25 ms·

If it were my home

228 points by kkwteh 5y ago

tlogan 5y ago
Question: how it can be that Mexico unemployment is lower than US?
nathias 5y ago
If I lived in the US I'd have 92.7% more money, sounds about right.
dang 5y ago
Past related threads: If It Were My Home - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13709405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13709405 - Feb 2017 (1 comment) IfItWereMyHome.com: Your Life in a Different Country - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10806405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10806405 - Dec 2015 (2 comments) Compare your country to any other place - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9472001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9472001 - May 2015 (2 comments) Living conditions in other countries compared to your own - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2726967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2726967 - July 2011 (3 comments) Website calculates how your life might be like in another country - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119220 - Jan 2011 (106 comments)
throwaway22032 5y ago
I think this site would be improved a lot by removing the colouring or at least normalizing it so that 'more' is always one colour and 'less' another. Electricity and oil are essentially access to material wealth. An American uses more because they probably have a bigger house on more land and a fancy big car. Spending more money on health care could be good if it means you have greater access, or bad if it means you're just paying a lot for the same. A class divide isn't automatically worse, it could be great for you if you're on top.
lmm 5y ago
The UI seems backwards? I'm in a country and want to see what a list of other countries are like compared to my current country
- MattPalmer1086 5y ago
  It's certainly a bit unclear how to compare one country to another. You have to go to Compare Countries , and it automatically selects a home country. You have to click the small link in the text to select a different home country.
- vsareto 5y ago
  Easiest if you use the URL: https://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/US/CA https://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/US/CA The first country is your home country. The second is the country you're comparing to.
jakedata 5y ago
Oh goodie! If I lived in Chad I would use 99.9% less electricity, clearly a win. I would also die 31 years earlier - why isn't that one green too? Dying early is clearly much better for the environment than hanging around using up resources and belching CO2.
- jakedata 5y ago
  ...replying to myself here to possibly avoid being downvoted to oblivion: This is an example of sarcastic critique. The goal is to illustrate the entirely arbitrary nature of the green vs red labels given to various categories such as electricity consumption. Thank you for your time.
  - johnday 5y ago
    I'm not sure it's "arbitrary" that people living longer is considered an upside.
    - jakedata 5y ago
      Nor is greater electricity consumption strictly a downside. Using more responsibly sourced electricity could be considered a good thing if it offsets charcoal sourced from a rainforest. Dying 30 years earlier certainly can reduce your lifetime energy consumption.
      - DangitBobby 5y ago
        Metrics cannot be perfect. That doesn't mean "don't have metrics" it means "think carefully about what your metrics actually mean." All other things being equal in two countries, it's a positive if one uses less electricity.
- chrischapman 5y ago
  Upvote for 'Oh Goodie' and the humour in general. But had to reflect on the sad reality of the following being in green! > spend 99.58% less money on health care That is apparently a 'benefit' of living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When compared to: > die 23.88 years sooner perhaps the health care statistic should have been in red?
jakozaur 5y ago
This is so outdated. GDP figures seem to be from 2012. A lot has changed since then. E.g. USA GDP PPP is $63k in 2020 by World Bank, but this websites claims it is $53k. I see similar data points, were figures are decade old. Some countries improved a lot in the last 10 years.
- fikama 5y ago
  Yep unemployment rates for Poland are also outdated. Ans source links follow to 404. It's pity becouse I really like the idea.
itronitron 5y ago
hmm, a lot of these stats are worded in a very obtuse way. Calculating percentage difference of two percentages overstates their differences in regards to the underlying statistic. For example... 'be 12% more likely to be unemployed' is used to state the difference between an unemployment rate of 5.6% and 5% Unfortunately that removes a lot of usefulness from the site.
- cowsandmilk 5y ago
  Why? That is the far more correct way of presenting data.
  - rolisz 5y ago
    Yes and no. 5 is 12% away 5.6, but so is 50 and 56. I would argue that the latter difference is much bigger and more likely to be noticeable by average Joe going about his daily life than the former.
    - quickthrower2 5y ago
      Or compare 1% and 2% to 50% and 100%
    - wowokay 5y ago
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    It's not though. If you take a random sample of people the odds that one is unemployed is .6% higher in one set than the other, not 12. The 12 only makes sense if you are only sampling from the unemployed, which is not how anyone on the street is going to parse that statement.
    - konschubert 5y ago
      The difference between 5% and 5.6% is approx 11%. But I agree it’s more useful to look at percentage points here
somenewaccount1 5y ago
Man, life sure is better when you don't have to arm your own military.
- melenaboija 5y ago
  Or yourself
- rainworld 5y ago
