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Comment by slantedview | Hacker News Reader

Whether talking about the US as a whole or any particular state, we don't compare to the modern European countries.

One important way we don't compare is that healthcare and retirement costs are a massive drag on our economy. Just an hour ago I received an e-mail from my employer letting me know that their 401k matching is decreasing 1% next year, but that they're cool with it because it's still "competitive". The reality is that many Americans working today will never afford to retire. And at some point in the future they will not be able to afford their healthcare either.

How can we talk about productivity and competitiveness when we can't even afford to keep ourselves alive and healthy?

TL;DR; American competitiveness is a joke.

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> American competitiveness is a joke.

Not really. "It's complicated" and there are many aspects to it.

US health care is terrible, for instance, in terms of costs/benefits. The startup I worked for in Italy dedicated all of 0 person-hours to health care or health insurance stuff because it's none of their business. Big advantage.

OTOH, the public pension system in Italy is pretty creaky and I would not trust it a lot. There are a bunch of people who got to retire at like 55 or 60, which is pretty early for a country where many people live quite long lives, and are no longer doing hard manual labor.

"At will" employment in the US is way, way more flexible than the kind of system they have in Italy where you'd pretty much have to murder someone while on the clock to get fired. Definitely a win for business.

There are all kinds of things to compare countries on, and it's not simple.

Not sure if you confused my comment with someone else's. I never said it wasn't complicated, I said it's a joke, for exactly the reasons you mention among others.

It's not "a joke", though: it's a very competitive country in many ways. Facile comparisons of one or two aspects don't do the subject justice.

It only seems not to be a joke when you discount that we're taking on societal debt in the form of looming healthcare/retirement/education expenses. This will reach an end.

>"At will" employment in the US is way, way more flexible than the kind of system they have in Italy where you'd pretty much have to murder someone while on the clock to get fired. Definitely a win for business.

I agree, it could be a win for employees as well if we changed some of the social norms. One example, change "2 weeks notice" to "give as much notice as they would pay if they laid you off" (In the majority of jobs currently, none) and employers would start offering severance packages again.

It's kind of a complex subject in its own right. One thing that happens with employees in someplace like Italy, is once they get that Permanent Position, they can be very, very reticent to let it go, even for something that is more interesting or has a better work environment or whatever. This has costs for everyone involved.

My own view is that making employers directly responsible for 'social welfare', rather than simply taxing them and providing money for the unemployed through the government, or some such, is suboptimal. If I'm not mistaken, places like Denmark take the latter approach: easy hiring/firing, high taxes, and a lot of benefits. Not everyone might like it, but it seems more efficient than making it impossible to fire people who are not really contributing much.

In italy there are a bunch of people retired in the early 40es, until 3-5 years ago retiring at 60 was normal for EVERYONE. And until about 15 years ago the pension cheque was a very high fraction of the last salary earned, regardless of how much did you contribute in your entire working life. There are stories of newly promoted generals just a couple of month before retirements so that their monthly pension would be substantially higher because of the "retributive" rule. Politicians get a pension after 2 years and half in the parliament regardless of their age. And this is with today rules. With the previous rules there are actually people that get a pension even if they were elected and stayed in charge for something like 3 days. Believe me, you have absolutely no idea of what incredible huge mess is italy pension system.

> One important way we don't compare is that healthcare and retirement costs are a massive drag on our economy.

By "our economy", do you mean private persons? The whole country?

Regardless, coming from one of those magic fairylands of modern Europe - health care and retirement costs are a massive drag on our economy as well, they're just not as easily seen by general people (you certainly don't see it on your pay slip).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_h...

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