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Comment by novaRom | Hacker News Reader

The very first impression after I land at any US airport is - why everything is so inefficient and of such a low quality? Roads, hotel rooms, transportation, food - everything looks inferior to what you see in an average European country. But still, US has higher GDP. Strange.

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The total US GDP is higher because the US population is gigantic compared to typical European countries.

The US GDP-per-capita (adjusted for purchasing power) [1] is only somewhat higher than highly developed European countries.

Given the relatively small GDP gap, the differences you are seeing have to with different cultural and therefore political priorities around spending on public infrastructure and social goods like education and job training. Different as in less.

Also, a lot of the US pattern of production and consumption is based on premise of disposability (with the notable exception of some infrastructure built leading up to WWII).

That has an effect on the durability and perceived quality of the things you see and experience in the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

Even by your source, US GDP PPP per capita is quite significantly higher than most European countries. Most larger European countries are ~75% of the US as a rule of thumb.

Oil and finance distort things quite a lot. Therefore Norway and Ireland.

Fair enough, and I suppose that strengthens my explanation of the OP's observation, that the differences in quality are a result of different national priorities, not lower means.

Still, the American GDP per capita is by far the highest in large countries with more than 20 million people. Countries with a higher value either have a small and easily manageable population, like Norway, an extremely large number of non-citizens as workforce, like Qatar, or a population so small that it's possible to create a generous welfare state from funds by tax evaders, like San Marino.

The two closest countries to America in this category are Australia and Germany, and a trip through Berlin or Melbourne won't make you particularly excited for the countries' infrastructure.

Berlin is the worst example, though – if you’d remove Berlin from Germany, the GDP per capita would actually increase.

Norway is because of oil and gas not small population. Qatar again.

The US is an extremely natural resource rich country as is Australia which explains a lot of the difference in GDP per capita.

Germany is quite a bit behind the US in GPD per capita, much closer to the UK and France than the US.

One thing to remember though is that the way GDP is calculated means that selling the same service for a higher price leads to more GDP so it's a very imperfect measure.

US GDP is comparable to that of the EU, but the US has six times the land area and a lower population. That leads to very different overall patterns of development. I’ve noticed similar differences between the UK and France, which has the about the same population as us but double the land area.

This clearly varies quite a bit, particularly between countries in Europe. Roads, in my limited experience, are often more efficient in the US thanks to higher typical travel speeds and generally more accessible parking. However, they are certainly of less consistent quality compared to at least western European countries.

how about food?

From traveling Europe I honestly thought that it felt cheap in a lot of places so maybe it is just a traveling thing.

I was going to say the same thing. I was in Switzerland a while back and thought "this place looks like an industrial park".

Also, when in the U.K. I thought "everything is so small, can't they afford better?".

Of course I know neither of those is true.

A lot of this spending priorities. America doesn't prioritize public infrastructure at all. Our public transportation is shit, but we spend a lot on cars. To our sensibilities, non-luxury European cars are tiny and ugly.

Maybe it's cultural bias, but I find American hotels of significantly higher quality dollar for dollar. Same goes for food, except for some of the European countries with rich food cultures.

US airports are pretty shitty. I wonder why? Maybe they are older on average?

Also if you are primarily visiting NYC, its sort a shithole by American standards. The hotels are tiny and ridiculously overpriced.

The US is a large country with poor and rich areas. Older airports will be dirtier than newer airports. Generally public transit will be worse as most people drive cars.

Also, per capita GDP is comparable or lower than parts of Western Europe, which will affect how nice/poor it looks.

Per capita GDP is considerably higher for the US than everywhere in Europe except for a few small nations. Norway and Switzerland primarily.

It closed out 2017 near $59,000 for the US. That's nearly 70% higher than the European Union's GDP per capita.

Germany is around $42,000. Austria $44,000. Finland $43,000. Netherlands $45,000. Belgium $41,000. UK $40,000. France $38,000. Italy $30,000. Spain $26,000.

Denmark and Sweden get the closest otherwise at $54k and $51k.

To put it into further perspective, France, Italy, Belgium, the UK would be among the poorest US states on a GDP per capita level, comparable to West Virginia and Arkansas.

The US problem is allocation of resources. $200+ billion should be chopped right off of the military budget and redirected to infrastructure. Another $100 billion could be redirected for infrastructure by altering war on drugs / policing policies.

$300+ billion extra per year into US infrastructure would result in the US having among the best infrastructure on the planet.

To put it in another perspective, US is so inefficient in using resources that they spend relatively more amount of money to get an almost equivalent or in someways inferior quality of life.

The health system is probably several hundred billion more of wasted economic effort.

More of an anti-tax, anti funding government culture in the US.

I went to Paris and at the train station a con artist team stole my luggage. To me, European transit is far shittier than USA; Europe can't even keep criminals from terrorizing its major ports.

Do you really want to compare crime rates between most Western European nations and the US? I think you'll find that the figures don't come out well for the US.

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