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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice.

I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in Western Europe or Japan ends up with better infrastructure than the $2M duplex in California

Then you get to grocery stores, and you have to go to the “fancy places” to even get the baseline of quality you see in the rest of the developed world. All the chocolate is bad.

My dad has a really expensive american-made fridge. It sucks. The UX is awful and it basically just looks shiny.

Maybe this is the result of 30 years of wage stagnation. I like to think it’s the result of people not really traveling abroad (reasonable! It’s expensive and far away). People don’t get that so many other places are just nicer and have higher quality things for cheaper.

There’s some quote about how somebody was super poor when growing up but was fine about it because they didn’t realize it. I think about that all the time when looking at some stuff in the US.

View on HN

German citizen here. I travel to the US quite often - I find that the quality of the Grocery stores is on average one level up. The quality of the goods sold there is another story. But mid-and southern Europe likes it cheap when it comes to these things. There is a reason why we call them "discounters".

I really do hear you on the housing quality - it's ridiculous what people are willing to put up with over there. We have friends living in the southern bay area who pay 3.5k for a 2.5 bedroom apartment in an apartment complex - the whole thing calls itself "Luxury Residencies". Ain't no luxury there. Like you describe everything is built extra cheap: from the walls, to the kitchen appliances and the plumbing. There is a massive top-loader in their supply closet that sounds like it runs on it's own ICE, built in the 50s. In Europe this would be considered a very basic apartment but it's already considered 1-2 levels higher than average and not even 3 years old.

I do think there is something to your Galapagos syndrome theory.

The effect on housing you see is a unique artifact of unconstrained unregulated capitalism: Property investment firms and private, "house flippers" have been buying up old houses at market value in many US cities for over a decade. They paint them grey, put new cabinets in, a new shiny refrigerator, and put it back on the market for double the price.

The first time one of these places sells (with black mold still in the basement, asbestos in the walls, and lead paint the children's room) the value of the nearby houses goes up and everyone starts looking to sell THEIR old beat up black mold and asbestos special. It starts a boom and suddenly a whole neighborhood of 300k$ houses become 1million$ grey monstrosities.

This all drives up the cost of new construction as well (which is always a little more pricey than buying an older home) and so you get overpriced mansions that you describe as well, but the root cause is the removal of the entire "bottom" of the market. It is now almost impossible to find what Americans call a "fixer-upper" in some cities.

It certainly takes something to look at a housing market where regulations enforce artificial scarcity and say that everything wrong with it is the result of capitalism...

Capitalism is the reason that regulations exist. Apartments cost less than single family homes. Makes total sense for developers to get regulations passed that prevent that sort of competition.

I mean, I suppose you could call regulatory capture 'capitalism'... But seeing as most people's response to 'capitalism failing' is to call for more regulation, I don't think that that's really fair.

I think you're under a delusion that 'government' and 'capitalism' are separate things.

Well, there exist countries that have government without capitalism, so yes I do believe they are.

sigh... you can't have capitalism without government.

From my experience of living in a college town where there seems to be a new "luxury apartment" building being built every week, "luxury apartment" is code for overpriced crap aimed at young people who are spending mom and dad's money

Please don’t use the Bay Area as a proxy for US housing. It’s an extreme outlier.

Million dollars houses would be regarded as unliveable in other parts of the US.

I'm inclined to agree. I've lived in Japan (5 years), in San Francisco (6 years), and now live in Germany. The food quality goes Europe -> Japan -> USA, with a sharp drop between Japan and the USA.

I'm currently living in Leipzig, which still has bombed-out looking empty buildings from the time of the Iron Curtain (although things have finally been picking up over the past few years). And yet even here the infrastructure is better than in San Francisco or any other part of the USA I've visited. I'm originally from Canada, and I'm sad to say that, although some things are better than the USA (like the roads and the trash), it's not by much, and it's still terrible compared to the rest of the first world.

I'd ague that Japan's quality is a bit better than EU but also depends on what food you are used to. Mainly healthy options wise I think Japan stands out even more.

It’s so hard to get a proper vegetable conveniently in the US, while in Japan you can get it at a 7-11.

In California, proper vegetables are very attainable.

When I've visited, I've noticed that the fruit in particular look gorgeous in the shops, but taste like damp tissue paper. Weird

> When I've visited, I've noticed that the fruit in particular look gorgeous in the shops, but taste like damp tissue paper. Weird

Thank the market: the food companies have prioritized durability, yield, and appearance over taste.

https://www.npr.org/2011/07/09/137623954/the-troubled-histor...

> On top of that, the tomatoes you see in those supermarkets have been bred for high yields and durability, not flavor. "As a farmer once said — an honest farmer — 'I don't get paid a cent for flavor,'" Estabrook says.

Which shops? That's true of the big chains (Safeway, Trader Joe's, Costco can be hit or miss), but you can get ugly-but-great-tasting fruit in plenty of the local produce markets.

What I meant to say was “as convenience food” as in already cooked and not a salad. Plenty of good stuff in stores, but not a lot from the available quick food places

In North Carolina, it's very easy to get proper vegetables.

In much of the rural US, it’s easy (ask folks which farmstand they go to). In cities, it’s also pretty easy (asian or mexican grocery for non-organic, specialty produce shop if you want organic). The problem is the suburbs. Don’t live in the suburbs. If you must, get veggies at the farmer’s market.

Every suburb I've been in has a big box grocery store with a large selection of fresh produce. If you want something specific you might need to go to a specialty store, but there are plenty of vegetables where people buy groceries. You won't find them at gas stations, but nobody buys groceries at gas stations.

As identified in sibling posters, the issue with these vegetables, in as much as one exists, and speaking very broadly, is that they look pretty but are flavorless.

I've seen others, Arianna Grande on a amateur video amongst them, complaining about the diff in quality between European and US street food being inconceivable .

Like, US street food being incredibly better or worse than EU?

It can’t be better - the US basically HAS no street food outside of New York.

I visited Portland a few years ago and the quantity and quality of street food being offered was amazing. There were entire squares packed with vendors.

I enjoy the street food scene in London, but I'd choose Portland over it any day.

Over downtown near the waterfront during a farmers market, or food trucks?

food cart pods, spread throughout the city. less than there were, but still quite a few. typically, they range an entire city block.

In my case: food trucks.

Most food carts in Portland charge about the same amount as non-food carts. For most people, if it's not cheaper, it aint street food.

Street food has a price threshold?

In China, street food might cost 20 yuan for a dish of something. The median income for all of China’s is 18,000 yuan.

In Portland, the median income is $53,230. A street dish might cost $10.

In China, street food is actually a lot more expensive than Portland, adjusting for median income levels. Even if you bought a dish for 10¥ it is still more than twice as expensive as Portland.

Are we to say that China’s street food ain’t street food? Because that’s what you are suggesting which basically means that no street food is street food.

I meant if it costs the same as a restaurant, it's not cheaper and thus I wouldn't call it street food. I wasn't comparing across cities. If a decent restaurant decides to ditch their downtown indoor restaurant, and decide to get a food cart and offer the same food for the same price as they did, is it really street food?

A number of popular food carts in Portland have a median price of $10 or above. For things like Mediterranean food I've often found restaurants charging the same or less. At the end of the day, I'm paying for the privilege of standing in the cold/rain.

That is objectively false. Since I doubt anyone from my neighborhood taco stand or hot dog carts is on HN, I'm offended on their behalf

What US street food ? There is none.

Even in NY, the traditional "American" food carts sell hotdogs, pretzels, ice cream or $1 pizza. All of which are IMO, pretty sub-par for street food. It is only since halal carts became a thing, that NY street food has started becoming alright. There are some other great food carts, but 1 off carts get overshadowed by the dozens of familiar NYC foods.

US's culinary strength lies in the diversity of cuisines. However, most affordable international food places are not opened by aspiring chefs. Rather, it is usually struggling immigrants who use it as a way to survive in the absence of other employable skills. While I respect the hustle, these people can obviously not cook at the same level as ones that run their operations in their country of origin out of more passion driven reasons.

When American born people with a passion for cooking start affordable restaurants in the cuisine of their roots, it is often heavily colored by their American upbringing. (which for me ends up meaning more sugar, more fat and less intense flavors) Not gate keeping, but at the end of the say the experiences of someone fully immersed in a culture will always be richer than those who've vicariously experienced them.

