Not only that, but it explains the disdain for Europe in the current American government. European society proves that Americans could have true freedom and quality of life if it weren't for corporations and oligarchs effectively owning our government. Fascists hate a counterexample.
The "official" line about Europe is "they get to live this way because we protect them" or some such.
Similar things are uttered by the same people about Canada, but with more denigrating comments.
In absolute terms the US is much wealthier than either. But like always with statistics it's important to look at the distribution, not the average.
Staying on topic: the Canadian legal system is probably about as bureaucratically dysfunctional as the US, just without the private super-prisons and the monetary shakedown. Which is to say it's dysfunctional and broke.
Man the European/anti-US folks are really triggered this morning. Yeah criminal justice moves slow in the US and isn’t perfect at all. It’s a huge thing from local police and courts to the FBI and… even more courts. As for lawyers there’s a reason for the joke “what do you call a million lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.”
Isn't this purposefully minimizing what essentially amounts to a poor-people-torture machine.
The purpose of the system is what the system does.
In the US we have deeply ingrained perverse financial incentives in criminal justice with wildly variable sentencing that depends on the mood of the judge that day.
Stray any amount from the fine line of legal, and if you're unlucky you could be plunged into a system where you'll be put into massive debt, while also losing your job, home, important documents, etc. We claim to want to reform criminals, yet we kick out their feet at every turn and expect them to say "thank you".
And then the people who face the smallest amount of risk to being victimized by this system like to say "Yeah, it's not perfect".
The hilarious thing is to get a visa in Europe one of the most reliable ways is to start a business under DAFT or be an investor. They want the evil hypercapitalist entrepreneur, they don't actually want the kind of people that their system often claims to champion the most.
Calling European freedom true freedom compared to American one is laughable and I say that as a European. Almost no country in Europe comes close to the freedom granted by the bill of rights.
Going by "The purpose of a system is what it does", I think European (specifically EU-member) states do a lot more for their citizens than the US does, in welfare, healthcare, environment, infrastructure and so on, so either the oligarchs are very subtle indeed (looking at our Slovakian oligarchs... I don't think so) or they just don't own the governments far more (yet). They are certainly trying though.
I think this is because effectively influencing European politics as a whole (as opposed to individual countries) is much more complicated than the US because of the diversity of languages, cultures and media, but then the EU-level politics will also influence state politics. But also every country has a commissioner in the commission and a vote in the EC, so there are several levels of feedback. Of course many internal and external actors are trying to own or destroy the EU, I just hope they won't be succesful.
The European upper class doesn't generally pay taxes, and they are more of internationalists than you are thinking. They move around enough and have their home base somewhere like Monaco so they don't participate at all in the welfare systems. European welfare systems redistribute huge amounts of money from the middle class to the poor, not from the rich.
In other words, the European welfare systems are actually a great tool of theirs to keep the competition down: if you're taxing the upper-middle-class workers at a ~50% rate, they need to out-earn you 2:1 to build wealth at the same rate.
I'm not disagreeing with you, just that even with all that "the common people" still get more from the state than in the US, that's at least my feeling.
European governments do these extra things for their citizens because they have to. Or at least historically had to.
Because there was an active socialist & communist movement -- with massive trade union support -- on the continent forcing them to.
That is basically non-existent in the US, and very weak and closer to non-existent in Canada. (We only have universal healthcare here because of the actions of the social democratic CCF/NDP in the 60s in Saskatchewan, winning against a doctor's strike and showing the centre-left in the rest of the country that it was possible. At that moment in time. I don't think such a thing could ever be won now. Not against an established insurance industry.)
And this is a very important point: there's no "perfect" situation (mandatory Churchill quote: "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried"). But there are so many nuances of gray that it's most important to differentiate. Yes, there's stupid EU bureaucracy. But citizens can influence it, look at the legendary straight banana regulation: it was repealed. And so on, slow, imperfect, annoying and at times even dangerous, but it kinda works. However, it will need much more to be able to withstand these times...
> European society proves that Americans could have true freedom and quality of life if it weren't for corporations and oligarchs effectively owning our government.
