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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I dispute the "better business results" claim, I don't think that's factually true. But let's assume it is, why then is wealth so much more concentrated[0] in the US?

Let's assume that the US did have "better business results" and let's also assume that that is the result of worse working conditions. Why then are the workers, working in worse conditions, not benefiting from it directly?

Seems like, if that were true, the US is working average workers harder so that the ultra-wealthy can get even wealthier. Does that benefit society at large?

PS - I'd like to link this, called "The Nordic Model"[1] discusses a lot of good (and bad) about that part of the world.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

[1] https://economics.mit.edu/files/5726

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Workers are benefiting from it, at least financially. The median income in the U.S. is more than 20% higher than in Finland, adjusted for cost of living: https://economistsview.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b33869e20133.... (Note also that the American work-week is only about 7% longer than the Finish work-week.) That difference increases as you go into the upper middle class.

But for the bottom 10%, which in the U.S. largely consists of people who do not work, U.S. incomes are a third lower.

That figure leaves off the cost of healthcare (both premiums and services) for the US but includes it for Finland. So you aren't comparing like with like.

Finland pays $4,033, and the US $9,892 per capita (2016) for healthcare according to OECD figures. Since 2016 healthcare costs in the US have continued to increase faster than the rate of inflation.

The figure includes employer-paid and government-paid insurance for both countries. 80% of health expenditures in Finland are paid by the government or employers, and almost 90% in the U.S. https://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/OECD-Focus-on-Out....

The income figures don't include out-of-pocket healthcare costs, but those are relatively small in both countries: about $1,100 per person per year in the U.S. and it looks like $800-900 per person in Finland. (Which by the way lines up nicely with your figures above, applying the fact that 20% of expenditures in Finland are out of pocket, versus about 11% in the U.S.)

Note that the data linked above is from the "mid-2000s" while we are using healthcare expenditures from 2019. A fairer comparison with more updated data is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c.... Here, the U.S. median household income is almost 30% higher in 2016, or $7,740 per year. The difference in out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for a three-person household reduces that to about $7,000 per year.

>Workers are benefiting from it, at least financially. The median income in the U.S. is more than 20% higher than in Finland, adjusted for cost of living

The difference is useless in the U.S. as its eaten away but healthcare, college costs, and several other kind of expenses...

Not to mention the quality of life, infrastructure, etc those extra 20% get you (even if they weren't eaten away) is way worse...

See above re: healthcare expenses. College costs are also small in comparison to a lifetime of earning thousands of dollars less. Most college graduates in the US have no debt, and the median debt for those that do is $10,000-25,000. Higher American salaries make that up in just a few years. Finnish National pension isn’t any more generous than Social Security, and other expenses are tiny in comparison.

As to “quality of life”—that’s subjective. If I wanted to live in a 900 square foot house without air conditioning, like the average Finn, I’d move back to Bangladesh.

There are 44.2 million borrowers who owe a total of over $1.5 trillion in student debt. That's a 35K average, but there are people owing 50K and 100K.

Not sure where you see the "higher salaries making that up in just a few year", since ex-students are saddled with debt for decades after graduation, and tons of young people can't find decent jobs. Low unemployment doesn't mean "enough paying jobs".

>As to “quality of life”—that’s subjective.

Well, not really.

>If I wanted to live in a 900 square foot house without air conditioning, like the average Finn, I’d move back to Bangladesh.

Well, if you mainly have Bangladesh experience to compare to, it's no wonder why America looks like such a wonderland to you.

For the average American it would be a huge upgrade to live "like the average Finn", even if they don't have the larger (shoddily built, average American houses are the worst I've seen in the west, and I'm not even getting into trailer parks and ready-mades) house.

>> the US is working average workers harder so that the ultra-wealthy can get even wealthier. Does that benefit society at large?

Some people are calling that the "Iron Man" principal. If we can funnel enough money into the hands of billionaires, they will invent the things to solve all the world's problems. The real world is not a comic book.

In contrast, if USA is not performing better then why are most of the digital innovations of US origin? Why do like half of the world's tech billionaires live in Silicon Valley? While Finland has maybe 1?

The Scandinavian countries focus on leveling the playing field for everyone. It allows the less privileged to build a good life, but it also hinders the most ambitious ones. Whereas USA is happy to focus on the extremes, allowing places like Silicon Valley to flourish.

We can argue endlessly whichever is better for the society, but professionals often choose the place to live based on what is best for them, not what political model some place runs on.

Low taxes.

Edit: not anecdotal. I personally know 3 execs from Scandinavian countries who tell me this is why they moved here. Also health care. They travel back to EU for routine stuff, but when they need elective procedures or advanced treatments you just cannot get those back in the EU.

> They travel back to EU for routine stuff, but when they need elective procedures or advanced treatments you just cannot get those back in the EU

Which advanced procedures aren't available in the EU? By the way, you can find private clinics in most EU countries if you don't want to use public health providers.

Yes, in the UK most professional jobs will offer private health as a benefit, plus NHS rules for getting on lists for operations are pretty fair, essentially if you can prove it’s affecting your life you can get operations for lots of things. There are the classic tabloid stories of people getting boob jobs and gender reassignment surgery on the NHS but I’m sure for the people affected it was a godsend.

My own brother got his ear pinned back when he was a teenager because he was being bullied about it at school. Cost nothing and happened within a couple of months of GP appointment.

And obviously being a highly developed western country you can find private clinics for just about anything you want.

