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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

I also sometimes think how people don't realize how good they have things; while Poland is no longer a poor country, it would take an absolutely colossal disaster to reduce the average living standard of America to that of Poland. America hasn't even reached the 'terrifying' level of European petrol prices.

It also depends who you are. A very large fraction of American trans people (not a large absolute number, only a few hundred thousand) have moved from R states to D states recently due to repression, such as Kentucky revoking their driving licenses.

I do think the best political-economic era of my life was 1997-2001: election of Tony Blair until 9/11, covering the first internet boom. That was the closest to "world peace". That includes the Israel-Palestine peace process and the reconciliation of the post-Soviet states into Europe. If that had worked better, with a democratic Russia, the world would be a very different place today.

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I'm sure you can throw out statistics that prove otherwise, but I think the average living standard of Poland is already better than America. Again, anecdotally, but I'm American and I've lived in Poland for about a decade. Food, healthcare, housing, access to parks, public transport, etc. are all better quality here at the average-person level than most places the US.

Americans just end up paying for a lot of things that are either undesirable for many Poles (e.g., a huge McMansion in desolate suburbs and the car to drive there) or paid for via other means (e.g., healthcare.)

Which country has a better average living standard depends on if we are talking about mean, median, or mode. The American mean is higher and since most of the HN crowed works in higher-paying jobs in urban centers they tend to look at their own experiences to think that the US is a high standard of living country. If you look at the median or mode of living standards across a country then places like Europe are where you find more people experiencing a higher standard of living.

Oh, best of luck convincing Americans that paying twice as much for shitty health insurance than you pay in 'high' general tax levels is somehow a bad deal for them. Until they actually live the experience they just cannot comprehend the second and third order benefits of a real social system.

I am a young man who lives in Europe and I too cannot comprehend the alleged second and third order benefits of a "real" social system.

I'll bite, even though I really shouldn't.

How do you define "average living standard", so that it would take a colossal disaster to have US reduced to that of Poland?

In terms of nominal GDP per capita, the US is around $85k with Poland at $25k, so US GDP would need to fall around 70%, which would be an unprecedented fall, the kind historically only associated with mass bombing or extreme hyperinflation.

Good thing we're not talking about GDP then!

GDP is irrelevant when discussing the well being of the ordinary person. A more relevant measure would be median income together with purchasing power parity.

US median income is just over 19 k international dollars, Poland is just under 9 k. Still a big difference but just over a factor of 2 instead of over 3.5.

See https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

America has not just a lot more people, but a lot more immigrants, refugees, and more.

In a more homogenous society, such as Poland’s in comparison to the United States, it also in my observation trends to be easier for wealth distribution to flatten.

Maybe the US has more kids per capita too which would also affect that value depending on how it is being measured. Not to say that anything is being hidden there, just something to think about that may make you interpret the data differently or think about it differently.

GDP is relevant, actually, because it measures how expensive things are. All other things being equal, a higher GDP is worse.

Petrol prices mean nothing for standards of living or overall desirability of given country. If that would be true, then I have 2 random samples which have supposedly way higher standard than US - Venezuela and russia.

US folks have more money on average, but are forced to spend them in ways ie europeans don't have to - top notch education and healthcare costs are huge in US for large part of population and compose big part of expected savings of parents and older folks, while an afterthought in Europe. How do you compare that.

Plus places in Europe like Switzerland have long term way higher living standards by any measure than even good places in US. Europe is big and diverse in ways US simply never was, it would do you good to travel the world a bit and see and experience it with your own eyes.

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