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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

American house are big because we are rich and lightly taxed. It’s striking to me that the whole article goes without mentioning the wealth difference between Americans and most Europeans. The gap in household disposable income between the US and France is comparable to the gap between France and Latvia or Chile: https://financialobserver.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017....

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Hong Kong has a gross disposable income of 327K HKD [1], equivalent to $41,792 USD. That's higher than every country in that list except the US. Needless to say, Hong Kong houses—fewer than 500 sq ft on average—are nowhere near the size of American houses.

Canada is below France in that table, but Canada has large houses as well—2,200 sq ft, compared to below 1,500 sq ft for France.

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/755874/hong-kong-disposa...

To add, HK's land area is orders of magnitude smaller than the U.S. Maybe Americans can simply afford to build on far bigger land given their income.

Right. I would guess the combination of available space and culture dominates income-related concerns. The places with big houses tend to be former British colonies that cover vast territories and feature an individualistic culture: Australia, Canada, and the US.

Hong Kong is also 1.5 times the size of NYC with about the same population. It's not quite comparable to other countries with a much lower population to area ratio.

Nevertheless, the average house size in New York City is 1,010 sq ft [1]. In this case, the cultural differences between Hong Kong and the US would seem to dominate.

[1]: https://www.6sqft.com/in-new-york-city-how-much-space-is-too...

I wouldn't say, "lightly taxed". I pay over 50% of my annual income in federal, state, and sales tax. I also pay between 1% - 4% of the value of my real estate every year in property taxes, depending on the jurisdiction. Then there are the fees ($1,000 annual vehicle registration fees, for example).

I pay the same, but I (and I assume you) live in the highest taxed state & city in the country. This is very far from what the median American citizen pays.

1. How the hell is your tax rate so high.

2. $1000 in (annual) vehicle registration fees means you’re driving a sweet car, so I wouldn’t complain. In some European countries you might pay 100% or more of the vehicles sales cost in taxes and fees.

Not the poster but I’d assume that things add up between 37% top federal bracket, 13.3% top California bracket and 10%ish sales tax rate depending on where one lives in the state.

Those are top rates, unclear whether “over 50%” refers to effective tax rate once all deductions are taken care of.

That’s lightly taxed compared to say France, where the 41% marginal rate kicks in around $80,000 and the VAT is 20%.

As a contractor in Poland I pay 19% income tax + about €320 fixed pension fund and health insurance, which are both partly tax-deductible.

There's of course VAT, but Americans have sales tax, which is lower, but significant.

All in all taking into account average VAT paid per month my tax rate is 32%.

This is lightly taxed.

This is all very wrong. You don't count income in brackets, and tax deductions correctly.

This doesn't fit because the income range between the country side (where you can have huge houses and lots of land for cheap) vs the city (where a postage stamp house is expensive) doesn't match with income levels. (low in the country vs high in the city).

That would mean that countries with even higher disposable income than the US have even larger houses.

This is evidently not the case.

(I am also not a fan of using averages in terms of comparing income across countries)

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