's worth it (think: your high priced business lawyer will answer your 2 am phone call, but you pay him millions) and other jobs won't exploit you too much because you'll leave if they try it (work life balance isn't good). I have less knowledge around maternity leave and paid vacation. I've only seen that stuff from my perspective and I've been lucky enough to work at places where both have been generous. 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiar...
alistairSH 6y ago
While that's all true, in the literal sense that those protections/benefits aren't legislated in the US, a significant number (maybe a majority, don't know for sure) of workers do get these things from their employer. Education - yeah, this one is a problem. College costs too much. State schools in my area are $18k/year for in-state students and $51k/year for out-of-state/international students. That doesn't include room, board, book/supplies. Housing - highly dependent on region. NYC, SF, LA are very expensive, but so are London and Tokyo. DC, Boston, Chicago are expensive, but "affordable" in the sense that most people with solid employment can purchase a home (anecdote - 2 friends of mine are UPS delivery drivers and both owned homes in their late-20s). Health care - most workers have insurance through their employer. There are often large co-pays and deductibles. And the US as a unit overspends massively on health-care compared to Europe, Japan, and others. Mandatory OT - highly dependent on job. Hourly workers get OT pay. Salaried workers (exempt) do not. IMO, a lot of salaried workers are misclassified as exempt when they should be hourly wage earners, but that cow left the barn a long time ago. Vacation/PTO/holidays - highly dependent on job. Most salaried workers receive 3+ weeks/year of PTO. Hourly workers is hit or miss. FWIW, I have 5 weeks vacation, 2 weeks sick leave, and 10 holidays. This is about as good as it gets in the US and I've been at my employer 18 years (stared with 3 weeks leave, 2 sick, 10 holidays). Parental leave - yeah, we lag WAY behind here. It's terrible. 1930s Poland we are not. But, there's LOTS of room for improvement. [insert political rant about people voting against their own interests] “John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” -― Ronald Wright
908B64B197 6y ago
A lot of these generalizations comes from headlines and they often don't hold true (or there's more to the story but it's not clickbaity enough). Some of it is flat out misinformation. A good example is education. Community Colleges are, mostly, free. State schools are incredibly affordable and private non-profits (think MIT) often have need blind admission where they will make sure anyone that is admitted can attend. But there are for-profit schools that will try and charge the maximum they can and it's those you hear about in the news.
dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. We don't want that here. More generally, please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They lead to extremely repetitive discussion (the opposite of what we want on this site), and usually turn nasty if not outright hellish. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- danlugo92 6y ago
  I saw no hint of any of that in Grandparenrs comment.
  - dang 6y ago
    That's great! but unfortunately I can guarantee you that large numbers of others will.
- fredrikholm 6y ago
  Forgive me, this was not my intent. Since the election campaign of your former president, the impression that has gotten broadcast outside of the US has looked bleak. In combination, I've read quite a few stories from HN with similar subjects as OP, so my question was one of curiosity, just very poorly phrased. I apologize.

spoonjim 6y ago

Well you definitely have the wrong idea. About 20% of Americans do live in extreme economic precarity. But things are not out of a horror movie. That’s in fact why there hasn’t been a violent revolution, things aren’t bad enough here (yet?).