  The purpose of NATO, per its first Secretary General: to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The thing the American ruling class fears most (at least until now, the rise of China) is an alliance between Russia and Germany, and they’ll go very far to prevent that. The purpose of the continuing American occupation of Germany is not to keep Russia from invading Germany, there’s zero risk of that.
  - somenewaccount1 5y ago
    Oh yeah, because of all the great Eastern European alliances Russia is known for. /s While that would suck, why on gods earth would democratic Germany align itself with Russia? Looking for another Berlin Wall? They really loved that the first time. There's no fear of either an alliance, or invasion, thanks to American and other Nato troops. But continue live ingin your ivory education tower - that's what we fight for after all.
  - samatman 5y ago
    > keep Russia from invading Germany, there’s zero risk of that. Granted that 1945-1990 was somewhat of an anomaly, it was a recent and important one...
smeej 5y ago
The one for Vatican City made me laugh!
Lemmih 5y ago
The sources link is broken and some of the data is wrong (or maybe old). The site says the Danish life expectancy at birth is 79 years. CIA factbook (the supposed source) has the number as 81.45 years.
thejosh 5y ago
This information is crazy out of date?
tagoregrtst 5y ago
But Id be living in Germany and not where I want to live. I hate these numerical comparison between countries. Don’t I already know most of these facts? Aren't they really comparisons at the margins (rare event vs. rarer event)? How about other considerations like some people like to live in a country where you can easily own a gun, homeschool your kid, or say whatever you want without fearing for your liberty (only your job)? Germans would rather not have these things, and thats cool, for them.
- joenathanone 5y ago
  >where you can easily own a gun, homeschool your kid, or say whatever you want without fearing for your liberty (only your job)? Wow, these are the most important things to you? Sounds pretty dystopian.
  - tagoregrtst 5y ago
    Not at all. These are the things Germans get hung on about the US. What I like about America are Americans. Especially middle America. They’re salt of the Earth. I grew up in Europe, and Europeans are, not all mind you, cynical and bitter people. Its so weird to move to America and having complete strangers salute you, even strike a conversation with you. Thats why I love this country. Now, Europeans and europhiles obsess over guns, schools and free speech. They can shove it. We like our society the way it is. Otherwise, to live in an uglier version of Europe (European cities are beautiful), I would have stayed… in Europe!
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    People in the US are obsessed with like 5 wedge issues and conspiracy fantasies. They will gladly give up healthcare as long as their enemies have to give it up, too.
    - tagoregrtst 5y ago
      “ They will gladly give up healthcare as long as their enemies have to give it up, too.” Ive never met an American who didn’t want health care so his neighbor wouldn't have it. Instead I find Americans extremely curious in how healthcare is done elsewhere since they keep asking me about health care wherever Ive lived. To Republicans I tell them American health care isn't that great (its terrible) and elsewhere’s not that bad, even quite good. To Democrats I tell them the problems others have America doesn't, and I remind them that “greedy” America spends more public money per capita on healthcare than almost any other country in the world. Americans are far more reasonable than they’re given credit for.
hereforphone 5y ago
wepple 5y ago
Per-capita expenditure on healthcare is higher in the US than anywhere else, we know this. But it doesn’t cover - quality of healthcare - how much is actually out of my pocket Compared to Australia, NZ, the UK, I have better healthcare in the US. And financially it’s insignificant.
- wepple 5y ago
  For those downvoting, I assume you’ve lived in all 4 countries and have first hand experience like I do too. Let’s discuss pros & cons of each! The American system is so deeply flawed and broken in many ways; high inequality is one result. But the states is just that: a loose collection of highly varying fairly independent states. YMMV.
  - 300bps 5y ago
    high inequality is one result Agreed. In the US if you work at a very large company that predominantly has high value employees then you very likely have the best health coverage in the world by far. I am the beneficiary of such a health plan. I pay $2,400 per year for my family plan. My total out of pocket after that is $750 per year. Oh and unions. They have great health coverage generally as well. Everyone else has from good to terrible.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      > I pay $2,400 per year for my family plan. My total out of pocket after that is $750 per year. Your company also pays at least as much directly, and it's part of your compensation. I'm not sure how relevant the healthcare of wealthy people is, though. Wealthy people have good healthcare everywhere.
Closi 5y ago
At least one of these statistics is calculated completely wrong - For instance, when looking at the "Americans have 22.43% less free time" statistic, that's not what the data says - It says they work 22.43% less than Americans. But if I work 22% less, that doesn't mean I get 22% more free time (because, for instance, if I work 20 hours and have 100 free hours, working 50% less will mean I get only a 10% bump in free time). Similarly the "make more money" statistic is calculated based on GDP per capita rather than on earnings (so for instance, while the site claims a 33% difference in earning, the Germany mean income is c$47k-$52k USD depending on the source while in the US it is c$55k-$57k, so while earning is higher it is not at the 33% difference claimed). GDP per capita tends to increase with income, but will absolutely diverge depending on the economic situation, as it's actually adding up Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Exports and then dividing by the population, which isn't a valid way to work out how much is paid to workers. Considering two basic stats are so far out, it doesn't fill me with confidence on the others...