Europeans have far more restrictions on their rights of speech, self-defence, and freedom of conscience than the Americans. They are also substantially poorer than Americans, and those numbers get worse when you account for America’s average being skewed lower by having a higher proportion of recent immigrants with lower earning potentials.
America has more ultra rich people and high income earners.
But if you’re poor and have an easily treatable illness, say type 1 diabetes, you’ll die begging for insulin.
It’s very easy to lose everything within a few months.
You get sick, lose your job, your entire family loses health insurance. We have this stupid prosperity gospel idea which conversely means poverty is your fault. Can’t afford medicine for your kids, well I guess it’s their fault for having a loser dad.
Taxes are still absurdly high in America for what you actually receive. Have any serious medical issues and you’ll be spending thousands upon thousands per month on top of 600 to 700$ for essentially useless health insurance.
We’re also a fear based society. When I visited London it’s perfectly normal to see single women waiting for the bus at 2am or whatever. Here as a grown man I got freaked out when I was approached by a stranger around 7pm. Was he going to rob me ?
He actually was a local politician passing out flyers , but we live in paranoia land.
America is closer to a developing country in both medical care and violent crime. I know I’d rather raise a family in Berlin than almost any American city.
> We’re also a fear based society. When I visited London it’s perfectly normal to see single women waiting for the bus at 2am or whatever. Here as a grown man I got freaked out when I was approached by a stranger around 7pm. Was he going to rob me ?
> He actually was a local politician passing out flyers, but we live in paranoia land.
Sounds like you're a part of the paranoia. Violent crime happens mostly in small pockets but quite densely where it happens. But generally, most places are perfectly safe.
I've had so many experiences of telling friends I'm off to walk the dog around midnight or whatever and I get responses like "oh is that safe?" Of course it is! I do it all the time. People seriously think if you walk outside at night nearly anywhere, you're likely to be assaulted despite never having such a thing happen to anyone they know.
So many people are scared to ride public transit thinking "what if I'm attacked?!" And yet hopping in their car is the least safe thing they'll do that day with over 100 people dying in car accidents every day. You're way more likely to die a painful death in that car than you are riding the bus, and yet people question if it's safe to ride transit.
It's a literal fact that a gun is much more likely to be used to kill its owner (or a member of the owner's own family) than any intruder or external threat [0]
Why is this such a thing in the USA? Why do you guys hold gun ownership up as this amazing freedom when owing a gun is literally, provably, way more of a threat to you and your family than anyone else?
A gun is effective for suicide, yeah. We don't have suicide clinics in the states like Europe has, at least that I'm aware of. So people buy guns then off themselves. You have the causation backwards.
Yes, I agree, there's definitely that. I know I would not be alive now if I had easy access to a gun.
But the parent is talking about the USA having more self-defence freedoms, and gun ownership is definitely part of that. It's not about suicide, it's that weird "you gotta protect your family" that non-Americans find a bit worrying - what are you so scared of? I've lived in a few countries and nowhere I've lived has this level of fear. I've never felt that I would be safer if I owned a gun. I have no idea who I'd use it against (except myself, obviously).
I live next to the us-mexico border, in a place with basically no police services. There are (true) signs everywhere warning of cartels roaming, often with automatic weapons diverted from the Mexican military. Maybe they won't ever bother me, but better to have and not need, than the other way around.
I'll be super real. The numbers from 2021 say the average American household owns 5 guns. This isn't because the average American really has a gun, but because of the people with 100 guns skewing the numbers. Those people are real, exist, and will give the cartel, and the local police, and a swat team a run for their money, if invaded. The real average American doesn't have an armory that can protect them from the cartel, but if you're the cartel, you now have to spend additional time and money doing research on if hitting some random house in San Antonio, Tx is going to result in a shootout that's going to get a bunch of your cartel members killed.
Can you point to any actual real-world cases where something like this has happened? It sounds like a movie concept; we're letting real-world policy be determined by a fantasy people have about a lone gun enthusiast killing a bunch of drug cartel members?
Nope! I agree it's something out of a movie, but real world people do actually have such arsenals. I'm not embedded enough in gun culture to have any personal stories/know of any news reports, but not everything makes the news. I'm not making a comment on policy, just that such individuals exist.
Half of ar15.com membership would be dead by now, were that the case. Although I imagine a great deal of the 'retards' are feds fishing for conspiracy charges.
