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Comment by GreaterFool | Hacker News Reader

I see poverty in Japan and I have no illusion that for many people here life is hard. But where is better? I often travel to US and it is like going to a third-world country. And I only visit nice places there!

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Have you been to western/northern europe or Australia? I've visited Paris, Berlin and Zürich and haven't seen US levels of poverty in any of them. I've also visited a kinda out of the way part of Russia and while average wealth seemed lower than in the US, the floor was higher.

You must not have visited the same Berlin I visited...

Can you elaborate? I certainly didn't see tent encampments or beggars like I've seen in every major US city I've visited so far but it's possible I missed something.

Not Berlin, but one of the images that stuck with me when visiting Hamburg this year was this: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/hamburg-germany-july-tramps-...

(Not my photo, but it's from the place I remember)

You obviously haven't been to Northern Territory in Australia. The way that the Aboriginal people have been treated, and the conditions they live in are Australia's national shame. People getting hit by cars because they drank too much and fell asleep on the road are a legitimate issue. They even have PSAs to try and stop people from sleeping on the road [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/XA241Lg70fg

No, I grew up around rural Victoria and my family is from NSW.

Why are things so bad for them in NT? I was under the impression they had much better access to welfare and education than the rest of us. Am I wrong? Are they not partaking of it? Are they discriminated against and unable to find housing/schooling?

The slums in the Paris suburbs are pretty well known.

I am from Europe. Some of the countries I suppose are nice. Switzerland <3

Uhhmm - you visited basically anywhere outside the periphique in Paris?

I mean the entire ring around Paris is a ghetto - as grungy as any American city.

Murder rates are not as bad - but petty crime and other forms of violence are just as bad.

The level of social malaise due to lack of integration of newcomers from the Maghreb and M/E is growing quite quickly.

And Marseille? Lyon? Even worse.

So yes - the American 'hardcore ghettos' are the worst, but beyond that I don't think Europe is that higher.

And the US has a considerably larger middle/middle-upper class of aspirants, which is a difficult proposition for most Europeans.

San Francisco is like a dystopian sci-fi movie.

Boise Idaho, Seattle, New York City, San Diego, Boston, Austin, Denver are all like a third world country? Is that right? Laughably absurd.

Full time median income in the US: ~$47,000 (about 50% higher than Japan; the US also has a GDP per capita about 50% higher).

Income in the third world: sub $2,000.

The US has a dozen states with median income levels on par with Switzerland. The US median income is so high, Germany and Britain struggle to match the very poorest US states.

That doesn't sound very third world to me.

Most of the US is absolutely nothing like a third world country in fact. Most of the US is absolutely nothing like Detroit or Baltimore. Most of the US has: a murder rate on par with Canada, extremely low unemployment, extremely high incomes, violent crime rates lower than Europe.

Just cause the cash numbers are high, doesn't mean you get that same value for your money. People who have moved from Canada, Germany and the UK notice the strange state of disrepair the infrastructure is in, the large social disparity been rich and poor, the utter lack of train infrastructure and universal healthcare and the fact there are really dangerous bad parts of town (vs just lower income but safe) in many places in the USA.

Yet taxes are pretty damn close to the same price as back home!

Statistics are misleading. Just because the median income is high doesn't mean that those on the bottom end of the scale aren't living under bridges trying to make enough money to prevent themselves starving to death.

This. There is no social safety net in the US. None,except charity.

So if you fall you crash.

Median income is a terrible indicator of poverty. Median income is guaranteed to be skewed high, since there is no maximum income, but there is a minimum income of $0. GDP per capita is even worse, Qatar has the highest GDP per capita in the world, but has construction workers that are practically slaves earning $1 per hour.

Poverty rate is notoriously hard to measure. You can't look at GDP per capita, even GDP(PPP) per capita doesn't give a good measure.

Going by the OECD's official numbers, the USA has the third highest poverty rate, behind Costa Rica and Israel. It has a higher poverty rate than Mexico.

Australia, with the highest minimum wage and fourth highest median income (PPP) in the world, has a higher poverty rate than the Czech Republic.

I would not classify the USA has having extremely high incomes. The income disparity in the USA is phenomenal. Not to mention that income is not the only measure of quality of life, or even a measure of disposable income, especially when you have to shell out thousands of dollars per year in health insurance premiums.

One thing that gets me in the US: the homeless. For some of them it feels like they are literally dying on the street (in a very non-metaphoric sense: I saw some injuries).

Also entrepreneurial homeless people, actually trying to earn money by making themselves useful however hard that may prove. That's something I never saw in central Europe -- where I think someone like that wouldn't ended up in the street.

The safety net in the US is non-existent, and that seems pretty much primitive to me.

That being said, yes of course third world countries are worse, as far as the average or median of the population is concerned. But frankly, I'm not sure if I would rather be a normal citizen in a third world country, or fall on hard times in the US.

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