- Beltiras 5y ago
  Also: how is using more electricity bad? I live in Iceland where we almost solely produce electricity with hydro and geothermals. I drive a Tesla which reduces our gasoline consumption. There's a lot of built in assumptions that ignore nuance that matters a great deal in the final analysis.
  - northwest65 5y ago
    According to wiki the Kárahnjúkar Dam took 4000 tons of steel, and flooded 440,000 acres, and presumably consumed an ungodly amount on concrete. Presumably you can't keep expanding that sort of infrastructure forever.
    - Beltiras 5y ago
      Hydro and geothermal have non-zero emissions of course. They last for a very long time thou. It's a bit like buying an electric car. The emissions might look bad at the outset but you come out ahead really quickly.
abrands 5y ago
Interesting
perfobotto 5y ago
This seems specifically designed to make the us look bad. If you try to compare us and Libya it almost seems like it would be so much better to move there which is stupid. Statistics are calculated in such a way that is just unfavorable for the us
- robjan 5y ago
  I don't think it's specifically targeting anyone, it's just oversimplifying issues. e.g. a place may look really good on average salary but terrible in terms of GINI (inequality). Neither should be taken in isolation
- notahacker 5y ago
  It tells you what the sources are. The most commonly used source is the CIA World Factbook. It strikes me as a little unlikely the CIA has a hidden agenda to make US statistics look bad. Anyway, if you're looking at it from a non-IS IP the US isn't the baseline. Also strikes me as a little unlikely that anyone actually reading the descriptions rather than looking at the colours would prefer Libya to the US on the basis of the stats (sure, that healthcare is really expensive and that prison population is insane, but I'd rather earn 5x as much and live longer than have a smaller carbon footprint)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
merricksb 5y ago
Last significant discussion about this here in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119220
tomp 5y ago
Far left wing bias. “Use less energy” is highlighted in green (as if that’s better) even though energy use is one of the hallmarks of civilisational progress.
- drchickensalad 5y ago
  Energy use for its own sake is not progress; efficiency and technological results which are measured elsewhere are.
- MattPalmer1086 5y ago
  Environmental bias, sure. Why "far left wing?". Even centrists these days are pretty environmental in their thinking.
  - tomp 5y ago
    Leftwing environmentalists promote ideas like degrowth, depopulation etc (less power hence cleaner). Rightwing environmentalists promote ideas like nuclear power, etc (more power but cleaner).
    - MattPalmer1086 5y ago
      Must be a US political thing (I'm assuming you're from the US). I don't think I've ever heard of anyone advocating degrowth or depopulation in the UK. We're more into increasing renewable energy. Some of the hard core environmentalists don't like nuclear energy, and they do tend to be more on the left side of politics.
      - tomp 5y ago
        Maybe if you read UK leftwing media… https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-...
        5y ago
sillysaurusx 5y ago
Whoa. As a US citizen, I clicked on Peru and wasn't surprised by anything (hello 96% less spent on healthcare) -- except that I'll experience 6% more of a class divide than Peru. The Gini index is interesting: "The GINI index measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income. In Peru it is 48.10 while in The United States it is 45.00. This index measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country. The index is calculated from the Lorenz curve, in which cumulative family income is plotted against the number of families arranged from the poorest to the richest. The index is the ratio of (a) the area between a country's Lorenz curve and the 45 degree helping line to (b) the entire triangular area under the 45 degree line. The more nearly equal a country's income distribution, the closer its Lorenz curve to the 45 degree line and the lower its Gini index, e.g., a Scandinavian country with an index of 25. The more unequal a country's income distribution, the farther its Lorenz curve from the 45 degree line and the higher its Gini index, e.g., a Sub-Saharan country with an index of 50. If income were distributed with perfect equality, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the 45 degree line and the index would be zero; if income were distributed with perfect inequality, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the horizontal axis and the right vertical axis and the index would be 100." c.f https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
- amelius 5y ago
  In the past poor people generally didn't understand how much they were screwed over by the upper classes. However, it seems that in the US, smart people increasingly end up at the wrong side of the divide, which could mean we're heading for interesting times.
- peruvianthwa 5y ago