That being said, for every cuisine in every big city in the US, there is a gem. They can be hard to find, are often not the most accessible (non-commercial area, language barrier, sketchy hygiene), but damn are they worth it. The ability to have a gem for each cuisine of the world, is a trait possibly unique to the US metro cities and their biggest strength.

Infrastructure in Leipzig is awesome because it was newly created after joining Western Germany for the money from westerners. Infrastructure in Western Germany is crap! My wife uses subway in Munich and there is no week without complaining about delayed or canceled trains. Buildings of universities in Western Germany is a bad joke. University in Regensburg was literally collapsing while one in Dresden got many new buildings. It’s not fair comparison.

> My wife uses subway in Munich and there is no week without complaining about delayed or canceled trains.

At least there is public transportation at all, unlike in the US.

Exactly. People in Germany think that if your train is late it is the end of the world. Their trains and subways tend to be very clean and punctual, yet very affordable. In the US this is not true. BART in SF nowhere near to the quality of service in Munich.

You could say that not having public transportation is better than having crappy public transportation. And I'm not talking about some occasional hiccup but the fact is that Deutsche Bahn operated trains are an enormous shit show. They are constantly late or even cancelled. You buy a ticket for a train and few mins before the train is supposed to arrive the board will say "zug fellt aus" (train cancelled). Have fun waiting 20-40 mins for the next one. If you have to be somewhere on time then you're going to have look for an alternative way of transport and you have practically no recourse for recouping the cost of your wasted ticket money.

Now if the public transportation didn't exist you'd just shrug and go by your car saving yourself a whole bunch of stress and fist clenching and cursing.

At least there are trains... and Munich in particular is slightly weird in that the subway (U-Bahn) is run by a municipal company and works very reliably given the amount of people they're moving, while the suburban trains (S-Bahn) are run by Deutsche Bahn and are often a mess at rush hour. In part that's due to the design flaw of having a massive central bottleneck.

Similarly for universities, the quality differs. Go to Munich's technical university and you'll see buildings in the top percentiles. Go to other universities and the substance is easily going to be much older - but then again, Germany sets its priorities to a good quality education without student debt, and the buildings themselves don't matter much for the education.

Generally, I feel like all these complaints need to be measured against what the alternative is. Which cities have a busy subway system where commuters aren't complaining?

> Generally, I feel like all these complaints need to be measured against what the alternative is. Which cities have a busy subway system where commuters aren't complaining?

Literally any city in Asia (or at least Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, whose subway company has now branched out to run subways in many parts of the world like Stockholm). In one year of living in Nagoya the subway was late once.

That said it has a way more sensible layout than Munich where one failure in a central point does not cascade to paralyze the entire rest of the network. It is not the worst of course, since it is pretty extensive, but routing nearly every single line through Hbf or Sendlinger Tor couldn't ever have been a good idea.

Germany sets its priorities to a good quality education without student debt, and the buildings themselves don't matter much for the education

That is true to some extent. However, the noise of the rainwater dripping into many buckets at the central library of the University of Regensburg made it hard to concentrate on anything.

That was around 2010. Not sure if the leaky roof has been fixed since. Wouldn't be surprised if the answer is no.

Our subway is good. I'm using it every day and just because one train is canceled doesn't mean anything because 10 minutes later the next one comes

Agreed, I lived in Munich for 5 years and its public transport is excellent and very extensive, some of the best I've seen.

10 minutes? Good for you - I get pissed off if I have to wait more than 5 minutes between trains in London.

A delay of 10m is different than a delay of 1h or a lack of public transport. The Munich Transport Corporation (MVG) guarantees a return of fare, equivalent to a full day's ticket, if they delay is more than 20m [0].

[0] https://www.mvg.de/dam/mvg/ueber/unternehmensprofil/mvg-imag...

Have you been to the US?

I used to hate public transport in munich, but compared to US (e.g. SF or NYC) it seems incredibly good.

Interesting, I was under the impression that the food quality in Japan was quite good. Although I suppose I have no reason to believe Europe would be any worse, or different.

What makes you say that Europe has a better food quality?

> What makes you say that Europe has a better food quality?

More space to grow food and a large open market between EU countries, whereas Japan grows a lot of rice on the very limited space they have and is very restrictive wrt. importing foods from abroad. Which is why you can good food in Japan but sometimes fruits are ridiculously expensive. Also, bread in Japan is terrible (but then again, good Japanese food in Europe is tricky too).

Japan is not as strict over antibiotics or general conditions in livestock.

Japan has a huge problem with counterfeit fish meat (substituting inferior, sometimes toxin tainted, different species meat).

Japan's non-seaweed vegetables are generally watery and not as nutrient rich as what you can get in Europe (rucola & feldsalat, for example). Their staple "vegetable" tends to be a nasty variety of cabbage, and daikon and pumpkin.

Bread in Japan is blanched wheat flour. In Europe there are dozens of grains to choose from. Even grau brot tastes amazing. Japan's XYZ pan couldn't even compare. Home cooked food in France was a truly magical experience.

Bio (organic) is very popular and very strictly regulated in Europe. In Japan they don't care as much, and in the USA its a joke.

It's relatively easy in Europe to get prepackaged foods (such as canned goods/soups & frozen foods) made strictly from first ingredients (there's nothing in the ingredients list you can't pronounce, or that you wouldn't add yourself if making it from scratch).

>I'm originally from Canada, and I'm sad to say that, although some things are better than the USA (like the roads and the trash), it's not by much, and it's still terrible compared to the rest of the first world.

If you're from Canada you probably realize that it's a big place, and impossible to draw sweeping generalizations about. Saying Canadian infrastructure is terrible "compared to the rest of the world" is an ignorant statement.

Well, I’ve been to Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax and live in the GTA; it’s pretty terrible compared to the European cities I’ve visited. Better than Cambodia but Thailand and Vietnam are catching up. Comparing to Tokyo is laughable.

American bread is particularly problematic as someone that moved from Europe. Until I found bread I liked I'd often joke that it was suitable for storage in a bomb shelter since it has an unnatural shelf-life and tastes like it.

After a tedious search, we wound up buying $2.60 "Sara Lee Artesano Style Bread" which is still less good than a 70c loaf of Hovis in the UK, and certainly less good than fresh made French bread (which in my opinion is world class). But it is very notable that it has a 7~10 shelf life, not one month like other supermarket breads, is actually soft, and not overly sweet.

It is kind of unfortunately that in the US basically passable bread is called "Artesano" and earns a price premium. Many living in the US haven't had the opportunity to try elsewhere to compare. The strangest thing about this is that you'd expect the US's bread to be much cheaper (given the quality reduction) but that wasn't at all my experience (in fact fresher bread in Europe was substantially cheaper than long-shelf-life-bagged bread in the US).

It's the same in the UK, where most of the bread you can get is basically intended for a toaster.

But, it's down to volume and consumption; in my country (NL), bread is a daily staple, often featured in two meals a day - so a family will easily go through a loaf a day. It makes more sense to optimize the production and logistics for a shelf life of days instead of weeks. We can get reasonably fresh (factory-produced) bread daily, and a lot of grocery stores have an in-house bakery as well nowadays if you want to go super fancy. (I'm sure that's a logistical optimization as well, that is, dough or its components are easier to transport than ready-made bread, especially because some (like croissants) are very fragile).

I bought some bread from Safeway earlier this year in August. I called the number on the package when the bread started to mould within four days of me buying it.

Outside of New York City area, I wouldn't think of doing groceries more than once a week. The place I've lived at are all terrible in terms of how grocery stores are walkable.

Here in the Netherlands I believe bread also starts to mould after four days. My solution is to have a stockpile in the freezer.

That's not a sign of bad bread. If you bake your own bread, you may find it also molds in 4 days, depending on your climate and how you store it.

I'm more leery of manufactured breads that keep forever.

Most supermarkets in the UK have in store bakeries. Buying fresh, good quality bread, including sourdough, etc. is easy.

I don’t recognise your statement on most bread being made for a toaster.

Edit: admittedly not as good as some other European countries.

Life hack: if you want fresh yeast in the UK go to Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s bakery counters, they’ll sell you it by weight.

Until quite recently (five years ago) they didn't charge you for it. It's only a few pence though.

In Poland the in-house bakery in a grocery store is the cheap and convenient way to get bread if you can't be bothered to get actual quality (not made from deeply frozen dough).

So if the Polish baseline is super fancy for NL, NL is better than UK and UK baseline is artisanal US bread, I wonder what baseline US bread looks like. It's made of sponge and sugar?

It's made of sponge and sugar?

Yes, pretty much. It’s very bad.

