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Comment by andrewmutz | Hacker News Reader

> Instead, they are comparing it to other developed countries and focused on specific conditions that matter to them, like housing, transportation, environment, violence, etc.

When I hear people complain online about the US, it is very common for them to have a deep understanding of problems in the US, but very superficial understanding of problems in other developed nations. European countries also have lots of problems with housing, healthcare, the environment, racism, the rise of the far right, etc. There are some problems that are uniquely american, like mass shootings.

Being an informed citizen isn't just understanding the problems in your country. If you wan't to be a part of positive change, you need to understand what's working and what's not working in other comparable countries as well.

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Indeed. It's hilarious to see some Americans claiming things are so much better in "Europe" when their entire experience consists of a few weeks as a tourist or business traveler in first-tier EU cities. Try living for a while in the places where outsiders rarely go and then tell me how great it is.

Yea, there is a reason why net immigration between Europe and the USA heavily biases towards people moving from EU to USA and not the other way around. The USA is truly the land of opportunity. More than anywhere else you alone control your own destiny. The USA has also proven time and again that it is more economically resilient than any other economy out there. There are booms and busts, but the recovery from the busts are always strong and do not stagnate for extended periods of time.

I say this all as someone who does not live in the USA and is not an American citizen.

The USA is not perfect and has its own share of social problems (like all countries do) but people decide that the tradeoff is worth it for all the good things the USA offers.

> The USA is truly the land of opportunity. More than anywhere else you alone control your own destiny. The USA has also proven time and again that it is more economically resilient than any other economy out there. There are booms and busts, but the recovery from the busts are always strong and do not stagnate for extended periods of time.

It's not limited to economic opportunity. The US also offers people the opportunity to make the US better through our democratic process.

Is it because poor Americans can't afford to move to Europe even if they would be better off, but wealthier Europeans can emigrate to the USA where they will definitely be better off?

Assuming some place in Europe would take them, which I suspect is the larger barrier along with language.

Countries with extensive social programs for the poor typically aren't the easiest places to immigrate.

Neither of those would be barriers if they had plenty of money to move to Europe.

That's kind of what "can't afford" means.

"Can buy a plane ticket" is pretty different from "Is affluent and skilled enough to not be a net negative to social programs".

I like your enthusiasm but you don't become an EU citizen just by buying an air ticket. :)

Well you can probably become a de facto EU permanent resident by buying a ticket on a smuggling boat. EU member states don't actually deport many undocumented immigrants regardless of what the official immigration laws say.

That's the point I was making...

Possibly, the USA is a good place to be rich and not so good of a place to be poor.

> Indeed. It's hilarious to see some Americans claiming things are so much better in "Europe" when their entire experience consists of a few weeks as a tourist or business traveler in first-tier EU cities.

Being specific in your comparison matters.

It is indeed facile to make the statement that "things are so much better in Europe". Blanket statements are usually stupid.

It's reasonable, however, to compare the efficacy of public transit of San Francisco to that of Copenhagen, or to compare the a population-wide health indicators of the US to Germany.

> It's not unreasonable, however, to compare the efficiency of public transit of San Francisco to that of Copenhagen. Comparing accessibility of population-wide health indicators of the US to Germany also makes sense.

I definitely agree that the US healthcare system sucks and should not be emulated. But I think many of its critics think healthcare is a solved problem in countries like Germany and it really isn't. Germans are not completely happy with their healthcare system and there is an effort underway to reform it currently. I think it's a better system than the US system, but it's got plenty of problems:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/14/a-ticking-ti...

> In Germany, which spends more on healthcare than almost any other country in the world, hospitals are a greater concern, with this winter’s wave of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in young children triggering alarm across the country.

> Amid reports of overcrowded casualty departments and parents forced to sleep in hospital corridors or travel hundreds of kilometres for a child’s treatment, the Süddeutsche Zeitung said the country was witnessing “what it means when a system implodes … in scenes which for a long time might have seemed unimaginable”.

> In a petition to parliament titled: “Alert level red – hospitals in danger”, the German Hospital Society (DKG) again highlighted a chronic lack of staff as the main problem, noting that many hospitals had had to temporarily close casualty departments due to a lack of doctors and nurses.

> More than 23,000 posts remain unfilled in Germany’s hospitals after several years of low recruitment and recent mass resignations, particularly in intensive care and operating theatres, by staff citing a workload so extreme that some were unable to take even a short break or go to the toilet.

Additionally, the poor health outcomes in the United States are not necessarily the result of the US health care system. Many of the most important drivers of health care outcomes (exercise, nutrition, obesity, drug abuse, etc) are worse in the US.

My point isn't that the US health system is great, because it isn't great. My point is that people in the US are well informed about their own problems but generally ignorant about the problems outside the country.

It often doesn't make sense: the nicest countries in Europe won't allow you to become an immigrant there, because they're hyper xenophobic and or extremely racist. They have very tall barriers to entry that are intentional. They usually call it protecting their culture, it's really just plain old xenophobia and racism.

The nicest European countries are fragile and can't handle immigration well at all. Just ask Sweden how their next 30 or so years are starting to look. France has entirely failed for decades at integrating their immigration populations, despite their vaunted welfare state. They're very mediocre at functional integration, whereas the US is the greatest by-design melting pot in world history.

