No offense but outside of money does the US have anything going for it?
Tasty drinkable water from the tap in nearly the entire country. Being able to flush toilet paper. Free toilets almost everywhere.
Being a country for 250 years is also quite an achievement.
I’m European and have witnessed many wars on my continent in my lifetime. A childhood friend was shot down with a Russian surface to air missile.
Due to the age of many places in Europe there is also still a lot of copper pipe used for tap water. Not deadly but also not very healthy. In Amsterdam over 20 percent of homes have copper pipes.
Much of the US has great tasting tap water.
The comment came about from the last charts show religion, patriotism, etc down while money rose. It clicked.
Different, not stricter perse. In the EU it is allowed to sell food with non-edible parts inside or cheese with maggots.
>Due to these risks, Italian authorities have banned the sale of this cheese, deeming it dangerous. Consequently, it is also prohibited across the European Union, as EU food safety regulations mandate that only food safe for consumption can be sold.
Look at the conflict on clorinated chickens between USA and EU. The USA insists on not-so-clean production environments and to get rid of the bacteria with clorine. While the EU insists on a clean-from-the-get-go approach, where clorination isn't necessary.
(Fun fact: "the customer is always rigth / drives the market" isn't applied here. The USA farmers want to export their chicken to the EU, but never ever did they consider to produce them according to what the EU standards are and what the european customers want: chicken without a clorine taste).
Or your eggs: you wash them for no real reason, That removes the protection against bacteria from the eggshell, and then you need to have a complete fridge chain towards the customer. Whereas in europe eggs aren't washed, keep their egg shell protection and don't really need to be put into the fridge. One could argue that here indeed the USA has "more strict controls" by requiring the washing phase. But this is faux security, as it worsens the product, mandating a more special handling of it.
However, things are really complex to compare. For some bacterias, e.g. Listeria monocytogenes, the US is indeed stricter (zero tolerance). Whereas the US has some "100 colony-forming units per gram". However, what is better? We know that the human body actually needs some amount of bacteria, lest our immune system isn't trained or turnes against ourselves. So it might be that a little exposition is actually tolerable --- and given that europeans have a higher live expectation than US-americans, that might actually be true.
Also the measurements is totally different. In the USA, they measure usually with a simple n=5 method, whereas europe has a n, c, m, M system based on ISO standards. That also takes in process hygiene.
"Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points" is mandatory in EU for all food, in the USA only for some (seafood, juice, meat, and poultry). So here the EU has a leg, albeit this isn't strictly bacteria related. However it relates to toxic metabolism products of bacteria and fungi.
And a fun fact: while many things in the USA differ from state to state, food hygiene in the USA doesn't. Their FDA and USDA work throughout the USA.
In the EU there is no central one for food. We have some FDA equivalent, but that is more for drugs & vaccines, not for food. And I'm not aware of something like the USDA at EU level. Instead it is usual that a EU regulation that the members agreed upon is then implemented in all member states ... and often slightly different. So any US legislation like the GPDR (and all others) have counterparts in national rights. And e.g. the german version might be slightly different to the estonian one. Thats for data protection as well as for food surveillance.
EU is a good place to be but some people have this overly optimistic view of the place.
There are countries in EU where it is almost impossible to get out of public healthcare, for example. And then some like yours, where this seems to be quite common.
But I guess "rent is higher than minimum wage" isn't true for all of Spain. Spain is extremely centralized, everything is in Madrid. But if you somehow can get away with living in the middle of nowhere, then I don't expect rent to be higher than minimum wage.
These extremely expensive metropoles exist all over Europe (London, Prague, München, Madrid, Paris, ...) but also in the USA (New York, and probably 40 others).
That being out of the way: drinkable water isn't really an achievement, we have it in all of western europe. Maybe even in all of europe. However, in the USA you have these places there the water is heavily poluted due to fracking. That is bad in itself. But even worse is that the political / judicial system in the USA is unable to fix this.
Being a country for 250 years is ... neither good nor bad in itself. And if you look at ancient egypt that had 4 digits here, then it is pathetic to bring this up. But also in the western world 250 years aren't that much.
Many wars ... yeah, the USA started and/or participated in many wars. More than european countries did during your lifetime. Out of my mind: Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Panama, Grenada, Bosnia+Herzegovina, Irak, Irak, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya. And don't forget undeclared wars like lots of "Wedding seeking hellfire missiles" in Yemen or Somalia.
Oh, and that was just a selection. Look up Wikipedia on the full list of US wars and incidents. You'll be mind-blown how militaristic / violent they are.