fredrikholm 6y ago
> 20% of Americans do live in extreme economic precarity > That’s in fact why there hasn’t been a violent revolution You're being sarcastic, no? A fifth of the people are living in extreme economic precarity. Your Capital was stormed by terrorist from your own country. Widespread policy brutality lead to protests over the entire country, culminating in city blocks being burnt down in what, a dozen cities?
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  Americans are pissed about a lot of the things we see around us, yet we also have a political system that, were all of us involved, would likely provide the means to fix many of those things. If you ask an American about, say, the problem of homelessness they will tell you it is awful, and there are more people living in tents, and etc. etc. But, the overwhelming majority of people will not lift a finger to get involved in either nonprofit or public-sector solutions in any meaningful hands-on way. So, we're upset about everything and simultaneously unwilling to put in a collective effort to fix any of it (even though we know we could if we really tried - we were raised on the idea of American exceptionalism after-all). I think that produces a sort of cognitive dissonance throughout the population. We know these problems are tractable, we know we're capable of solving them, but we also know we're not going to do a damn thing about them. The origins of the cognitive dissonance can perhaps can be attributed to the strong mythologic narrative of individualism in the country running up against the erosion of community, the income gap, the increasing complexity of the problems we face, and the inadequacy of out K-12 education system to prepare students to function competitively in the 21st century.
- liveoneggs 6y ago
  neither of these events brought about change at all.
- spoonjim 6y ago
  Ask a random American person what happened yesterday. They probably went to work, came back, sat in their backyard, watched some TV, went to bed.
- covidthrow 6y ago
  > A fifth of the people are living in extreme economic precarity. I'm not sure what this means to you, but "economic precarity" is a meaningless statement without context. For example, in the US, pretty much anyone living in destitution is unwell. It's practically impossible to starve to death in the US. etc So what this means is: economic mobility is limited for 20% of the population. That's not good, but in practice that translates to difficulty creating generational wealth, not a recipe for people starving or living in filth. Mobility would be much better, but it generally correlates strongly with level of education which is a separate chicken/egg problem. (At least until you get into massive student debt without a valuable degree, then that correlation shifts significantly.) > Your Capital was stormed by terrorist from your own country. What happened that day was not good, but framing it as a "terrorist insurrection" is exceedingly dishonest reporting. This is made plain by the kinds of charges that are being filed by the federal government. (Which, under the current administration, has no reason to "go soft" or brush things under the rug.) There were a small number (single digits) of dissidents that wished to engage in... something not well thought out. There were a much greater number of people that trespassed into the capitol. There was an even larger number of people outside that were (as the FBI director put it) "rowdy". All this because the former president insisted that he was cheated. (Which, frankly, there wasn't a lot of effort put into building confidence beyond "trust us!") Wholly inappropriate, bad, but not terrorism. We've experienced terrorism before (from other countries, from our political Right, and from our political Left) and this wasn't that. Anyone who suggests that is misinformed or leveraging it for political purposes. > Widespread policy brutality lead to protests over the entire country, culminating in city blocks being burnt down in what, a dozen cities? There is no widespread police brutality. Again, this is political framing. There are problems, no doubt, but nothing that could even reasonably be colored as "widespread brutality". Just as there were problems of confidence during the election—egged on for political reasons—that resulted in an inappropriate reaction by protestors, there are problems of confidence—again, egged on for political reasons—about our police force. Unfortunately, this resulted in significant overreaction that did, sadly, result in a tremendous amount of damage. But do you notice the underlying theme, here? Political and media framing are largely responsible for exceedingly dangerous levels of division. It's not that Righty Rick is evil or Lefty Lane is evil. It's a game of power by the institutions that control culture. The people are the pawns. So yes, in that regard, we've got major problems: the elite. Not necessarily "the rich" (although they're largely complicit), but almost the whole of the elite institutions. The people are at each others' throats not because there are rampant problems, poverty, abuse, etc. They are at it because the elites are at war. There isn't much to stand for the people engaging in a violent revolution, at least not conditionally. There is, however, if they're poked and prodded enough by the elite class. So no, he's not being sarcastic.
