3 ms·

Are you joking? 50k is not "relative poverty" by any definition.

dijit 6y ago
This is such a complicated topic that it's hard to make generalisations that apply in all cases. The US is similar to Europe in that standards can be wildly different between states/countries. 50k EUR in Estonia is a lot different to 50k in Sweden. But I would say, on average, that the difference is that it's cheaper to have a good life in Europe. If you earn 50k in Sweden, it would roughly give me the same QoL as a person living on 150k in NYC (or 80k in London!), and if I earned 60k in Sweden then it would feel roughly the same as 200k in NYC, because the costs don't scale linearly. But the difference between me, an IT professional on a "good" wage (which, actually does feel like a good wage btw) and a Waitress at a restaurant is not so incredibly vast as to make sure that the waitress lives in perpetual poverty. The gap is smaller and because of it the wealth feels attainable and people are a bit more content. Contentedness is far better than the "dollar amount" of capital you have, wealth is feeling good about your life, some people conflate the fact that it costs a lot of money to feel content and secure in the USA with the rest of the world. I've lived in Finland, Sweden, Estonia and I was raised in the UK. Income equality has a long way to go in the UK, so what I say does not apply there at all.
- distances 6y ago
  I see you're hopping the Nordic countries. How similar are they in reality? Is it fair to place all them in the same bucket as always is done in these discussions? What made you move from one to another?
  - piva00 6y ago
    I'm not OP but I live in Sweden for almost 6 years now, had a Norwegian girlfriend and have traveled around, so I will tell how I see from my perspective. The Nordic countries share some common social philosophies, economic models and ways of life but each one leans in different ways in numerous aspects: culturally, economically, socially. The impression I get is that all stem from a common "root" but have diverged quite a bit when you see them from the inside. Bundling them up together is a useful mental model for some approximations, some aspects of the day-to-day life are similar but I believe that's where it stops. A good extrapolation would be to look at a more extreme version of this phenomena, like with Spain and Portugal, where history and culture are quite intermingled but each can also be quite different to the other. The Nordics are a bit less extreme on their differences but it's a good analogy to lean to, I believe.
  - dijit 6y ago
    Estonia wants to be Finland but has a large (relatively right wing?) Russian minority. Finland wants to be left alone. Sweden wants to be the role model of the world, and has increasing divisions between right and left (because if you talk about immigration you're branded racist immediately). Denmark is a lot less tolerant than it might be made out to be by being grouped with the nordics (which sounds like I'm saying it's a bad thing). They have at-will employment and put up barriers to people migrating to the country. The morals/religions typically follow along similar lines (heavy promotion of work/life balance and raising a family) but economically they differ largely and politically there are minor but important differences between the countries.
- shankr 6y ago
  > But I would say, on average, that the difference is that it's cheaper to have a good life in Europe. If you earn 50k in Sweden, it would roughly give me the same QoL as a person living on 150k in NYC (or 80k in London!), and if I earned 60k in Sweden then it would feel roughly the same as 200k in NYC, because the costs don't scale linearly. These numbers seem quite off as far as I see it on numbeo. It's a factor of 1.5 that you need to multiply the Stockholm /Swedish salaries with to get the same standard of life in NYC. $150K in NYC should be something like ~$100K in Sweden. And $200K in NYC should be something like ~$133K in Sweden.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

This is such a complicated topic that it's hard to make generalisations that apply in all cases. The US is similar to Europe in that standards can be wildly different between states/countries. 50k EUR in Estonia is a lot different to 50k in Sweden. But I would say, on average, that the difference is that it's cheaper to have a good life in Europe. If you earn 50k in Sweden, it would roughly give me the same QoL as a person living on 150k in NYC (or 80k in London!), and if I earned 60k in Sweden then it would feel roughly the same as 200k in NYC, because the costs don't scale linearly. But the difference between me, an IT professional on a "good" wage (which, actually does feel like a good wage btw) and a Waitress at a restaurant is not so incredibly vast as to make sure that the waitress lives in perpetual poverty. The gap is smaller and because of it the wealth feels attainable and people are a bit more content. Contentedness is far better than the "dollar amount" of capital you have, wealth is feeling good about your life, some people conflate the fact that it costs a lot of money to feel content and secure in the USA with the rest of the world. I've lived in Finland, Sweden, Estonia and I was raised in the UK. Income equality has a long way to go in the UK, so what I say does not apply there at all.

distances 6y ago
I see you're hopping the Nordic countries. How similar are they in reality? Is it fair to place all them in the same bucket as always is done in these discussions? What made you move from one to another?
- piva00 6y ago
  I'm not OP but I live in Sweden for almost 6 years now, had a Norwegian girlfriend and have traveled around, so I will tell how I see from my perspective. The Nordic countries share some common social philosophies, economic models and ways of life but each one leans in different ways in numerous aspects: culturally, economically, socially. The impression I get is that all stem from a common "root" but have diverged quite a bit when you see them from the inside. Bundling them up together is a useful mental model for some approximations, some aspects of the day-to-day life are similar but I believe that's where it stops. A good extrapolation would be to look at a more extreme version of this phenomena, like with Spain and Portugal, where history and culture are quite intermingled but each can also be quite different to the other. The Nordics are a bit less extreme on their differences but it's a good analogy to lean to, I believe.
- dijit 6y ago
  Estonia wants to be Finland but has a large (relatively right wing?) Russian minority. Finland wants to be left alone. Sweden wants to be the role model of the world, and has increasing divisions between right and left (because if you talk about immigration you're branded racist immediately). Denmark is a lot less tolerant than it might be made out to be by being grouped with the nordics (which sounds like I'm saying it's a bad thing). They have at-will employment and put up barriers to people migrating to the country. The morals/religions typically follow along similar lines (heavy promotion of work/life balance and raising a family) but economically they differ largely and politically there are minor but important differences between the countries.
shankr 6y ago
> But I would say, on average, that the difference is that it's cheaper to have a good life in Europe. If you earn 50k in Sweden, it would roughly give me the same QoL as a person living on 150k in NYC (or 80k in London!), and if I earned 60k in Sweden then it would feel roughly the same as 200k in NYC, because the costs don't scale linearly. These numbers seem quite off as far as I see it on numbeo. It's a factor of 1.5 that you need to multiply the Stockholm /Swedish salaries with to get the same standard of life in NYC. $150K in NYC should be something like ~$100K in Sweden. And $200K in NYC should be something like ~$133K in Sweden.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]