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Comment by ezequiel-garzon | Hacker News Reader

I think that neglects how much children can help their parents learn the host country’s language. There are several variables involved, as the parents doing well economically will also help their children in a different way.

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This is a great point, despite the other bizarre response. There may be no greater factor to a child's success than their parents'success.

First, this somehow assumes that immigrants aren't doing well enough. And what - poor people should speak the local language at home just in case it improves their economic standing, even though it would lead to missing a lifelong benefit for the children. But if you are already doing well, don't?

If you don't keep poor people suffering like folks do in the US, being poor isn't as big of a detriment and the adults are perfectly able to improve on their own time. And it isn't like being an immigrant means you are poor.

Poor people in the US are remarkably well-off. According to [0], if you’re in the 20th percentile in the states ($25k income), you’d be in the 80th percentile of Germany. 20th percentile and lower is the OECD definition of working/lower class.

Personally I found the 80% figure hard to believe. According to something else I saw online, it was 20th percentile in the US = 50th percentile in Europe. Which still shows how dominant the US is!

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global...

I can't prove this but I suspect this comparison is reflecting the relative price of goods and services which is a hyper-competitive market in the USA.

Other differences between the USA 20th percentile group and the Euro 50th percentile group is that one of them has healthcare and a longer lifespan.

Europe has far greater inequality between countries than US between states. People talk about EU/Europe but they mean developed/rich Europe, they gloss over that poor parts are way worse than underdeveloped parts of US. For all that egalitarianism and social policies they sure like to use cheap labor from underdeveloped countries and box them out of their systems for years/exclude from residential markets with rent contract requirements.

People who compare the entire US to Sweden and Finland never think to compare Mississippi to Albania.

Shit is looking up in backwards south-east Europe, too. Perhaps not all that much and all that fast, but still, the direction and speed seems better than the poorer bits of the US. So how much worse off than Mississippi is Albania really today?

That’s wonderful for Albania et al, more prosperity is always a good thing. My point is just that people should compare apples to apples, especially with US vs Europe, or US vs city states/tiny countries like New Zealand

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