  I was born and lived in South America before I moved to the US and I'm not mentioning this so that somehow I'm granted enough authority to trust anything I say, but to encourage people to look further than this just plain numbers. I truly wish I knew how to get this point across with Americans: - Yes, we have expensive health care in the US - Yes, we are privilege because most of us have jobs that provide us with relatively good health care policies I think this fight-for-a-greater-good has blinded people as to give examples like yours -- utterly disrespectful. Most of the time health care in those countries cannot and is nowhere close to be compared to the US, UNLESS, of course, you go to private practices where you're back to "uhm, so maybe it's not so cheap after all". If you're so inclined in advocating for new policy, I welcome you to travel and experience, ask the locals, etc, how their healthcare system works. This site claims that people would spend 93.33% less on health care in Venezuela, that is, if you're lucky enough to even get health care. This site claims that people would spend 88.81% less on health care in Argentina, that is, if you can afford to wait long enough to get whatever medical attention you need. I'm more than willing to answer any questions if you have them. I'm just trying to raise awareness because I DO NOT want America to become what I escaped from.
mberning 5y ago
These are so disingenuous. It’s like comparing aggregate schooling scores between the US and some Scandinavian country and concluding that every kid in America gets a worse education. False. If you were to constrain for home life (two parent household), income level, etc. you would find that the US is very on par in many aspects. The real question to me is why does the US have such a large population of extremely downtrodden people that will never escape their station in life.
sigmaprimus 5y ago
Oh Boy, another one "these" submissions... Rather than get into the agenda behind such a site, I'll just scroll to the bottom of this page and find a comment beaten down by the mob and try to bring some balance.
geekamongus 5y ago
This is cool. I wish it had some kind of a wizard to walk you through so that you could get some personalized (but not too personal) results, and build out a profile for you, to make it more relatable. For example, ask me my income, my family size, my religious views, etc. Then give me a "profile" of a fictional person in country X to whom I could relate.
arendtio 5y ago
I like the idea and the site, but at times it fails to transport the magnitude. For example, sometimes a metric is communicated as 'percentage' and somestimes as 'times'. And 26 times is something completely different than 26%.
instance 5y ago
Putting things in relative like that (e.g. 30% more likely to be murdered) always feels like much - in reality, one doesn't know the variance. This is just putting the averages of two datasets in relation. If both have a very wide confidence interval, 30% suddenly loses meaning to me..
bagacrap 5y ago
I think it would have to know my age or other vitals for a lot of this. For example someone born in 1950 in Colombia might have a very different life expectancy than someone born in 2010. I thought it would be more interesting if they asked you your age, sex and socio/economic percentile ("privilege") because in a lot of places the mean experience is quite different from many folks' reality.
nopcode 5y ago
CIA World Factbook is a horrible and usually outdated source.
davidmurdoch 5y ago
I thought the "consume oil" category was a weird one to have on here until I realized they weren't talking about food oils. Haha
rootusrootus 5y ago
This just seems like a classic example of how to lie with statistics. And that assumes the comparisons are even valid -- it is notoriously difficult to compare measurements that sound the same on the surface between different countries that have differing methods at calculating the value.
- frankfrankfrank 5y ago
  It is also a good example of the magic dirt/soil concept that is meant denigrate and abuse people and cultures for their work and achievements. It's a toxic, defeatist, abusive, and deeply unhealthy mentality to have.
narrator 5y ago
Certainly makes clear that the solution to American healthcare is anything you can think of except spending more money on it.
- frankfrankfrank 5y ago
  That applies to basically everything in and related to America. Healthcare, education, "defense", social programs, immigration... it's all really just a con job by a subset of what is a kind of neo-aristocracy/nobility that pilfers and pillages their income and wealth through con jobs committed against mostly the middle class by way of how the whole system works. In many ways the system is not any different than a casino; the promise of winnings and riches, while the whole theater around it is purely meant to provide confidence (i.e, the con in confidence trick) to separate people from their money while making them think they had a good time (feeling good about themselves, the primary appeal to people's narcissism). Yet, somehow no matter how much we blow at the Casino called education/healthcare/"defense"/social programs ... the only thing that gets better are the bank accounts of the executives and directors and presidents while all the measures and statistics and metrics have scraping a bottom for decades. The only war the US government and the parasitic people that make it up have ever waged successfully, is the war on getting the value of the work the middle class does into their parasitic pockets through all manner of schemes and con jobs.
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    It does not have to be like this. What Americans need to see is not bigger or smaller government but more 'effective' government. Is the government using the resources it does have effectively. Obviously the answer is no. But hoe have other countries managed to solve this problem? It seems like its down to historical chances where events that played out in the country's history dictated how the government ended up behaving and the values of the people that run it. For example: If you consider the massive losses after WW2 and the effort it took to rebuild after the war, it seems like the aftermath resulted in many of those countries in Europe establishing programs with the idea that the society stands together as one and should help each other out. This mentality affects many European government behaviors to this day.

