U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world | Hacker News Reader

U.S. employment conditions compare poorly to the rest of the developed world

mercurynews.com

107 pointsrbanffy140 comments

What I don't understand, and you may say that it's the intrenched powers keeping the status quo, is why the US picks such poor implementations of certain ideas.

The article mentions low collective bargaining. Our model, as an American, is pretty much one union per vertical. There is the Teamsters. There are no unions that compete with the Teamsters. I believe that Germany has unions that fight each other for contracts and membership. At the same time our model is one filled with corruption. (Though I've never heard many complain about IBREW corruption.) Our auto union would rather see the company disappear than reduce wages, or have some of their members dismissed. All the while it's common to hear stories of the Auto Workers Union defending drunk forklift drivers making north of 90k a year.

If it is just institutional power, why do we defend or allow this? I was watching Killer Mike on Colbert just now. He complained about the plight of blacks in poor communities. It seems like they are a microcosm of the general problems facing this country. He talked about how the governments kept people down. When he mentioned the communities affected (an abridged list I'm sure), they all had democratically elected officials by that community. The party hadn't changed in 60 years. Why do they, and the US in general, allow these failures to continue? Tribalism?

There are theories like Duverger’s Law[0] to try to account for why a two-party system emerges from the voting conditions in most of the US.

Giving the appearance of conceding to collective bargaining, when really just ensuring that a single monopoly union is in their pocket, is just another type of regulatory capture.

[0]: < https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law >

Added: a concise way to understand Duverger’s Law, if you are mathematically inclined, is to say that plurality-rule is like L1 regularization among political parties, tending to force the participation of small parties to zero and create a sparse set of parties (generally only two). Whereas proportional representation is like L2 regularization, allowing non-zero participation by many parties.

I think partisanship can explain a bit of these failures. People defend or attack the implementations of ideas based on their ideology, rather than implementation. If you like unions you basically don't want to admit they have problems, because that is ammunition.

I'm a bit surprised by the support unions have personally, even when people are aware of their failings. I recently talked to a friend about coat to build public transport in NYC and mentioned how we were, among other things, getting super fucked by unions, and while he was aware of these issues still basically supported unions as a way to improve things for workers.

But besides that tangent, can you point to some reading material on good implementations of unions? How can we have unions that advocate for workers, but don't lead to incredibly inefficient workplaces? Because all I basically hear is unions resisting anything that looks like accountability for their members, or efficiency in doing the work.

Much of this was determined by the so-called "Battle Of Detroit" of 1948. The USA had just defeated Nazi Germany and was looking to make sure that fascism would never return to Germany, so the USA encouraged the formation of strong labor unions, and supported the law that made unions automatic for large firms. The USA labor unions looked at that and wondered "If we are imposing this on Germany as a good thing, why can't we also get this in the USA?" In particular, there was the issue of who should have seats on the Board Of Directors. It would soon become normal for German labor unions to hold seats on the Board Of Directors at German firms. The USA labor unions wanted the same thing. What resulted was the longest and most bitter set of strikes in the history of the USA up till that time. Everyone understood the stakes -- the future shape of labor relations in the USA. The leadership of the major USA corporations dug in deep to resist the increasing power of the labor unions. The leadership of the major USA corporations were willing to offer higher wages -- essentially they were trying to bribe the workers with money instead of power, with the understanding that power is more important than money. Eventually, the corporations won. Although the workers got higher wages, they were denied control of the corporations. And at that time a so-called Red Scare got going in the USA, a hysteria over Communism, which turned into a dramatic episode of labor-union smashing. The most militant leaders of the labor unions were arrested or blacklisted. After that, what remained of the labor movement in the USA tended to be the least ideological and the most corrupt. The true-believers were chased away during the Red Scare. Those left behind were the ones who could be bought off with money. From that point forward, the labor movement in the USA was to shrink, first slowly, and then after 1970, much more quickly.

> Although the workers got higher wages, they were denied control of the corporations

There is an interesting lesson on giving up control of your rewards in favor of an uncontrollable but larger reward. Stupid humans.

The labor unions did not have control, but were striking to get that control. Maybe if they don't take the higher wages then end up with nothing, busted and broken. Complicated humans.

This is only speculation, but initially when unions were just getting started, all that concentration of power was probably required to wrest any control away from the company.

Then by the time the scales began to tip, the unions suddenly had all the power in the world to prevent other competing unions coming in.

