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> a "third world country with a Gucci belt" (as someone put it) for everyone except the 1% The median American is much richer than the median European.

by wyager 5y ago

selfhoster11 5y ago
While also spending more money on various things, or having to spend them on privatised health care etc. It's not directly comparable. My point also discussed things like infrastructure and public services, which are often very neglected compared to their European counterparts.
- odiroot 5y ago
  Maybe if you only take San Francisco and New York City in consideration. USA has famously cheaper life than EU (especially gas and food). Not that I would trade places.
  - kazen44 5y ago
    mind you gas prices are heavily subsidized in the US. The same goes for food. Also, from experience i have found vegetables to be ludicrously expensive in the USA, the same goes for beer and wine.
    - wyager 5y ago
      How are gas prices heavily subsidized in the US? They are certainly heavily taxed...
- hardolaf 5y ago
  Yeah, that statement made zero sense by the other person. Sure, on paper, us Americans at the median have more money. But after you pay for a single visit to the ER or urgent care, or after you have a kid, or any expenses, Western Europeans are far better off. I know, I've been near that income level before. It's not a fun experience over here. That said, now that I've moved into a job that pays at least $225K per year, you know, life in the USA is amazing for me. And everything everywhere else in the world is so cheap! Why can't my fellow country men just pull themselves up their bootstraps and get a high income earner job? It's so easy! You just go to the job tree and get one /s. But more seriously, we need to completely restructure our society in the USA before the poor and middle class violently rise up against the government and make us into what Mexico was 120 years ago.
  - wyager 5y ago
    Most Americans have employer provided health insurance. Fewer than 10% have no health insurance. Hardly anyone is paying out of pocket. > we need to completely restructure our society in the USA The specific primary reason the USA is rich is that we’ve resisted the temptation to do harebrained projects like this.
    - hardolaf 5y ago
      Most Americans pay a shit ton of money before their insurance kicks in to pay for the majority of their non-preventative care. I personally need to spend $3,000 before I only pay 10% of the bills that insurance receives until I hit $6,000 in a calendar year after which I pay nothing else.
ex_amazon_sde 5y ago
The "median citizen" is an absurd concept given the income distribution. It completely fails to capture income inequality. Also access to free education, free healthcare and so on.
- wyager 5y ago
  I think you’re confusing median and mean. Median actually does account for the long tail. Over 90% of Americans have health insurance.
jltsiren 5y ago
Statements like this are ambiguous, because "European" can mean many different things. Over 40% of Europeans live in former communist states, so the median European in the literal sense does not tell much about the standard of living in the traditional first-world European countries. I did a comparison between Finland and the US some time ago. My conclusion was that the median households were about as wealthy in both countries, but the average household was 3x wealthier in the US. The biggest caveat was that household wealth includes retirement savings but not pensions, making the median Finn wealthier than the median American. I estimated that the crossover point for the standard of living was somewhere around the 80th percentile, depending on things such as local costs of living and whether you have kids or not. After a few years in America, nominal salaries seem low in Finland. On the other hand, Finns have fewer major expenses. Their out-of-pocket costs for education, childcare, and healthcare are much lower. The concept of an emergency fund does not really exist in Finland, largely thanks to income-dependent benefits. Pension contributions are mostly paid by the employer on top of the nominal salary, making saving for retirement much less important.
- yurishimo 5y ago
  As an American with over 10k in their emergency fund, it would be really nice if it didn't have to be that high! That's 3 months for both my wife and I to not work at all if needed, or one trip to the ER for a "major" accident. I would love to only need to keep a few thousand bucks in the case that my car breaks, and even then, that's likely overkill for the actual repair costs relative to the value of the car. I don't own a house, I don't have any debt. I'm 8 years into my career and I've just now getting to building a positive net worth. I've put off so much medical/dental maintenance because of the cost and now it'll take half of my savings to fix all of it. I know I'm doing a lot better than many folks my age. Top 10% for my age, but it sucks knowing that elsewhere in the world, they're doing some things so much better. It's one "benefit" of the internet connected world; we can see what everyone else is doing and how others solve hard social problems. Fixing those social problems in the US though, is continuing to be extremely difficult and we're still likely decades away from catching up to parts of Europe, and by then, we'll still be decades behind what they'd be doing then. Sometimes I wonder if my life would feel better if I didn't know the term egalitarianism.
dukeyukey 5y ago
This isn't (quite) true. On a continent,-wide level it is, and US incomes are significantly higher. But US wealth levels are below most of Western Europe, including France, the UK, Ireland, even Italy and Spain. Plus Canada/Australia/New Zealand for good measure. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_... That said, I thoroughly disagree with the characterisation of the US as "a third world country with a Gucci belt".