If it were my home

228 points by kkwteh 5y ago

tlogan 5y ago

Question: how it can be that Mexico unemployment is lower than US?

nathias 5y ago

If I lived in the US I'd have 92.7% more money, sounds about right.

dang 5y ago

Past related threads: If It Were My Home - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13709405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13709405 - Feb 2017 (1 comment) IfItWereMyHome.com: Your Life in a Different Country - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10806405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10806405 - Dec 2015 (2 comments) Compare your country to any other place - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9472001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9472001 - May 2015 (2 comments) Living conditions in other countries compared to your own - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2726967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2726967 - July 2011 (3 comments) Website calculates how your life might be like in another country - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119220 - Jan 2011 (106 comments)

throwaway22032 5y ago

I think this site would be improved a lot by removing the colouring or at least normalizing it so that 'more' is always one colour and 'less' another. Electricity and oil are essentially access to material wealth. An American uses more because they probably have a bigger house on more land and a fancy big car. Spending more money on health care could be good if it means you have greater access, or bad if it means you're just paying a lot for the same. A class divide isn't automatically worse, it could be great for you if you're on top.

lmm 5y ago

The UI seems backwards? I'm in a country and want to see what a list of other countries are like compared to my current country

MattPalmer1086 5y ago
It's certainly a bit unclear how to compare one country to another. You have to go to Compare Countries , and it automatically selects a home country. You have to click the small link in the text to select a different home country.
vsareto 5y ago
Easiest if you use the URL: https://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/US/CA https://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/US/CA The first country is your home country. The second is the country you're comparing to.

jakedata 5y ago

Oh goodie! If I lived in Chad I would use 99.9% less electricity, clearly a win. I would also die 31 years earlier - why isn't that one green too? Dying early is clearly much better for the environment than hanging around using up resources and belching CO2.

jakedata 5y ago
...replying to myself here to possibly avoid being downvoted to oblivion: This is an example of sarcastic critique. The goal is to illustrate the entirely arbitrary nature of the green vs red labels given to various categories such as electricity consumption. Thank you for your time.
- johnday 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's "arbitrary" that people living longer is considered an upside.
  - jakedata 5y ago
    Nor is greater electricity consumption strictly a downside. Using more responsibly sourced electricity could be considered a good thing if it offsets charcoal sourced from a rainforest. Dying 30 years earlier certainly can reduce your lifetime energy consumption.
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      Metrics cannot be perfect. That doesn't mean "don't have metrics" it means "think carefully about what your metrics actually mean." All other things being equal in two countries, it's a positive if one uses less electricity.
chrischapman 5y ago
Upvote for 'Oh Goodie' and the humour in general. But had to reflect on the sad reality of the following being in green! > spend 99.58% less money on health care That is apparently a 'benefit' of living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When compared to: > die 23.88 years sooner perhaps the health care statistic should have been in red?

jakozaur 5y ago

This is so outdated. GDP figures seem to be from 2012. A lot has changed since then. E.g. USA GDP PPP is $63k in 2020 by World Bank, but this websites claims it is $53k. I see similar data points, were figures are decade old. Some countries improved a lot in the last 10 years.

fikama 5y ago
Yep unemployment rates for Poland are also outdated. Ans source links follow to 404. It's pity becouse I really like the idea.

itronitron 5y ago

hmm, a lot of these stats are worded in a very obtuse way. Calculating percentage difference of two percentages overstates their differences in regards to the underlying statistic. For example... 'be 12% more likely to be unemployed' is used to state the difference between an unemployment rate of 5.6% and 5% Unfortunately that removes a lot of usefulness from the site.

cowsandmilk 5y ago
Why? That is the far more correct way of presenting data.
- rolisz 5y ago
  Yes and no. 5 is 12% away 5.6, but so is 50 and 56. I would argue that the latter difference is much bigger and more likely to be noticeable by average Joe going about his daily life than the former.
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    Or compare 1% and 2% to 50% and 100%
  - wowokay 5y ago
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  It's not though. If you take a random sample of people the odds that one is unemployed is .6% higher in one set than the other, not 12. The 12 only makes sense if you are only sampling from the unemployed, which is not how anyone on the street is going to parse that statement.
  - konschubert 5y ago
    The difference between 5% and 5.6% is approx 11%. But I agree it’s more useful to look at percentage points here

somenewaccount1 5y ago

Man, life sure is better when you don't have to arm your own military.

