The same as everywhere... due to a war and pandemic.
> a government and social safety net that is rapidly becoming unaffordable
Completely false. Do you even read our budgets? Your debt-to-GDB was literally 3x ours last year. European countries aren't even allowed to deficit spend more than a few percent (which is what got Greece in trouble, for example.)
> they pretend don’t exist
I'm guessing you don't speak any European languages or you'd know this isn't true.
> business climate that has produced essentially zero large companies in decades, and on and on.
Ummm, right... like ARM, Skype, Spotify, Klarna, all the telecom suppliers, not to mention some of the biggest multinationals on the planet (whom you probably think are American)
The grass is always greener but I prefer it here.
> Even more so as American armed forces and weapons (and our tax dollars and political system) are what protect all of you from annihilation.
This is delusional. All you've ever done is make the world more insecure for your own gain[1]. You invade and overthrow everyone who ever disagreed with you and scream "freedom" at everyone.
> The grass is always greener but I prefer it here.
You've never lived here, that's why.
1. https://github.com/binka/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md
That's one of the stupidest misconceptions Americans have about "Europe" (the EU).
The EU has a mutual defence elements to it. The EU has a nuclear power, France. The EU doesn't need the US, your "tax dollars and (horrifically broken) political system", and should stop relying on it ASAP. Trump showed you can be an incredibly unreliable partner, why risk it?
https://www.statista.com/chart/27278/military-aid-to-ukraine...
25% comes from the US, but if you order by GDP(second graph), US is fourth. So overall a very big contribution, but far from "all". And about "negotiations" specifically, you're simply wrong - the ones keeping an open line with Putin (for zero gain so far) are Macron and Scholz (both say it's with Zelensky's approval, and he hasn't disproven them so they're probably not lying).
Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing are getting the bulk of that $40 billion.
We don’t talk about Iraq of course.
We are all helping Ukraine because it's the right thing to do (being invaded by a genocidal regime is not a nice thing to happen to anyone).
How about: "As a Californian, I support withdrawing all aid, so the east coast can defend itself."
While this sounds like something Otto said in A Fish Called Wanda, I can assure Europeans that many Americans actually believe what he is saying.
Of course we can look at the history of the US in Europe. Operation Gladio ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio ) was established to start a guerrilla war in Italy or France if the parties elected were not aligned with the rulers of the US (the US barely tolerated De Gaulle). The US intervention in Italian politics in 1948 exceeded Russian meddling in Czechoslovakia that year. The CIA spied on and stole Airbus plans for US business and does this regularly for other industries. And not to forget spying on Merkel's phone calls and all of this...as the US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland famously said in 2014 "fuck the EU".
Also, someone would have to be naive to think the US is acting in the current situation out of enormous benevolence to the Ukraine. It is, among other things, working on accomplishing what it wants to achieve for its own benefit in western Europe.
It's a lot more complex than that and a lot less cartoonish. The US armed forces protect the way the world is structured, which is obviously dominated by the US. This state of affairs has been erected over the second half of the 20th century primarily to further US interests. It's relatively unique in that it has come about with incredibly little bloodshed, though there are some precedents (not at this scale, obviously). This state of affairs has worked really well for the US as a nation state and economy, and it has had a ton of positive collateral effects for many others as well, but of course nothing at this level is ever motivated by goodwill. Protecting the current world order is done out of self-interest.
The European powers have arranged themselves with and taken advantage of this reality pretty well. Yet no one (that matters) is under the delusion that any support or protection on the part of the US happens for any other reason than to further US interests and wouldn't happen if those interests weren't aligned that way. The US are a "force for good" if and only if your interests are aligned closely with theirs; find yourself in the way of US influence or economic interests, and things can get very evil. There are numerous examples for this in relatively recent history (the most recent one is probably the Julian Assange extradition ruling).
If you look closely, you'll also notice precisely how the big EU players accomodate for that reality. Obviously the US wouldn't tolerate a European rival and it's certainly much safer to keep those interests aligned, given the scale of US dominance. It would also be a lot harder, geographically, to build a powerhouse like the US on European soil, and an impossibility from a political point of view. So there's no upside to aim for overwhelming force projection capabilities on a global scale; just huge risks and downsides and crippling cost.
Yet France and the UK have nuclear arms and fairly effective militaries that are way, way smaller that the US one, hence not a true rival even on European soil, but cover the important strategic bases; namely a solid capability for limited but effective projection of force abroad and a nuclear retaliation capability. Germany, due to its geographic location, cannot have either, as it must not seem threatening to its neighbours if Europe is to have any kind of stability at all. Poland couldn't possibly chain itself to a Germany poised to pounce at them whenever a hardliner government comes to power and France would have similar reservations, they're highly exposed to attack from the northeast as well. Germany's weakness is why the current state of affairs can exist, with a EU security policy that revolves around the tightly-coupled binary of France with its strong national defense stance and Germany with is baffling lack of strength.
Yet it's widely acknowledged that Germany is a latent nuclear power and could build nuclear weapons and means of delivery very quickly with resources present on its soil if it decided to do so. Even its military, joke of a force that it currently is, is fundamentally built to scale into a very effective modern army relatively quickly (as in a couple of years), they have a lot of expertise, just not a lot of decent hardware or effective organisation. It's likely that they will do some scaling now, depending on how the Ukraine conflict develops further. If they do, it's going to be interesting to see whether that actually works the way it's intended to.
But as long as the US are both capable of and forced to intervene in any major assault in or on Europe, or suffer a huge loss of influence and severe long-term consequences to their economy, being strategically cheap in that department is a pretty solid gamble that brings a bunch of benefits the US cannot enjoy, like being able to treat with Russia and China with a lot less reservations and being perceived as a lot less of a threat (especially in case of Germany). Whether getting cozy with China is a good thing in itself is of course very much open to debate, but the EU powers simply don't have the kinds of interests in the South China Sea that the US have there, that does open up options.
