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Comment by boeingUH60 | Hacker News Reader

Interpretation: If you’re poor or middle class, Western and Northern Europe is the best place to be, as the government will take better care of you.

If you’re rich (as in $1m+ annual compensation)…maybe the US if you’re interested in paying lesser taxes and keeping more of your money. You’ll pay insurance and education costs out of pocket but you’ll end up with more post-tax income in your pockets than your European counterparts.

If you’re born in Nigeria like me, start weeping because your healthcare budget is $6 per person annually (no, I’m not joking)…haha

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US is also far better if you are middle class and want to accomplish things. It’s not a coincidence that pretty much all the successful ambitious startups are in the US, and not in Europe.

I admit that, but that doesn’t matter to the 99% of people who will never start a company.

Not in the near term. But in the long term it does: as you can see in the OP historical economic growth is essentially the variable that explains current standard of living.

And it also makes work uninteresting and dull for another few percent, who can no-longer choose to work for an ambitious startup.

It's not just entrepreneurship. European countries are notorious for safeguarding people against mistakes at the cost of everything else. Safeguarding not just meaning 'you can't fall deep into poverty', but also 'we will give you the means to stay at your current level'. That's how you end up with young people earning median household income unable to get a semi-decent apartment while Joe with a family of 4 making the same amount could never afford his current home, but passed the checkpoint before the bar got raised too high.

Great if you're established or the economy is flourishing where you want it. Not so great if important sectors are dwindling and you have yet to establish yourself.

I keep seeing this. I don't get it. You are Swedish too, right?

One, why do you think startups are so good to the avarage person?

Two, Spotify, Ericsson, SAAB, Skype, Thepiratebay, our military in general (we are country of 10mil and we build 3 jet plane models, our subs, and cruisers are renowned) and ofc IKEA. :))

They were all startup mentality once.

Plus how many people really start their own companies. More importantly, WHEN they fail, and they WILL, how will you survive in the usa without massive private savings as there is no safteynet?

> US is also far better if you are middle class and want to accomplish things

I worked my way up to (maybe upper-)middle class and wanted to accomplish things. Not only would this not have been possible in the U.S.A, what I wanted to accomplish wouldn't even have been termed an accomplishment there (it was happiness and contentment).

> It’s not a coincidence that pretty much all the successful ambitious startups are in the US, and not in Europe

It certainly isn't, but that likely means something else to me than you. So far, those "successful ambitious startups" have messed up quality of life, and maybe even global politics.

It's not a co-incidence that that I see "FUCK OFF GOOGLE" stickers everywhere I walk here.

We have different goals in Europe.

One of the amazing things from a western perspective about the less developed world is being able to buy a full course of antibiotics without a prescription for a few dollars.

In the US you'd need an appointment, insurance paperwork or no insurance and then the actual meds might be $50-$80, if your doctor insists on prescribing the latest pharmaceuticals.

"I think this is infected"

"Looks like it. Here you go!"

Yeah, drugs are relatively cheap here, and you just walk into a pharmacy and buy it. A true free market, although self-medication is a major problem.

My ex-gf had a condition that needed to be treated with antibiotics and at the time she was between jobs. The doctor made a few calls and her out of pocket for a full prescription was $5.

Antibiotics should be carefully described, so I don't think it's good they can be bought without a subscription.

Not everywhere 'Western' is like the US. Saw my GP a couple of weeks ago and got prescribed antibiotics. Full course was < 10 AUD. No insurance necessary.

Same there in America. Saw my kids pediatrician this week and it was $8 for antibiotic ear drops.

What insurance did you have?

In France (and probably the rest of the EU, at least the countries I visited) you cannot get antibiotics freely. They need to be prescribed by your MD. And usually generics.

Cost is 1€.

Whether they are prescribed correctly is another story (France used to be very into prescribing antibiotics for everything, this changed in the last 20 years)

Generics are generally pretty cheap. There are some indications that US doctors are incentivized to prescribe patented meds. I know I've received them when I strongly suspected a generic would have been fine.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8315858/

>These analyses included several types of prescribing decisions, finding that physicians who received industry payments were more likely to prescribe drugs made by the companies that had paid them over alternatives, had higher prescribing costs, and prescribed relatively more brand-name products over generic alternatives. The positive results of these studies spanned a broad range of physician specialties and drug classes.

In France generics are compulsory (there are some exceptions), otherwise you have some problems with the reimbursement. This is not strong enough but at least this is something.

The pharmaceutics have to provide a generic if it exists, even if the prescription is for another drug (except if the MD explicitly states that the specific drug must be used, with an explanation and they have to report this)

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