> The party hadn't changed in 60 years. Why do they, and the US in general, allow these failures to continue? Tribalism?

Even though I completely agree with you on the policy issue: Given that the other party is literally harboring white supremacists, is it really a surprise that people in black communities reflexively vote democrat? If you think about it, some of these policies are incredibly bad for them. E.g. public unions divert money intended to help people in need to pay above-market salaries for middle class, mostly white people. Why would folks in black communities keep voting for that? Because they're worried the other side wants to take away their right to vote. When people feel attacked they'll band together with the people who aren't directly attacking them.

We just had our republican mayor in Annapolis booted in the blue wave. Larry Hogan is facing a much tighter race than he should. These guys are very moderate and very competent, but when your party is responsible for children being separated from parents, it's a tough sell.

One of the reasons labor unions are weak in the US is the Taft-Hartley act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Management_Relations_Act...

Although the article at the top claims it didn't have a major impact on the power of unions, if you read further down and see what the act actually does, it's easy to see how over the longer term it crippled the effectiveness of unions. In short, it made unions less capable of forcing change (by curtailing strike actions) and gave employers much more power to oppose unions (including preventing supervisors from joining or supporting the union). This means a system like that in Germany where the labor union has a seat on the board is explicitly discouraged.

Personally I'm ambivalent about unions, but my opinion is shifting a little in favor of collective action in light of how power has shifted between management and labor.

I think there was so much union suppression in the US, that in many areas, unions only survived where the company was literally risking peoples lives or chewing up their health, like in heavily industrialized factories. And because those lines have been hard fought for decades, there is little trust.

I think you are on to something. There are powers with an interest in keeping the status quo....but I think it is more often than not on an issue by issue basis and less often about overall social control.

Fact is some folks straight up vote against their best interests and others don't vote, ultimately just bad choices are a part of democracy.....and that plays a big part.

Also unions in the us really do suck sometimes. My wife is a part of the teachers union and it is a mess.

Profit. Profit. And more profit. The profit of corporations here in the US is the most important pursuit by government, even when it comes at the expense of jobs or even human lives. Nothing will stand in its way. If you take a closer look at why we have the worst of the worst ideas implemented in the worst way, you'll see it's because someone or some corporation is making a ton of money at the expense of everyone else. This is not an inherent property of capitalism, it's how the US chose to implement its version. Put simply, humans are second-class entities in this system and only the profits of the rich/corporations are first-class entities. When you put this idea into a country built on war, colonialism (carried out towards others), slavery, and oppression, the current status quo should not be surprising.

> defending drunk forklift drivers making north of 90k a year.

That's nothing. How about car washer making $466K? https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2018/06/money_for_nothing_... Or in the same place, somebody getting 24/7 salary (literally paying him for existing, double on weekends) up to $517K per year? That's the stories people need to hear. But try to curtail the power of these unions, and there would be cries that "poor workers need living wages" up to the sky.

> The party hadn't changed in 60 years.

Maybe in another 60 years somebody would think about introducing some competition there. Right now, why would anyone bother to do anything for those people, if their election is assured (provided the party assigns them to the place) anyway?

I'm glad this is being addressed but I don't feel qualified to add anything of substance to it.

As many other techies I frequent message boards on reddit and other sites. A majority of users are from the US and many posts are written from a US-centric point of view.

What I've observed on those message boards regarding workers rights and health has made me deeply concerned about US workers. And that's only in the tech field. I can't even imagine how it compares to other industrial fields.

I'm not qualified to debate this but I am convinced that I would never want to work in the united states.

As a third-world citizen, reading about US worker conditions in Reddit made me realize that working minimum-wage burger-flipping job with no benefits in US affords you a better life than working one of the rarer white-collar high-skill jobs in my country.

That’s not really due to the job there though - it’s due to the overall state of the country & infrastructure.

Not really the same thing.

When compared to countries with similar quality of infrastructure & “development” the US fares extremely poorly.

Extremely poorly? How so?

Did you read this article or the OECD report it is based on? Probably some clues in there if you are interested in finding your answer.

It really depends on your third world country.

It is likely true that there is a high degree of self-selection here: because U.S. citizens dominate a lot of these discussion boards, U.S. news will dominate them as well. And because emotions garner upvotes, news of terrible things in America rise to the top. And on top of that, the most vocal, emotional commenters with the most amazing stories of U.S. suffering tend to rise to the top of the comments section.