Well they are outnumbered. So if one of their guys get killed one of 10 times they fuck with the locals, that is enough to persuade them not to do it. Of course they could eliminate me, but can they do it without one of theirs getting hurt? Probably, but not probably enough to make it worth their time.
Americans have a recent history of slavery. They believe since they would be aggressive if emerging from the same situation, that African Americans would be equally aggressive. Which is why most American own guns…
Yeah, I've heard this theory before, and it kinda makes sense. Except that there are other countries (most of the Anglosphere, including the UK) that also had slavery, (and/or have confronting relationships with their indigenous population), and don't feel that same fear.
Is there something unique about the USA's history with slavery that would cause this?
Its about owning a farm in the middle of nowhere not slavery. It really is not that hard to understand that people have different worries back when the second amendment was written when the nearest town for protection is weeks away and not hours.
It does not matter what threat its about protecting or even if its that likely to happen. Its human nature to have things to protection youself and things you care about. Like insurance you never need it until you do but then its too late.
Think of the other side of the coin. Through history the first thing slaves are denied are weapons. And there is many countries that allow weapons at home, US, Mexico, Latin America....
The question is "what are you guys so scared of?" and it's a genuine question, I would love to know what the fear is that drives someone to buy a gun when the plain fact is that buying a gun puts them in more danger. It's not a rhetorical question.
The two answers I've read so far are: mexican cartels (ok, but if you don't live on the border what are you scared of?) and "all the other terrified people with guns" which I think is intended to be joking (but many a truth said in jest).
If you have a different answer, I'd love to hear it.
We're really not. Just the health care issues, which can be directly seen in the life expectancy figures, make us materially richer, never mind anything else.
And I much prefer not needing to exercise my rights to self-defence in the first place, than to have to worry about carrying a gun around all the time, and whether or not a child might get accidentally get access to it. See also gun shooting figures.
> We're really not. Just the health care issues, which can be directly seen in the life expectancy figures, make us materially richer, never mind anything else.
They don’t. Americans earn something like 1/3rd more than the average European. They have substantially larger houses and own more cars.
> And I much prefer not needing to exercise my rights to self-defence in the first place
The vast majority of people will never need to use a gun whether they are in the US or Europe. The position you’re taking is one that it is convenient for you to take because you are not currently the victim a violent crime. This is akin to someone talking about all of the money they are saving by driving without insurance.
I lived in Berlin for a while. Most people don't own a car in Berlin. Not because of poverty, but because the city is walkable (you can walk from one side to the other in an afternoon, it's a lovely thing to do on a summer's day). Your metric of "own more cars" is not incorrect, just irrelevant. It's like saying that Europeans are wealthier because they are more likely to have a passport.
Likewise for "substantially larger houses". This is just not a relevant metric - Europeans generally live in denser cities, with more apartment living, more cycling, more parks. That's a preference. It's got nothing to do with wealth. Europeans don't have smaller houses because they can't afford them, but because they prefer living in smaller, denser, more walkable cities.
It's interesting because I have been to many walkable places in southeast Asia with extremely cheap collective taxis, but even then most extended families have a small motorbike so they can visit another village without all the bother of begging/renting/borrowing.
Yeah, I have lived in SE Asia too, and I think the reason is public transport - in Berlin there are two train systems, trams, and buses. You can get anywhere cheaply, safely, and relatively quickly. In SE Asia there's usually tuk-tuks, sometimes taxis, and that's it. And owning a moped is a lot cheaper than taking a tuk-tuk every time. Owning a car is a lot more expensive than taking the u-bahn every time.
> It's like saying that Europeans are wealthier because they are more likely to have a passport.
It’s not like that as we were discussing tangible measures of wealth. Can you provide any evidence that Europeans are materially wealthier than Americans? That is, that Europeans earn, own, and / or consume more than Americans?
But I don´t want to "consume" more than Americans. I want to eat healthy food in reasonable quantities and maintain a sensible weight.
I don´t want to own a car and drive 2 hours to work every day, and consume more car ownership - I want to cycle or walk, and stay fit and enjoy the sun.
You see the mistake you're making?