"Better Bread Starts with a Sponge" https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/better-bread-s...

Good grief. What kind of bread are you buying? I can find terrible bread in Europe too. There is a lot of great bread in the US. People, in these discussions like to take the very worst example of dollar-store bread and compare it to a dedicated boulangerie in Paris, however French supermarket sandwich bread can be just as terrible as the American equivalent. But go to an American bakery and the bread is really good.

It’s popular to characterize American stuff as “bad,” but America is a huge country.

Tortillas in France are pretty terrible and good luck finding a Jalapeño or a Habenero, but in any grocery store in the US, I can find high quality ingredients to make almost anything. Try finding a spice in the average French grocery store any stronger than “hot” Paprika.

These “other countries are better than the US” arguments are ridiculous. In the US, you have access to pretty much anything you want. Mostly not true in many European countries and definitely not true outside the capitals.

I actually hosted some couch surfers from the UK and other places in the world while in Germany. I had a local market with an old bakery(remember that even in Germany the great majority of bakers are now a handful of companies) very close to my place.

The bread they bake is genius it has just the right amount(little) sourness and never tastes soaky, crispy around but soft inside.

But the point being is that some of the couchsurfers would hilariously laugh at the strangeness of having bread that isn't white fluffy toast. I got that reaction from Brits and South Americans. The French would appreciate it and the cheese choices with it.

The UK is an interesting little phenomenon IMHO. Not quite the US but also not quite Europe. In a lot of ways more similar to the US(not always in a bad way). You also get plenty of HFCS there

I didn't know we had HFCS in the UK. What products contain it?

Are you sure things have HFCS in the U.K.? What’s it labelled as? I often look at ingredients and only ever notice “sugar” ie. sucrose

I have never seen high fructose corn syrup in the UK. There is a bunch of chat right now about not watering down our food (and other) standards to allow US-quality food here after/if Brexit happens.

FWIW brown bread in the UK has been "a thing" since well before I was born, so there there is not just an expectation for white.

I would wager that the typical couch surfer is the sort of person who as well as focusing on value on where they choose to sleep probably also subsists on fairly cheap basic foods.

Certainly in the past decade or two the UK you'll see a lot more variety in what you can get even in convenience stores in London: white, brown, granary, soda, rye, sourdough, bagels, barbari, boule brioche, baguette, challa, chapati, ciabatta - you name it. It all seems to get sold and presumably eaten. Not saying it is any good of particularly authentic or "correct" but there is a lot of variety in the most common of shops.

I might be reaching a bit (also a tangent), but a lot of US's problems are rooted in their urban design and sprawl.

From my experience, Americans often do grocery once every couple of weeks, because the super market is usually a non-trivial drive away.

I can see how a lot of their foods developed to accommodate that shopping cycle, and forced preservatives that make things last those 2-3 weeks while compromising on freshness and taste.

I think you are right. My individual situation is different, but it may just be an exception that tests the rule.

And even though we have a selection 2 to 3 stores in 20 minutes drive ( one we could walk to if we chose to forego convenience of one trip a week ), I remember living in locations where access was not as simple.

> From my experience, Americans often do grocery once every couple of weeks, because the super market is usually a non-trivial drive away.

Overwhelming majority of Americans live less than 20 minutes drive from a proper grocery story (i.e. not a gas station convenience store), and most probably live 10 minutes drive. In my metropolitan area of 4 million, I can't think of a place that's more than 10 minutes from a large supermarket.

Americans don't do grocery shopping very often simply because it's such a waste of time: there are 5 large supermarkets (two Safeways, one QFC, one Whole Foods and one local chain) 5 minutes drive from my home, and there's also Costco 10 minutes drive. Despite that, I go grocery shopping once a week, because it usually takes an hour. Doing this more often would replace one hour-long trip with three 45 minutes trip. Since the drive is only 5 minutes, living literally next to them wouldn't change my habits much.

Also, let me assure you that most Europeans don't live in 5 minutes walking distance from grocery stores, so the travel time here is not what makes the habits different.

In a HN thread about bread some time ago, someone living in California protested that one could get top quality European style bread basically everywhere. I looked it up and the bread they recommended comes from a single industrial bakery that supplies the whole state of California.

So yeah, there's that thing again where they don't know that better is possible.

Industrial bakers can’t make good bread?

Good but not great, because that's what they choose to do. Plus there's the shipping delay and its effect on freshness.

Maybe you should consider importing a consumer bread making machine from europe :)

(in case anybody wonders what that is, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_machine)

You’re shopping at the wrong places. There is good bread out there.

For better or worse, a lot of Americans like fluffy white bread that’s loaded with preservatives to give it a long shelf life. That’s what they ate as kids & they’ve never branched out.

I’m not defending US mass market bread, but I do think it’s largely a matter of differing tastes and values. Your comment (and much of this thread) comes off as “I have different values, I don’t understand mainstream American values in this or that regard so let me tell you why they suck and why we’re better than you”.

So yeah, it’s flame-baity & perhaps even unkind. Even if you’re right. A gentle reminder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21490714

> “I have different values, I don’t understand mainstream American values in this or that regard so let me tell you why they suck and why we’re better than you”.

If your "values" are medically unhealthy... I'll let you draw your own conclusions ;-)

I was comparing supermarket breads in Europe and the US. So while I may be shopping in the "wrong" places in the US that doesn't really detract from my overarching point. A lot of people, in both areas, buy their bread at supermarkets.

If supermarkets don't offer good products, that may also be a discussion worth having.

> I have different values, I don’t understand mainstream American values in this or that regard so let me tell you why they suck and why we’re better than you

But this critique doesn't address why the price is higher. You can call it "values" if you want but ultimately we're talking about a lower quality product at a higher price and shoppers that likely don't know they have other choices/are getting a worse product.

> So yeah, it’s flame-baity & perhaps even unkind.

I feel like attempting to place words into my mouth ("why they suck and why we’re better than you") that don't remotely match my tone or substance of my post and then calling it "unkind" is a much larger departure from expected decorum than anything I actually posted above.

To quote the site's guidelines:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Re-stated my argument in a much more negative and judgemental way then attacking it doesn't feel like a good faith argument or trying to argue the strongest interpretation but YMMV.

>I was comparing supermarket breads in Europe and the US

Every major supermarket I've ever been to in the US and Canada has a million styles of bread, including many freshly baked right there at the store.

>but ultimately we're talking about a lower quality product at a higher price

Do you have evidence for lower quality, outside of the roundly debunked "shelf life" argument? Or are these your preferences?

A million styles of bad bread in comparison to any one of the cheap loaves available in a German market. In many major US supermarkets, the freshly baked product is worse than the stale packaged product. Try it at your local albertsons or walmart. It's acceptable if you eat it warm and after that you can use it as a sponge to soak up spills. The $7 artisan whatever quarter of a loaf at Whole Foods is maybe in the same ballpark as what you find in Germany and you still have to be lucky enough to get it fresh. The normal packaged rectangular bread loaves people buy in the US are what we called "toaster bread" in Europe (bread to only be eaten toasted).

What would you consider objectively lower quality anyway? Is use of preservatives and corn syrup lower quality, or is that a preference for shelf life and sweets? Is a McDonalds burger low quality or is that just preference? I can take you to a generic bakery in my old rural small town in Germany where the 25-cent pretzel would blow the socks off any pretzel you can find for any price in any store in the US, but maybe you'd call that preference.

I love how long the bread argument thread is getting.

Reminds me of coffee discussions. “Peet’s is good coffee!”, “No it’s shit, you don’t know good coffee!”, “You just have an unsophisticated palate!”.

My experience (Germany) is different: You can't get a good bread in super markets here. Heck you can't even get a good bread at specialized bakeries (with some very rare exceptions). I bake my own bread as a result.

Are you comparing this to the US or some other country, or just broadly speaking? I have had better breads than Germany in other countries, and I've had bad supermarket breads in Germany, so I can agree there, but when comparing to the US it's like comparing apples to sawdust.

The trick to finding real bread in the U.S. is to skip the “bread aisle” in grocery stores like Safeway. Instead, look to shelves in the bakery section for fresh-baked, un-sliced whole loaves of bread without sugar added.

Even that is a crap shoot. Here I end up buying a national brand that comes in frozen:

https://www.pepperidgefarm.com/product-finder?category=ecce-...

Nothing local has a crumb anything like https://www.pepperidgefarm.com/product/multi-grain-boule/

Get a Zojirushi brand bread maker, buy your grains off Amazon, and bake your own bread. It's really the only way in the Americas...

