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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

What if the Europe's laid back work culture and stricter control on environment(that is work environment, food and natural environment, healthcare) produces better outcomes after all?

The tech community loves to mock EU for being lazy or being anti-innovation or anti-business but at the end of the day life in Europe is pretty good. Food is good, its safe, people live healthy long lives - things reserved for the rich in the USA. Community preserving regulations are all over the Europe, which might make the housing markets less dynamic but once you are in you don't easily loose access to your community when your fortune isn't performing.

Being the "old world", Europe has been over this stuff long ago and despite people imagining that bureaucrats of Brussels are making up the regulations, European love for strong government is rooted in past experiences with issues and their solutions.

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Europe is objectively better for salaried workers who will never have a shot at early retirement (which is prob 90% of the US population)

US is better for business owners and entrepreneurs and maybe the super ambitious

Europe is better for the rich too, just not for getting even richer. The rich in EU are having great time, there are many hot spots for the billionaire class as well as the other less rich but still wealthy. They only complain about how they can't do whatever they want to the workers and the nature.

Europe is also fine for startups, its just not good for scale ups. When successful with tech and the product, startups go to the USA to try to become gargantuan(which also affects the startups, because investors are less motivated to bet on them becoming scale-ups).

Yeah I was thinking more bootstrapped businesses or small businesses - the tax advantages for such businesses you get in the US are insane

The EU is a big place, and geographic Europe is even bigger. Try spending a couple years living outside the affluent areas popular with American tourists: rural Romania for example. Life isn't that great, nor is life expectancy particularly long.

Worst of Europe isn't better than the best of USA. I'm talking about averages here.

Oh and I'm born and raised in Bulgaria, poorest of EU and one of the poor ones in Europe and even the worst places of Bulgaria are quite safe and have good food available. Can you say the same for the worst places of the USA?

Life expectancy is worse though, according to the WHO that's because of prevalent smoking, frequent alcohol consumption and unhealthy diet and low physical activity. Completely avoidable, no one has to live off on cereal even in Bulgaria.

Have you been to rural Romania? Or stayed there for an extended period of time?

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