melenaboija 5y ago
Or yourself
rainworld 5y ago
The purpose of NATO, per its first Secretary General: to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The thing the American ruling class fears most (at least until now, the rise of China) is an alliance between Russia and Germany, and they’ll go very far to prevent that. The purpose of the continuing American occupation of Germany is not to keep Russia from invading Germany, there’s zero risk of that.
- somenewaccount1 5y ago
  Oh yeah, because of all the great Eastern European alliances Russia is known for. /s While that would suck, why on gods earth would democratic Germany align itself with Russia? Looking for another Berlin Wall? They really loved that the first time. There's no fear of either an alliance, or invasion, thanks to American and other Nato troops. But continue live ingin your ivory education tower - that's what we fight for after all.
- samatman 5y ago
  > keep Russia from invading Germany, there’s zero risk of that. Granted that 1945-1990 was somewhat of an anomaly, it was a recent and important one...

smeej 5y ago

The one for Vatican City made me laugh!

Lemmih 5y ago

The sources link is broken and some of the data is wrong (or maybe old). The site says the Danish life expectancy at birth is 79 years. CIA factbook (the supposed source) has the number as 81.45 years.

thejosh 5y ago

This information is crazy out of date?

tagoregrtst 5y ago

But Id be living in Germany and not where I want to live. I hate these numerical comparison between countries. Don’t I already know most of these facts? Aren't they really comparisons at the margins (rare event vs. rarer event)? How about other considerations like some people like to live in a country where you can easily own a gun, homeschool your kid, or say whatever you want without fearing for your liberty (only your job)? Germans would rather not have these things, and thats cool, for them.

joenathanone 5y ago
>where you can easily own a gun, homeschool your kid, or say whatever you want without fearing for your liberty (only your job)? Wow, these are the most important things to you? Sounds pretty dystopian.
- tagoregrtst 5y ago
  Not at all. These are the things Germans get hung on about the US. What I like about America are Americans. Especially middle America. They’re salt of the Earth. I grew up in Europe, and Europeans are, not all mind you, cynical and bitter people. Its so weird to move to America and having complete strangers salute you, even strike a conversation with you. Thats why I love this country. Now, Europeans and europhiles obsess over guns, schools and free speech. They can shove it. We like our society the way it is. Otherwise, to live in an uglier version of Europe (European cities are beautiful), I would have stayed… in Europe!
- pessimizer 5y ago
  People in the US are obsessed with like 5 wedge issues and conspiracy fantasies. They will gladly give up healthcare as long as their enemies have to give it up, too.
  - tagoregrtst 5y ago
    “ They will gladly give up healthcare as long as their enemies have to give it up, too.” Ive never met an American who didn’t want health care so his neighbor wouldn't have it. Instead I find Americans extremely curious in how healthcare is done elsewhere since they keep asking me about health care wherever Ive lived. To Republicans I tell them American health care isn't that great (its terrible) and elsewhere’s not that bad, even quite good. To Democrats I tell them the problems others have America doesn't, and I remind them that “greedy” America spends more public money per capita on healthcare than almost any other country in the world. Americans are far more reasonable than they’re given credit for.

hereforphone 5y ago

wepple 5y ago

Per-capita expenditure on healthcare is higher in the US than anywhere else, we know this. But it doesn’t cover - quality of healthcare - how much is actually out of my pocket Compared to Australia, NZ, the UK, I have better healthcare in the US. And financially it’s insignificant.

wepple 5y ago
For those downvoting, I assume you’ve lived in all 4 countries and have first hand experience like I do too. Let’s discuss pros & cons of each! The American system is so deeply flawed and broken in many ways; high inequality is one result. But the states is just that: a loose collection of highly varying fairly independent states. YMMV.
- 300bps 5y ago
  high inequality is one result Agreed. In the US if you work at a very large company that predominantly has high value employees then you very likely have the best health coverage in the world by far. I am the beneficiary of such a health plan. I pay $2,400 per year for my family plan. My total out of pocket after that is $750 per year. Oh and unions. They have great health coverage generally as well. Everyone else has from good to terrible.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    > I pay $2,400 per year for my family plan. My total out of pocket after that is $750 per year. Your company also pays at least as much directly, and it's part of your compensation. I'm not sure how relevant the healthcare of wealthy people is, though. Wealthy people have good healthcare everywhere.

Closi 5y ago

At least one of these statistics is calculated completely wrong - For instance, when looking at the "Americans have 22.43% less free time" statistic, that's not what the data says - It says they work 22.43% less than Americans. But if I work 22% less, that doesn't mean I get 22% more free time (because, for instance, if I work 20 hours and have 100 free hours, working 50% less will mean I get only a 10% bump in free time). Similarly the "make more money" statistic is calculated based on GDP per capita rather than on earnings (so for instance, while the site claims a 33% difference in earning, the Germany mean income is c$47k-$52k USD depending on the source while in the US it is c$55k-$57k, so while earning is higher it is not at the 33% difference claimed). GDP per capita tends to increase with income, but will absolutely diverge depending on the economic situation, as it's actually adding up Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Exports and then dividing by the population, which isn't a valid way to work out how much is paid to workers. Considering two basic stats are so far out, it doesn't fill me with confidence on the others...