I as chatting with someone in UK on Reddit who has some rare disease and trying to see what he could do to improve from it. Apparently he had reached a dead end with the UK medical system but his research indicated there are some doctors in the US who knew more and was desperately trying to find a way to get the same treatment. Sadly all his parents/sibling died from that disease so he had no support network. I felt really bad for him but had no way to help him. All I could suggest is he speak to a patient advocate. What would you have told him differently?

The NHS has been fucked by consistent cuts by the Tory government. Unfortunately they just don’t have enough money to cater for things like this. I would write to my MP but I know that’s just going to be a fart in the wind.

I have my own experience with this, I was/am a heroin addict and it took 12 months to get into any treatment at all. And A&E wait times are increasing year on year, either this winter or next there is going to be a crisis. Already we’ve come close.

I still maintain that for the vast majority of people and ailments the NHS is perfectly adequate, it’s just hobbled by the government at the moment. You could conduct a poll of almost any demographic in the country and they would say they would be willing to pay more taxes if they were ringfenced for the NHS.

> Edit: not anecdotal.

I think that is pretty much anecdotal as per definition.

to clarify, not anecdotal to me having primary sources, but yes anecdotal to those reading my anecdote.

> Why do like half of the world's tech billionaires live in Silicon Valley?

Because wealth is concentrated at the top... That's the whole problem. Society gets poorer while the ultra-wealthy continue to accumulate wealth.

> It allows the less privileged to build a good life, but it also hinders the most ambitious ones.

Good..? So your complaint is that Nordic countries try to make give everyone a good standard of living rather than creating poverty so a few more millionaires can become billionaires? That argument doesn't make any sense to me. I don't even see where you're coming from.

> We can argue endlessly whichever is better for the society, but professionals often choose the place to live based on what is best for them, not what political model some place runs on.

A lot of professionals aren't ultra-wealthy though. They're the ones working longer hours in the US for similar pay relative to most of Europe. They're being exploited harder and seeing nothing as a result except their proportionate spending power diminish further as their healthcare costs continue to outpace their wages.

> So your complaint is that Nordic countries try to make give everyone a good standard of living rather than creating poverty so a few more millionaires can become billionaires?

That's putting words into my mouth. I'm not complaining, merely observing. You're free to want more socialism, nobody is stopping you. I'm not saying one system is better than the other, they all have their own merits.

USA attracts top talent with top salaries, these are the people who are prepared to work hard and expect to be compensated well for that. They understand it's a sacrifice and they're willing to make it. Working willingly hard for a high compensation is not what I'd describe as exploitation.

Such a person in a Nordic country is working hard yet not compensated well for it. I don't see that as a better outcome for them and neither do they - that's why they emigrate to the USA. It's hardly relevant for building their own lives that there's some poor people living elsewhere in the USA.

The poor do not get poorer. It's not a zero sum game. The size of the pie is constantly increasing in absolute terms.

I don't think you understand how US salaries compare to European ones, it's not even close.

>The poor do not get poorer. It's not a zero sum game. The size of the pie is constantly increasing in absolute terms.

Much slower than the pie increases. In fact slices (salaries) in the US have been almost stagnant since the 70s, while the "pie" got 10x the size...

1. Almost stagnant means that they did not increase their % of wealth - their wealth increased. 2. Focusing on income ignores the plummeting costs of goods, what they can buy is much better and more plentiful than they could in the 70s.

>Focusing on income ignores the plummeting costs of goods, what they can buy is much better and more plentiful than they could in the 70s.

Actually the most important good, a house, is much more expensive to buy/rent than in the 60s/70s.

There were times when a middle class family with one working member could afford a house and send the kid to college without huge debt - something near impossible now even with 2 working members.

As for goods, those are hardly a compensation, if people work crazy hours, with stagnant pay, and get less share of _their_ society's wealth (their current society's, not compared to 20, 30 or 1000 years ago, which is what matters. We don't compare ourselves with medieval serfs or cavemen to see if we're doing OK, and we don't pat ourselves in the back in 2019 if we live in a trailer park because we have electricity and some rich person in 1800 wouldn't).

So, yeah, thanks to cheap foreign manufacturing one can have more stuff (just not the important stuff, like house and healthcare and education and better job conditions).

Agreed, healthcare, education, and housing -- the three most regulated and corrupt industries have grown at an accelerated rate. The are hurting people -- they are caused by unlimited loans (education), corruption/bureaucracy/regulation (healthcare), and housing (government regulation/zoning). These have nothing to do with income and production, but instead are caused by poor governing policies and regulation.

Also goods, e.g. electronics, media, communication, food, are of a higher quality than they were in the 70s -- a substantial qualitative difference that is hard to measure and compare over time.

You are in no way answering to the question: why in Silicon Valley and not in Finland or other countries?

Because the military-industrial complex of the world’s largest super power invested in the basic research and infrastructure to create this context. It’s the same reason the Soviet’s excelled in technological pursuits relative to many small European countries and why Russia still has an outsized place in IT.

Because Finland, while would appreciate having such large companies, doesn't want this kind of shitty social environment and inequality, so it doesn't encourage it. Besides, it does just as well (and ever better than the US for the large majority of its citizens) without having billionaires...

The US has 330+ million people and Finland has 7 or so... :-)

>In contrast, if USA is not performing better then why are most of the digital innovations of US origin? Why do like half of the world's tech billionaires live in Silicon Valley? While Finland has maybe 1?

Because there are a lot of people with servant mentality there to cater to their whims...

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