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Comment by gopi | Hacker News Reader

Public education: I was talking about schools in good school districts. They are comparable to most European schools.

Healthcare: If you have a good health insurance, you are covered better than any other govt sponsored health system in the world. Again i agree you are screwed if you don't have a insurance but that's a whole different argument

Vacation: I am a Indian living in US and many of my friends take a month off (2 weeks paid + 2 weeks unpaid) when they go to india. Its not a big problem

From what i see most of the people arguing that europe is better are Europeans who never worked (for a meaningful time) in US or american leftists who adore everything european :)

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I grew up in the US and now live in Europe so I'm at least as qualified as you.

Education: Yea, get ready to pay insane prices to get in these so-called "good districts" because there are so few and everyone wants in. Realistically, you're going to have to send your kids to private school if you don't want to worry about violence and them learning anything useful. But you'll still pay for the near useless public system.

Healthcare: this is a bold faced lie. Two separate independent reports compared health care around the world and found that the US was the most expensive in the world and did not provide the best care. Where do you get your metrics? Some talking head like Hanity?

Vacation: I don't know where you work but a lot of companies seriously frown on taking unpaid leave. There is a lot of culture in the US that feels that 2 weeks is all anyone should want. When I was telling my friends about how excited I was to come to Europe and get 5 weeks vacation, one of them told me he thought that was immoral!

I worked the majority of my life in the US and I'll never go back unless it's to do a startup.

Public education: but what happens when you need to go to college?

Healtcare: I want to see data supporting that, IMHO it's just patently false.

Vacation: if you say so I rest my case…

I'm the worst of possible worlds I am an European leftist who's actually employed by an American company but works remotely from Europe, so I'd say I know pretty well both systems.

Yes it costs a lot more to go to college in US compared to Europe. But if you take into account the higher salary and low tax you will be still better off in the end. This is assuming you have 2 kids not 4 :)

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