Americans Need to Learn to Live More Like Europeans | Hacker News Reader

Americans Need to Learn to Live More Like Europeans

bloomberg.com

18 pointsjacobbudin14 comments

The article utterly sucks. It's essentially a clickbaity rendition of the banal rant about American consumerism.

The arguments are poorly constructed, even when there is a point to be made. The sentence "Americans haven't always acted like this. We've entered an age of overabundance." is followed by a a graph showing that Americans consumed more than major European countries at least since 1990. (And I don't think that graph is purchasing power parity adjusted)

Apart from the confusing graph, most of the numbers in the article don't have a corresponding European version for comparison.

What has happened to the Manhattan Institute? I kinda thought their senior fellows were better than this.

I've thought a lot lately about how American's don't have the benefit of living somewhere that has been continuously inhabited (by non-nomadic people) for thousands of years. I can't go have fun in a local town center because I literally have no local town center. Living in the middle of suburbia as a youngster means everything within walking/driving distance is paved and closed by 9:00pm. There isn't much to do except spend time inside and to make it enjoyable we buy things to spend time with.

I would have loved to live European-ish but I wish it was more practical than it seems.

> I literally have no local town center. Living in the middle of suburbia as a youngster means everything within walking/driving distance is paved and closed by 9:00pm.

Modern neighborhoods went a long way to rob youth of most opportunities to learn self-sufficiency and interpersonal skills.

Whatever heavy traffic and no trespassing signs didn't take away - that gets ruined by the endless and pervasive lies about stranger kidnapping risk.

The data should also take into account average income or something similar. A quick search in Wikipiedia[1] shows that average wage in the USA is $65k, and the UK is $47k, a ratio of ~1.38. Before the pandemic, the consumption per capita ratio for these 2 countries was ~1.33. Basically, people who earn more tend to spend more but not disproportionately so. So the actual trend is not as extreme as that plot makes it out to be.

This is not to say that there isn't an underlying problem.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...

That title is a non-starter for so many Americans. Any such shifts need to be sold without reference to foreign lands.

Tesla made EVs sexy. In the same way, you have to make living more efficiently sexy. Less overwhelming consumerism, more conscientious and intentional consumption, with a bit of camping’s “leave no trace” thrown in.

Tesla made a high performance electric car. Its nothing like "conscientious and intentional comsumption". They didn't make having a wussy electric car cool, they made a powerful electric car. The parallel I could maybe see to efficient living is making it zero cost, or somehow more rewarding, instead of asking people to cut back. This comes from better technology, whether its cheap efficient lights or lab grown meat that actually tastes and nourishes like meat or carbon capture or whatever.

I largely agree with the author, but why isn't the ire directed at the companies that offshores everything in the first place? We'd be in a much better position if we hadn't outsourced the manufacturing of all our most most needed items to china I'm the past 30 years

Why companies and not the govt though? I understand that these companies have the choice to not do it in China, but they're incentivized to do so by the existing economic structures.

One of the wonderful things about America is that anyone is free to up and move to Europe whenever they want.

...and carry on paying taxes in the US in many cases. Even choosing to renounce citizenship can land you with a hefty tax on any capital gains, etc.

In this regard, US citizens are less free than citizens of most other countries in terms of leaving.

Sure, so long as they have the requisite wealth to uproot their entire life, travel to a foreign nation, and acquire citizenship. No big deal really.

> One of the wonderful things about America is that anyone is free to up and move to Europe whenever they want.

Oh sure. People living paycheck to paycheck are just one decision away from moving to the EU.

I get a lot of these types lecturing on Europe, despite living quite frugally and efficiently.

The ones who spend all their energy babbling away at me about how much better it is in Europe generally did their absolute best to leave there and come here (to the US). And I generally consume less than they do.

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