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This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies. You bring it upon yourself.

by wyager 2y ago

HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
People die from inability to afford something as fundamental as healthcare in the US. You are poorer than any European ever could be.
- wyager 2y ago
  > You are poorer than any European ever could be Are you talking about me, personally, or Americans in general? I suppose it doesn't really matter - you'd be wrong in either case. The median person in the poorest US state is richer than the median person in the UK, for example. Most Americans grumble about paying for healthcare, and we are getting ripped off, but it's also very rare for someone to actually die because they can't afford it. Anyone in the top, say, 80% of American society has some form of employer-subsidized insurance.
  - troupo 2y ago
    > some form These words are doing some very heavy lifting.
  - csomar 2y ago
    > The median person in the poorest US state is richer than the median person in the UK, for example. This is due to the garbage GDP numbers. Based on these, the quality of life in the Mississippi is better than in Japan. Not a single chance. The US numbers are highly inflated by the financial sector and real estate. It'll take a financial crisis and dethroning of US dollar to show how truly poor these places are.
    - wyager 2y ago
      There are multiple reasons that Japan is better than Mississippi, but "Japan is actually materially wealthier" is not one of them.
sofixa 2y ago
> This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies. Source? Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median?
- wyager 2y ago
  > Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... > Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median? Yes, yes, and no (irrelevant because it barely shifts the result)
  - sofixa 2y ago
    GDP and GDP PPP are almost irrelevant with regards to personal wealth or lack thereof. A factory making billions to its owner doesn't improve the revenues, wealth or standard of living of more than 1 person. A factory producing luxury Louis Vuitton handbags is good for GDP and the wealth of the factory owner, but is irrelevant to the living conditions of the workers. A private equity firm making wild bets is very "productive", GDP wise, but again , entirely irrelevant at a personal level. Even the worker's salary is tough to compare in isolation between countries because of the vastly different costs of living - an American having to pay tens of thousands of student loans back, with obscene housing prices, absurdly expensive healthcare... $200k/year in San Francisco might not get you as far as e.g. 100€k/year in Berlin (throwing numbers for illustration, haven't actually done the math). Come on, this is Econ 101 and basic logic.
    - wyager 2y ago
      > A factory making billions to its owner doesn't improve the revenues, wealth or standard of living of more than 1 person... A factory producing luxury Louis Vuitton handbags... is irrelevant to the living conditions of the workers > Come on, this is Econ 101 and basic logic. You griping about luxury goods on principle isn't "Econ 101" or "basic logic". You can look at basically any material metric you like (cars owned, house size, etc.) and Americans come out ahead. Nominal GDP numbers are kind of nonsense, but they're directionally the same nonsense everywhere, so they actually work OK as an international comparison.
marcinzm 2y ago
Billionaires making more money sure helps pay my hospital bills.
coldtea 2y ago
And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home, 70+ yo still working their ass off in McJobs, crumbling public infrastructure, homeless and billionaires laughing all the way to the bank... Then you're comparing countries with better distributed quality of life based on GDP or the presence of billionaires and unicorns, as if between you, Zuck, and Musk you have an average wealth of $500B. There are much poorer GDP-wise countries where people live better and are happier than the US :)
- wyager 2y ago
  > And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home The median American has all of these things better than the median European, except maybe healthcare. That's tough to compare. Some countries like the UK clearly have worse healthcare than the US. Most of the top colleges are American. American homes tend to be much larger and nice than European homes. > Then you're comparing countries with better distributed quality of life based on GDP The distribution is really not that skewed. In most states, median income is within 40% of mean income. Whether you compare median or mean, Americans reliably come out ahead, except for a few small Euro countries (mostly tax havens for American companies).
  - csomar 2y ago
    > Whether you compare median or mean, Americans reliably come out ahead, except for a few small Euro countries (mostly tax havens for American companies). No. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe... By median, the US is on par with Italy. If you adjust for property prices (cheaper in Italy), then it's definitively lower.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >The median American has all of these things better than the median European, except maybe healthcare. How about the median Western European (including nordic)? >Most of the top colleges are American. Yes, because that's where the money and companies are. Those concern a miniscule minority of the population - with most either not having access to education, or only through huge personal debt. And even there, take away the majority Europeans, Asians, Indians, etc doing the research in these (after having been educated in their local countries), and it would be a wasteland. >Some countries like the UK clearly have worse healthcare than the US The UK had better healthcare than the US for the average person, it only fell behind because of opening itself up too much because of immigration (without sufficient funding increases) and also because of following US-like neoliberal policies in the past 20 years or so that hurt the NHS. >Whether you compare median or mean, Americans reliably come out ahead, except for a few small Euro countries (mostly tax havens for American companies). Not exactly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
nkrisc 2y ago
I’m an American. I wish we had these protections.