And then don't forget all the coups it did in south america, I think more than 20 incidents. Or the awful Nicaraguan Contra thingy, where the USA paid death squadrons to terrorize just normal people, not just communists.
Depending on how old are you, all of the above happened during your lifetime.
Ah, and did we forget in these 250 years not about their civil war, about the enslavement of millions of people? Or of the genocide on natives? Never heard of the trail of tears perhaps?
No way the USA has a even a tiny bit more of morality on their side as other countries.
Absolutely not. Water tastes bad in plenty of parts in Europe and isn’t even drinkable in plenty of parts.
> But also in the western world 250 years aren't that much.
I would like to know which countries you are talking about.
> yeah, the USA started and/or participated in many wars
I was talking about wars on their own continent, impacting their own people. Europe has seen plenty of that. I am currently less than 1000 kilometers away from an active battle zone. How many Americans can say that.
In in the fracking counties it isn't even drinkable.
Also note that I actually used the term "western europe" in my post. I was in UK, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Czech, Romania, Hungary, Poland ... and everywhere was tap water totally drinkable. In Mallorca (Spain) it didn't taste that nice, but it was drinkable. Germans travel a lot, and when you book a travel, you get some information about your host country. And never ever did I read "don't trink the tap water".
So of all places I've been, "tastes bad" only was once true. "Can't drink" was never true. Your "plenty if parts" is definitely hallucinated.
However, I've not been in many places in south-east and east europe, like not in Albania, Moldavia, Slowenia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, the Baltics, Belarussia, Slowakia, Ukraina, Russia etc etc etc. So I have no idea on how their water is.
The money is largely a side effect of these two things.
Coastal California is probably one of the nicest places on earth but generally US is quite harsh.
Many people find Europe to be gloomy -- too little sun and too much rain. The US is only "harsh" if that is your platonic ideal for weather. The Pacific Northwest is a sunnier version of this climate. Most of the US is well within the range people can naturally adapt to and be comfortable in. The US is also an incredibly sunny place by comparison, even the parts not known for heat. The US does have unusually extreme weather but those events don't define the day-to-day and the built environment is adapted to it.
There are only a few parts of the US with irredeemable weather in my opinion. The low deserts of the southwest (e.g. Mojave) are literally among the hottest places on Earth. The northern Plains reach Arctic temperatures during winter. This is why almost no one lives in these places. The South famously has tropical heat/humidity during the summer, which Americans complain about, but that is like tropics everywhere and is quite pleasant during the winter.
That said, the best weather in the US (and arguably the world) is widely considered to be in San Diego. Perfect sunny days at an almost ideal temperature with no humidity for virtually the entire year.
Freedom to do, to create a business with far fewer roadblocks than in, say, Europe.
Freedom to go, to travel anywhere in a really large country, with no borders or restrictions.
Yeah, you can quote me all the caveats. They're there; I don't deny them. But: Freedom to say, freedom to do, and freedom to go. Those are really big deals.
To a certain degree. In the US you can drive to another state thousands of kilometers away and decide to just live there for the rest of your life.
That is not needed when you switch states in the US. You just need to update your address and tax records. You do not needed to show financial means and you do not need private healthcare.
Edit: looking into it I see that Spain has a more complicated process, indeed. thanks for the info, I didn’t know, I will need to read more about it
Most European nations strongly protect free speech, allowing open public critique and satire of politicians, the wealthy, and the powerful.
> Freedom to do, to create a business with far fewer roadblocks than in, say, Europe.
Several European countries actually lead global easy business rankings, some offering fully digital, single-day company registration, very little bureaucracy (not mine, sadly)
> Freedom to go, to travel anywhere in a really large country, with no borders or restrictions.
The schengen zone grants passport-free travel across 29 nations, spanning thousands of miles without a single border checkpoint.
Not anymore. I got stopped between The Netherlands and Germany, between France and Spain, Denmark and Sweden. Germany has border checkpoints with most of its bordering countries.
That is unheard of in the USA. You can travel thousands of kilometers without getting stopped by authorities for checking your passport or identity card.
Free speech is also on the outs since we’re having people getting jailed for not carrying the flame appropriately with regards to the late Mr Kirk.
Oh, and people getting prosecuted for 8647 as the powers at be decided to interpret that as a death threat instead of call to impeach.
Not comparing that to ICE as deportations in the EU are typically peaceful.
Schengen allows to have temporary border controls, you can see the, here: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen/schengen...
I also was really surprised to get controlled between Germany and Denmark. But it’s not the same as the old border checkpoints. Though I wish that didn’t exist
The US's problems are entirely political. Geologically and climate wise it is a really great place. And it already has an educated populous and a significant amount of industrial hardware.