- dang 6y ago
  It's bad enough that you started a nationalistic flamewar, but pouring fuel on the flames like this is seriously not ok. Please don't do it again, regardless of which country you have a problem with or indeed whatever the flamewar might be about. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: I'm happy to see that you haven't made a habit of posting like this to HN—your previous comments have been excellent. Please do that and not this.
  - fredrikholm 6y ago
    In hindsight, I shouldn't have posted this in an emotional state (OP post moved me, first child on the way). I realize now how inflammatory those statements where, I am just having a hard time understanding how such events can be brushed off. Thank you, I will stick to those type of posts in the future. Sorry for the inconvenience.
    - dang 6y ago
      No worries. Thanks for the thoughtful reply—I appreciate it!
stouset 6y ago
> Well you definitely have the wrong idea. About 20% of Americans do live in extreme economic precarity. I think they do have the right idea. Many of their points stands for even the bottom 80%. We've simply grown to accept that "this just is the way things are". 22% of the population between 18-65 owe student loans, which might not sound like much until you realize that only 40% of the population has a college degree. So over 50% of college-educated adults still have student loan debt. That number is also heavily weighted towards those 40 and younger due to rapidly ballooning costs, and will likely increase to 75%+ of college-educated adults within the next twenty years. 0.35% of adults file for medical bankruptcy alone every year. I couldn't find direct statistics on the total number of bankruptcies, but naïvely this implies that somewhere around 5–10% of the adult population will file for medical bankruptcy at some point in their lifetime. The majority of these bankruptcies were for people with health insurance. Maternal leave is by law unpaid, and few companies offer paid leave and paternal leave is virtually unheard of outside of extremely progressive companies. 59% of the workforce is hourly and thus generally does not get paid leave of any kind.
- com2kid 6y ago
  > So over 50% of college-educated adults still have student loan debt. So long as the interest rates on student loans is lower than the expected % return from an index fund, smart money is on not paying off those loans. I have friends who could pay off their entire student loans amount, but why would they? Same logic applies to why I took out a 3 year loan at 2% for my last new car. High interest debt? Get that paid off ASAP. But I'd want to see a breakdown of interest rates of student loan debt before I start seeing gloom and doom! > Maternal leave is by law unpaid, and few companies offer paid leave and paternal leave is virtually unheard of outside of extremely progressive companies. This needs to change, and it is on a state by state basis. We are up to 10 states that have mandatory paid maternity leave! Still not nearly long enough in many cases, but progress is being made.
- covidthrow 6y ago
  > So over 50% of college-educated adults still have student loan debt. How much? What's the percentile breakdown? How does it impact their monthly income? What's their economic potential without the degree? Are you suggesting it's higher if most just hadn't gotten a degree? How many choose economically unviable degrees? Who made them do that? You're simplifying a complex issue—and inferring a problem—without demonstrating the problem. The fact that 50% of college educated adults have student loan debt tells me absolutely nothing of substance. I don't understand how you can make a judgement in any regard without that information. > 0.35% of adults file for medical bankruptcy alone every year. There's no such thing as "medical bankruptcy", so I assume you mean "bankruptcy caused by medical bills". For how many of these people is the medical bill the sole cause? A major cause? One of many causes? Again, without identifying this in a more granular way, you're asserting some undefined "problem" which means there's no equitable mechanism to rectify that problem. > Maternal leave is by law unpaid, and few companies offer paid leave and paternal leave is virtually unheard of outside of extremely progressive companies. Here again stating a condition, but not identifying the problem. To what end? What's the cost to the family? To the mother? To the child? The social cost? I can't help but feel you're just regurgitating political talking points which, frankly, aren't designed to solve problems. They're designed to emotionally hook with a voter base and ultimately get the person elected, or the newspaper sold, or whatever self-serving reason someone in power would actively choose to be so vague as to not even concretely identify a problem. It's just the notion of a problem. I'm not saying there's no problems. I'm just saying you spent a lot of words trying to counter the parent post, but didn't say much at all. I'd like to learn more about this, but I can't find much online, and unfortunately your post wasn't very helpful. Do you know more than you said and you're just holding it close to your chest for the sake of brevity?

