Why Don’t Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are?

For the record I've met quite a few Europeans (French and Germans) and I've asked them about what compelled them to come to the US. At times it does seem like Europe is a less stressful place to live. And the answer I get typically amounts to this;

"In France (or Germany or UK) security is much better than the US. But the opportunity in the US is much better."

I find it strange to mention Spain, and really all the PIIGS nations who not long ago were in financial dire straits and Greece has still not escaped.

The lack of a decent safety net in the US scares the crap out of me. The richest nation in the world should not have this poor a safety net. But to make Europe seem like some workers paradise is laughable.

This results in people, individuals, denying their fellow peers access to things. As for the question the title poses, there's no answer, because it depends on who you ask.

I don't think Americans will ever be convinced collectivism is superior until there's some organization or company created within the States that ends up being far superior to everything else. Only then will people see the overwhelming advantage that comes with the "spread", which is the main advantage of collectivism (meaning the spread of burden and the spread of fortune).

The Musketeers said it best:

All for one and one for all.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

2: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html

Maybe we shouldn’t use vacation anedoctes to try to find what the best political system is?

"so they already look half-dead — order coffee and a croissant, both of which are fairly tasteless"

Sorry, but there are plenty of places where croissants don't suck (give Wegmans a try) - and I'd be hard-pressed to believe that those major US cities don't have bakeries run/owned by real frenchmen.

"Everything I consume in the States is of a vastly, abysmally lower quality. Every single thing. The food,"

Really? Everytime I go to europe, the meat tastes like crap in comparison to US-raised meat, it's tough as a shoe-sole and it's overpriced.

"So my quality of life — despite all my privileges..."

There you have it, this guy has homes in London AND New York. Ask the average EU citizen (I'm not talking about techies, I'm talking about the blue-collar workers) how good they have it.

I compare my upbringing in the States (we lived in France for a year when I was young and it just wasn't for me) and life is far easier on the blue-collar worker in the US if you could find a decent job.

An uncle of mine spent 4 years out of work (machinist) before he found a new job in France. My father worked in a factory in the US for 37 years. This is obviously too small a sample to be significant, but other family have had similar outcomes and difficulties. My mom (who still barely speaks english) wouldn't go back to live in France.

This is still the land of opportunity for those who are willing to work their butts off and take risks. The only thing I wish we had in the US is universal healthcare. It's coming, when the republicans manage to lose congress in 2018.

So yeah, if you're rich a rich hipster, Europe might be "better."

I'll keep my guns, my F150, and my 4,000 square foot (372 sq. meter) house, merci beaucoup.

European cities are not all the same. Similarly for US cities.

And despite the lower quality, things usually are considerably more expensive anyway. If I might just add one more example: housing. Rent prices in the U.S. are generally about twice what they are in Germany for comparable units, and yet the houses here are incredibly flimsy (walls made out of plywood and windows without proper insulation - you just don't see that in Germany) for anyone but the upper class.

And if the comments here are any indicator, the article is also right about the fact that Americans are never even going to realize how poor the quality of life is in comparison to Europe. Instead, they just placate themselves with myths about collectivism, socialism or communism in Europe (none of those are even remotely a thing).

Which is all the more heartbreaking because there are some things about the US that I absolutely love.

In my experience, this is not exclusive to America. It seems to be a feature of very large and diverse countries. I’m an immigrant from Brazil and I saw the exact same thing there. When a country is large and diverse enough, people seem to think that all that there is to be seen is in their own land, and nothing outside can be much different from that. I had friends that refused to accept that life in other nations was objectively better. They claimed it was just “different”, but that quality of life was the same everywhere. Evidently, they had never traveled abroad.

For a couple of years, it was a great, relaxing experience. But on the third year I travelled back for a few days to realize that I miss it like hell - and moved back a month later.

As I'm typing this, I have worked two weeks of crunch time without weekend, in the office late in the evening. For the holidays (which are government mandated off-days), everybody's going on away on vacation, while I'll be coming back to office to finally work on a new thing in silence. I'm full of energy drinks, coffee and sleep deprivation.

I chose this. Not everybody wants a relaxed life. I will die in about 50 years, and I have even less productive ones - I want to spend them making something, not waste them relaxing, lying around. I'm happy like this.

May be that's what's special about America, too?

