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Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

The US dream of "making it" is all about money.

What we in Spain consider "making it" is to enjoy life, having time to relax, pursuing hobbies, spending time with family. And not having to worry about healthcare bills and pensions. We don't need a lot of money for that. I don't always want more. I just want enough.

In the US the vast majority never "makes it" and they are far worse off than we are here. I think Europe is great the way it is. I would not move to the US even if I was offered a job there. In fact I don't even want to visit and never have though I've lived in many countries around the world.

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I don’t understand where this overused rhetoric comes from. I enjoy my life, spend time with my family, have hobbies… and make money. These things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Yeah, it's odd. I have more time to do those things the more I earn too. Earning more doesn't have to mean working more.

>In the US the vast majority never "makes it" and they are far worse off than we are here.

Mississippi, the poorest state in America, has 33% higher GDP per capita than Spain does.

You're proving the point of the commenter you're replying to. ;)

They're pointing out that "richness" comes from measuring all parts of a person's life.

But you immediately revert to talking about only money. It's super ironic.

I'm just pointing out how implausible the claim is that the vast majority of Americans are far worse off than Spaniards. Of course there's more to life than money and GDP/capita is an imperfect measure, but the median American leads a very comfortable life.

> I'm just pointing out how implausible the claim is that the vast majority of Americans are far worse off than Spaniards.

Perhaps you have the wrong idea about Spaniards?

The median spaniard will have fewer working hours, more holidays, more paternity leave, lower risk of abruptly loosing their job, have a longer life expectancy, less likely to struggle with extreme medical bills, need to put away less money for children schooling, etc?

> GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living; however, this is inaccurate because GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income.

It also doesn’t take into account cost of living. You might as well make 300% more but if everything is 500% more expensive I don’t see why that’s an indication of things being better.

GDP per capita is not a useful measure of living standards. Or most other things, really; it’s a very crude metric.

To take an over-simplistic example, imagine that the cost of healthcare in Mississippi just rose 5k per capita. Mississippi’s GDP just rose 5k per capita (simplified almost to the point of being nonsensical, but increased healthcare cost will raise gdp), but Mississippians got worse off!

For a glaring example, take Ireland; gdp per capita is over 3x Spain. Is the standard of living in Ireland 3x that of Spain? Definitely not; I think you could actually make a case for it being lower, especially for the more economically disadvantaged (wages are much higher, but so is cost of living).

I think where all this comes from is that gdp/capita _used_ to work a bit better as a proxy for standard of living (though still not well) when economies were more manufacturing-oriented.

Nice example. I actually moved from Ireland to Spain a few years ago.

Indeed my wage went down but my standard of living went up. The exception being if I want to pay goods that cost the same everywhere (e.g. computers, cars). But it's not a big deal.

Also, my quality of life increased considerably. In Ireland public transport is horrible and almost nonexistent. A car is always necessary for those living outside of Dublin or Cork. Now I can do without a car and spend 20 euro monthly on all my travel needs, and not having the hassle and costs of a car. Driving is very stressful to me (especially in Ireland where until recently people could just buy their license at the post office so driver skills are very low).

And the weather is way better which affected me greatly in Ireland (during winter it was raining almost every day where I lived, and the days were super short leading to depression). Here in Spain life is much more outdoors. And healthcare here is free and much better (in Ireland even though I had expensive private insurance I still had to pay 70 euro just to see the family doctor. Here I pay nothing).

GDP-per-capita is a meaningless comparison tool (especially for the US because it neglects healthcare costs in retirement), look at PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) and quality-of-life metrics.

Also, for stats on the US, there's so much variation; beware the tyranny of averages (statewide/nationwide); you want to avoid being in the bottom quartile/50% but the top quartile is probably quite nice. Many US indicators (education, violent or property crime, health outcomes, economy) are very heavily linked to zipcode(/county/metro), more so than in Europe. [0] says if you excluded the MS Delta from those metrics, MS is solidly in the middle of the pack in many of those metrics

[0]: r/mississippi: 'Mississippi often has the lowest "quality of life" metrics in the nation. Do residents believe this data, do they care about it, and does it affect them?' https://www.reddit.com/r/mississippi/comments/108ts12/seriou...

Both systems think they are right, both are coping. One is slave to hustling and greed with no time/chance to enjoy basic things in life. The other will always be under the boots of the employees/managers and complain while enjoying basic things. Both are slaves to their masters, just enjoying a comfort enough to keep going at it.

> The other will always be under the boots of the employees/managers and complain while enjoying basic things.

No, not really.

Employees have actual rights here in Europe :) Most of my (ex-)managers are also my friends. There is no boot. We get lots of holidays, we get a good lump sum when we are laid off because there is no "at will" employment and grievances can be discussed fairly.

There's always reason to complain of course but we're not bad off.

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