endisneigh 6y ago

It's unlikely you will get a representative set of answers form this site, which skews towards what you might call "upper-class" individuals. That being said, if you're very, very poor it's not terrible to be a US citizen. - Community college is free via a Pell grant. - Housing is expensive, but you will qualify for Section 8 (welfare) and will eventually get housing for free. - Hospital costs are irrelevant if you're very poor (5th percentile or so) - Life-saving medicine is in the same boat. You would likely qualify for Medicaid if you're dirt poor - You would likely work multiple jobs if you're dirt poor. - You likely wouldn't have vacation if you're dirt poor. - Same thing with maternal and paternal leave. That being said your life in the USA depends very much on where you live. If you lived in Massachusetts, for example, you get maternal and paternal leave. The real struggle in the USA is if you're between the 25th and 50th percentile. Where you're rich enough to not qualify for the things I mentioned above, but not so rich that you're on a more or less guaranteed path to financial independence.

fredrikholm 6y ago
That sounds more reasonable, thank you. Your final point applies here too (Sweden), where you're in a position of maximal welfare, where taking a job would disqualify you. Most people end up taking the job to get out of the hellhole that is welfare, but you find the occasional individual that settles and feeds off of the system despite ability and opportunity to work.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
>The real struggle in the USA is if you're between the 25th and 50th percentile. I would say 20th to 80th percentile. You're phased out of benefits, but you're not earning enough to build wealth, especially in higher cost of living areas where the 60th+ percentile earnings are.
- Domenic_S 6y ago
  Don't know why you're being downvoted, 80th percentile is ~$86k single-earner. As an example, the write-off for student loan interest is completely phased out at $85k.

rhino369 6y ago

America has a high ceiling and a low floor for quality of living. For above average, America is arguably better (with some caveats). For the average person, its better than Europe (in that you can afford more since you are paid more and taxed less, but Europe definitely gets more paid time off / leave). If you are poor enough to qualify for government assistance its roughly on par with Europe--though maybe a bit worse. But there is a bottom 10-25% (where the line is, I'm not sure) that would be a lot better off in Europe. The average college debt (~30k) is about the same as a single year's difference income between high school and college graduates (~30k). They are paying for a personal investment. Housing (not in California, NYC, or DC) is cheaper in the USA than other rich countries). 90%+ have health insurance that covers hospital visits A high percentage will have medicine covered by their insurance Less than 6% of people have multiple jobs. No mandatory paid vacation (but any halfway decent job will get you 2-3 weeks). Europe gets more, but we get paid more. I'd probably rather have the time off, but some people would rather have the money.

mateo411 6y ago

Education can be really expensive. However, there are many great state schools, and there is also a lot of financial aid. Many people get a great education and are not saddled with debt. Housing is impossibly expensive in metro areas where people make a lot of money. The US is a large country and there is a lot of variability to housing costs throughout the US. A single hospital bill could be thousands of dollars or 0 if it's covered by your insurance. If you are really poor then you get insurance from the State. If you have a good job, then you get insurance through your work. It could be or it could be not very much depending on the factors described regarding hospital visits. Unpaid, effectively mandatory overtime applies to salaried people with well paying jobs. It's a bad situation, but if this applies to you, then the other issues aren't as bad. Many poor people work more than one job. Working class people need to get paid more. Maybe the minimum wage will be raised at the Federal level, but probably not. Minimum wage is also location dependent, so it's already higher than $15 in some locales. People with good jobs get PTO. Working class people in bad jobs do not get paid vacation. States provide some benefit for maternal and paternal leave. It's not 100% of your wages though. I don't think Paternal leave is taboo or strange. I don't think that's part of the culture. Maternal leave depends on the State and the company that they work for. If you have a good job, then you will get more Maternal leave. I'm sure there were a lot of rugged individuals in 1930s Poland.

