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Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

The Europeans may be out to lunch, but at least they're living a decent life while they're eating.

It takes huge balls to look at the US right now -- banks in collapse, citizens teetering on the edge of bankruptcy -- and claim that we're a model for the right way of doing things. The French may not work 60-hour weeks, but at least they have the good sense to make the most of the time they've been granted on the planet. What do most Americans live for? Buying cheap crap at WalMart? Buying better crap than the guy next door?

I could care less that the "best" web2.0 companies are based in the US, when those companies are laying people off right now. Their former employees will have to enter the worst job market in nearly 30 years, without health care to protect them if they get sick, or basic social programs to keep their children from going hungry. I think that's an awful, brutal, unfair system, and I'd gladly trade a little bit of "competitiveness" for a bit more compassion.

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Your argument is indistinguishable from the arguments people used to make in the 1970s about how life was better in the Soviet Union than the US. Sure, their GNP per capita was lower, but they had more leisure time; their lives were not merely devoted to piling up possessions; society had more compassion.

The actual fact, in hindsight, is that life in the Soviet Union was pretty grim for the average person. It was only good for the guys who ran everything. And that is pretty much the case in France, though on a smaller scale.

Once you leave the big tourist areas, France is pretty grubby. The median French citizen does not live some kind of charmed, stylish life in his ample free time. Nor is he so high-minded that he is above buying cheap crap. Everyday life in France for the average person is much like it is for the average person in the US, just a little poorer.

I'm not only talking about France -- that was just the immediate target, as the country that Arrington visited.

Even in Germany they have very different attitudes toward work and social services than we do, yet still support an industrial and entrepreneurial culture (and still make fun of the French for being lazy). Framing this as a choice between US capitalism and French socialism (or Soviet communism) is a false dichotomy.

Ok, substitute Europe for France. The median for France is almost certainly above the median for all of Europe.

Median wage in Portugal is below the US poverty line.

I'm not sure that I understand what you're saying.

Are you suggesting that France is richer than the rest of the European nations (after cost-adjustment), but that it's still pretty grubby? If so, then all I can say is that I've been outside the tourist areas of a few different European nations, and they never looked that awful to me -- certainly no worse than rural America. The people didn't seem unhappy.

That said, I think this discussion is a distraction from my primary argument, which is that it's possible to guarantee a higher standard of living for people, without sliding down the slippery slope from corporat-ism to communism. There's a middle ground -- if our internet companies are 5% less successful, but we have universal health care, I think that's a reasonable trade-off.

The Big Mac index shows the Euro as significantly overvalued when purchasing price parity is brought into effect, which means that in addition to earning less in USD, the French can buy less with the same money as well.

That being said, they have much better and much cheaper health care. That saves each person the equivalent of thousands of USD per year. And coupled with other social insurance programs makes the gap not as high as it appears otherwise.

> That being said, they have much better and much cheaper health care. That saves each person the equivalent of thousands of USD per year.

I seriously doubt that the French plan is significantly better and cheaper than the boring Kaiser+dental+eyes plan that costs around $350/month for folks in their 50s.

> Everyday life in France for the average person is much like it is for the average person in the US, just a little poorer.

That is not my experience in Italy. To take an example near and dear to that country, the average Italian eats much better than the average American. Indeed, the basic, raw ingredients you find in supermarkets are far better than what you get in the US.

But it's not just that... I find that the relationships between people are genuinely a bit better in Italy than in the US. Perhaps one of the effects of all that "stasis" (jobs for life, people less willing to move around for jobs) is that people really get to know one another. I have several friends in Italy I've known for 13 years, but barely anyone in the US I've known for that long. I've heard some people say this is also true of small towns in the US, but I've never lived in one so I don't know how to compare it to Italy.

