Hacker News Reader

Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

Wealth. Per capita GDP in the US increased by 180% in the time period mentioned (in inflation constant dollars). Which means that in the regions of the country where it is hot for a considerable period of time almost everyone will have air conditioning, and in areas where it's hot only a few weeks out of the year a lot of people will have in-window air conditioning units, since they are so inexpensive.

The UK's per capita GDP is only 3/4 that of the US so they don't have as much disposable income and the weather tends to be much colder there than the average in the US so there's not as much demand for AC.

View on HN

While your second point (colder climate) is correct, suggesting that UK residents are too 'poor' to afford air conditioning is way off the mark.

Yeah, I love how in the US (in the Midwest) you can get a hermetically sealed McMansion on a developer's salary. I don't think you can get that anywhere else in the world. There's not enough land, energy costs are too high, and the cost of living in general is too high.

A decent-sized house with a decent-sized lawn still costs around $200k.

That is quite affordable to a developer in the Midwest.

sounds pretty good to me - a decent house in England anywhere except London will cost you at least £120,000, and developer salaries average out at £30,000.

[edit] oh, and my impression is that a decent sized house here is quite a bit smaller than in the States.

> my impression is that a decent sized house here is quite a bit smaller than in the States

A decent-sized house in America is 2000-3000 sqft (185-275 sq meters). You will usually get two floors and a two car garage. And if you pay a little extra, a finished basement as well.

And of course, the entire house, top to bottom, back to front, has central air-conditioning and heating, controlled from a single point. If you get fiber-glass insulation in the attic, properly insulated walls, and double-paned windows, you can easily survive a Midwestern summer (during which the number of days the temperature is above 40C can easily be a dozen or more) without ever opening a window or breaking a sweat, and you won't break the bank doing it.

Not being able to do that in Europe is probably the biggest reason why I would never able to live there (or in places like Seattle, where central air isn't common). Even if it only gets hot occasionally, having to essentially "condemn" most of the house to the outside temperature and just sit inside one room the whole day is not a lifestyle I could tolerate.

It's not really too bad honestly, it's an acclimatisation thing.

Spent a few holidays in places where it was regularly 35+ degrees and only really struggled for a day or two, I can't imagine it being worse for you if you live there full time since you'd be much more used to the weather.

I have spent months at a time in such places, and I never got used to it. I longed for the day I would return home, and I truly relished it when I did. I don't think I'll ever get used to it.

I was born and have lived in Brazil for the last 25 years. I was never able to tolerate the heat. I live in the south, were the winters are cold (it gets to 0C in some years) but the summers are ridiculously hot and humid (35C+ most of the time, sometimes the "feels like" is 45C). Most people here have a hard time with the heat, despite having lived here all their lives. Sometimes it's so incredibly hot that setting air condition to the lowest possible temperature only prevents it from getting hotter and hotter inside the house, but it still feels damn hot all day.

Personally, heat makes me literally sick. My blood pressure plummets (even though I have very good health), I can't think straight (productivity drops to like 10% of what I'm able to accomplish in winter), and I feel extremely stressed. I also get skin rashes and abdominal pain frequently.

Thank God I'm moving to Seattle next month :) I know it can get very hot in the summer there, but at least they get short summers. Our summer lasts 4-5 months.

The only downside is per-capita carbon usage higher than nearly every other country in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com