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You'd be absolutely shocked at how little a vast majority of Americans are in interested in paying taxes to improve their communities from the smallest to the largest. I don't really get it because I've lived here my whole life and you can pretty much 100% guarantee the more a locality taxes their populace the better the quality of life is, at least in the states. I live in a town (Boulder, CO) where this isn't the case and it's such a breath of fresh air.

There's such a prevalent "the federal government is less efficient than private business" attitude it's mind blowing. This despite the fact that in any area where public competes with private public wins here every single time (ISPs, Infrastructure, Criminal Justice, etc)

edit. oh yeah and the army of "well at least the poor here aren't literally dying of starvation en masse"

>I don't really get it because I've lived here my whole life and you can pretty much 100% guarantee the more a locality taxes their populace the better the quality of life is, at least in the states.

..what? This makes no sense. My quality of life was significantly better when I lived in TX than when I lived in SF, and you already know which one taxed me more. Even a lot of public infrastructure, like roads and highways especially, was just so much better. Plus, even though TX doesn't do much to help the homeless, the likelihood that the author would have ended up homeless in the first place is lower because home ownership is feasible. And the programs the OP is referring to, social safety net type things, aren't local but national in scale.

That said, I do like the idea but the quoted statement just makes no sense to me.

Yeah I mean if you think the quality of life is higher anywhere in Texas than San Francisco obviously I'm not going to convince you of much.

edit. yeehaw, downvotes

Quality of life at $600 a month is greater in SF than Texas? You must be kidding right.

People like him equate cost with quality of life. "SF is more expensive, therefore it must be a better place to live". It's a sad and naive outlook that a lot of consumers grow up with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life

hth

the quality of life in san francisco is absolutely abysmal unless you are the top 10% in either wealth or income.

being able to spend $300 on a multi-course crudo and wine prix fixe dinner for 2 is not 'quality of life', that just means you're rich and you like nice shit. you can do that anywhere there are other rich people, texas included.

most people consider quality of life to be cleanliness, low crime, affordable property, personal freedoms, etc., all of which are in dramatic short supply in san francisco.

San Fransisco does have a great deal of personal freedoms, has low crime and is clean compared to tons of cities across the states. Beyond that, I don't know that San Fransisco would be the ideal model because they aren't really what I'm talking about, cities that collectively pitch in to use taxes to provide more services. In many cases, SF isn't doing that.

All of that being said, Texas, by any measure, is a way worse place to live in the US than SF if you actually do value things like a criminal justice system that doesn't make a point of murdering the mentally disabled.

Constant arguments along the same lines with my friends. Half of us live in big cities, the other half live in Montana.

"Homeless tent city outside my apartment has grown 2x in the last week" -1 Big City

"I went to Glacier Park last Saturday" -1 Big City

"I make >$180k" +1 Big City

"I ordered pizza from a place that wasn't Dominos" +1 Big City

Yeah the problem comes when you have cities like Boulder which are very close to natural wonders and are actively pursuing policies to deal with homelessness in the local community instead of throwing their hands up with statements like this:

> And the programs the OP is referring to, social safety net type things, aren't local but national in scale.

They are because you choose to make it that way, and that's why Texas is a shithole. It's not that here is perfect, it's that they actually are taking steps that make sense to try to improve things. Texas's laws as a state pretty much preclude any sort of development there in that direction. That's beyond the absurd political climate you have to deal with in a state where Rick Perry was governor multiple times.

I used to live in LA, now I live in Austin and travel all over Texas for a living. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Texas has shitty roads that are way too narrow and full of potholes, a non-existent public transport system, and quite a few more homeless people per capita than SF. The difference with the last one is that you don't see them as often, because Texans aren't nearly as tolerant as homeless people as Bay Area residents, so the homeless hang out in places such as highway underpasses and the wilderness areas surrounding the cities. You know, out of sight of the rich.

> quite a few more homeless people per capita than SF

Citation please.

This is an issue with comparing large states with cities. You can't compare LA or SF w/ Texas anymore than you can compare Austin with Dallas. It makes statements like "quite a few more homeless people per capita than SF" unfair (or possibly just straight false in your case). For instance, you could easily say "CA has WAY more homeless per capita than Texas" and actually be accurate.

Similarly, you can't making sweeping generalizations about potholes across the state in TX or CA since people don't live in every area of the state all of the time. And wrt quality of life, which is an extremely subjective measure, public transport may not be what the local citizens want compared with road infrastructure that isn't well known to be mired in traffic (again, depends on where you are, but CA consistently ranks worst here).

It's bad enough comparing two states at that high level, it's even worse to throw in subjective opinions about quality of life on specific things.

> My quality of life was significantly better when I lived in TX than when I lived in SF

I'm not sure what your personal experience represents. We really need some data.

How much of that thinking really comes from the mindset that believes govt is not doing a good job with the taxes they are already paying them. If our DMVs, EPA, Education systems are all working efficiently and in a modern way, more people will change their mind.