Once you get into the swing of it, you can whittle it down to 10 minutes of preparation in the morning, set it on automatic timer, and have fresh, hot bread waiting for you when you get home from work. Just make sure the yeast is in a pile on top so that it stays dry during the day.

To be fair, it’s often difficult to find good bread in many countries. In asia it seems to be down to whether there are still french influences in the city you’re in.

Good chocolate is even rarer. I’m from belgium and chocolate abroad is almost always disappointing. Most of the time if you look at the composition it wouldn’t actually be allowed to even call it chocolate when selling it in belgium.

I had a colleague who came over from Norway - not known as a center of culinary excellence - and complained about the bread. I suggested that he should find a Jewish or Italian bakery, which he did, and then he was happy. It kind of sucks that decent bread is only available here in specialty stores and not alongside everything else in the grocery store, but that's how it is.

P.S. This advice was hyper-local (near Boston). Just a few miles away, I'm sure there are great Armenian bakeries and I would have suggested those. In some other city, who even knows? Local patterns vary, but there always seems to be someone filling this niche.

At that price you should just make your own bread if you care about the flavor of bread. Bread makers aren't that expensive if you really desire the convenience of not having to kneed anything.

You say this like you don't trip over bagged bread in every supermarket in Europe. Including some places that have essentially crustless white bread slices in a bag.

(Source, traveling around Europe now, with recent experience of French, Portuguese, and Spanish grocery stores)

I think there is something to this, but in my experience they just don't care. Their stuff is optimized for their own cultural values, which you perhaps expect to be more like your own than they are.

I have had American visitors marvel at the (German built) windows in my French home, calling them something you'd see on a space station. On the other hand they think I must be having money problems for not having a tumble dryer (only poor people hang their laundry to dry) or not having airco.

Could be.

I find it amusing that from a climate change point of view, both their comments are basically negative:

* good windows provide better insulation and reduce the need to heat/cool down a building, plus their reduce dampness since they keep moisture out

* while a tumble dryer uses electricity for something which is not much of a chore (it takes like, 5 minutes, to hang the laundry and 5 more minutes to pick it up when it's done)

Also, clothes last longer, so it promotes reuse.

>I find it amusing that from a climate change point of view, both their comments are basically negative:

It's almost like countries like Germany (350k sq km area) and the US (10 million sq km) have different climates and needs. This thread is filled with Europeans saying, "I went to the US once, and their grocery store didn't have produce like my French neighborhood market!"

You're making so many assumptions in 1 short comment that it's hard to dismiss all of them without writing a novel. But still, this is HN, so let's go:

- I'm not German and most of my points apply in quite a bit of the EU

- the EU is about 4m sqkm, which while smaller than the US, puts them in roughly the same ballpark (they'd both qualify as "huge countries")

- the EU as a whole has at least as diverse climates as the US

- I'm not even sure what to respond to the "needs" part

- I've been to the US more than once, to different places

Let's track back a bit and find out what exactly your argument against high quality German windows is.

Is it that you don't need them in hot climates? You do, to reduce the need for cooling.

Is it that you don't need them in cold climates? I don't even know what to reply to this :-)

Is it that you don't need them in Mediterranean climates, a la California (stable relatively warm and dry climate)? Even there, there is variation, houses do need heating and cooling and it can't hurt to have better windows. I'll grant you this, but that's probably an area which is 1/30th or less of the US territory.

Or was it about normal drying vs tumble drying? The only solid argument against normal drying that I can find is that normal drying requires more space (and a bit more time, but you can easily plan around that). But US homes, on average, are way bigger than EU homes. So Americans could easily find room to dry their clothes. If I can do it in 65sqm, an American definitely can do it in 120+ sqm.

>the EU as a whole has at least as diverse climates as the US

It's laughable to talk about "the EU" as if it's in any way homogeneous. It's an economic union, not a country. We are talking about France and Germany, which are tiny and far less diverse in their climate than the US.

>I'm not even sure what to respond to the "needs" part

Perhaps you're unaware that there are places in the US that have frigid winters, and others that have debilitating summer heat. But please, tell us about how you don't need air conditioning in France. That fact is relevant to those in Arizona.

>Let's track back a bit and find out what exactly your argument against high quality German windows is.

My argument here is that it's ridiculous to think that we don't have or use "high quality windows" in North America because you once had friends over to your home that were impressed.

> My argument here is that it's ridiculous to think that we don't have or use "high quality windows" in North America because you once had friends over to your home that were impressed.

I'm not the original poster :-)

> My argument here is that it's ridiculous to think that we don't have or use "high quality windows" in North America because you once had friends over to your home that were impressed.

That is indeed ridiculous, I agree! You're the one inferring that story though. I'm not about to write an essay with quotations of industry figures and national polls here.

A lot of Americans consider hanging clothes to be unsightly (it's even become an idiom: "Don't air your dirty laundry in public"). Some apartment managers will even get mad at you and ask you to stop or hang them indoors if you do.

There's also an issue with general social cohesion, inequality, and safety in American urban environments: many people are afraid people will steal their clothes if they just hang them up for a while. This is less of an issue in small rural towns, and indeed, hanging your clothes out to dry in your yard is considered more socially acceptable in small towns.

Hanging laundry in the UK is also kinda in the same condition - in your own back garden fine, but if you live in an apartment with a balcony it is usually a 100% hard no to hanging laundry.

Personally I never liked the smell of clothes that had hung dry, much preferred them "done properly" in the drier :)

I didn’t mention this in my original post and I kinda wish I did now, seeing the replies.

I am American. I grew up in Texas and generally feel at home with other Americans (to a degree, politics is weird).

At times in my life I’ve thought about moving back to the US and I still thought that it was easier to pay the quality of life costs of being a foreigner in other countries (being half illiterate and having a hard time with banking and real estate) rather than deal with the quality of life gap in the US.

My life would not be bad in America, but I feel like it would be less comfortable. In the future the feeling of belongingness might outweigh this, but right now that’s not the case, and it makes me sad

Ah, plot twist. Yep, I assumed you were not from the US. I hope you find the perfect place for you!

I had to live without a clothes drier and it felt like being a student again.

There is a reason they call them modern conveniences.

Yet I'm not inconvenienced. The expense would be trivial to me.

After hanging the laundry outside, won't you need to wash it again? Most countries have things birds, rodents, and pollen.

Do you always have dry non-freezing weather? If the humidity stays high, the clothes will get moldy before they dry. If the temperature is low, you'll get ice in your clothes. There may even be rain.

What can I say? These are just not issues to me. It's not that I choose the hard life willingly.

The clothes dry on a rack next to the washing machine. I have a large enough house with wooden floors and high ceilings that the humidity is not an issue.

One of the small, but significant things I noticed about German apartments was the lipped 'bezel'[1], where the door and the frame fit snugly into each other and there is a rubber/plastic seal between the door and the frame. This is a big deal in an apartment, because it reduces noise, reduces drafts, and eliminates the need to heat more than one room at a time. Also, the door itself seems to be very solid, you'd have to hit it with quite some force to make a dent - none of this cardboard sandwiched between 2 slides of thin MDF nonsense. I'm not from the US, I've just noticed this in Germany coming from another European country with less quality interior finishings.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/InteriorDesign/comments/8ths03/germ...

That's pretty standard feature in Italy, it's called door frame and it's basically everywhere, even on cheap doors.

I didn't know it wasn't common all over Europe.

It's not standard everywhere. My theory is that furniture and home fittings like doors have not really been disrupted by the internet (perhaps because of high shipping costs and bulky sized items). Therefore, there is wide variance in cost and quality from country to country.

Yeah, it is strange for me too. I live in Poland and such doors are the only kind that is being sold - it protects one from the winters.

Thank you for linking this, I noticed this in every apartment I lived in Germany and was wondering what is it called. The door frame had rubber/plastic dampener that would literally create a vaccum like effect when closing (i.e the room door would slam if I closed the balcony door).

They really made a difference in terms of inside temperature.

Also the ability to tilt windows and even doors (vertically) was an amazing feature.

Hah! And I have completely the opposite experience - with the exception of modern American cars of course (still miss my 90s Chrysler Saratoga!) Europe is very often about the looks and the function is secondary.

