9 ms·

Look to the stagnancy of the UK to see where the US could be in a few more decades. They have the same high prices for housing, but far far lower wages. When th

Look to the stagnancy of the UK to see where the US could be in a few more decades. They have the same high prices for housing, but far far lower wages. When the powerful political class (homeowners) has all their wealth tied up in their homes, they see little wrong with such broken basic arrangements, because it doesn't hurt them and they see their number going up for wealth. Canada and Australia have similarly destructive housing policies and outcomes. And since the self-immolation of Brexit, they have far worsened their financial future. Similar politics of self-destruction masked as the appearance of strength are gaining a loooot of ground in the US as well.

chairmansteve 2y ago
Yes. Trump is looking like Brexit on steroids to me.
frereubu 2y ago
Are you accounting for things like free healthcare when comparing wages? (I wish I did't have to say this, but it's a genuine question, not snark). I always wonder when people compare other countries to the US. Edit: I agree that Brexit was the most incredible piece of self-harm that I've seen a country do to itself. I certainly don't have rose-tinted spectacles about the state of the UK.
- wbl 2y ago
  My US job comes with NHS level never seeing a bill. This is really easy to do in CA.
  - don_neufeld 2y ago
    Saying “fuck you, I’m rich” is not a good look. A health plan like that costs your company 25K/yr on the backend. They pay that as part of your compensation, you just don’t see it. Even the most basic HDHP Bronze Kaiser plan currently costs over 1K/mo, and that increases about 10% per year. If you’ve ever had a coworker (or yourself) decline COBRA coverage because it was “so expensive”, you need to understand that the price under COBRA was the price the whole time, you just didn’t see it.
    - nsxwolf 2y ago
      $25k doesn't sound like a lot. Doesn't sound like it accounts for the difference in salary.
      - don_neufeld 2y ago
        I’m not sure what your point is? 25K/yr IS a LOT. Per the US Census, the median income in the US is a bit over 37,500, so it’s literally an entire paycheck. Remember - the NHS is available to everyone, not just the rich. Source: https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore&mprop=income&popt=Person&cpv=age,Years15Onwards&hl=en https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore...
        wbl 2y ago
        You're misunderstanding how the ACA subsidies work.
        sympil 2y ago
        According to article linked to below there are 48 million uninsured Americans. Fifteen percent of the UK population isn’t without coverage. The subsidies don’t work well.
      - hello_moto 2y ago
        $25K is a lot. Respectfully, You're out of touch until you lost your 6 digits job.
    - epistasis 2y ago
      > Saying “fuck you, I’m rich” is not a good look. This is a pitch-perfect example of the Brexit-like self-destructive politics that come with the "win" of appearing strong. Here is a person who has the typical experience, who could easily be convinced by their positive experience to say "everybody should have this." But instead of going that route you impute negative motivations and put very ugly distasteful words into their mouth. Which, even if they are highly supportive of your position, will likely turn them against you. Instead of using this opportunity to advocate for a really good thing, you use it as an opportunity to hit somebody you view as the enemy with a rhetorical hammer. End result: no more people in favor of better means of distributing health care, and perhaps a net negative. Especially in the context of how to account for free-at-point-of-care healthcare, which started this. If the employer is paying the prices that are revealed to employees only via COBRA, should that be accounted for in part of the wages or not? The US chooses to put about twice the fraction of GDP into healthcare that the UK does, and that per-capita GDP is also higher, how do we account for that in terms of wages and individuals? The $1T that employers pay for healthcare should be accounted for how, exactly? It's a tough question, and most likely in any comparison of nations there's a couple different ways to see how it impacts the average person. And when the "average" person in the US has such varying experiences, that has to enter into any comparison too. In California there is great healthcare coverage for those with extremely low to no income, due to subsidy. Those with healthy salaries and savings can weather the times of unemployment and pay the COBRA prices. Those who struggle the most are the ones in between, and improving that involves getting those on the high and low end to advocate for the in-between incomes. It does not involve making enemies of them.
  - CharlieDigital 2y ago
    That's not how it works for millions upon millions of Americans that are not fortunate enough to work at a job that provides tens of thousands of dollars in healthcare insurance as a benefit. This line of thinking is exactly why the "American Dream" is falling apart; we increasingly place a handicap on some Americans and then wonder why some slice of America is not advancing generationally.
    - wbl 2y ago
      Americans who have jobs with health benefits that include Kaiser in CA is a whole lot of them in CA! It's a massive hospital system that covers 9 million people, a full quarter of the state.
      - hello_moto 2y ago
        You're tied to your job though. Not so in say, UK, Canada.
      - alsetmusic 2y ago