In short, in economic terms, you're correct, but the broader picture is more complex, and doesn't favor the US 100%. That's not to say that one is necessarily better... after many years of both, I guess I have a more nuanced view. I wouldn't hesitate to say the US is better for founding startups, but if you're just Joe Schmoe, life can be nice in Europe, too, even if you don't have an SUV and a fancy television set like your American equivalent.

> But it's not just that... I find that the relationships between people are genuinely a bit better in Italy than in the US. ... I have several friends in Italy I've known for 13 years, but barely anyone in the US I've known for that long. I've heard some people say this is also true of small towns in the US, but I've never lived in one so I don't know how to compare it to Italy.

Is your living in the US experience comparable to your living in Italy experience?

Lots of folks in the US don't move for jobs, etc,

Also, it seems somewhat odd to compare Italy to the parts of the US that it isn't much like. The US isn't the coasts/urban areas any more than Italy is Europe. Italy is, perhaps, like Minnesota (except smaller and warmer).

How did you get the "just a little poorer" part? Of course the US is the richest country at the moment, but I wonder if that also goes for the average American?

Also maybe in terms of owning things for example maybe it is easier to own a house with garden in the US, making people rich in terms of owning a house and garden. But french people living in an interesting cultural environment in a small flat might feel richer than somebody living in their own house at some crossroad in the middle of nowhere.

Overall I guess the average french factory worker doesn't really take 4 hour lunch breaks all the time, either...

Check out the CIA world fact book for some simple data.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

US Per capita GDP is $42,000 per year. France's per capita GDP is $32,000 per year. The US average tax burden is something like 35%, compared to nearly 50% in France. Even considering France's flatter wealth distribution and more generous social services, the average American is richer than the average French person.

These aren't the best measurements if you're interested in studying this sort of thing closely -- I'm using these because they were easy to find. Comparing the relative wealth of nations while controlling for cultural and regional differences is hard, and will probably never be solved now that political actors have an incentive to refute answers they don't like. Still, it's my understanding that there's a strong consensus for Americans having between 25% and 30% more money to spend on average -- the bone of contention being how much GDP numbers actually matter to promoting the welfare of citizens.

I have had holidays in various parts of France, and what I have seen wouldn't back that up at all. The only "poor" seemed to be in the outer paris suburbs (notable for violence in recent times) - and perhaps Calais, which was a bit of a toilet.

So I don't think its all like the Soviet comparison - in the soviet case it was deliberate mis-information to try and destabilise the west, controlled deliberately by soviet organisations.

"banks in collapse, citizens teetering on the edge of bankruptcy" - have you not been reading the news from Europe? Have you not noticed the way the word "global" is prepended to the word "recession"?

Europeans had about four days of gloating while we stumbled. Then the gloating stopped because it turned out that many of their banks were even more leveraged than ours, despite their supposedly-superior regulation regime, and their bill came due too. For all that you hear people bitching about the US, in relative terms it's actually not doing so bad. (I'd prefer that we'd all be growing in absolute terms, but the whole "Europe is better than the US argument" is intrinsically relative, so I'm just agreeing to your terms and following through.)

You want to talk about how much better the European system is, then explain why this is happening there and not here: http://www.oxfordpress.com/hp/content/shared/news/world/stor... And notice the scale! This is not an isolated riot in one block of Paris. Nor is this the first time.

The European-style social system is unsustainable, and to their credit they are beginning to recognize this and beginning the hard task of scaling back their promises, but they face challenges from all those who were promised and do not want to give it up. I have found it highly ironic (and very sad) that as Europe wakes up to the failures of, for instance, socialized healthcare, the US seems primed to go charging into that pit of despair more than ever.

"You want to talk about how much better the European system is, then explain why [the French immigrant riots are] happening there and not here....and notice the scale! This is not an isolated riot in one block of Paris. Nor is this the first time."

1) It's early. If we keep up with the immigrant-baiting in this country, we'll get there. Just last year, we had huge protests in the major cities because of the way that we treat immigrants. Did you not notice?