The most recent example - Vaillant vs Honeywell heating controllers. Vaillant looks fancy with decorative, smoothly flowing elements, knobs and fancy backlight, and the Honeywell unit is, well, spartan: big LCD letters, primitive graphics. Vaillant is crazy - it is too slow to react on temperature changes, the interface is just horrible: imagine no escape or back button - you just have to idle a minute to go back to the "main screen." It takes 30 seconds or so to connect wirelessly to the boiler, sometimes it fails or even freezes and requires a reset, and I can go on forever. I hate the fucking thing. Honeywell... Well it just works.

Every place I've lived in for the past 20 years here in the UK has had a Honeywell thermostat. They're pretty much the standard in cheap houses.

I wonder if this is because Vaillant is really a boiler company, so they are good at things involving gas and water, whereas Honeywell are an electronics company, so they're good at things involving electricity and information.

> Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice.

I have this a bit uneasy impression[1] that a really significant chunk of US is basically a developing country with bigger cars.

[1] Based only on visiting a few developing countries as well as a few states of US. Not on any statistics or data whatsoever.

Comparing the US to third world countries makes me think you never really visited a developing country. Maybe just flew through the airport?

To be honest, I have spent way more time in developing countries[1] than in US. Even some time in the least developed counties to understand that the developing/least developed countries are a really diverse group. As is US in my humble and limited opinion. Wealthier areas of developing countries and not so wealthy areas of US are easily comparable in many measures in my opinion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country

It’s not until I was forced to live in Europe due to circumstances that I realized that there exists a much better life than the North American one. Even though I’m in the East (Ukraine), everything is better here. Everything, especially the food, the prices, and the lack of racial tensions and militarized police. The only thing I miss here is trying to fill the emptiness in life with same-day Amazon junk delivered to my door.

Well, just glide about 1000 km west and you can still have Amazon :p

> lack of racial tensions

Is this because of lack of diversity or actually accommodating masses ? Genuine question.

Both. Maybe the latter is caused by the former.

In the US the power of large corporations seems to have run amok a bit allowing them to foist crappy bread, chocolate etc. In Europe things are more regulated and it seems easier for local producers to not be wiped out by the large corporates. I think the US need some political reform so it's less easy to buy political influence.

Yes it's regulations, but there's another factor too: population density. In Paris for example, you can find food markets where stuff is brought from small farms and is ridiculously cheap, right in the city central areas, though often hidden in the back alleys. The reason this works is that this type of commerce doesn't require marketing: local people just see it and use it. Only possible in higher density population areas.

I think this is one of America's problems: living far apart from each other has a lot of disadvantages and inefficiencies. Homes are much more expensive to build and maintain (just think of the road infrastructure and all the utilities alone). In a typical suburban there can be virtually no public areas other than shopping malls, which are owned by someone.

There's also research that confirms people are more productive in higher density areas from the point of view of economics.

We'll have to see if America can fix itself by moving to bigger cities, which seems to be the current trend among the millennials and younger, I hear.

I talked about this earlier in the thread, and I strongly believe that their urban design decisions have shaped and in-turn damaged a massive part of their lifestyle.

Car dependence, massive maintenance costs, density that's too low to support any social or public programs....so many problems created by an idea that is described as the American dream.

Decent parks are much more common in the US than huge shopping malls.

Still pretty limiting. Can you have a farm market in the park? Street performances? Protests/rallies? Small towns are not only inefficient, they are also very limiting. Just merge a bunch of typical American suburbs into a city with denser population and see how life becomes so much more full of opportunities and experiences.

The park here is pretty nice, it has a band shell, the city band and other groups use it lots during the nice weather. They also setup a portable stage in another area of the park and have some performances by the yacht club.

There's no space for a farmer's market in the park, but there is a dedicated space on main street.

It is a very nice park, and is quite large. In addition to the above, there are tennis courts, a relatively modern kids playground, a pavilion, accessible fishing piers, a basketball court, sand volleyball courts, a softball backstop, many picnic tables and grills and benches, a disc golf course, a few miles of multiuse trail, a public beach that is guarded during the summer, a boat launch, a decent marina and a sledding hill. There's also a historic lighthouse and small museum.

This is just a normal small town on Lake Michigan (the members of the Yacht Club have medium sized sail boats...). I guess the density matches up with lots of older suburbs, more dense than a lot of newer stuff, but not a lot of large apartment buildings either.

Ridiculous generalization. In my suburb, we have a bikepath that runs along a protected area, a lake, and a park area. Nearby (within 100m) is an elementary school with an open 10 acre field. The nearest shopping center is 2 miles away.

What all the metrophiles advocating for the abolishment of suburbia either willfully forget or misunderstand, is that people like the suburbs. Especially people raising families.

> foist crappy bread

A more charitable interpretation is "American consumers care more about price than quality."

Or perhaps it's a market for lemons. American consumers don't know which products are of good quality, and don't want to pay extra for the same quality, so they buy cheap to not be taken advantage of.

There is nothing stopping people from making good bread and chocolate in the US, and many do. They would/will succeed in the market if the demand is there. Trouble is, even though people will tell you they're willing to pay a bit more for nice things, for the most part those preferences don't come out where it matters -- in supermarket aisles.

There was an interesting anecdote from Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy about when he launched a burrito called the Dilberto. He got it in supermarkets but the merchandisers from large brands would go around the stores and shove them to the back of the shelf and their products in front. It's hard for small producers who can afford merchandisers to compete with that kind of thing. I see you point but the playing field is kind of tilted.

This is it. Americans by and large care about price and quantity. Next comes basic taste sensations (sweet, salty, ect). We'll eat things others would turn their nose up to, as long as it has sugar, or is loaded with cheese. Boxed cardboard with frosting. Freshness, delicate taste/texture, simplicity of ingredients, buying local, ect. all take a back seat to price, quantity, and being "tasty" (but not as in well put together and balanced, just in terms of the comfort/dopamine hit).

I've had others from overseas comment on this. The nice restaurants with the freshest, highest quality foods, and really talented chefs take a back seat to cheap lowest common denominator choices. The "mexican" place with $1 tacos and $2 margaritas is packed, and the great spanish restaurant next door is empty.

>In Europe things are more regulated

Meanwhile, they are rioting over gas taxes and speed limit changes.

Wait. Your theory as to why there are differences in chocolate between the Us and Europe is paid political influence?

Or you know, it could just be differences in tastes!

"I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes."

Where in the US? First mistake is acting as if a house built in northern California is representative of a house built in rural Maine, or suburban Texas.

If you think it's remotely monolithic, it absolutely isn't. But there's definitely a pattern of lower quality building in very high-growth, high cost of living areas where the property's value isn't related much to the building, but mostly reflective of the land and it's location.

I agree with this comment. I don't know the actual cut off, but having done a lot of home shopping and some home owning, I'd suggest you look for houses built before the 1980s, and if you can afford it, in the less dense suburbs and rural areas. Say a place with an acre or more. Bet you'll find it was built with some care. Look at the standard 1/2 acre or less suburban development from the 1980s forward, though, and it's cookie cutter, cheap supplies, tight deadlines. Of course that's a generalization, but I feel like there's a broad spectrum of build quality to be found in the United States.

I've seen videos of people tripping in their home and punching a hole in the drywall.

My apartment in the Netherlands is 100% drywall but I need to run into it at full force to even make a dent. To make a hole in it I need tools.

> I've seen videos of people tripping in their home and punching a hole in the drywall

Did that last year. Went to stretch and pressed my palms firmly on the wall and one side punched in. Apartment complex made me fix it too. You could also easily hear neighbors and whatever domestic dispute they were having that week. I live in a nice place now. Advertised as "luxury", but everything still seems cheaply built

I think a lot of this is that people don't know what to look for, so they buy based on appearance rather than quality.

America has a trade deficit of ~600 billion, which roughly equates to every American having $2,000 to spend buying stuff from overseas. Then on top of that there are all the services America exports.

If foreigners are willing to give Americans stuff for paper there is a real pressure for Americans not to bother making stuff and printing more paper instead. That probably influences a lot of the decisions behind American made consumer goods.

> The cheapest studio apartment in Western Europe or Japan ends up with better infrastructure than the $2M duplex in California.

I live a long way from California, but the first stop should always be to check the local tax code, financial incentives and regulations. Most countries I've been to end up having strange tax incentives that influence how much money gets spent on primary residences; and taxes can put a real dampener on what gets done. I speak mainly from experience in Australia where there are massive tax incentives for a person to spend money on their primary home.

I live in Australia.

What are the tax incentives to spending money on my home?

roenxi is possibly talking about the main residence CGT exemption.

