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Comment by kdheiwns | Hacker News Reader

America is in a weird situation where people have a lot of money in terms of the number and it converts well to other currencies. But it feels worthless within American borders.

An American can get a very sad and bad sandwich for about $20 in a mid sized American city. They can get a full meal with fresh ingredients in most of the rest of the world for $10 (no tip either). Some places even under $5.

An American can rent a dump in a high crime city for $2000 a month. They can get a nice home for $500 a month in many other countries.

An American can pay hundreds a month for health insurance that rejects their claims and covers absolutely nothing, resulting in a medical bill of tens of thousands of dollars. Medicines can cost thousands as well. They can pay out of pocket for treatment in another country and it'll cost hundreds, and medicine will cost a few bucks.

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That's not weird at all it's the difference in most cases between products and services produced by local labor vs products and services produced by more abundant, cheaper labor elsewhere. I don't complain about $20 meals because I think inequality is bad enough.

The only thing in your list that could be cheaper without underpaying local workers are pharmaceuticals.

Labor is cheaper elsewhere, yes. But people getting paid lower salaries in other countries are still getting health care, affording rent, affording restaurant meals, etc. America has a strong problem where local salaries are high and prices far outpace them, despite the country being dependent upon things produced by salaries that are a fraction of typical salaries (underpaid farm labor, restaurant staff being paid under the table below minimum wage, meat plants employing children, technology all produced in "cheap" Asian countries where locals can afford rent and get health care, clothes produced in countries that pay pennies per hour, etc).

The health insurance is the part that just is hard to relate to much of the world which is where the fear/sadness comes from. It is the undertone in any wealth discussion. So many people in the US see their family and friends get medically bankrupted for one reason or another and insurance being tied to employment makes everything awful.

The fact that you simply can't save enough to get medical care is foundationally depressing.

If we are talking about kids, then you really need to see what happens in public schools these days. Being told either you or your country is evil incarnate several times a day for 13 years has an effect. My child has horror stories from his time in a public school in CA. However, it very much depends on where you are and which school we are talking about.

PS In the future, those same teachers will need their former students to vote for extra taxes to fund their (the teacher's) retirement. In the words of the janitor from "The Breakfast Club", "I wouldn't count on it".

Health insurance should have little effect on children's happiness (both because the USA provides baseline child healthcare to all, effectively, and because kids don't and shouldn't even know what "health insurance" is).

So perhaps we can cross-reference that to see if health insurance is causal (also 60% of Americans have health insurance and 'losing job' is way more about losing income than insurance).

> because the USA provides baseline child healthcare to all,

Where can I found out more about this? I have about $2,500 in medical bills to pay for my kids on my desk right now.

For 4 visits to get regular antibiotics (amoxicillin and ceflex), one just happened to be at night on a Sunday, requiring an emergency room visit. Is that “baseline”?

Children must be super happy if their parents have unaddressed health problems. /s

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