> the same issues plague both sides
Some of the issues are common; most are not, or only superficially so, with what will probably be very different trajectories (by what might well be a large margin). Europe is a very complex place, too, a very old, very cramped constant battlefield (literally; up until recently, there was literally always someone at war there), it is geographically linked to half the world, deeply divided, has few natural resources (left), is perpetually struggling to not lapse right back into constant warfare (that's what the EU is for), has no common language, no common set of ideas or values, no strong common identity and it's chock full of ancient grievances and conflicts papered over very thinly. That gives rise to tensions the US don't share (and vice versa – the unique situation in the US poses challenges that Europe doesn't have).
Yes, Europe is at war. Good reminder of the massive social instability occurring on the continent. Scary place to be right now.
Europe is not at war. War in Ukraine is due to an external force that affects barely anybody in Europe. What a bizarre nationalistic reply this is, to be so insecure about the landmass you happen to live on.
Can you point to, say, the UK's constitutional right to bodily autonomy so I can compare? I assume that there will be one as not having a strong constitution guaranteeing these rights is massive internal oppression that is very scary. Also: speaking of the UK and taking away its citizens rights... ever hear of Brexit?
>Europe is not at war. War in Ukraine is due to an external force that affects barely anybody in Europe
Ukraine is not in Europe? Also, the original commenter claimed inflation were a result of war and pandemic. So does it affect people or not?
>What a bizarre nationalistic reply this is, to be so insecure about the landmass you happen to live on.
I agree, the Europeans in this thread are bizarrely nationalistic. My sense is that there's a large contingent of political redditors in here.
And day to day quality of life has nothing to do with geopolitics for most people. US just simply ranks far lower than Central Europe and the Nordics in these measurements. A lot of it is just city planning and infrastructure.
Can they even buy a house or do they have to settle for an apartment?
Quality of live might be great in Barcelona if you like to drink and eat and want to work less. But Spain is so small comoared to the US. The US has so much more variety.. deserts, tundra, forests, palm trees, rocky mountains, cities..
What... world do you live in that Europeans* can't do all of that except the last?
> Can they even buy a house or do they have to settle for an apartment?
Of course... wtf? lol 76% of people own their homes in Spain. Home ownership in the US is only 65%...
* Spanish people can go anywhere in the EU with just an ID, no passport needed, just like in the US.
> Two different states want out and after a vote they arrested the head of state for those regions. The legacy of Franco..
You must be trolling. You literally had a civil war for the same exact reason... Unfortunately, no state allows any subset of itself to secede.
I could pick pretty much any US state over Spain and with a US engineering salary enjoy a vastly better standard of living.
Addendum: used to live in a very wealthy suburb in the US. Said houses are creaky, have constant humidity issues because the mildest of winds would blow out the roof tiles, and have a very low standard of construction coming from other places. More square footage is not indicative of a higher quality of life; many rooms sat mostly empty and did nothing for us.
This isn't even true (immigration accounts for half of Norway's population growth) but let's take a more extreme example: Sweden, the country with 7th highest quality of life on planet Earth yet every 1 in 11 people is an immigrant. This single case proves your generalization wrong. Every 16th person is a first generation immigrant originating from outside of Europe.
You seem completely ignorant of the fact that we took hundreds of times more immigrants per capita than any country on Earth yet we all dominate the fuck out of ALL of quality of live rankings.
The ethnicities in Norway are recorded as Norwegian 83.2%, other European 8.3%, other 8.5%
Your vision of Norway and the numbers don't lineup. 92.9% of people are white..
I live in Boston and groups here are flying women in and shipping pills out to abort their babies. Acting like it’s a dystopian nightmare because of the Roe overturn is hyperbolic.
2) this ruling doesn’t change that for the states most people live in, Abortion is still legal, and has been legal. And hopefully folks in the other states get less complacent and make their voices heard.
It’s a devolution of the issue to the states. Which sucks for a lot of folks, especially young women with few options. But it isn’t banning abortion nation wide or anything.
If anything, this is now way more like Europe.
Nice.
Am I missing something or did you respond to a person writing in English? English being a language created in a place called England, which last I checked is in Europe.
I can't pick what was more brain cells-killing to read: bshepard's initial rant, his later claim that he doesn't use Reddit despite having written a comment that could be pulled from /r/politics or /r/worldnews every single day, or eertami's claim that the Ukraine war affects "barely anybody in Europe". Honorable mention: kkfx's claim that a lawyer is needed to get a gym membership in the US.
Germany has had national health for 140 years, and people have said it is "rapidly becoming unaffordable" for 140 years.
I talk to older people who get US health care. It is incredibly expensive compared to other countries (which few deny), and nowadays they can barely get ahold of their doctor.
> a business climate that has produced essentially zero large companies in decade
Cisco hoovers up many network companies, FAANG hoover up startups, US mobile and land is basically either Verizon or AT&T, the ad agencies, accounting firms, media firms and on and on are all consolidating into a small oligopoly, I can't think of any major sector around a few decades where this has not happened. Europe is not much different.
Many of the things you mentioned are not generally true of Switzerland, for example. And OTOH, in Germany, the far right has stagnated and doesn't seem to make further inroads, large companies do continue to be successful but there are especially a lot of mid-sized companies (what's this obsession with growth at all costs?), etc. (let's not forget that one of the mRNA vaccines was developed here).
Yes, there are problems, sometimes even major ones, but I do think you're stereotyping just as much as GP.