        I was unfortunate enough to have a job that gave me Kaiser healthcare. My job was not my only source of income. Everything about the experience of Kaiser sucked so much that I often paid out of pocket to go to other orgs. Example: I transferred my prescriptions to Kaiser, walked in and saw the dozens of people standing in line, and immediately transferred them back to CVS (where Kaiser doesn’t apply). They called me before I got home with my scripts ready for pickup. I walked in and it was one of the rare moments when no one was in line. But even when they’re busy, I’ve not seen more than ~10 people and mostly more like 1-3. Kaiser sucks. It’s the worst healthcare system I’ve had to deal with in terms of my effort vs my satisfaction. I’m very happy to work a job that lets me choose again so that I can go where I please.
        wbl 2y ago
        I am happy that the doctor calls me to schedule things instead of the other way around. My prescriptions come by mail order, and the few times I've had to get to the pharmacy it's been a very straightforward process.
- rcxdude 2y ago
  Roughly speaking, when I've looked into this comparison, for near-median earners, they're better off in the UK, because of things like healthcare. But when you look at the higher-earning roles, especially engineering or software, then the different in pay more than makes up for the increased cost of living (i.e. a higher percentage of your pay may go towards cost of living, but the smaller percentage of money left over is still larger in absolute terms). There's other tradeoffs in terms of work culture and so on, though (e.g. you get much more holiday in the UK).
  - bko 2y ago
    Can you share your research? In the US, the average out-of-pocket healthcare spending was $1,424.6 per capita in 2022 Most people have insurance. They might have some high out of pocket maximum like $10k. So worse case scenario you're out an additional $10k. But you pay a lot less in taxes In US, a single filer, the 12% bracket covers income from $11,926 to $48,475. In UK it's 20% So at 40k you're paying an additional 3k in taxes, not to mention VAT and others (although I am ignoring other US taxes like state, local and payroll). More than covers your out of pocket healthcare costs. And pretty much any job in the US is significantly higher paying, for instance a typical accountant in US makes 80k while in the uk that 37k pounds. Pretty much every office job is like this. And note the US 80k figures includes benefits like ... you guessed it, healthcare! Even if make the generous assumptions that taxes are the same, UK has same healthcare quality and everyone is hitting out of pocket max every year, it's still not close. The whole "but we don't have to pay for healthcare" strikes me as just a cope. https://www.statista.com/statistics/484578/us-per-capita-out-of-pocket-health-care-payments-since-1960/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/484578/us-per-capita-out... https://www.allbusinessschools.com/accounting/salary/ https://www.allbusinessschools.com/accounting/salary/ https://uk.indeed.com/career/accountant/salaries https://uk.indeed.com/career/accountant/salaries
    - g8oz 2y ago
      I think if the health insurance situation was as rosy in the U.S as you make out there would not have been as much support for the killer of the United Healthcare CEO. The figure for the average out of pocket expenses hides a lot of pain.
- vineyardmike 2y ago
  I think most Americans over-index on the cost of healthcare and the availability of insurance because it’s constant in our news and our system absolutely sucks. Most people don’t need regular medical care because most people are healthy (until they start getting older). It’s expensive, sure, but most people in the middle-class have employer sponsored healthcare, and retirees have government sponsored healthcare, and many low-income people have government sponsored healthcare. The difference in out-of-pocket costs is easily accounted for within significantly higher salaries. Of course, the issue is not the actual availability of insurance, it is that there is a patchwork of laws and protections and it’s not universal to be covered at any point in your life. But many states have well above a 90% insurance rate. California, the most populous state, has 93%. Massachusetts is sitting at 98%. Even Texas, the worst state for health insurance, is at 85% of the population covered.
  - fastasucan 2y ago
    >The difference in out-of-pocket costs is easily accounted for within significantly higher salaries. Any sources for this?
    - vineyardmike 2y ago
      Salary Info (25k USD salary difference, before tax) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w... Cost of healthcare: There are a bunch of numbers that are trivially accessible via Google, including government sources, but I couldn’t find any that match perfectly with the time range of the wage data. Here is one quote, from a few years earlier… > Median annual out-of-pocket spending on medical care ranged from $360 (Hawaii) to $1,500 (Nebraska). In four states, households in the top 10 percent of out-of-pocket expenses spent $7,000 or more on these items. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2019/may/how-much-us-households-employer-insurance-spend-premiums-out-of-pocket https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2... See also: https://meps.ahrq.gov/data_files/publications/st441/stat441.shtml https://meps.ahrq.gov/data_files/publications/st441/stat441....
  - SnorkelTan 2y ago
- lttlrck 2y ago
  It's not free.
krferriter 2y ago
Yeah both the UK and US are notorious for NIMBYism. People filing lawsuits as like a hobby, because they want to stop all development. In these countries it's far to easy for a small group of complainers to grind the entire system to a halt and burn endless amounts of time and money. It seems particularly bad in the anglosphere.
- dontlikeyoueith 2y ago
  It's particularly bad in the anglosphere because we have common law legal systems that are built around resolving personal disputes in court. This has upsides -- it was a good solution to the problem in the 1200s of people solving disputes by fighting it out -- but in a modern context the downsides are pretty high thanks to rent-seeking lawyers.