2) We've been doing the violent social protest thing for quite a while: the Watts riots in 65, the LA riots in 1992, looting after Hurricane Katrina, the Benton Harbor riots in 2003...and many, many others. Here's a nice list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_riots#1990s_-_2000 (for fun, count how many times France appears in the list, relative to the US!) We have a long, illustrious history of making minority groups so angry that they erupt into violence, so if anything, France is late to the party.

3) For the most part, the European banks were not more leveraged than US banks, with certain critical exceptions. That said, most of the world's banks make significant investments in US debt-backed assets, so it's pretty hard for an economic downturn in this country to avoid affecting other industrialized nations. The bank argument is a straw man.

the way that we treat immigrants

"Illegal" immigrants. And the way we treat them is: Despicable pandering. And when that became slightly threatened, they went into a violent tizzy. No surprise.

No, we treat many immigrants like shit, even the ones who come to do things, like, say, Y Combinator. There have been a number of stories here about the hassles people have gone through to participate in Y Combinator. H1B visas are another nasty piece of work. Instead of simply trying to ensure that immigrants have some sort of job, we tie them to one employer, which makes it harder for them to bargain for better wages, change jobs as opportunities arise and so on.

Those weren't the people protesting. The people protesting were illegals.

> why this is happening there and not here: http://www.oxfordpress.com/hp/content/shared/news/world/stor.... And notice the scale! This is not an isolated riot in one block of Paris.

These are discontended immigrant groups. The riots in L.A. in '92 were regular American citizens. The Parisian suburbs have got nothing on the ghettos of L.A., New York, and Washington. Murders are actually rare in European cities.

As an American living in Europe, I think there are things to be learned on both sides. I completely agree with things like health care, or things to protect people to some degree if they lose their jobs. What doesn't work in "Europe" (please not, however, that there are different systems within Europe) are some of the rigid labor laws, and the high barrier to entry for people wishing to create new companies.

... a little bit later ...

I wrote something about it myself, as it's a topic that's quite important to me:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/12/13/startups-and-work-euro...

To address entrepreneurship in Europe misses the point. What Mike Arrington fails to realize is he's only talking about France. When it comes to work ethic, different European countries are world's apart. You can't take countries like France, Germany, the UK and Ireland and blithely treat them as one entity. Behaviors and attitudes to work and to start-ups differ vastly from one country to another.

The same could be said of NYC, San Francisco and Detroit.

> I think that's an awful, brutal, unfair system, and I'd gladly trade a little bit of "competitiveness" for a bit more compassion.

As I see in your profile that one of your goal is to live outside the US, let me tell you that I'll gladly trade my French passport for your US passport. In France, you'll have as much compassion, fairness, equality and socialism as you want (and probably even more!)

edit: to be honest, you are on the right track to experience this brilliant social system in the US...

Living abroad is a great eye opener: you see the good and bad in another system and way of doing things, and you get some perspective on your own country, too.

I think that it's often also a great way to realize that Things Back Home are nowhere near as bad as you thought they were, and that The Other Place isn't necessarily paradise, no matter how much you may like their culture/food/women/men.

Well, I'm married to one of the women from The Other Place, so yeah, I'd definitely have to give them the edge:-)

> The French may not work 60-hour weeks, but at least they have the good sense to make the most of the time they've been granted on the planet.

France is the number one country in the world for antidepressant drugs consumption...

Is that because people are actually depressed, or because it's easy and cheap to get the pills?

Interestingly (well, in a grim sort of way), according to this, the suicide rate is pretty high in France, one of the highest in western Europe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...

That's surprising to me, I would have thought France would show up somewhere between places like Italy and Spain (which have low rates despite being relatively a bit poorer), and more northerly, gray places like Germany. Belgium is quite high up there too.

it's not cheaper than america... and it requires a prescription, as well

I don't know how much you should read into that list, given that Zimbabwe, Iran, Armenia and Uzbekistan are listed as having significantly lower suicide rates than most industrialized nations. It's pretty clear that the statistics are less than reliable.

