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Americans surely spend a very disproportionate amount of income on housing, transportation, and healthcare compared to the rest of the world.
by nwsm 4y ago
Americans surely spend a very disproportionate amount of income on housing, transportation, and healthcare compared to the rest of the world.
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoI disagree. Your houses are dirt cheap (outside of NYC and SF I suppose) and gas is basically given away.
- ethanbond 4y agoThe people making $250k outside of the ultra-expensive metropolises are probably not generally in the 1/3 here in the title.
- nwsm 4y agoMy perception is that in much of the rest of the world, it's more common to live with one's family or other more communal housing situations for longer. In the US there is a slight stigma about not having "moved out" that starts at 18 years old.
- rootusrootus 4y agoSurely there is data that could answer that. Health care I could see. Transportation? We don't have nearly the tax rate on fuel that, say, European countries typically do. Housing seems pretty expensive everywhere, I'm not at all sure it's disproportionately so in the US.
- lkbm 4y ago> Transportation? We don't have nearly the tax rate on fuel that, say, European countries typically do. Sure, but how many miles does the average European drive in a year, and what's their MPG? Before he semi-retired, my dad's daily round-trip commute was ~70 miles. Do any Europeans drive that much?
- pastage 4y ago50 km is a long commute but it is not unheard of. Doing 50km under 40 min is doable, as long as that is possible by car you will have quite a lot of people commuting like that. Almost all commutes are under 40 min but average is 25 min.
- rootusrootus 4y agoThe US is a big place, we definitely drive more miles. But the fuel tax in Europe is high enough that the overall cost isn't necessarily dramatically higher in the US. Also, a lot of the public transit (at least in my experience) in Europe is surprisingly expensive, though that probably depends a lot on where you live and where you need to go.
- stetrain 4y agoOwning, maintaining, fueling, and insuring a car is much more expensive than walking, biking, and taking public transportation. Both in end-user costs and overall per-capita cost of transportation. But in much of the US having your own car (one for every adult in the household) is basically a requirement to hold a job.
- rootusrootus 4y agoThis is more true in Europe, though, than many people seem to think. Car ownership around the world is very common.
- stetrain 4y agoTrue, but there is a greater percentage of the population living in places where one car per adult is not a hard requirement. And there are probably fewer 20mi+ commutes among car owners.
- nwsm 4y agoI'm also sure the data exists but I wouldn't know what to look for. On transportation I'm mainly talking about how much more common car ownership is in the US than what I perceive to be the case elsewhere in the world.
- rootusrootus 4y agoPer capita, the US ranks 25th [0] in car ownership. Though admittedly this is 10 year old information. Somewhat newer data ranks the US higher, but I still see some claims that Germany has higher per-capita car ownership than the US. But in either case, it's not a clear cut answer. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/its-official-western-europeans-have-more-cars-per-person-than-americans/261108/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/it...
- throwaway0a5e 4y agoThe nations that beat out the US is more damning to certain oft-repeated tropes than the US's position on the list.
- throwaway0a5e 4y agoHealthcare is a dead horse but I'm going to need to see citations for the other two, fraction of income preferred over raw dollar figures but I'll take what I can get.