> GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU, and the amount of medical bankruptcies is also telling.
Healthcare is a particularly _atypical_ example to choose, and the particularly poor health outcomes of MS are only partly explicable by healthcare cost/access: it's also cultural and lifestyle issues. So it's rather disingenuous to say "take health insurance", as though it can be used by analogy to comprehensively explain other aspects of American finance.
You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher. Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries.
Would I rather live in Mississippi than France? Are Mississipians living better lives than French people? I mean it depends on where specifically, but almost certainly no. Of course having more money doesn't necessarily make a place better to live in.
But that doesn't invalidate "people have more money available to spend on cars and easier access to credit to finance that purchase over five years at favorable interest rates" as part of the reason why Americans choose to spend more money on cars.
You really don't have to take every point of discussion of difference between the US and European countries as an obligation to rant about how much better Europe is on tangential topics.
> You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher.
Income would include the money being immediately spent to cover debt (be it student loans, mortgage, medical, car).
> Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries
I'm struggling to think of things which aren't inflated. Only one I can come up with is gas/petrol/fuel, because there are much less taxes on it. Everything else I can think of is more expensive in the US - healthcare, transportation, food (groceries, and absurdly so for restaurants, for worse quality at that), various types of recreation (cinema, theatre, netflix and co, cable, watching live sports, concerts) internet, phone bills. Electricity is way too location dependent so I'll skip that one.
> But that doesn't invalidate "people have more money available to spend on cars and easier access to credit to finance that purchase over five years at favorable interest rates" as part of the reason why Americans choose to spend more money on cars.
Are interest rates favourable? There are multiple concerning trends (like car payments being one of the top household expenses and people struggling with that, people owing more on car loans than what the vehicle is worth, etc. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/15/american-consumers-are-incre... )
> You really don't have to take every point of discussion of difference between the US and European countries as an obligation to rant about how much better Europe is on tangential topics.
I'm not ranting, I'm correcting a wrong comparison using a wrong metric incorrectly. I don't know what is it with Americans reassuring themselves with GDP metrics, but it's very confusing why anyone would throw in GDP numbers when talking about disposable income and the car market.
Everything else I can think of is more expensive in the US...food
Where in Europe are you? Because I've always found food ridiculously cheap in the US compared to the Europeans countries I've lived in or visited for an extended enough period of time that I had to regularly go food shopping (Scandinavia, UK, Germany, Switzerland). You can get 3 chickens, each 3 times the size of the chickens I'm used to, for what I pay for 2 chicken breasts. Many restaurants will give you a serving that could feed a family of 4 for what I might pay for starter back home.
I'm genuinely struggling to understand where you are pulling these conclusions from because they don't fit the trivially searchable data, nor do they fit the anecdotal conclusions that I think most people would make from spending time in these places.
> Are interest rates favourable? There are multiple concerning trends (like car payments being one of the top household expenses and people struggling with that, people owing more on car loans than what the vehicle is worth, etc. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/15/american-consumers-are-incre... )
Yes, they're more favorable. The interest rates available to US consumers on auto purchases are lower than those available to UK consumers. And again, it's a case where your need to moralize is getting in the way of the topic: I'm saying that easier access to credit is a contributor to Americans spending more on cars. You are saying "oh, but Americans then struggle with auto loans". Yes! These are not conflicting statements. You seem to be attaching a value judgement that isn't there to the statement that "Americans are able to spend more on cars". It doesn't have to be a good thing, but that doesn't necessarily make it untrue.
> I'm not ranting, I'm correcting a wrong comparison using a wrong metric incorrectly. I don't know what is it with Americans reassuring themselves with GDP metrics, but it's very confusing why anyone would throw in GDP numbers when talking about disposable income and the car market.
You were the first person in this thread to bring up GDP per capita! The person you are replying to said "richer". You're the one interpreting this to be a GDP reference, but it doesn't need to be since it's also true with regards to disposable income.
I also don't understand why you think it's people "reassuring themselves". I don't need reassuring of anything on this topic, and I'm not sure why you think you know what beliefs I might hold about the relative merits of living in MS versus various European countries. I think it's a pretty basic ability to be able to decouple the question of "is the median american is willing and able to spend more money on a car than the median german?" from "which country has an overall higher standard of living?".
> Standard plan is £5.99 in UK, €7.99 in france, $7.99 in the US. So the US is the cheapest of those after currency conversion
Standard with ads, which is distorting because ads have a different cost and benefit (more expensive and lucrative in the US). Standard Standard is 14.99€ in France, £12.99 in the UK, $17.99 in the US.
> US median price in 2022: $10.53. In the UK, £7.69 == $10.54 (uncanny tbh)
I like how you picked France, not Poland at $27, Spain at $35, UK at $35, Ireland at $39, Belgium at $42, Italy at $44, Germany at $46, etc.
> I'm genuinely struggling to understand where you are pulling these conclusions from because they don't fit the trivially searchable data, nor do they fit the anecdotal conclusions that I think most people would make from spending time in these places.
From visiting the US multiple times over relatively extended periods (few weeks at a time) over the past few years, while living and travelling extensively over the EU. Plus anecdotes from the internet. A lot of things are more expensive, when you count everything (tax, tips, etc).
> Yes, they're more favorable
You said they're favourable, not more favourable than e.g. in the UK. What's the average APR?
> You were the first person in this thread to bring up GDP per capita! The person you are replying to said "richer".
The only metric by which Mississipi is "richer" than France is GDP/GDP per capita.
> Standard with ads, which is distorting because ads have a different cost and benefit (more expensive and lucrative in the US). Standard Standard is 14.99€ in France, £12.99 in the UK, $17.99 in the US.
so it's 30 cents cheaper per month on that basis. that doesn't really support the claim.
> I like how you picked France, not Poland at $27, Spain at $35, UK at $35, Ireland at $39, Belgium at $42, Italy at $44, Germany at $46, etc.
I picked France because I had specifically mentioned France previously. I'm aiming to be consistent.
> Plus anecdotes from the internet.
It all becomes clearer.
> You said they're favourable, not more favourable than e.g. in the UK. What's the average APR?
I said "better access to favorable rates", not that every person is getting good rates. For what it's worth I would say that any interest rate that's below the expected return on money in the SP500 is quite favorable.
> The only metric by which Mississipi is "richer" than France is GDP/GDP per capita.
Clearly untrue: it has higher household disposable income, almost certainly the most relevant statistic.
I really don't think you're sincerely interested in this topic, you just want to dunk on America.
Healthcare is a particularly _atypical_ example to choose, and the particularly poor health outcomes of MS are only partly explicable by healthcare cost/access: it's also cultural and lifestyle issues. So it's rather disingenuous to say "take health insurance", as though it can be used by analogy to comprehensively explain other aspects of American finance.
You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher. Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries.
Would I rather live in Mississippi than France? Are Mississipians living better lives than French people? I mean it depends on where specifically, but almost certainly no. Of course having more money doesn't necessarily make a place better to live in.
But that doesn't invalidate "people have more money available to spend on cars and easier access to credit to finance that purchase over five years at favorable interest rates" as part of the reason why Americans choose to spend more money on cars.
You really don't have to take every point of discussion of difference between the US and European countries as an obligation to rant about how much better Europe is on tangential topics.