Maybe they aren't because we refuse to fund them adequately? If Americans keep electing Democrats and Republicans who make it a point to ensure those agencies remain unfunded... it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy at that point.

Are you sure this is a good reason to witness what happens when you walk into a DMV and wait for forever to get something done.

Then it means there is no proper oversight. This also has to be corrected. Corrections take resources but measures have to be designed and vetted first.

We pay taxes now, it just goes to everything else but local communities. Politicians decide where that money goes. The military gets a lot of it, which could be argued is a socialist plan to employ at risk youth fresh out of high school and give jobs to factory workers making military vehicles they don't need. We spend a lot on military so that most of NATO, etc doesn't have to, so they can have their safety nets.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

Having escaped from poverty in my 20s (I'm one of those guys who made it in software via dumb luck and no college degree) that's a cozy concept, but I don't think it's at all accurate. The poor people I grew up with have no idea of the life we lead. They live in a world where there's no such thing as air travel, you'll probably never travel outside the US, having your car start in the morning (if you've got one) is a sometimes thing, and you'd be mega-rich if you had 4 figures in your bank account - and that's all most of them have ever experienced. They don't see themselves as embarrassed millionaires, because most of them don't even have the faintest understanding of what that means.

Socialism did take hold. It was brutally repressed.

The battle of blair mountain is a clear example of what happens when workers demand fair treatment in America. They didn't just send the army in to break the strike, they sent the air force.

Though they lost, in the long term it raised awareness enough to actually lead to organized labor victories like the New Deal (which effectively led to the creation of the middle class 'good life' from the 50s).

The thing that really worries me is that another, similar battle would be necessary in order to arrest the current decline of the middle class.

Is this mentioned ? the new deal thing is world famous, but not the blair mountain event. History ...

I had never heard of it until I saw it mentioned in an HN comment a year or so ago. For anyone who's interested, here's a link to the Wikipedia article on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

I just read Economix, no mention of it, but I can't blame it really.

> The battle of blair mountain is a clear example of what happens when workers demand fair treatment in America. They didn't just send the army in to break the strike, they sent the air force.

The air force? in the 1920s?

Looking into this, it seems that pilots were hired to drop bombs on the miners during the uprising.

Just because you have some insurance your state isn't a socialist state. Socialism would actually mean poverty for everyone.

I think even in the US people pay taxes and the government buys things from that which are supposed to help everybody (like, say, roads). Ooops - I guess you already live in a socialist state.

Why is it OK to build roads with tax money, but not to provide social insurance?

In the end, society pays either way for people who have fallen on hard times: either they pay for welfare, or they pay indirectly by having to deal with the inconvenience they cause (like, as I have heard, human turds on SF streets).

Bottom 10% in US live considerably better than OECD bottom 10% average (#4 of OECD countries) and better than top 10% in a lot of countries [0]. Perhaps that's what drive the optimism in the US.

[0] http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/05/daily-c...

Since you present this number, then I assume you have read how this have been calculated, and can give some credible answer to e.g. why the low 10% in America are considered better off than the bottom British, Germans, Australians and Swiss.

Having been in several of these countries and knowing people who have lived there it simply does not strike me as believable. Maybe it is true, but I'd like to hear some articulated reason for it.

Here are my counter points. We know that for all these other countries supposedly worse off than America health care access for the bottom is considerably better. Access to education is better. Crime levels are lower. So within what area is it that American's gain the upper hand?

I've seen studies like this before giving poor Americans an upper hand and all to often it is due only focusing on material aspects. E.g. the poor in the US usually have bigger houses, more microwaves, bigger cars etc than the poor elsewhere. This is often given as evidence that they are better of while ignoring the fact that poor Americans have significantly worse access to health care and education than other people. Also Europeans e.g. spend a lot more on travel than on just accumulating stuff at home. So quality of life is difficult to asses exclusively by just adding up stuff.

Well certainly how "well off" someone is requires a value judgement. Everyone has preferences and one individual may prefer to be bottom 10% in one country as opposed to another. The scale is based off data compiled by OECD and includes the below:

Housing Income Jobs Community Education Environment Civic Engagement Health Life Satisfaction Safety Work-Life Balance

Another index includes EPI’s State of Working America Report [0] as well as research from World Bank economist Branko Milanovic [1].

I understand you might disagree with methodology or how they weigh certain aspects and that's perfectly fine. But if you come across some objective measure that tell me that people in the US are considerably worse off than other Western nations (in absolute terms), I would like to see it.

[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/01/astonishi...

[1] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...

I would echo the NYTimes review of Milanovic's book. It is an outstanding read.

Edit: I tried looking at the study and the factors and numbers they used. I find it very unconvincing. The numbers are very abstract and the weighting rather arbitrary. You'd have to correlate these numbers by sampling actual people in each country at the bottom and top half and see how they live. When you conclude that the bottom 10% of Americans all living on food-stamps are about as well off as the top 10% Italians then something seems very wrong with the methodology.

