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> The US, UK, EU and realistically most developed countries I would say have fairly similar quality of life within margin of error.

Having lived in the EU (Netherlands) and the US (California), I would say the inequality in the US is much worse. Especially in larger cities. To the point where I sometimes wonder if I'm living in a "developed" country.

I'm British. When I visit the US I would agree that inequality is significantly higher, but it also seems quite clear that overall wealth is significantly higher too. Second and third tier cities in the US are clearly still fairly well off in a way that just isn't the case across Europe.

The thing I tend to always fall back on is the last part of my comment. You don't want to be poor in the US; there is no bottom. Whereas if you're poor in Europe usually there's a minimum standard that you'll fall to.

For most people the relevant factor I think is what the QoL in their cohort is like. I say it's a bit of a wash, because basically, if we limit the discussion to EU and US, if you're well off the US is probably better, if you're poor Europe is probably better, if you're in the middle then there are trade offs.

Do I want to live in a country where it’s comfortable to be poor? That implies everything from people defending poor as a lifestyle, such as classmates insistently you that working in class is a stupid lifestyle choice, to people joining the country on the basis that they don’t like producing much, and living in a general country that is second at everything (or falls down to Chile level in terms of studying math in school).

If I had a passport for the US, I’d move yesterday.

There is more to life than "producing much" and "getting rich". There is no single answer and it depends on preferences and tradeoffs. But, labeling an ideology that takes care of the unfortunate, and lets the people live life without "if you dont produce much or work every minute of your life towards getting rich" as lazy or incentivising to be poor is just naive and ignorant.

I'm saying as someone from Asia having lived equal number of years in both US and EU.

> You don't want to be poor in the US; there is no bottom.

How do you figure? US has SNAP, Medicaid, UI, TANF (for families with children), Section 8 housing, SSD, SSI, Childcare Assistance amongst other programs.

These aren’t much of course but are something.

There is also a lot of impact from immigration that the US has that Europe has not. Immigrants tend not to be at the high end. The US has had a large influx of immigrants (around 14% of the whole population right now) vs just 6% for Europe. (from quick Google checks.) I'm not saying that is good or bad, but if you keep adding at the lowest end of income you increase the inequality if the most wealthy are experiencing gains.

> The US, UK, EU and realistically most developed countries I would say have fairly similar quality of life within margin of error.

Ahem... Have you seen the standards in the UK get diluted year after year post-Brexit?

There's more to the story than the listed examples.

Environmental standards dictate your risk of developing various diseases later in life so are a big difference in quality of life. E.g., if you drink tap water from UK vs other countries, with high PFAS levels, where it essentially comes from a spring in the mountains - that's a huge difference.

Another difference is job security which again has a huge impact. Consider France: If you get an unlimited contract at a company you're essentially set for life (unless the company goes busy, or you mess up in a very bad way). Compare that to the scare many US dev employees hat to ensure in spring 2023 when all the big tech companies were doing layoffs. Also, France had a much shorter work week.

So, no, quality of life doesn't even compare remotely between these countries. Only perhaps for the upper 3% it is similar - if you're an average tech dev, your life will be much much nicer in Paris than in a random SF/LA suburb.

I guess I have a physicist mindset but basically I feel that these things are within margin of error. We're talking 20%, 40%, whatever. And because the lifestyle is so different it's hard to compare directly, it depends on your personal vision of what you want in life, as I mentioned some people want Paris, some people want the mountains.

I do think that if you're going to live in a Big City(tm) then the old world just does cities better. Then again I haven't visited SF, just NYC.

Job security isn't something I've ever cared about in my life. Starting from zero (no parental wealth), beyond about age 20-22 I've always had a minimum of six months savings, who cares, just find another job. It's business, you're not married. If you're an actual adult and you need a job continuously to get by you've fucked up somewhere.

It kind of just feels like a leverage decision, anyone middle class or above has a net worth in the x00k's, it's just about whether you have anything liquid vs locked up in home value etc.

If you have 0 in the bank then unless you're in North Korea or something you have bigger issues than "which country has better QoL" in my opinion, you need to work on yourself first.

Not every adult plays the game of life on easy mode, to get most rewarding experience one has to invest some serious time and energy into matters.

Also, for most folks here its trivial to be independent and successful financially if alone, past decades have been good in ways mankind has not experienced ever before. Get 2 or more kids into the equation of life with everything that they bring and challenge goes up tremendously. But as said, there are rewards, and most of them can't be achieved in any other way (that is coming from somebody doing fair amount of extreme sports, mostly in mountains).

Also, these matters are not within margin of error. Quality of life is way more important than cashflow once one is not poor. Also in Europe extremely expensive matters like universities for kids or more intense healthcare are simply non-topic when it comes to finances, you simply need less money to have similar quality of life and peace of mind. You are always just 1 error, often not even yours, to have quality and quantity of your remaining life massively dependent on quality of the healthcare, or just bad luck with genetic lottery. If you feel invincible now, give it a decade or two and you will reconsider.

I stopped reading at “life on easy mode”, sorry, just crabs in a bucket bollocks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_quality_of_life_indices

> UK [..] realistically most developed countries

Its also really uneven. It contained in 2016 6 of the lowest GDP per captia regions of the entire EU.

However we should of course treat GDP as a suspect measure of living standards. Whilst those people living in those areas will tend to have curtail life chances, they did at the time have access to _good_ healthcare and housing (in certain circumstances)