Hacker News Reader

Comment by AHOHA | Hacker News Reader

Almost everything in North America is criminally priced with almost zero regulations, and all political parties are responsible for that: wanna buy a house, enjoy your 70y mortgage, wanna study, enjoy your student loans and expensive textbooks, oh you actually got sick, how rude?? Pay a hefty price or enjoy your 10hrs waiting time in the ER, Restaurants?! Pfft, pay the inflated prices for garbage food and don’t forget the 15%tip and credit card costs is also on you!! Gas is expensive? Yeah sorry despite the trillions we didn’t invest much in public transportation or bike/walking infrastructure. And so on.

View on HN

Gas is insanely cheap in the US compared to almost any other developed country.

Food is fairly inexpensive as well.

Housing has major problems in part stemming from over-regulation via zoning, NIMBYism, etc.

You might argue that the gas is cheaper, but it isn’t cheap, additionally, when it increases (and it will), US pretty much have no other options except cars.

Food isn’t cheap either and constantly is getting expensive (1), and I’m not even touching the subject of its bad quality.

(1) https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/price-of-food

US grocery store food isn’t really any more expensive than Europe and actually is cheaper. The price of milk for instance is cheaper than the European average. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings...

The actual cost of gas is actually about the same in US and other western countries, with the major difference being that in almost every other country you pay a hefty extra tax on gas on top of that cost - above and beyond usual sales taxes, often more than the actual gas cost - as means of reducing emissions and/or funding roads. So yes, US has cheaper gas at the pump, but it's not because of market efficiency but because of the differences of government policy to encourage/discourage gas consumption.

The market for gas/oil is already relatively extremely efficient so there isn’t much space left for cutting prices in that regard

> Food is fairly inexpensive as well

Really? I admit that this is anecdotal, but as an American when I studied abroad in Europe I was consistently pleasantly surprised by how much less expensive eating out was. In particular I felt like it was much more affordable to get healthier food at restaurants compared to the US, and also much cheaper to get alcohol drinks at restaurants. There were a few exceptions (Copenhagen, Paris) but even major cities like Rome, Munich, & Barcelona had pretty well priced restaurants (which included tip).

They're probably talking about groceries, not restaurants.

I’m talking groceries, not eating out. Eating out in cities has high costs due to high cost of living in cities. Average wage of a waiter or waitress in the whole of New York State is $23/hour (including tips), vs about $8-10/hour in Spain/Barcelona. So no doubt you’d have a cheaper experience eating out in Europe, the wages are much lower! And this is also why it’s bad to use eating out as a benchmark, because it’s dominated by labor costs and by its very nature (and sociocultural expectations), it’s labor-intensive. So as overall wages increase, so will the price of eating out. So Americans, with our much higher average wages, are able to get a much better deal eating out in European nations with their lower labor costs.

But actual food (grocery) prices tend to be overall higher in Europe than the US. Milk (easier to compare than most things) costs $1.03/liter in the US compared to $1.14/liter in France, $1.35 in Italy, $0.96/liter in Spain, $1.28 in the UK, and $1.85 in Norway. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings...

> 15%tip

You mean 25% tip, minimum -- according to many POSs!

Where can I get one of these 70 year mortgages?

Canada, of course!(1)

(1) https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYEGwwSD/

Wow...tiktok is blocked for me at work...is that fixed rate or ARM financing?

Here’s the video https://files.catbox.moe/rpp5fp.mp4

My impression is the Canadian government only backstops mortgages up to 25 years, so (without having seen the video) I would guess it's some kind of ARM.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com