Why do so many Americans object to universal health care yet complain about insurance premiums? Its something I've never understood as an outside observer.

American exceptionalism isn't a myth, it's a thing. But it has both positive and negative side effects. The positive side effects are a big reason why America still dominates the computer science world - empowering individuals results in innovation, freedom to experiment, freedom to fail (this in particular is lacking in the rest of the world) and freedom to chart your own path. Obviously, this is a range, it's not a binary switch, but over and over, I consistantly see American engineers take risks and try things that their foreign counterparts don't often do. Of course, as with everything, individuals differ, but opportunity exists here. This matters - Americans routinely identify as happier, less prone to suicide, and have higher productivity.

The second factor that this author seems blind to is that the rest of the world has become more and more American - not just western, but American. This is often sad, the difference between walking down Sukhumvit in Bangkok even five years ago - with the tuk-tuks and ethnic celebrations and baht's in the pocket - versus listening to rap, catching a uber from the airport, and using your US credit card is pronounced. But in general, Americanization (under the name globalization) has resulted world wide in a world that is kinder, more inclusive, more humane, less people dying of war & starvation etc. There is a result of the post-war strategy that American embraced and led the world on (and is now turning it's back on with Trump). The fact that Europe can focus on it's own prosperity and not the never-ending regional conflicts is built on Winston Churchill's call for "A united states of Europe" and the security of NATO.

Now are there things that should be much better then they are? Obviously yes. Health care is a obvious one. But again, that also ignores the fact that Americans are basically fronting the R&D cost for almost all of the world right now. We have to improve this. We have to improve income disparity, but without going through the devesation that collectivist systems can impose. We have to relearn how to compromise, and return to the first principles of democracy. But this article is mostly the typical European-exceptionalism ;-)

That unhappiness is the result of many things: major changes in the job market leaving millions without opportunities, the collapse of hundreds of small towns and communities, the disintegration of the nuclear family, etc.

Ironically, materially, Americans are much better off than they were decades ago, but all that material prosperity has left people unsatisfied.

In my opinion the problem goes much deeper than this, as Augustine said:

> You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

But the inadequacy of consumerism is maybe more clear.

The overall objectives in the US are different. So in most countries, for example, a transportation system is designed to move people around. So a train line can run to an airport,for example. In most US cities its goals are seemingly different (spend as little as possible, regardless of externalities? Punish people who can't afford a car? Make a political point? It's never clear).

The transaction costs (both in time as well as actual $) of the most routine things are higher. So yes the taxes are lower but overall costs (the difference between total and disposable income) usually end up higher.

I do love working in the USA, and have done so for the majority of my (35+y) working life. The people are friendly (as they typically are most places). But day to day life in the US is a drag compared to life in other wealthy countries (I have lived and worked for years in Australia, Asia and Europe).

Part of my objection to that article is that things are more alike than they are different. Cartels can exert control to maintain rents (taxi unions, for example -- my train example isn't quite as cut and dried as I made out).

And in in the US when there's a difficult political dispute both sides typically battle it out, and amp it up, making resolution harder and fostering public cynicism and apathy. In Europe when there's a difficult political dispute both sides typically make a muddle, kicking the ball down the street and hoping the problem will go away, making resolution harder and fostering public cynicism and apathy. In the parts of Asia where I lived, when there's a difficult political dispute nothing really happens unless someone is strong enough to simply make a decision (a strongman perhaps, or the bureaucracy) which isn't particularly democratic and fosters, at best, public cynicism and apathy.

Seriously? This is an absurd exaggeration. For one thing, GMOs are safe, and EU policy on them is utterly backwards. For another, this is some transparent application of the "natural food is safer" fallacy. Food here isn't "full of toxins", that's mythology invented to support the bottom line of "organic" grocers -- there are occasional issues, but those also happen in Europe. And food colorings are much less dangerous than, say, sugar. But Europe has fake olive oil and the infamous practice of dumping substandard products in Hungary and other poor countries and probably some other problems I'm not aware of because I'm not a propagandist.

Should we have a better healthcare system? Absolutely. Everything else in this article is mostly an issue of lifestyle preference and ideology.

I love how he compares the some of the worst US cities to some the best European cities. All the while ignoring the issues those European cities are currently facing (mounting debt, exit from the European Union, mass immigration) while highlighting all the bad things in the US cities he cherry picks to prove his points.