When you spend money on your house the value of that house increases. When you sell your primary residence, it isn't caught by the Capital Gains Tax. So essentially if you are looking for a place to park money you have two choices:

1) Put it in your primary residence. Wealth is stored, no future tax liability, you are more comfortable

2) Buy a productive asset. Wealth stored, you will pay capital gains tax on the asset price rises due to asset inflation.

The most tax-effective place to store money long term is capital improvements to your primary residence, mainly due to how inflation and CGT interact. And the capital value of the property could reasonably rise more than the cost of the work done.

There are risks but there is also a lot of incentive to remodel the kitchen or upgrade something if money is available.

Thanks for clearing that up.

True. In Finland where taxation is high, you get a certain sum per year that you can hire home improvement work without tax. (Ie you can deduce it from your taxes). Also makes tax avoidance a little less attractive.

This is a slight aside but the Wikipedia article on Galápagos syndrome is kind of interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_syndrome

It seems like a pretty useful metaphor that I wasn't familiar with.

I remember thumbing through the CR car ratings book in the early 1980s and the track record of American cars was terrible (by comparison) even then. The Japanese cars were consistently good. So I don't think it's 30 years of wage stagnation either.

My thoughts exactly.

Those of us “of a certain age” will remember that this is not new at all.

I can’t speculate on the reasons, but I agree about standard quality levels being higher in Japan and Western Europe; but so are costs.

I'd speculate that it is because people still buy them regardless.

That may sound overly simplistic but I think there's an element of truth to it. Foreign vehicle companies needed to fight to gain market share in the US, often needing to be much better just to be compared as equals. Look at KIA recently doing so, now they're doing very well reliability wise and offer a substantial free warranty, but ask random people and they'll be described as unreliable foreign cars.

The real mystery is why Americans still buy American made cars. The foreign competition has eclipsed them for whole generations at this point, but yet demand remains.

Americans generally don't buy American cars, right? We buy American-made trucks.

The US imposed a 25% tax on imported light trucks and has for decades (the "chicken tax"). I think that this has resulted in a weird distortion where American auto makers focus heavily on that one more profitable market segment, and advertise most heavily on that one market segment, and have done so for generations.

I think the Ford F-150 is the best-selling vehicle made by US companies.

There's a reason that Musk is building a Tesla truck.

So you may be right, but I'll point out that if your sample of American housing is "California" you're getting a biased sample. The housing stock in California (and particularly the Bay Area) is uniquely terrible in the U.S, for a variety of reasons:

1.) Much of the housing in Silicon Valley was built in the 1950s and 60s by a wave of migrants coming to work in the nascent defense & semiconductor industries there, sometimes with their own hands. They'd go to the hardware store, buy some lumber and build a house, something you definitely can't do today. Oftentimes they were in a rush to do so because they'd just taken a job in the area and were otherwise living in a tent. Of the ones that are professionally built, they were often quickly mass-produced to keep up with the flood of new migrants.

2.) There are a variety of disincentives to upgrading your house from the original build: you have to bring it up to the (now vastly upgraded) building codes, you need to deal with the year-long permitting process, you often need to get written permission from your neighbors if you're doing something big like adding a second story or rebuilding the house, you may lose your Prop 13 grandfathering if the value changes significantly. That's why you end up with ridiculous situations where the land under your house is worth $1.5M and the structure is worth $100K.

3.) California has forgiving weather. You can get away with stupid stuff like having doors & windows that don't completely seal, no heating (let alone air conditioning), no basements, etc.

4.) California has unforgiving natural disasters. Between earthquakes, wildfires, termites, mudslides, and floods, it's often not worth sinking a lot into your primary residence if it's just gonna get destroyed with the next earthquake anyway.

I lived in Massachusetts before California and there were houses in my town still standing from the 1700s. They were a bit drafty since they still had the original windows from then, but the build quality was a lot better than what you see in California.

> The cheapest studio apartment in Western Europe or Japan ends up with better infrastructure than the $2M duplex in California

This is a strange comparison, housing prices depend on many different factors and you can get really crappy small apartments (including the plumbing) in expensive parts of London or Monaco for that kind of money.

If the $2m home in California has mediocre doors and plumbing, it's probably just due to lack of attention/clue by previous owners, possibly also from abundance of crappy plumbers because everyone in the business makes plenty of money from rich people in the area.

There are plenty of shoddy new build expensive properties in the UK - I've been amazed when looking at some new properties how poor the fit and finish is but they still sell.

Yes but so many of them are built and sell as investments that are banking on an ever-inflating property market. I guess it's also what happened in most of the US to drive the quality down.

I wouldn't bundle the UK in with the rest of Western Europe. We're much more interested in the American model.

If you want to see shoddy new buildings, go to Sydney.

Third Sydney apartment block abandoned

https://thebrag.com/third-sydney-apartment-block-abandoned/

Yeah, ROI (so not UK but similar in many respects) and I feel like the construction here is utter crap. Hell, houses are now being sold with 10 year structural warranties (rather short, that) because of a history of houses falling down because of pyrite. Nevermind that we always feel 20-30 years behind everyone else; god help you if you want a timber frame, or for that matter have a heritage building where the builders just slop cement on top of the walls (thus starting the destruction of the lime mortar).

The OP's comments remind me of how much nicer everything seems on the continent, groceries included (though increasingly everyone shops at Aldi/Lidl anyway)

Aldi and Lidl's quality is overall better in Ireland because they use local suppliers for certain items. The dairy and meat in Germany is quite low quality for example, although the beer is way better and cheaper in Germany.

When I worked in Germany people didn't seem to buy much meat or baked goods in Aldi/Lidl, there was always a local butcher or baker. In the UK nearly all the independent bakers and butchers disappeared years ago.

UK housing standards, especially the plumbing, is a joke.

Tiles misaligned, not sealed off, some bathrooms have no tiles but a bulge-ridden plastic ground cover. All the cupboards are loose. Doors don’t close. I have to manually fuck around with the boiler to get water for my shower. And it still has low pressure. It’s atrocious.

No idea where that comes from. I have a feeling that there’s a disregard for craftsmen. Plumbers, joiners, painters, are all looked down upon. There’s no pride in doing a good job in these areas.

Yep particularly in London. Absolutely every new build is advertised as "luxury apartments", but it is all thrown up as quickly as possible to sell either to desperate people trying to get away from renting, or sold off-plan to investors who leave them empty as the price goes up, or to buy to let landlords. A lot of work is done by unskilled labour picked-up in the back of transit vans from street corners on a day by day basis, paid cash in hand.

Landlords especially don't care about quality so long as the yield is good. Who gives a shit if you can hear the neighbors behaving sex or taking a piss if you are not living there, but someone else is paying you £1500-3000 a month for the pleasure? A fancy "luxury" apartment with a flash looking kitchen worktop and fashionable bathroom allows charging a premium.

Any damage or breakage of the low quality construction comes out of the tenants' deposit at the end of the tenancy, and repairs are tax deductible too.

Having lived in Japan for a significant portion of my life, I would really disagree with you on all of this.

I lived in a very expensive, up scale apartment in Japan, and everything in it was very poor quality in comparison to the quality of my (not mcmansion) house in the US. My doors are good quality, plumbing works fine, furniture is much nicer and less expensive by an order of magnitude.

I do most of my grocery shopping at Aldis, and certainly you can get fresh fish more easily at the corner grocery in Japan, but otherwise the selection is better even at Aldis than at most groceries in Japan. There's nothing like a Wegmans or a Harris Teeter in Japan at all that I ever saw -- maybe somewhere upscale in Tokyo or something.

> The UX is awful

Wait, what UX does a fridge need? Mine just has a scroll wheel which goes from cool to cold.

Of course there needs to be a clock that you then need to switch between daylight savings and normal time.

American fridges have falcon wing doors with door knobs instead of handles

"Mine just has a scroll wheel which goes from cool to cold."

It not having a touch screen doesn't mean there is no UX.

One important user interaction for a fridge is that when the door is open you grasp the handle and push toward to the body of the fridge, three things happen:

1) The door glides smoothly on its hinge toward the body.

2) The door connects with the body and provides haptic feedback that it is closed

3) The door remains closed.

The last one is the most important because user will likely walk away and stop monitoring the state of the fridge. If it changes to an open-state, it could remain open and thereby let the food inside spoil.

The handle, the different compartments, the drawers, …. That’s all part of the UX.