Beltiras 5y ago
Also: how is using more electricity bad? I live in Iceland where we almost solely produce electricity with hydro and geothermals. I drive a Tesla which reduces our gasoline consumption. There's a lot of built in assumptions that ignore nuance that matters a great deal in the final analysis.
- northwest65 5y ago
  According to wiki the Kárahnjúkar Dam took 4000 tons of steel, and flooded 440,000 acres, and presumably consumed an ungodly amount on concrete. Presumably you can't keep expanding that sort of infrastructure forever.
  - Beltiras 5y ago
    Hydro and geothermal have non-zero emissions of course. They last for a very long time thou. It's a bit like buying an electric car. The emissions might look bad at the outset but you come out ahead really quickly.

abrands 5y ago

Interesting

perfobotto 5y ago

This seems specifically designed to make the us look bad. If you try to compare us and Libya it almost seems like it would be so much better to move there which is stupid. Statistics are calculated in such a way that is just unfavorable for the us

robjan 5y ago
I don't think it's specifically targeting anyone, it's just oversimplifying issues. e.g. a place may look really good on average salary but terrible in terms of GINI (inequality). Neither should be taken in isolation
notahacker 5y ago
It tells you what the sources are. The most commonly used source is the CIA World Factbook. It strikes me as a little unlikely the CIA has a hidden agenda to make US statistics look bad. Anyway, if you're looking at it from a non-IS IP the US isn't the baseline. Also strikes me as a little unlikely that anyone actually reading the descriptions rather than looking at the colours would prefer Libya to the US on the basis of the stats (sure, that healthcare is really expensive and that prison population is insane, but I'd rather earn 5x as much and live longer than have a smaller carbon footprint)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

merricksb 5y ago

Last significant discussion about this here in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119220

tomp 5y ago

Far left wing bias. “Use less energy” is highlighted in green (as if that’s better) even though energy use is one of the hallmarks of civilisational progress.

drchickensalad 5y ago
Energy use for its own sake is not progress; efficiency and technological results which are measured elsewhere are.
MattPalmer1086 5y ago
Environmental bias, sure. Why "far left wing?". Even centrists these days are pretty environmental in their thinking.
- tomp 5y ago
  Leftwing environmentalists promote ideas like degrowth, depopulation etc (less power hence cleaner). Rightwing environmentalists promote ideas like nuclear power, etc (more power but cleaner).
  - MattPalmer1086 5y ago
    Must be a US political thing (I'm assuming you're from the US). I don't think I've ever heard of anyone advocating degrowth or depopulation in the UK. We're more into increasing renewable energy. Some of the hard core environmentalists don't like nuclear energy, and they do tend to be more on the left side of politics.
    - tomp 5y ago
      Maybe if you read UK leftwing media… https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-...
      - 5y ago

sillysaurusx 5y ago

Whoa. As a US citizen, I clicked on Peru and wasn't surprised by anything (hello 96% less spent on healthcare) -- except that I'll experience 6% more of a class divide than Peru. The Gini index is interesting: "The GINI index measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income. In Peru it is 48.10 while in The United States it is 45.00. This index measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country. The index is calculated from the Lorenz curve, in which cumulative family income is plotted against the number of families arranged from the poorest to the richest. The index is the ratio of (a) the area between a country's Lorenz curve and the 45 degree helping line to (b) the entire triangular area under the 45 degree line. The more nearly equal a country's income distribution, the closer its Lorenz curve to the 45 degree line and the lower its Gini index, e.g., a Scandinavian country with an index of 25. The more unequal a country's income distribution, the farther its Lorenz curve from the 45 degree line and the higher its Gini index, e.g., a Sub-Saharan country with an index of 50. If income were distributed with perfect equality, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the 45 degree line and the index would be zero; if income were distributed with perfect inequality, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the horizontal axis and the right vertical axis and the index would be 100." c.f https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