I lived in the US for 6 years, and could have stayed. It was an easy decision to go back to Europe.
My point was that your metrics (more cars, bigger houses) are as invalid as my metric (more passports) because Europeans have fewer cars and smaller houses as a choice, not because of poverty. Like Americans have fewer passports because they choose not travel internationally, not because they can't afford to.
I think there's maybe a value discrepancy as well. Admittedly I fall more on what I perceive to be the European side of this, so that's my bias here.
As someone of moderate wealth (high earner, investments), I still live in the same small house in the same inexpensive city I did when I was earning a quarter of what I do now. Americans talk about "starter houses" and moving up, but that's a consumptive pattern I don't value. Instead, I value the financial freedom of not having a mortgage and having stable, well-constructed housing that I continuously improve. I could afford the bigger house but I don't want it.
As for cars, I have 2 but they rarely get used. One is a business van for transporting large equipment and the other is a cheap hatchback. I bike most places though, and drive only a couple times a week. I understand their utility as a tool, but if I could get away without owning one I would.
Money is nice, but financial security with social safety nets and public healthcare is a trade-off I'd gladly make.
The thing about being “poor” in Europe is, you can be “poor” your entire life by American standards of income/assets, but still never take on medical debt, travel more than a month out of the year, have a couple kids and educate them in good schools, and retire.
You have no idea what you’re talking about and there is no statistical basis to the claims you are making. The only two metrics Europeans win out on is life expectancy (by around 4 years) and (narrowly) on home ownership rate (around 5 percentage points higher in Europe). Americans are overwhelmingly wealthier than Europeans by every other metric.
there is no statistical basis to the claims you are making
Are you really arguing that Americans (and especially Americans below the median) don't have higher levels of medical debt, higher rates of medical bankruptcy, and get/take less vacation than Europeans.
Those were not the claims being made. The claim was that:
> Most Americans cannot: Never take on medical debt, travel more than a month out of the year, have a couple kids and educate them in good schools, and retire.
Most Americans do these things, with the possible exception of month-long vacations.
> Americans are overwhelmingly wealthier than Europeans by every other metric.
$1.21 trillion in credit card debt, $1.66 trillion in car loans and $1.6 trillion in federal student loans - yes, Americans are overwhelmingly wealthier.
Yes, they are. The largest of those three figures involves the purchase of a hard asset that provides utility to the purchaser over time. If you buy a $30,000 van, you’re not out $30,000, because you’ve received the van in exchange.
I note that you didn’t provide equivalent figures for the EU, however, so I imagine you’re less interested in making an actual argument than you are in looking clever.
> Do you know why it's hard to get national student debt figures for Europe
If you’re implying that student debt doesn’t exist in Europe because schooling is “free” for everyone you are wrong. Plenty of European countries don’t provide free schooling and even the ones that do such as Germany often have a parallel private system for those who fail to get into the more exclusive public schools. Europeans who do graduate are then faced with substantially higher tax rates - education, like healthcare, doesn’t just fall out of the sky for free.
Europeans also own credit cards; they probably have lower levels of debt than Americans (who have a fairly unique culture of credit-financed consumer spending), but they also aren’t capable of servicing the debt that an American can service, for the simple reason that they earn less than Americans.
> PS: if you buy 30k van you are down more than that as you need to get an insurance, gas, parking lot, pay tax, etc.
This is a red herring. When you eat dinner you not only have to pay for the food but also spend time purchasing, preparing, and eating it. This doesn’t prevent people from eating because they derive utility from eating which exceeds the opportunity costs associated with purchasing, preparing, and eating it.
It's certainly true that Europeans take more vacations and spend more time abroad. They also win on spending less time at work and more time with their loved ones.
Those weren’t the claims the grandparent made. Europeans do work less and vacation more often, but even when you account for this, they still earn less per hour worked.
Vacation time itself might be a good metric for quality of life (which I am not disputing is probably comparable if not better in Europe if you discount the importance of material wealth), but time abroad is not since Americans have access to a lot more variety within America than a European would have within their own country; it’s the same reason more Europeans have passports.