Well, the fridge needs to be opened, closed, has inner compartments, you need to be able to regulate the temperature, possibly to let the user know the fridge is running/which temperature is inside... all this happens in the kitchen, possibly with dirty hands, or with wet hands, or while you're holdin ga handful of things... that's all UX-related aspects.

The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman, had a nice example of how even the wheels for regulating the temperature can be very confusing (and indeed, in basic fridges you don't regulate the temperature, you set a number on the scrollwheel e.g. between 1-7. But is 7 a higher temperature or higher cooling power?).

- When you open a door, its hinges don't provide nearly enough friction so it starts closing immediately, instead of being able to be propped open (like when you're cooking and holding other stuff so need time to take stuff out)

- The drawers are all basically impossible to use without fully opening the door, but (see above) fully opening the door makes it swing back super hard as well so now you're fighting two different parts of your fridge at once

- It's huge but somehow the space inside the fridge is super small compared to comparable fridges. Probably a shelf thing.

- Some of the design leads to little cracks that are hard to clean up without pinching yourself with the door.

It's basically door-related stuff but it's also stuff I don't experience with my ... $200? Fridge from Hitachi. I feel like my own fridge is fine. It's a fridge. Nothing to write home about. It would probably get a wirecutter recommendation if they did "small-ish fridges for 1-2 people"

I think there’s truth in this, but the factors behind it are tricky. Unlike something like bread, it’s not easy for consumers to actively choose good plumbing over bad plumbing.

Installing new plumbing is something you do very rarely. Most often it’s done by a developer rather than the person who will actually live in a property. And when you’re buying or renting a property, plumbing quality is lower priority than other factors, notably price and location.

So developers go for the cheapest option they can get away with, property owners don’t necessarily like it but don’t push back enough because they have bigger concerns, and the result is that most plumbing is low quality.

Even if you yourself are the developer, it’s hard to ensure decent quality unless you spend a lot of money, do a lot of research, have a lot of time available, or ideally all three.

I’ve learned this to my own cost - on a renovation project, we ended up with some crappy fittings and crappy installation because we didn’t manage it closely enough and the builders don’t care. I would like nice stuff, but how do I get it?

Edit to clarify: I think building standards are driven much more by builders than by homeowners. I’d like to know more about the driving factors - is it purely a matter of cost? I hope not, because that suggests everything everywhere will inevitably become crap.

> I’d like to know more about the driving factors - is it purely a matter of cost?

My thesis on this is that people do what they can get away with. If you think you can get away with really low quality stuff, you do that.

Definitely helps to have a housing shortage, where there's probably no other choice anyways. So everything is cheap (since there's no incentive to make a nice place. You're gonna get someone in the apartment anyways!) and so nobody actually knows what "nice" is and just assume it's normal to be able to punch through your door.

I got the very same impression when I visited the US, particularly about housing and furniture. But I don't quite trust it: there must be a lot of quality metrics where the American stuff shines which I don't even recognize, for exactly the same reasons you named. But in the end I guess I still agree, chances are it's not even half as bad as it looks to my untrained European eyes, but still not good.

> Then you get to grocery stores, and you have to go to the “fancy places” to even get the baseline of quality you see in the rest of the developed world. All the chocolate is bad.

While I agree with you on other points, I take issue with this. American grocery stores are a real treat when visiting. Produce is colorful, plentiful, and delicious thanks to American embrace of GMO's and subsidies for farmers. Raw ingredients such as flour are available in huge variety (try finding something as simple as peanut oil at your local Lidl). Even the quality of "junk" food is comparably fantastic, as you won't find a frozen pizza like DiGiorno anywhere else. This is all before you visit a Whole Foods, which takes quality and variety to a point which organic supermarkets elsewhere in the world can't compare.

Europe, on the other hand, is so obsessed with the discount model, so disinterested in variety, and so opposed to GMO's, that their supermarkets are downright frustrating. Yes, the meat, cheese, and chocolate is great, but it stops there.

The corn economy in the US is highly perverted, and that is just the tip of an iceberg. Agreed somewhat about Lidl, I'd be very frustrated if Lidl was the only place I could buy stuff in Sweden.

There’s a Lidl opening nearby, soon (I live in New York).

Lidl is a discount supermarket. It's not about choice, it's about the lowest prices possible with a limited amount of variety available in exchange. There are plenty of other chain supermarkets that have the huge variety of flour (?) you crave.

And "colorful" doesn't mean tasty with produce, unfortunately.

Also Lidl, at least in Sweden, does some things amazingly. One of the best shops for produce, for instance, both in quality and price.

Indeed, I'm not sure whether I would call Lidl in the Netherlands a discount supermarket, food and especially produce like you say is of a high quality, compared to other supermarkets. Usually they don't even have the lowest prices, as other supermarkets also have discount brands which are cheaper, but of lower quality than the cheap products you'd buy in a Lidl.

Sure, but US supermarkets have ridiculous variety even when you compare it to Tesco's, Sainsburies, Waitrose, G20, LeClerc etc...

It's funny how both my favorite US supermarkets are German owned. (Aldi for price and Trader Joe's for quality).

The only better one's I've seen are local 1-off stores and sometimes kirkland brand stuff from Costco for good VFM.

You've got a point about GMO-fobia in Europe, but it's a tangential problem.

It highly depends on where in Europe you go. If you are using German discount stores as the yardstick for Europe for example, it's a very low bar. The dairy quality is crap, and a lot of the meat doesn't taste great. Carre Four by comparison in Italy or France is in another universe.

I have to agree that it depends on specifics. Being used to the famous and beloved Wegman's in the US, I'm finding the Sainsburys and Tescos of my neighborhood in London to be a real disappointment.

London supermarkets tend to have a bit poorer choice as real estate is so expensive. I found choice to improve the further out you go.

Absolutely agreed, To add to that, I will post a link to a comment I made in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21256125.

There are already 1873 German Aldi discounters in the US. Maybe it's not where the HN croud buyes their stuff (that would be trader joe's ;) ). But there is a way to get cheap fresh produce in the US now.

Unfortunately we don't have Aldi yet in the bay area, which makes up for a good proportion of HN readers. However we do have Grocery Outlet, which IMO is the best discount grocer in the US, having previously lived in the midwest and southeast.

> is so obsessed with the discount model,

It is really not.

Nobody goes to LIDL to buy food, unless has some real money problem.

You have to make a different comparison: buy quality food from a local farmer and the same food from a local European farmer.

You will notice that in Europe is much more common than you think, it can usually be found in the local market in your neighborhood and it's much cheaper than in the US.

> the meat, cheese, and chocolate is great, but it stops there.

Basically every kind of raw food, except maybe for raw meat, in Europe taste better.

Including vegetables and fruit.

> Nobody goes to LIDL to buy food, unless has some real money problem.

Then I guess most of Poland has "real money problems", as LIDL and equivalents is where we shop. However, I think it's just that we don't like to overpay for stuff.

LIDL is a discount from Germany, it is spread over northern continental Europe and especially the eastern block.

If you compare it to other western supermarket chains like Carrefour, or Auchan, their food is of a lower quality, despite being not much cheaper.

LIDL is convenient for packaged or canned food or "everything not related to food", but it's a discount, not exactly popular for quality.

Even Simply, the discount branch of Auchan, sells better food than LIDL. At least in this part of Europe.

And they are all of lower quality than Esselunga or Coop or Conad (but that could just be the Italian in me talking).

But honestly I've never been at LIDL in Poland, maybe it's better over there.

On a side note: many Polish people have a real money problem.

The average Polish salary is below 1k euros, while in Germany is over 2.5k euros.

Oh, I just learned I have a money problem. Never heard that before. Sure, many Lidl products aren't great in quality, but some are definitely comparable with food bought elsewhere (at a much lower price). And buying non-local produce at a farmers market doesn't really make that much sense.

> Oh, I just learned I have a money problem

Sorry, not trying to be disrespectful, I was referring to where I live: Italy.

They usually don't even sell fresh food here and when they do, they are not much cheaper than the better alternatives.

This is kind of hard to square with the whole "food desert" phenomenon: http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defi...

What I suspect is happening is that the "variance" of America is much higher - the nice neighbourhoods are full of vast houses and plentiful food, while down the road the not-so-nice areas are way below what would attract some sort of social intervention in Europe.

The UK has a smaller version of the same effect, containing some of the poorest (well, lowest GDP) regions in Europe. https://fullfact.org/economy/does-uk-have-poorest-regions-no...

> Produce is colorful, plentiful, and delicious thanks to American embrace of GMO's and subsidies for farmers.