amelius 5y ago
In the past poor people generally didn't understand how much they were screwed over by the upper classes. However, it seems that in the US, smart people increasingly end up at the wrong side of the divide, which could mean we're heading for interesting times.
peruvianthwa 5y ago
I was born and lived in South America before I moved to the US and I'm not mentioning this so that somehow I'm granted enough authority to trust anything I say, but to encourage people to look further than this just plain numbers. I truly wish I knew how to get this point across with Americans: - Yes, we have expensive health care in the US - Yes, we are privilege because most of us have jobs that provide us with relatively good health care policies I think this fight-for-a-greater-good has blinded people as to give examples like yours -- utterly disrespectful. Most of the time health care in those countries cannot and is nowhere close to be compared to the US, UNLESS, of course, you go to private practices where you're back to "uhm, so maybe it's not so cheap after all". If you're so inclined in advocating for new policy, I welcome you to travel and experience, ask the locals, etc, how their healthcare system works. This site claims that people would spend 93.33% less on health care in Venezuela, that is, if you're lucky enough to even get health care. This site claims that people would spend 88.81% less on health care in Argentina, that is, if you can afford to wait long enough to get whatever medical attention you need. I'm more than willing to answer any questions if you have them. I'm just trying to raise awareness because I DO NOT want America to become what I escaped from.

mberning 5y ago

These are so disingenuous. It’s like comparing aggregate schooling scores between the US and some Scandinavian country and concluding that every kid in America gets a worse education. False. If you were to constrain for home life (two parent household), income level, etc. you would find that the US is very on par in many aspects. The real question to me is why does the US have such a large population of extremely downtrodden people that will never escape their station in life.

sigmaprimus 5y ago

Oh Boy, another one "these" submissions... Rather than get into the agenda behind such a site, I'll just scroll to the bottom of this page and find a comment beaten down by the mob and try to bring some balance.

geekamongus 5y ago

This is cool. I wish it had some kind of a wizard to walk you through so that you could get some personalized (but not too personal) results, and build out a profile for you, to make it more relatable. For example, ask me my income, my family size, my religious views, etc. Then give me a "profile" of a fictional person in country X to whom I could relate.

arendtio 5y ago

I like the idea and the site, but at times it fails to transport the magnitude. For example, sometimes a metric is communicated as 'percentage' and somestimes as 'times'. And 26 times is something completely different than 26%.

instance 5y ago

Putting things in relative like that (e.g. 30% more likely to be murdered) always feels like much - in reality, one doesn't know the variance. This is just putting the averages of two datasets in relation. If both have a very wide confidence interval, 30% suddenly loses meaning to me..

bagacrap 5y ago

I think it would have to know my age or other vitals for a lot of this. For example someone born in 1950 in Colombia might have a very different life expectancy than someone born in 2010. I thought it would be more interesting if they asked you your age, sex and socio/economic percentile ("privilege") because in a lot of places the mean experience is quite different from many folks' reality.

nopcode 5y ago

CIA World Factbook is a horrible and usually outdated source.

davidmurdoch 5y ago

I thought the "consume oil" category was a weird one to have on here until I realized they weren't talking about food oils. Haha

rootusrootus 5y ago

This just seems like a classic example of how to lie with statistics. And that assumes the comparisons are even valid -- it is notoriously difficult to compare measurements that sound the same on the surface between different countries that have differing methods at calculating the value.

frankfrankfrank 5y ago
It is also a good example of the magic dirt/soil concept that is meant denigrate and abuse people and cultures for their work and achievements. It's a toxic, defeatist, abusive, and deeply unhealthy mentality to have.

narrator 5y ago

Certainly makes clear that the solution to American healthcare is anything you can think of except spending more money on it.

frankfrankfrank 5y ago
That applies to basically everything in and related to America. Healthcare, education, "defense", social programs, immigration... it's all really just a con job by a subset of what is a kind of neo-aristocracy/nobility that pilfers and pillages their income and wealth through con jobs committed against mostly the middle class by way of how the whole system works. In many ways the system is not any different than a casino; the promise of winnings and riches, while the whole theater around it is purely meant to provide confidence (i.e, the con in confidence trick) to separate people from their money while making them think they had a good time (feeling good about themselves, the primary appeal to people's narcissism). Yet, somehow no matter how much we blow at the Casino called education/healthcare/"defense"/social programs ... the only thing that gets better are the bank accounts of the executives and directors and presidents while all the measures and statistics and metrics have scraping a bottom for decades. The only war the US government and the parasitic people that make it up have ever waged successfully, is the war on getting the value of the work the middle class does into their parasitic pockets through all manner of schemes and con jobs.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  It does not have to be like this. What Americans need to see is not bigger or smaller government but more 'effective' government. Is the government using the resources it does have effectively. Obviously the answer is no. But hoe have other countries managed to solve this problem? It seems like its down to historical chances where events that played out in the country's history dictated how the government ended up behaving and the values of the people that run it. For example: If you consider the massive losses after WW2 and the effort it took to rebuild after the war, it seems like the aftermath resulted in many of those countries in Europe establishing programs with the idea that the society stands together as one and should help each other out. This mentality affects many European government behaviors to this day.