Hacker News Reader

Comment by f38zf5vdt | Hacker News Reader

From the 1880s to 2000 this may have been the case, but I don't think it is anymore. Any country with public health insurance that is decent is more attractive than the US. People are not blind, they see Americans dying of diabetes because they can't afford insulin that they attempted to crowdfund. [1]

The US has evolved into a modern dystopia under the first-past-the-post system and cloture in the senate. I think the election of Donald Trump was the signal to the rest of the world that America's democracy may not even be a democracy. Republicans are currently digging themselves in to remove as much democracy from the American political system as possible. [2] I'm not sure where the country will end up.

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shane-patrick-boyle-died-a...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2021/06/the-...

View on HN

We never had a true working class party or the same kind of safety net as they have in Europe, because all the class divisions could be papered over with free stuff and money- first, a whole continents worth of free land, and then when all Europe was destroyed, a 60 year burst of huge profits. So you know, it’s material conditions in the end. Matt Christman and Sean KB did an excellent podcast on this called History is a Weapon: Q is You.

> The US has evolved into a modern dystopia

> America's democracy may not even be a democracy

> Republicans are currently digging themselves in to remove as much democracy

Here's the ideological intensity that the article mentioned. This is delusional.

The smartest, most driven people still come to the US to start businesses and seek fortune, because it's the best place in the world to do so.

I'm not from the US, so I suppose I don't know. One of my uncles immigrated there and works in a VA hospital. The stories he tells me, of people dying of ailments that are common in the third world, seems to suggest otherwise.

> The smartest, most driven people still come to the US to start businesses and seek fortune, because it's the best place in the world to do so.

Rates of entrepreneurship are higher in Scandinavian countries[1].

It's also easier to start your own business in such countries because you don't already have to be wealthy enough to afford spending $36k in premiums alone each year for your family's health insurance on the individual market.

[1] https://www.oecd.org/sdd/business-stats/EAG-2018-Highlights....

Everything f38zf5vdt said and that you've quoted here can be true (at least subjectively) while your own reply is also true. You're not actually addressing or contradicting their arguments, such as they are, just declaring them categorically invalid because "capitalism."

> The smartest, most driven people still come to the US to start businesses and seek fortune, because it's the best place in the world to do so.

Keep believing that myth.

If a highly-skilled individual wants to amass the most monetary wealth possible, which geographies do you think would be better than the USA and why?

>> Any country with public health insurance that is decent is more attractive than the US.

Depending on what you want to do with your life, this is mostly true. But immigration laws to countries with these kinds of welfare structures tend to be much tighter than ones without for reasons that are obvious.

"Tend to", perhaps, but it's not universal, in that there are huge gaping loopholes in some places.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com