Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

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This is a rude and ignorant statement.

First, you admit that "you and everyone you know" live in Europe. Perhaps consider not making sweeping generalizations about places that neither you nor anyone you know live.

Second, the many US States are far from perfect, as are the many EU member nations, but conditions in the US in general are hardly "shitty."

Other's have pointed out the extraordinary number of immigrants to the US -- there are more immigrants living in the US (40M) than citizens of Poland (38M)[1]. Those are normal people making intelligent, reasoned, self-interested decisions. They didn't leave their homes behind for a downgrade.

But more to the point, generalizing "conditions in the US" is utter foolishness. The US is very much like the EU v0. In the same way that my time living Italy didn't give me a great deal of insight into life in Belgium, a stay in New York City doesn't tell you very much about life in Idaho, or almost any other place in the US. The states are highly autonomous by design, and life experiences vary widely between them.

Yes, New York and San Francisco in particular are having a hard time due to acute housing crises, and some other cities are dealing with housing issues to a lesser extent. Yes, healthcare here is a problem if you don't have insurance.

But fortunately, the majority of the country is not SF or NY, and 92% of people have health insurance[2].

1: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding... 2: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27...

> 92% of people have health insurance

I don't mean to take away from anything else you've said, but that statistic is incredibly misleading. It specifically states 92% were insured for at least part of 2019. It also ignores the quality and effectiveness of the insurance.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...

> In the first half of 2020, 43.4 percent of U.S. adults ages 19 to 64 were inadequately insured.

> The adult uninsured rate was 12.5 percent. In addition, 9.5 percent of adults were insured but had a gap in coverage in the past year and 21.3 percent were underinsured.

> A quarter of those who were continuously insured and did not meet the threshold for underinsurance also reported problems paying bills.

> People who reported problems paying medical bills experienced lingering financial problems including damage to their credit ratings and depleted savings.

But grandparent's assertion that Europeans should leave everything behind and hop over the pond for more money isn't rude and ignorant?

I do see your point that it could sound like “everyone wants out,” but FWIW to me it didn’t come across that way.

I read the GP as asking “how will the EU stop the people leaving when they prefer to work elsewhere,” which implies that most people are moving for personal preference reasons rather than jobs. I doubt that is the case - I suspect that most humans would prefer to have both an elite job and their family relatively nearby, thus keeping talent locally is pretty easy if you have elite jobs to offer.

But since the GP didn’t elaborate on why they think people are leaving it’s difficult to argue about the posters intentions.

The US' "shitty conditions" aren't limited to healthcare or housing (but also last time I checked, having health insurance doesn't mean you're actually going to receive the healthcare you need). Look at measures like wealth inequality, police violence, parental and other forms of leave, infant mortality, child hunger and poverty. The US underperforms Europe on many of these metrics.

Also, that the US accepts more immigrants is not an argument for its inherent superiority, especially given how vilified and abused they've been in the past four years. All it means is that there are countries worse than the US, or that better ones have more restrictive immigration policies.

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