tnkhonethk 6y ago

* My education left me with 12k USD of debt, but provided significant earning opportunities. For me, it was worthwhile. I did elect to forgo a graduate degree, despite my above-average grades and desire to obtain one, because it would have incurred upwards of 50k USD of additional debt. One of my friends graduated with nearly 80k USD of debt to obtain a masters degree of engineering, and has not paid it back fully after ten years. Another person I knew graduated with a bachelors of fine arts from the most expensive institution in my state, with nearly 200k USD worth of debt. It has ruined her financial life forever. So, there are many possible outcomes. Meanwhile, my mother worked part-time during the summer holiday and was able to use those wages to fully pay for her own tuition and board at an excellent state school. In general, I believe the extension of easy credit, un-dischargeable in bankruptcy, has encouraged schools to raise prices without limit. * Housing is highly location dependent. Many communities have been utterly deprived of income-producing work, and housing there can be had for a pittance. Places with opportunity to work are flooded by those seeking out the few remaining opportunities. In the past, companies and individuals would go to less-populated areas to establish manufacturing or farming ventures, making profitable use of the cheap land. with those sorts of industries leaving the country or being consolidate by conglomerates, the few remaining opportunities to earn income are consolidated into a minority of cities. Cheap credit here, too, has allowed the desirable land in these areas to be consolidated into a few financial-real-estate instruments. In other words, there is historically extraordinary demand for a commodity which is practically monopolized. * Single hospital visits are always thousands of dollars. In the past, the American Medical Association lobbied congress to increase the cost of medical care, because they were embarrassed that the poor were able to afford the services of physicians. See the history of "friendly societies" in the US for details. Then, also, medical insurance began to be offered by companies to their employees as a way to increase tax-free wages. When this practice became common, some politicians viewed it as politically convenient to force these insurance companies to cover non-emergency procedures and doctors visits as well. This is an economic problem called "third party payer" which always results in rising prices. Medical practitioners cannot legally have two pricing tiers for the insured and the uninsured, so the high prices are what sticks. * As for medications, take note that the previous president edicted that the prices of certain medications be lowered. The current, mainstream, president rescinded those edictions in less than one month. It is in the interest of the powerful and wealthy in this country that these prices remain high. * The way employees may be treated depends on their classification. Hourly wage employees are legally required to be paid a premium for overtime work. Salaried employees are considered exempt from such requirements. This creates an incentive to classify employees such that they are exempted from the overtime protections. See also the practice of classifying employees as contractors to exempt them from legal protections, or preventing hourly employees from working enough hours to qualify for certain legal protections. * The previously mentioned employee classification system is the direct cause of many people having to work multiple jobs. The people I know that had to behave this way would have preferred to work longer hours at a single employer but that would have caused their employer to provide them with the legal obligations for a full-time employee. * Paid time off for any reason is a feature of many positions but not all of them. In practice, employers would just work to re-classify employees such that their overhead per employee was at a level they considered acceptable, regardless of legal obligations, as stated previously. Life in the US is largely controlled by the very wealthy (oligarchs) rather than by democratic processes. This has been the mainstream political order in this country since at least the 1970s, but has been present to a smaller degree for some time before that. I will further note that there are exceptionally vast cultural, moral, practical, and ideological differences between different parts of the country, and your individual experience depends heavily on that fact.

tejohnso 6y ago

Financially, it sounds pretty bad and unstable: > more than a third of Americans said they could not cover an unexpected $400 home repair or hospital bill without going into debt > a third of U.S. adults say they are having difficulty covering everyday costs such as food, rent or car payments > survey after survey for years has found that most people in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/16/941292021/paycheck-to-paycheck-nation-how-life-in-america-adds-up https://www.npr.org/2020/12/16/941292021/paycheck-to-paychec...

bluGill 6y ago
I know couples where both are doctors - household income it closer to a million/year - who still live paycheck to paycheck and have problems covering everyday costs like food and the car payments. You understand that the car payment are high end luxury cars. They also have the boat payment, the mansion payment. Even at that they might be okay if they weren't buying other toys every months with everything that might or might not be leftover. Understand too that trouble paying for food means the cheap takeout joint instead of the most expensive restaurants. The point is if you don't take care there are a lot of things to spend money on. The poor in my experience tend to do slightly better with savings - they too have harder problems, but having had to live with nothing - instead of what feels like nothing but is really a lot - they will attempt to have some backup plans for when the money doesn't reach the end of the month.
conductr 6y ago
It's frequently the people that are unstable because they just don't save. I always think of my brother in law when I see stats like this. He would definitely answer truthfully YES to all 3 points while I would say NO to all 3. BUT somehow, > He buys every new apple product on release day > He's had 3 brand new cars while I've driven my current car (my car is 8 years old now) > We can plan a family vacation 18 months out and when time comes he can't manage to pay for a <$1000 flight > He gets an inheritance and immediately posts pictures about shopping trips (it was ~$40K) while not being able to pay for flights I mentioned above > His only kid goes to a private school that he can't afford so has to be on payment plan which cost 10% more > He does "debt consolidation" then maxes out his credit cards > His household income is about ~$150K and they live in a small affordable town Also he's in 40s and married with a kid. I think this is pretty "average" behavior unfortunately for Americans though.

bluedino 6y ago

40% of us have iPhones, it can't be that bad.