This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies. You bring it upon yourself.

by wyager 2y ago

This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies. You bring it upon yourself.

HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago

People die from inability to afford something as fundamental as healthcare in the US. You are poorer than any European ever could be.

wyager 2y ago
> You are poorer than any European ever could be Are you talking about me, personally, or Americans in general? I suppose it doesn't really matter - you'd be wrong in either case. The median person in the poorest US state is richer than the median person in the UK, for example. Most Americans grumble about paying for healthcare, and we are getting ripped off, but it's also very rare for someone to actually die because they can't afford it. Anyone in the top, say, 80% of American society has some form of employer-subsidized insurance.
- troupo 2y ago
  > some form These words are doing some very heavy lifting.
- csomar 2y ago
  > The median person in the poorest US state is richer than the median person in the UK, for example. This is due to the garbage GDP numbers. Based on these, the quality of life in the Mississippi is better than in Japan. Not a single chance. The US numbers are highly inflated by the financial sector and real estate. It'll take a financial crisis and dethroning of US dollar to show how truly poor these places are.
  - wyager 2y ago
    There are multiple reasons that Japan is better than Mississippi, but "Japan is actually materially wealthier" is not one of them.

sofixa 2y ago

> This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies. Source? Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median?

wyager 2y ago
> Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... > Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median? Yes, yes, and no (irrelevant because it barely shifts the result)
- sofixa 2y ago
  GDP and GDP PPP are almost irrelevant with regards to personal wealth or lack thereof. A factory making billions to its owner doesn't improve the revenues, wealth or standard of living of more than 1 person. A factory producing luxury Louis Vuitton handbags is good for GDP and the wealth of the factory owner, but is irrelevant to the living conditions of the workers. A private equity firm making wild bets is very "productive", GDP wise, but again , entirely irrelevant at a personal level. Even the worker's salary is tough to compare in isolation between countries because of the vastly different costs of living - an American having to pay tens of thousands of student loans back, with obscene housing prices, absurdly expensive healthcare... $200k/year in San Francisco might not get you as far as e.g. 100€k/year in Berlin (throwing numbers for illustration, haven't actually done the math). Come on, this is Econ 101 and basic logic.
  - wyager 2y ago
    > A factory making billions to its owner doesn't improve the revenues, wealth or standard of living of more than 1 person... A factory producing luxury Louis Vuitton handbags... is irrelevant to the living conditions of the workers > Come on, this is Econ 101 and basic logic. You griping about luxury goods on principle isn't "Econ 101" or "basic logic". You can look at basically any material metric you like (cars owned, house size, etc.) and Americans come out ahead. Nominal GDP numbers are kind of nonsense, but they're directionally the same nonsense everywhere, so they actually work OK as an international comparison.

marcinzm 2y ago

Billionaires making more money sure helps pay my hospital bills.

coldtea 2y ago

And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home, 70+ yo still working their ass off in McJobs, crumbling public infrastructure, homeless and billionaires laughing all the way to the bank... Then you're comparing countries with better distributed quality of life based on GDP or the presence of billionaires and unicorns, as if between you, Zuck, and Musk you have an average wealth of $500B. There are much poorer GDP-wise countries where people live better and are happier than the US :)

wyager 2y ago
> And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home The median American has all of these things better than the median European, except maybe healthcare. That's tough to compare. Some countries like the UK clearly have worse healthcare than the US. Most of the top colleges are American. American homes tend to be much larger and nice than European homes. > Then you're comparing countries with better distributed quality of life based on GDP The distribution is really not that skewed. In most states, median income is within 40% of mean income. Whether you compare median or mean, Americans reliably come out ahead, except for a few small Euro countries (mostly tax havens for American companies).
- csomar 2y ago
  > Whether you compare median or mean, Americans reliably come out ahead, except for a few small Euro countries (mostly tax havens for American companies). No. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe... By median, the US is on par with Italy. If you adjust for property prices (cheaper in Italy), then it's definitively lower.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >The median American has all of these things better than the median European, except maybe healthcare. How about the median Western European (including nordic)? >Most of the top colleges are American. Yes, because that's where the money and companies are. Those concern a miniscule minority of the population - with most either not having access to education, or only through huge personal debt. And even there, take away the majority Europeans, Asians, Indians, etc doing the research in these (after having been educated in their local countries), and it would be a wasteland. >Some countries like the UK clearly have worse healthcare than the US The UK had better healthcare than the US for the average person, it only fell behind because of opening itself up too much because of immigration (without sufficient funding increases) and also because of following US-like neoliberal policies in the past 20 years or so that hurt the NHS. >Whether you compare median or mean, Americans reliably come out ahead, except for a few small Euro countries (mostly tax havens for American companies). Not exactly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...

nkrisc 2y ago

I’m an American. I wish we had these protections.