chairmansteve 2y ago

Yes. Trump is looking like Brexit on steroids to me.

frereubu 2y ago

Are you accounting for things like free healthcare when comparing wages? (I wish I did't have to say this, but it's a genuine question, not snark). I always wonder when people compare other countries to the US. Edit: I agree that Brexit was the most incredible piece of self-harm that I've seen a country do to itself. I certainly don't have rose-tinted spectacles about the state of the UK.

wbl 2y ago
My US job comes with NHS level never seeing a bill. This is really easy to do in CA.
- don_neufeld 2y ago
  Saying “fuck you, I’m rich” is not a good look. A health plan like that costs your company 25K/yr on the backend. They pay that as part of your compensation, you just don’t see it. Even the most basic HDHP Bronze Kaiser plan currently costs over 1K/mo, and that increases about 10% per year. If you’ve ever had a coworker (or yourself) decline COBRA coverage because it was “so expensive”, you need to understand that the price under COBRA was the price the whole time, you just didn’t see it.
  - nsxwolf 2y ago
    $25k doesn't sound like a lot. Doesn't sound like it accounts for the difference in salary.
    - don_neufeld 2y ago
      I’m not sure what your point is? 25K/yr IS a LOT. Per the US Census, the median income in the US is a bit over 37,500, so it’s literally an entire paycheck. Remember - the NHS is available to everyone, not just the rich. Source: https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore&mprop=income&popt=Person&cpv=age,Years15Onwards&hl=en https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore...
      - wbl 2y ago
        You're misunderstanding how the ACA subsidies work.
        sympil 2y ago
        According to article linked to below there are 48 million uninsured Americans. Fifteen percent of the UK population isn’t without coverage. The subsidies don’t work well.
    - hello_moto 2y ago
      $25K is a lot. Respectfully, You're out of touch until you lost your 6 digits job.
  - epistasis 2y ago
    > Saying “fuck you, I’m rich” is not a good look. This is a pitch-perfect example of the Brexit-like self-destructive politics that come with the "win" of appearing strong. Here is a person who has the typical experience, who could easily be convinced by their positive experience to say "everybody should have this." But instead of going that route you impute negative motivations and put very ugly distasteful words into their mouth. Which, even if they are highly supportive of your position, will likely turn them against you. Instead of using this opportunity to advocate for a really good thing, you use it as an opportunity to hit somebody you view as the enemy with a rhetorical hammer. End result: no more people in favor of better means of distributing health care, and perhaps a net negative. Especially in the context of how to account for free-at-point-of-care healthcare, which started this. If the employer is paying the prices that are revealed to employees only via COBRA, should that be accounted for in part of the wages or not? The US chooses to put about twice the fraction of GDP into healthcare that the UK does, and that per-capita GDP is also higher, how do we account for that in terms of wages and individuals? The $1T that employers pay for healthcare should be accounted for how, exactly? It's a tough question, and most likely in any comparison of nations there's a couple different ways to see how it impacts the average person. And when the "average" person in the US has such varying experiences, that has to enter into any comparison too. In California there is great healthcare coverage for those with extremely low to no income, due to subsidy. Those with healthy salaries and savings can weather the times of unemployment and pay the COBRA prices. Those who struggle the most are the ones in between, and improving that involves getting those on the high and low end to advocate for the in-between incomes. It does not involve making enemies of them.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  That's not how it works for millions upon millions of Americans that are not fortunate enough to work at a job that provides tens of thousands of dollars in healthcare insurance as a benefit. This line of thinking is exactly why the "American Dream" is falling apart; we increasingly place a handicap on some Americans and then wonder why some slice of America is not advancing generationally.
  - wbl 2y ago
    Americans who have jobs with health benefits that include Kaiser in CA is a whole lot of them in CA! It's a massive hospital system that covers 9 million people, a full quarter of the state.
    - hello_moto 2y ago
      You're tied to your job though. Not so in say, UK, Canada.
    - alsetmusic 2y ago
      I was unfortunate enough to have a job that gave me Kaiser healthcare. My job was not my only source of income. Everything about the experience of Kaiser sucked so much that I often paid out of pocket to go to other orgs. Example: I transferred my prescriptions to Kaiser, walked in and saw the dozens of people standing in line, and immediately transferred them back to CVS (where Kaiser doesn’t apply). They called me before I got home with my scripts ready for pickup. I walked in and it was one of the rare moments when no one was in line. But even when they’re busy, I’ve not seen more than ~10 people and mostly more like 1-3. Kaiser sucks. It’s the worst healthcare system I’ve had to deal with in terms of my effort vs my satisfaction. I’m very happy to work a job that lets me choose again so that I can go where I please.