ALittleLight 6y ago

There is definitely a "sweet spot" where things could be very uncomfortable for you, if you're doing well enough to not qualify for government assistance but poorly enough to need some kind of help. In general I think a lot of stories are somewhat sensationalized and that our culture is more enthusiastically self-critical than Sweden's. Schools are an example, how you always hear about the ruinous costs of expensive schools, but it forgets all manner of grants, academic assistance, and the existence of much cheaper schools (everything from in-state to community colleges). A greater portion of American citizens have tertiary education compared to Sweden[1], so it would be weird if education were effectively/relatively more expensive here. Healthcare is similar. It's provided free to people who can't afford it and people with good jobs will get health insurance from their jobs. There is a window, the sweet spot I referred to, where people can "technically" afford healthcare so it isn't given free by the government, but affording it is a genuine hardship for them or an unexpected illness crushes them financially. You can also shrug off lots of medical debt by declaring bankruptcy or telling the hospital you will declare bankruptcy unless they negotiate better terms for you to pay - and hospitals can't turn you away in an emergency. Housing is impossibly expensive only in some areas and incredibly cheap in others. Go on Zillow and look at houses in Houston, for example. I expect you'll see large and luxurious houses for relatively good prices. Houses in some cities (Seattle, New York, SF) are expensive but not in all/most. Regarding overtime it depends how you get paid. If you're paid by the hour then unpaid overtime would be illegal. If you're paid salary then the expectation is that you do your job if it takes 8 hours a day or if it takes 12 (or if it takes 4). Some jobs exploit this but again, it's right in the sweet spot. High end jobs either compensate you enough so it's worth it (think: your high priced business lawyer will answer your 2 am phone call, but you pay him millions) and other jobs won't exploit you too much because you'll leave if they try it (work life balance isn't good). I have less knowledge around maternity leave and paid vacation. I've only seen that stuff from my perspective and I've been lucky enough to work at places where both have been generous. 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiar...

alistairSH 6y ago

While that's all true, in the literal sense that those protections/benefits aren't legislated in the US, a significant number (maybe a majority, don't know for sure) of workers do get these things from their employer. Education - yeah, this one is a problem. College costs too much. State schools in my area are $18k/year for in-state students and $51k/year for out-of-state/international students. That doesn't include room, board, book/supplies. Housing - highly dependent on region. NYC, SF, LA are very expensive, but so are London and Tokyo. DC, Boston, Chicago are expensive, but "affordable" in the sense that most people with solid employment can purchase a home (anecdote - 2 friends of mine are UPS delivery drivers and both owned homes in their late-20s). Health care - most workers have insurance through their employer. There are often large co-pays and deductibles. And the US as a unit overspends massively on health-care compared to Europe, Japan, and others. Mandatory OT - highly dependent on job. Hourly workers get OT pay. Salaried workers (exempt) do not. IMO, a lot of salaried workers are misclassified as exempt when they should be hourly wage earners, but that cow left the barn a long time ago. Vacation/PTO/holidays - highly dependent on job. Most salaried workers receive 3+ weeks/year of PTO. Hourly workers is hit or miss. FWIW, I have 5 weeks vacation, 2 weeks sick leave, and 10 holidays. This is about as good as it gets in the US and I've been at my employer 18 years (stared with 3 weeks leave, 2 sick, 10 holidays). Parental leave - yeah, we lag WAY behind here. It's terrible. 1930s Poland we are not. But, there's LOTS of room for improvement. [insert political rant about people voting against their own interests] “John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” -― Ronald Wright

908B64B197 6y ago

A lot of these generalizations comes from headlines and they often don't hold true (or there's more to the story but it's not clickbaity enough). Some of it is flat out misinformation. A good example is education. Community Colleges are, mostly, free. State schools are incredibly affordable and private non-profits (think MIT) often have need blind admission where they will make sure anyone that is admitted can attend. But there are for-profit schools that will try and charge the maximum they can and it's those you hear about in the news.

dang 6y ago

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. We don't want that here. More generally, please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They lead to extremely repetitive discussion (the opposite of what we want on this site), and usually turn nasty if not outright hellish. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

danlugo92 6y ago
I saw no hint of any of that in Grandparenrs comment.
- dang 6y ago
  That's great! but unfortunately I can guarantee you that large numbers of others will.
fredrikholm 6y ago
Forgive me, this was not my intent. Since the election campaign of your former president, the impression that has gotten broadcast outside of the US has looked bleak. In combination, I've read quite a few stories from HN with similar subjects as OP, so my question was one of curiosity, just very poorly phrased. I apologize.