I wonder if the author has ever been the Northwest. Has he ever been to Washington? Oregon, Idaho, or Colorado? I have and they're all amazing states with many, many cities with their own little cultures and laid back lifestyles. The scenery is second to none, the air clean, the people incredibly hospitable.

I won't dissect the entire article, but when you're cherry picking statistics to prove your points (most of which are subjective and not even factual) it's easy to say how much more awesome Europe is.

We have now descended into the hyper-atomization of the individual as a series of micro-collectives, for whom we must fight among ourselves against others with different series of collectives. We now care not for whether our lives are good, merely that we see the other having a bad time.

Mourn for us, and learn from us - do not follow in our footsteps.

While I generally try to avoid talking like this on HN, I don't see how to avoid it here:

The author of this piece is a pretentious asshole. Basically every premise he argues is wrong or purely opinion based. Taking a quick look at his Medium post history, this sort of article seems to be his bread and butter of writing subjects, as well.

Some people have to work earlier than 9 or 10am in these countries. (Who does he think is making the trains run and brewing the coffee he drinks? Do they not count as people working?) Plenty of people in the US don't have to work until 9 or 10. Plenty of people go home at 5 in the US.

US food tastes worse? Man, I've been to London. I've been to Berlin. Two of his examples. I've had a variety of food at each. Were their non-chain cafes and restaurants better than some of the US chains? Sure. Were they better than non-chain cafes and restaurants in the US? No. And the US has EVERYWHERE else beat on food diversity. Not a single city in Europe can hold a candle to the food diversity you get in New York City, Los Angeles, or even Houston. With average quality being similar at non-chains, and the absolute diversity being significantly better in the US compared to anywhere else in the world, the American diner that wants to eat more than Chile's or Applebee's or whatever is in a better position than the average diner in the UK. On the top end, in the Michelin world, I don't think there's a clear winner, but having eaten at a variety of 3 star places in the US and abroad, I can say it's comparable.

You can't watch documentaries on US TV? Completely false. You can't watch Swedish crime noir? Well, probably true. But we're also living in a post-cable world. Things like Netflix and other streaming services open up much more global access to media. And the idea that America is incapable of producing quality and interesting media is insane.

Fashion, art, etc? All somehow objectively worse in America? The suppositions here are just blatantly influenced by personal opinion.

I don't think America is the best at everything in the world. Basically everywhere I've spent time internationally - and some of that is a lot of time! - there are specific things that I think are done better than their American counterpart. But I can also point at things that are done worse. Even things that people laud a country for. People act like Germany has the best beer in the world - yet from an objective standpoint they have been largely at a creative standstill for more than a century. America is clearly at the forefront of craft beer, experimenting more, creating more, doing more and better than anywhere else. And beer might seem like a silly thing to measure anything by, but this whole article kicked off by talking about coffee, so whatever.

He pulls out one statistic that he can prove - life expectancy - and then lists a string of others stating that they are the same. Some of them are so vague as to be meaningless - America is statistically worse at "stress" - what does that mean? Others, you look, and sure enough, America isn't on top. But then you look at something else. Japan is #1 in Life Expectancy - but then press freedom, another one of the things the author is championing as an important measurement, Japan is significantly worse than the US. Or the UK is ranked basically the equivalent. Quality of democracy? The US ranks higher than portions of the EU, lower than some, but the absolute quality is so similar that the first 30 points in ranking are largely indistinguishable.

There are things wrong with America. There are very few things I can say that I think America is best at - though there are some!

But it's a pretty good place to live. And if you look at the balance of all of these important rankings, the US averages out pretty well, because while it isn't topping any of them, it'w consistently good to okay at worst, whereas some other countries that are exemplary of some of what he claims as important have crazy swings on their rankings and are terrible at others. The US ranks higher in happiness than the majority of the EU. It ranks lower in suicide rates. If we're going to look at specific sets of statistics, are these not important too?

If this article was "Why don't Americans understand that they're not the world leaders on every single aspect of life", it would make sense. The US could do with understanding that it is a world leader in very few things. That there is a lot of room for improvement. But the idea that life on average is so much worse in America than it is in the rest of the world is stupid.

America's got the choices, they are expensive because they are not subsidized the same ways or at all.

The cause it seems is propaganda.

You're going to the wrong restaurants, friend