This list might be a bit easier to scan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_suici...

The French are famous for extensive consumption of medicine in general.

But it comes in 75cl bottles, mostly ;)

As a US-educated entrepreneur based in Europe, I disagree. Their entrepreneurial culture is what's going to save the Americans, since they have the means to innovate their way out of this meltdown; be it through web 2.0 or greentech. Generous welfare state that we have in Europe presumes presence of a stable economy generating enough surplus wealth to sustain it. If we get outcompeted, it'll be the first thing to go unfortunately. We need to figure out a way to combine best of both worlds.

The next big bubble = greentech.

Bubbles are a great way to build infrastructure: http://www.slate.com/id/2165929/nav/tap1/

Build a smart energy grid during boom, and it will spawn a great deal of innovation during bust.

I'm probably horribly naïve, and quite possibly stupid, but I think the solution is actually pretty simple. Welfare, and all other aid programs, should be available to absolutely anyone, regardless of income. But none of these aid programs should result in the aid-ee receiving any form of currency.

For example, welfare should provide spartan clothing, housing, nutritious food, and that's it. No food stamps, no cash disbursal, but a safe and humane environment that can help people to get back on their feet. For those who don't want to get up and work, that's fine too, but comforts like being able to get coffee at Starbucks, or a big-screen TV, or a nice bottle of wine, aren't going to be provided by the government. If you want luxury, work for it.

It should include sufficient resources to raise children effectively. Underinvestment in poor children, especially at a very young age, is probably the biggest opportunity cost in almost all countries in the world.

If you do the maths using the UK government's own figures, it's actually cheaper to scrap the entire welfare system and just give every man, woman and child in the UK #3000/year, no questions asked, no strings attached. A family of 4, outside London, could live reasonably on 12k (untaxed, remember) a year, and anything you earned above that would be counted as regular income and taxed accordingly.

In the U.S., Charles Murray has been advocating a similar policy. He wrote a book called In Our Hands on it.

There has been a discussion about this in Germany, too. One of the most prominent supporters of it is the boss of Germanys biggest drugstore/pharmacy chain. You'd normally expect such things to come from "leftists".

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedingungsloses_Grundeinkommen (there are translations)

Personal opinion: I like it.

"What do most Americans live for? Buying cheap crap at WalMart? Buying better crap than the guy next door?"

That doesn't describe any Americans I know. On what do you base this claim? How do you know what most Americans live for?

it describes the european cliche of the US. That is all what counts in internet discussions ;)

Honestly, I think that it'd be a lot better for American entrepreneurs for the US to learn from the European model. Small businesses will benefit enormously from universal healthcare, for example. More vacation wouldn't hurt either. I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that productivity is probably maximized, per hour, at 9-10 weeks' vacation, and in gross, at 4-5. It makes sense for the most ambitious 1% to work 50+ hour weeks, during the highest-energy decade of their life... but it doesn't make sense for everyone to be working that much.

Lately it's been bothering me more that we're expected to get our health care plans through our employers. The proportion of Americans who hold traditional full-time, salaried positions at medium-to-large companies is far from 100%. A health care plan is something everyone needs; a job is something much more flexible that we do to earn (notably inconsistent amounts of) money. Moving toward either socialized medicine or the libertarian/free-market model would be better for entrepreneurship -- relying on a paternalistic employer for access to essential services isn't even a local optimum.

Universal health care I'm not so sold on, but the possible options aren't just (1) universal health care and (2) the incredibly awful system the U.S. has.

I'm an American living in Switzerland, for example, and here it is simply the law that you must have insurance. And since the government is guaranteeing income for insurance companies there are controls on how much money the insurance companies are allowed to make (from time to time they even have to send checks to their customers because they made to much money!). Since their profits are capped there is no incentive for shady practices like telling every person who claims "no" knowing full well that around 50% wont know enough to push it further as you see done in the US, South Africa, etc.

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