> a "third world country with a Gucci belt" (as someone put it) for everyone except the 1% The median American is much richer than the median European.

by wyager 5y ago

> a "third world country with a Gucci belt" (as someone put it) for everyone except the 1% The median American is much richer than the median European.

selfhoster11 5y ago

While also spending more money on various things, or having to spend them on privatised health care etc. It's not directly comparable. My point also discussed things like infrastructure and public services, which are often very neglected compared to their European counterparts.

odiroot 5y ago
Maybe if you only take San Francisco and New York City in consideration. USA has famously cheaper life than EU (especially gas and food). Not that I would trade places.
- kazen44 5y ago
  mind you gas prices are heavily subsidized in the US. The same goes for food. Also, from experience i have found vegetables to be ludicrously expensive in the USA, the same goes for beer and wine.
  - wyager 5y ago
    How are gas prices heavily subsidized in the US? They are certainly heavily taxed...
hardolaf 5y ago
Yeah, that statement made zero sense by the other person. Sure, on paper, us Americans at the median have more money. But after you pay for a single visit to the ER or urgent care, or after you have a kid, or any expenses, Western Europeans are far better off. I know, I've been near that income level before. It's not a fun experience over here. That said, now that I've moved into a job that pays at least $225K per year, you know, life in the USA is amazing for me. And everything everywhere else in the world is so cheap! Why can't my fellow country men just pull themselves up their bootstraps and get a high income earner job? It's so easy! You just go to the job tree and get one /s. But more seriously, we need to completely restructure our society in the USA before the poor and middle class violently rise up against the government and make us into what Mexico was 120 years ago.
- wyager 5y ago
  Most Americans have employer provided health insurance. Fewer than 10% have no health insurance. Hardly anyone is paying out of pocket. > we need to completely restructure our society in the USA The specific primary reason the USA is rich is that we’ve resisted the temptation to do harebrained projects like this.
  - hardolaf 5y ago
    Most Americans pay a shit ton of money before their insurance kicks in to pay for the majority of their non-preventative care. I personally need to spend $3,000 before I only pay 10% of the bills that insurance receives until I hit $6,000 in a calendar year after which I pay nothing else.

ex_amazon_sde 5y ago

The "median citizen" is an absurd concept given the income distribution. It completely fails to capture income inequality. Also access to free education, free healthcare and so on.

wyager 5y ago
I think you’re confusing median and mean. Median actually does account for the long tail. Over 90% of Americans have health insurance.

jltsiren 5y ago

Statements like this are ambiguous, because "European" can mean many different things. Over 40% of Europeans live in former communist states, so the median European in the literal sense does not tell much about the standard of living in the traditional first-world European countries. I did a comparison between Finland and the US some time ago. My conclusion was that the median households were about as wealthy in both countries, but the average household was 3x wealthier in the US. The biggest caveat was that household wealth includes retirement savings but not pensions, making the median Finn wealthier than the median American. I estimated that the crossover point for the standard of living was somewhere around the 80th percentile, depending on things such as local costs of living and whether you have kids or not. After a few years in America, nominal salaries seem low in Finland. On the other hand, Finns have fewer major expenses. Their out-of-pocket costs for education, childcare, and healthcare are much lower. The concept of an emergency fund does not really exist in Finland, largely thanks to income-dependent benefits. Pension contributions are mostly paid by the employer on top of the nominal salary, making saving for retirement much less important.

yurishimo 5y ago
As an American with over 10k in their emergency fund, it would be really nice if it didn't have to be that high! That's 3 months for both my wife and I to not work at all if needed, or one trip to the ER for a "major" accident. I would love to only need to keep a few thousand bucks in the case that my car breaks, and even then, that's likely overkill for the actual repair costs relative to the value of the car. I don't own a house, I don't have any debt. I'm 8 years into my career and I've just now getting to building a positive net worth. I've put off so much medical/dental maintenance because of the cost and now it'll take half of my savings to fix all of it. I know I'm doing a lot better than many folks my age. Top 10% for my age, but it sucks knowing that elsewhere in the world, they're doing some things so much better. It's one "benefit" of the internet connected world; we can see what everyone else is doing and how others solve hard social problems. Fixing those social problems in the US though, is continuing to be extremely difficult and we're still likely decades away from catching up to parts of Europe, and by then, we'll still be decades behind what they'd be doing then. Sometimes I wonder if my life would feel better if I didn't know the term egalitarianism.

dukeyukey 5y ago

This isn't (quite) true. On a continent,-wide level it is, and US incomes are significantly higher. But US wealth levels are below most of Western Europe, including France, the UK, Ireland, even Italy and Spain. Plus Canada/Australia/New Zealand for good measure. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_... That said, I thoroughly disagree with the characterisation of the US as "a third world country with a Gucci belt".