Try immigrating into affluent nations like Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway, Finland, etc. They make it far more difficult than it is to come to the US (unless you're a top tier immigrant in terms of skill/wealth). The nicest countries love to use points systems or the equivalent to keep poorer, lower skilled people out.

Canada for example is 2% black and 3% Latin American. Anyone think that's an accident? There are roughly 3/4 of a billion Latin Americans in the Americas and somehow Canada is merely 3% Latin American. The huge Latin American immigration wave the US has seen over the past 40-50 years has been nearly entirely blocked by Canada. It's by design, they're xenophobic like the Europeans are, and they do everything they can to keep poor people out.

People will say: just look how amazing Norway or Germany are. It's a nice fantasy, because good luck becoming a citizen (maybe for the privileged HN crowd there's a chance).

Japan is amazing? Yeah ok, go try becoming a citizen there. Try integrating, try becoming Japanese (you can't).

So what the hell is the point of saying: xyz is so wonderful - if they're excluding by design and won't let you join?

Gee, Stanford, MIT and Harvard are amazing, every college should be like that.

The US remains moderately accessible, most of its peers are the exact opposite.

Canada[1] is 15% Asian (India, China, etc), 4.3% Black, 1.9% arab, 1.6% latin american.

The US is 12% black, 18% latin american, 6% Asian. And let me tell you, that 12% black number isn't the product of a liberal immigration policy.

The numbers aren't actually too different, and if you were to switch the two countries' geographies, I'd expect the US latin american numbers to significantly drop, and Canada's to significantly rise.

The Canadian immigration system is actually pretty reasonable. Points for being young, for having useful skills, points for demonstrating mastery of the language, points for having relatives. And a clear process for international students studying in Canada to naturalize.

The US is the one that yanks you around by your britches, with decades-long waiting lists and visa lotteries for people who are already living and working in the country.

[1] Country-of-origin breakdown for recent immigrants to Canada[2] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1171597/new-immigrants-c... - 32% India, 8% China, 4.3% Philipines, 3.8% Nigeria. The first European country to make the list is France, at 3.2%, followed by the US, Brazil, Iran, Korea, Pakistan, all at 2-3%.

[2] Similar breakdown for the US - https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested.... - 14% Mexico[3], 13% India, 7% China, 4% Phillipines, 3% Dominican Republic.

[3] Given these numbers, I think its reasonable to hypothesize that if Canada had border proximity, and strong cultural ties to Mexico, I'm sure that it's lat-am immigration numbers might look similar to what the US has.

> Europe won't allow you to become an immigrant there, because they're hyper xenophobic and or extremely racist. [...] They usually call it protecting their culture, it's really just plain old xenophobia and racism.

> Just ask Sweden how their next 30 or so years are starting to look. France has entirely failed for decades at integrating their immigration populations, despite their vaunted welfare state.

You seem to be contradicting yourself. The way you put it, European countries are simultaneously closed to immigration and irrationally racist for being this way, and at the same time they're on doomed trajectories due to immigration. If the latter is true, that would be a non-racist justification for anti-immigration policies, but if they were as anti-immigration as you claim those faltering social conditions due to immigration wouldn't exist in the first place.

Compare immigration to France and Japan. It's clear which of these countries is actually hostile to immigrants.

Not to take sides, but there's not a contradiction there. The immigration of refugees has been a topic of discussion for some time now (Brexit). Standard immigration is still difficult in most of the EU but there has been an influx of refugees who are primarily poor.

I don't agree with the characterization that the policies are due to racism though.

> I don't agree with the characterization that the policies are due to racism though.

Right, it's a clear contradiction. If European countries were "hyper xenophobic and or extremely racist" they would be turning away and deporting those refugees. They're not doing that though, so the characterization of European countries as xenophobic and racist doesn't fit the facts.

The contradiction is between government policies and the society. Government (I am speaking of Germany which I know of, I expect France and Nordics be similar mutatis mutandis) clearly understands that they need immigrants, but the society is inherently nativist (if xenophobic is too strong of a word), and not willing to accept/integrate them.

> The US remains moderately accessible, most of its peers are the exact opposite.

I agree completely. But that's good and practically necessary for the US, since it is highly reliant on immigrants at all levels of skill for their labor.

Immigration even underpins the basic functioning of the healthcare system, and not just for doctors and nurses. Cleaning hospitals is a critical job for the healthcare system, and janitorial workers are 20% Latino.

However, that doesn't mean there isn't plenty that can be learned from the administration of healthcare systems elsewhere.

Germany, like the US, has a market based health insurance system organized through employers, but unlike the US, carrying insurance is required by law [1].

Furthermore, Germany has universal public coverage for medically necessary care, and controls the price of prescription drugs [2].

That doesn't make Germany's system perfect by a long shot, but it manages to achieve a much lower healthcare spend as a percentage of GDP while maintaining universal coverage for basic healthcare and even offering patients longer average hospital stays than the US does.

1. https://sites.gsu.edu/gsuglobalhealth/2021/02/15/competition...

2. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...

I have done this, its really great for me and my family. Kid goes to public school and most of our friends are locals. Would highly recommend everyone try this for a bit and make their own judgement.

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