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Comment by maccard | Hacker News Reader

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maccard

I agree with your sentiment but -

> you can't put a price on a 5min commute to work and letting your children play outside

That's very achieveable in parts of the US, and unachieveable in parts of the UK.

> having ghettos or "bad areas" in your city

Not exclusive to the US by any means. Plenty of nice cities in the UK have ghetto/bad areas.

> sending your kids to university without paying anything

If you live in England, this is definitely not applicable. Based on [0] (no idea how reputable the source is, but the first I could find) The average student loan debt is just shy of £35k. Anyone who borrowed for university from 2012 or later is paying 3% + RPI interest on their loans - That's fairly substantial.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/376423/student-loans-eng...

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Thanks for commenting maccard, but looks like you haven't read my comment or read it superficially.

Nevertheless, since I'm commenting already might as well add two more things. One thing is I get 29 days of PAID annual holiday. I've head from my US colleagues that in US you can take about a week or two of UNPAID holiday in a year.

Not to mention that women can go on maternity leave for a whole year and then come back to work without losing any rights whatsoever and also get paid 40 weeks of their maternity leave while in the US women can take up to 3 months of UNPAID maternity leave and only if they've worked for a company at least a year.

Yeah traffic can still be bad in the UK, but ghetto wise the US have it worse because of their gun laws (and seen from the murder rate). Also student loans are paid for by the UK government, and you only have to pay it off after graduating, and even then it's basically a small percentage of your earnings. Also after 25 years they write off the debt anyway.

I wasn't actually talking about traffic, I was purely talking affordability. e.g. You can live in nice areas around Leamington-Spa with 5-15 minute commutes in light traffic, with huge amounts of green space for kids, or you could live in Zone 4 and have to commute to the City every day. Similarly in the US, you could commute to Mountain view, and live in a city condo, or you could live in Raleigh, NC and work for SAS/Red Hat, and live in a wonderful outdoor area 10 minutes away.

Sure, the worst areas in the US are worse than the worst areas in the UK, but that doesn't mean that the worst areas in the uk don't suck. You said you couldn't put a price on not having ghettos, not that the ghettos in the UK are better than the US equivalent. Besides, being on HN, the majority of us aren't going to be living in the Missions or Paisley.

> Also student loans are paid for by the UK government, and you only have to pay it off after graduating, and even then it's basically a small percentage of your earnings.

Right, but you still have to take out a 35k loan, and pay 9% of your earnings for 25 Years, or until it's paid off. That definitely doesn't sound like having to pay nothing to me.

> Right, but you still have to take out a 35k loan, and pay 9% of your earnings for 25 Years, or until it's paid off. That definitely doesn't sound like having to pay nothing to me.

The student loan really isn't that big of a big deal, because it's 9% of your salary OVER £25,000. So at the moment on £27k, I pay about £15 a month. If I stop going to work or earn less than £25k then I won't have to pay anything back (unlike normal loans).

Ideally the tuition fees would be free like in Scotland, but the English loans aren't as big of a deal as you're making them out to be.

The student loans also include money for living costs (if desired), some of which is free (and doesn't have to be paid back) depending on household income. We also pay year by year, so we wouldn't have to commit to £35k straight off the bat, just £9k per year. So if you decide to drop out after first year, you'd be in £9k of debt (or slightly more if you took out extra money for living costs).

Source:

https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/what-you-pay

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