There are two problems with this statement. One is that the availability of plentiful and colorful produce is very much dependent on where you are in the US, and there are a large number of people who really don't have convenient access to it.

The other is that while produce is generally inexpensive, it is hardly generally delicious. Perfect looking tasteless hothouse tomatoes and peppers etc. are the rule, not the exception in a typical grocery store. Lot's of 'convenience' packaging (e.g. "baby spring mix" boxes), mountains of last years apples, not so much flavor.

If you have the means and live in the right places, you can buy very good produce from farmers markets and specialty stores, but it is expensive; the baseline is often pretty mediocre. And if you don't have the location and time and money to use these alternative sources, that's often what you are stuck with.

The silver lining on all this is that the industrial food system in the US has proven to work well as a very large scale optimization algorithm; unfortunately it's been optimizing on thing like shelf-stability, appearance, shipping convenience and food-science inputs while mostly ignoring flavor and nutritional content (see also why there are so many Holstien cows and so little decent butter). If the consumer demand is there for better food though, it should respond to that also.

If your countries ethos consists of being "the greatest in the world", then a part of that is the expectation that everything in the country must be equally as great as its sum.

That’s all I ever think of when traveling, even to relatively poorer countries. The US doesn’t even seem to try to be a top tier country in anything that brings quality of life.

I live in the middle of nowhere and rent a wonderful studio in a beautiful old building for next to nothing. The Bay Area is the armpit of America when it comes to value per dollar spent.

It certainly depends on what you’re comparing to. I’ve lived up and down the USD east coast, and spent time in London and Reykjavik, and traveled through Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

I was always left with the impression that everything in Europe except for trains and windows (why do Europeans have such nice windows and we do not?!?) is rundown crap.

I’m not saying I’m necessarily objectively correct. But I’m definitely not endorsing your subjective impression, either.

You could also lay some blame on a race to the bottom; i.e what is the minimum definition of a product that we can get away with making in order to keep those profit margins as wide as possible.

Less profit, though still plenty of it, can be made from high-quality goods. It's not that profit is inherently wrong, rather it's widespread business and corporate attitudes. An obsession with numbers and statistics rather than any pride in work.

> Maybe this is the result of 30 years of wage stagnation.

Don't think so. My family moved to the US in the early 80s and all the same observations applied back then.

This. America has always been considered crude by Europe when it fines to cuisine, craftsmen, etc.

As an American, I agree with your observations. Average food quality was higher when I lived in Europe, even in parts of the former Yugoslavia. Instant hot water was also more common; American homes typically use tank-style water heaters which take a minute to warm up once you open the faucet.

I think the Galapagos effect exists anywhere there's enough isolation, whether it be through language, geography, class, or politics. Different cultures have different values, preferences, and priorities.

These differences shape all of our opinions, whether it's you visiting the US, or me visiting the EU. Don't assume that your values are as equally important to someone in the US as they are to you, though. Many of our cultural preferences are just that -- preferences -- which all come with an associated set of pros and cons.

One person's "crappy hollow-core door" is another persons "ADA accessible, 2018 IRC-compliant, lead-free, contemporary-style door".

Shiny sounds right. In my experience with appliances in the US people either get the cheapest option or the option that matches the design of their home the best.

You hear people wanting stainless steel appliances...but never discussing their quality.

I could cherry pick examples from around the country to show exactly the opposite. There's a great Quora answer on this phenomenon, "Why do so many Europeans look down on 'American Cheese'?": https://qr.ae/TWJAc9

I was expecting to read a great Quora article but the author compared American speciality cheese to European supermarket fast serving cheese to prove that not everything made in Europe is superior.

What's next? Comparing an American ivy league university building to a newly built apartment somewhere in Brussels and prove that not everything is older in Europe?

Of course every place has all kind of extremes. I look down on West European cheese too because they don't have proper white cheese that is available in the Balkans and Turkey and when abroad I have to rely on low quality feta as a substitute and get depressed. That said, I am not going to claim that Balkans and Turkey have the best chease, it's just that the kind of the cheese I like is not available in western Europe in good quality and I am better of to stick with the local cheese(which is superior to the versions found in the Balkans and Turkey).

All those "country X is superior to the country Y" is inherently flawed unless you talk about specifics. Otherwise, all you do is some kind nationalistic masturbation.

Lack of white cheese is a real problem, I kid you not!

Ever tried Italy? ;)

I think quartirolo (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartirolo_Lombardo) is the closest to the white cheese you're looking for and also salty ewe's ricotta is pretty similar.

Like how you have to adjust the water temperature everytime you take a shower in the US. It's a solved problem!

What’s that then?

I live in Western New Zealand (Tasmania), and we have to adjust the temperature too.

You can set a temperature on a thermostatic shower head and you just adjust the flow of water. Most newer bathrooms have thermostatic shower heads in Europe. But even the old ones with hot + cold valves allow you to not only set the temperature but also the flow.

I think most US showers have just a single faucet where you can control the temperature but not the pressure/flow. You always have to go from cold to hot (it looks like this: https://www.americanstandard-us.com/-/media/sites/asus/image...)

those are common in Europe too. A Thermostat is nice but it does not solve the "first water" problem. A shower will always run cold at first.

I guess it's a regional thing, the single "US" faucet is something I guess no one in Slovakia or Czech Republic has seen. I remember when we were on a first US business trip and it was hilarious to find out that I was not the only one of the group who tried to find Youtube videos how to control that thing and also to switch between the shower head and the tap. The second thing was that after having a shower I wanted to switch on the bed lamp - the switch was a small knob which I tried to push but nothing worked, then I found out I had to turn it in any direction to cycle between on and off.

Those are common in U.S. hotels but virtually unheard of in homes. Most U.S. homes have separate hot & cold knobs running through a single faucet/showerhead, with a knob or switch to select shower vs. tub. First time I ran into the single-control shower, it took me a while to figure out how to work it as well, and I've lived in the U.S. my whole life. It was pre-YouTube as well, so I just had to fidget with it.

I've seen the thermostatic faucets before (I assume those're the ones where you twist to adjust temperature & pull to adjust pressure). They show up in more modern upscale hotels, and in people's homes when they've remodeled their bathroom. I think they tend to be an aftermarket add-on rather than a typical part of construction, though - no idea why, they're much more convenient than the alternatives.

Also - there is almost no cold water if I switch on the shower. That's because (at least in new houses) there is a closed circle for warm water and the heating system cycles the warm water (2 pipes of warm water + 1 pipe of cold water for each water outlet) in the pipes to keep it ready for use. You have instant warm water.

> You have instant warm water.

You should try Arizona in the summer next time you're in the USA - we have instant hot water 24/7 - even our cold water is hot.

Yes - I'm serious. In the summertime, our water from the "cold side" is typically luke-warmish at best. From the hot side, we can actually turn the temperature down on our water heaters and save some money.

It gets a bit better during "winter" (in quotes because right now, the temperature is around 32C - yep, shorts weather in the middle of November!).

Anyhow - you can purchase the tankless circulation system you describe, but it isn't cheap so you only usually see it on new houses, and only as an upgrade. Retrofitting old houses just isn't really possible without a complete interior teardown. The only other option is tankless water heaters, but those require a decent electrical circuit to each sink. So, most of us just have the central water heater tank, and when we want hot water, we turn it on and let it run (ain't like the water is going to disappear, thanks to the "water cycle"). Or we deal with the cold water (except here in Arizona - where again, our cold water is warm).

That sounds great, but also expensive.

Electricity and gas are relatively expensive in Australia compared Europe or US, so I’m lead to believe. Might be better in a new house with good insulation on the pipes.

This is due to the law. Flow rate through a shower is limited. There is no point having an adjustable rate if everybody wants more than a legal showerhead can provide.

We have two levers on the tap. One adjust temperature, another flow rate. I can't remember last time I've touched the temperature lever. Just open the flow and take a shower.

https://www.hanakat.fi/sites/default/files/imce/oras_sekoitt...

"expensive american-made fridge" how did he manage to find something like that? People might have different priorities but nothing is preventing you from installing Grohe faucets, or Villeroy & Boch sinks they are widely available.

80% of that $2M home was for the land, no money left for build quality.

This is not true. America is highly non homogenous, and looks like you did not bother to find "something else". If you seek long enough, you can find the worse but also the best things in the world here, including houses, people, politicians, bread, vegetables, meat, businesses, service, amenities and so on.

Europe, especially its non-Mediterranean part, is boring in this sense (everything is kinda OK but mostly not that fun)

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