It is actually very hard to come by studies and comparisons of these things, but one knows certain facts, which is that health care is not easily accessible to the poor in the US, while it generally is in other western nations. We also know that college costs considerably in the US if you are not especially talented and get a scholarship.

Germany which is supposed to much worse than the US according to this study offers cheap health care and college to all citizens.

So I am not saying this study IS wrong. I have no proof of that. It simply isn't believable to me unless somebody can offer a proper explanation for the way in which say poor swiss or germans are worse off than the poor americans.

This would not be the first time I've come across dubious studies like this. There have been studies in the past where they claimed Mississippi was better off than Sweden. If you start looking into this assertion and talk to people who have been both places it becomes clear that the assertion is completely ridiculous. It is one of the many cases in which statistics can serve you a fat lie.

Fair enough, but I would take several flawed studies over anecdotal evidence to the contrary. I would also point out the net migration numbers to the US suggest that it really is the land of opportunity.

Why not get and provide true raw numbers? Or are these manipulated on purpose?

There sure are a lot of people who don't live here and carefully explain our attitudes to us as though the filters of bias are somehow pure perception. I used to get annoyed by it, but now I just find it endlessly amusing.

If I were as clever as a feminist, I guess I could call it Eurosplaining.

well it helps them to talk down about American and over exaggerate the issues here so they can ignore what they don't want to see at home.

There are enough horror stories everywhere that people fail to acknowledge, first world problems pale in comparison what people suffer in the non Western worlds. From complete lack of some basics we considering necessary to every day threats to their lives and property, should they even have the ability own anything.

Why do you think "well it's worse other places" is some sort of defense for our callous handling of our social safety nets? All while every other industrialized nation shows a better way (see: Healthcare)

I find it odd that you care more about the perception of your country than actually dealing with the horrible problems you have.

What is more important solving poverty in America or shut up some smug European saying unfavorable things about America?

I would never excuse problems in Norway by saying look how horrible it is for people in Ethiopia. We are a rich country and should be judged by those standards. So is America. It ought to be embarrassing that you are even competing with third world countries.

In your sad world I guess you imagine that this is a game to me. That I just want to embarrass America to feel all good about myself. I don't. I feel deeply sad about the many people suffering in the US. Why do I not feel the same about people in say South Africa?

Well we humans are odd. We don't care equally much about everybody. As Europeans we will feel strong kinship with Americans. We have many family members there and we can relate to American society as it is another western society with many of the same values.

Solving Uganda, Jordan or Colombia's problems are very difficult not at least because they are poor. America's problem seems like the most unnecessary problems in the world because America is so wealthy and still have third world problems. They could have been solved with political will.

Other countries don't have that luxury, they actually have to build and industrial base and get rich first.

I've lived in the US and my wife is American. I also have distant relatives in the US. I know what their lives are like and I know the struggles various members of my wife's family has gone through as well as my distant relatives.

I work with a lot of Americans and deal with a lot of American companies.

I'd say in many ways I think see America clearer than a lot of Americans because they have nothing to compare it with. I've lived in several countries and I can compare my experiences. If you have never lived abroad you tend to take too many things for granted and you become blind to so many realities in your own country.

Anyway it isn't like American's are the quite guys in the corner never volunteering their opinions to anybody else about how the rest of the world should be run. Quite the opposite, except American are frequently extremely opinionated about things they know absolutely nothing about.

If you were a Congressman, you would call the American version of this phenomena the Voice of America. (The conclusions that it draws are consistently pro-business, anti-labour, pro-Pax Americana, anti-red, etc.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America

What's especially sad is that it would probably save us money to get homeless people off the street and we still don't do it. If getting her a place to live would have prevent even one of her thirteen hospitalizations in the past year, that would almost certainly have a positive ROI.

This has been proven, I can't find the link but there was a study done with statistics for New York and they found that the homeless cost on average about $30k a year to keep homeless, between interactions with the police/jails, ER visits because they can't get medical care any other way, reduction in property values, etc. On the flip side putting them in cheap housing with a shower, food, and a TV would cost s fraction of that but there's no way in hell you're going to sell that to the American culture as long as the bootstraps narrative holds.

Are you thinking of this? http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic...

>>But I guess that is what happens when you build a whole country on the myth that the life you get is completely your own choice.

Congratulations on figuring out freedom doesn't exactly mean what people think it means.

But really that's what freedom actually means. You are responsible for your life. Both good and bad parts of it.

There is never a way to fully control everything in your life. And the poorer you get, the less you can control.

Poor do not get to shop for jobs, move to healthier or cheaper places (especially faraway), spend money or time on exercise. (if they attempt to make ends meet) Older people are much less wanted on the job market too.

Nobody is God. Nobody can fix everything.

So to you the only options possible is suffering for poor people, or massive government programs?

That is really the only 2 options you believe can exist?