And yet, by all accounts we have a higher life quality than Americans. Only Americans care about money, because in USA you don't get anything without paying for it all yourself. Here we have minimum mandatory vacations for 4 weeks per year, and many countries have a lot more than that, most countries have a year or more of maternity leave, paid of course, we have plenty of public holidays, paid of course, and we don't need to do work while in a hospital or when giving birth, as that would be illegal for the employer to ask of you. There's also no at-will firing just because your boss doesn't like your face, there needs to be an actual reason proving that a person cannot fulfill responsibilities, and there also needs to be a chance given to improve on the mistakes before firing a person.
Our food is not riddled in toxic waste because of those horrible regulations that Americans don't like, our air is breathable because of those same horrible regulations, companies are not allowed to just steal and sell all of our data or keep it indefinitely, because of those horrible regulations, which makes American tyrants mad because they can't make their billion dollar startups here so easily since they're used to breaking the law, abusing people, or paying off governments to get what they want, which is a lot harder to do here. Much sad, many tear, for the poor American startup founder.
Europeans by and large don't share the same values as Americans. Being filthy rich isn't our goal, our goal is good health, spending time with our loved ones, having plenty of time to rest and dedicate on our hobbies, and being treated fairly and with respect. Americans on the other hand care about money at all cost, doesn't matter if it's at the expense of working class people, and they view people who work less than 80 hours a week as lazy.
I also don't know what freedom of speech you are talking about since I read the news and USA seems to have everything, BUT freedom of speech. Your education is down the toilet, crime is rampant, police murders minorities on a regular basis, school shootings everywhere, a government as corrupt as can possibly be, people fired en masse everywhere for not replying to an e-mail ...
> and they view people who work less than 80 hours a week as lazy
In my last startup in Germany, I worked with a bunch of ex-management consultants who had all worked in a famous consultancy in the USA (you've definitely heard of it).
They all shared stories of Americans staying 12+ hours in the office but not actually doing anything. It was all performant "we're working really hard", mostly chatting to each other and scrolling social media. The Germans were incredibly frustrated because getting anything actually done was really difficult, and they ended up mostly sharing the work amongst themselves so they could actually get it done. Needless to say, their American colleagues thought they didn't work hard because they left the office after only 10 hours or so.
I've seen this in American-influenced startup culture, too - a tendency to use hours spent moistening a chair as a productivity measure, because measuring actual productivity was "too hard".
After reading your comment, one might come to the conclusion that Europeans see Americans through the lens of reporting and social media, just as Americans see Europeans through the same lens. Both sides believe characterizations of the other.
> one might come to the conclusion that Europeans see Americans through the lens of reporting and social media
Heck, Americans see Americans through the lens of reporting and social media.
Look at the incredibly polarized climate. Why is it a novelty to just bring together people of "opposite sides" to talk? When political "debate" is just a grounds to get your sound bites out to the media, democracy is in danger. And not just from the current administration.
The conclusion is correct, I would say. I know plenty of Americans who are not the archetype I portrayed, but this is HN, and that’s the HN American I see here a lot. Not all, but a lot. And we seem to be fundamentally incompatible. It’s really unfortunate, but that’s what it seems to me, and I’m sorry for the bitter undertones, it’s just really hard to stay optimistic in the current social climate.
> Europeans have far more restrictions on their rights of speech, self-defence, and freedom of conscience than the Americans
That is true. However Europeans tend to believe that restricting some freedom leads to higher overall freedom: I can exercise a lot more freedom when I don't risk a gun pointed at me. I'm a much freer thinker when religious agenda pushed (overtly or subtly) on me (directly or through societal influence). Same for misinformation and other propaganda.
From a European perspective, "american freedom" seems like "free as in free-for-all", which certainly doesn't lead to the highest level of personal freedom. It's a local optimum at best.
> They are also substantially poorer than Americans
According to this random source (first result for "poverty rate by country") https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-r..., America has a similar or worse poverty rate than a lot of Europe (not that European countries can easily be compared).
Salaries tend to be higher in the US of course, that doesn't translate directly to living conditions and poverty.
Regardless, I don't think that Europe's path to improve poverty level is US-style individual freedom.
I think it's not just about poverty, some stats about "precarious employment" - as in "I'm above the poverty line, but if I lose my job (or even one of the two jobs I have to do to get by), that will change very quickly" - would also be interesting...