      - wbl 2y ago
        I am happy that the doctor calls me to schedule things instead of the other way around. My prescriptions come by mail order, and the few times I've had to get to the pharmacy it's been a very straightforward process.
rcxdude 2y ago
Roughly speaking, when I've looked into this comparison, for near-median earners, they're better off in the UK, because of things like healthcare. But when you look at the higher-earning roles, especially engineering or software, then the different in pay more than makes up for the increased cost of living (i.e. a higher percentage of your pay may go towards cost of living, but the smaller percentage of money left over is still larger in absolute terms). There's other tradeoffs in terms of work culture and so on, though (e.g. you get much more holiday in the UK).
- bko 2y ago
  Can you share your research? In the US, the average out-of-pocket healthcare spending was $1,424.6 per capita in 2022 Most people have insurance. They might have some high out of pocket maximum like $10k. So worse case scenario you're out an additional $10k. But you pay a lot less in taxes In US, a single filer, the 12% bracket covers income from $11,926 to $48,475. In UK it's 20% So at 40k you're paying an additional 3k in taxes, not to mention VAT and others (although I am ignoring other US taxes like state, local and payroll). More than covers your out of pocket healthcare costs. And pretty much any job in the US is significantly higher paying, for instance a typical accountant in US makes 80k while in the uk that 37k pounds. Pretty much every office job is like this. And note the US 80k figures includes benefits like ... you guessed it, healthcare! Even if make the generous assumptions that taxes are the same, UK has same healthcare quality and everyone is hitting out of pocket max every year, it's still not close. The whole "but we don't have to pay for healthcare" strikes me as just a cope. https://www.statista.com/statistics/484578/us-per-capita-out-of-pocket-health-care-payments-since-1960/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/484578/us-per-capita-out... https://www.allbusinessschools.com/accounting/salary/ https://www.allbusinessschools.com/accounting/salary/ https://uk.indeed.com/career/accountant/salaries https://uk.indeed.com/career/accountant/salaries
  - g8oz 2y ago
    I think if the health insurance situation was as rosy in the U.S as you make out there would not have been as much support for the killer of the United Healthcare CEO. The figure for the average out of pocket expenses hides a lot of pain.
vineyardmike 2y ago
I think most Americans over-index on the cost of healthcare and the availability of insurance because it’s constant in our news and our system absolutely sucks. Most people don’t need regular medical care because most people are healthy (until they start getting older). It’s expensive, sure, but most people in the middle-class have employer sponsored healthcare, and retirees have government sponsored healthcare, and many low-income people have government sponsored healthcare. The difference in out-of-pocket costs is easily accounted for within significantly higher salaries. Of course, the issue is not the actual availability of insurance, it is that there is a patchwork of laws and protections and it’s not universal to be covered at any point in your life. But many states have well above a 90% insurance rate. California, the most populous state, has 93%. Massachusetts is sitting at 98%. Even Texas, the worst state for health insurance, is at 85% of the population covered.
- fastasucan 2y ago
  >The difference in out-of-pocket costs is easily accounted for within significantly higher salaries. Any sources for this?
  - vineyardmike 2y ago
    Salary Info (25k USD salary difference, before tax) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w... Cost of healthcare: There are a bunch of numbers that are trivially accessible via Google, including government sources, but I couldn’t find any that match perfectly with the time range of the wage data. Here is one quote, from a few years earlier… > Median annual out-of-pocket spending on medical care ranged from $360 (Hawaii) to $1,500 (Nebraska). In four states, households in the top 10 percent of out-of-pocket expenses spent $7,000 or more on these items. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2019/may/how-much-us-households-employer-insurance-spend-premiums-out-of-pocket https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2... See also: https://meps.ahrq.gov/data_files/publications/st441/stat441.shtml https://meps.ahrq.gov/data_files/publications/st441/stat441....
- SnorkelTan 2y ago
lttlrck 2y ago
It's not free.

krferriter 2y ago

Yeah both the UK and US are notorious for NIMBYism. People filing lawsuits as like a hobby, because they want to stop all development. In these countries it's far to easy for a small group of complainers to grind the entire system to a halt and burn endless amounts of time and money. It seems particularly bad in the anglosphere.

dontlikeyoueith 2y ago
It's particularly bad in the anglosphere because we have common law legal systems that are built around resolving personal disputes in court. This has upsides -- it was a good solution to the problem in the 1200s of people solving disputes by fighting it out -- but in a modern context the downsides are pretty high thanks to rent-seeking lawyers.