Take it all with a huge grain of salt and stick to the facts and figures.

I think it all comes down to how Americans see and value money versus how the rest of the developed world values it.

American culture puts 100% emphasis on how much money you make, and how you make it. More than health, or stability, or a well rounded life, American's are taught that money is the cure-all.

And sure, when you are in the top 1/4 of income earners, the U.S. has quite a bit to offer. But what good is all that money if your job can literally disappear over night? Or you get sick and can no longer work? Or any other unexpected tragic circumstance.

Somehow, we as American's have been brainwashed to believe that we are all just 'down-on-our-luck millionaires'. The opportunity exists, but it is certainly not a fair playing field - and offering assistance to those who experience bad luck or tragedy will not take away from someones ability to make what they wish, despite what we are being sold.

> we as American's have been brainwashed to believe that we are all just 'down-on-our-luck millionaires'

I'm not sure I'd say "brainwashed" -- this is a founding mythos of the United States. It's embedded in our most sacred documents -- the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, etc. -- that the individual (in theory) reigns supreme and (in theory) has ultimate control over his/her life.

It's a noble ideal, truly, but also a damn convienent excuse for those in power ("I/my ancestors didn't get lucky, they made smart decisions and worked hard, and so did I, so I succeeded") and those in poverty ("I can win if I just work harder/emulate those more successful than I -- ultimately I'm in control and nothing else matters").

It's both our ace-in-the-hole and our fatal flaw IMO.

That's fair. Brainwashed is probably an overly emotional label for what is actually a great idea that has deviated from it's original intent.

The American Spirit (for lack of a better term) is at odds with the economic and political structure of current-day America. We are led to believe (for good reasons) that we control our fate, but the infrastructure no longer supports it in a way that makes it available to every American.

From 1862 till 1976 an American could always head west(or north) and claim 160 acres with 5 years of hard work(caveats apply)[1]. It would be cool if some similar opportunity was available today. 1976 was not that long ago.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts

>"I can win if I just work harder/emulate those more successful than I -- ultimately I'm in control and nothing else matters"

While obviously there are things outside individual's control, is this really a harmful outlook? I'd certainly rather look at my life as if I had agency vs thinking I had none, or it was incredibly limited.

> The United States and Mexico are the only countries in the entire study that don’t require any advance notice for individual firings.

This is why I never feel bad for quitting a job without giving the expected two week notice. They don't give you any notice when they fire you.

A Canadian friend just experienced this, too. He had many years with the same employer and was recently fired for nebulous reasons and offered a paltry severance package. He's currently in the process of suing. I do not know _anything_ about Canadian labor laws but I did find it _very_ interesting that he went through this experience as a Canadian with a Canadian company in Canada (BC). It goes against everything that I thought that I knew about the treatment of workers there (no surprises there, of course, as I am a naive person, but still...).

They don't have to, no. But I've been laid off, and given two weeks pay in lieu of notice, and I appreciated it. I don't have to give two weeks notice, either. But those who enjoy receiving courtesy should also give it.

I do give the two week notice, but it's out of courtesy, not guilt.

Well, virtually nobody browsing HN can say they share the pains of the workers of the US that 'suffer when compared with the rest of the world'.

Sure, there are many low-income residents, high inequality, high turnover, low unemployment with low upward job mobility, etc. All those things are true for the 'disadvantaged', and engineers, technologists, computer scientists etc. are _not_ part of the population that makes less than the median income.

So, yeah, a more appropriate title would be 'vanishing lower middle class in the US is increasingly facing the same problems as the lower class', which some may argue is identical to 'is becoming poor' (but not technically true)

Anyway, at a _personal_ level, nobody here will come to the conclusion they better leave to the EU because they'd be better there

  > nobody here will come to the conclusion they better leave to the EU because they'd be better there

If not the EU, there is this fairly European country that shares timezones with the US and has a reasonable tech scene going on, and you can actually drive back and forth between the US and this country across the longest undefended border in the world.

It used to be one of the US's best friends and strongest allies. Before Russia swooped in like a bad new BF/GF and convinced the US that all of its friends are really its enemies.

There is already a fair bit of job mobility between this country and the US, and you can get these weird "socialist" things like healthcare and education that won't bankrupt you.

You're welcome here.

As a general note, it’s better to not use code formatting for quotes because it makes the quotes unreadable on mobile

I am deeply disappointed to hear that there is a feature baked into HN that is unreadable on mobile.

But now that I know... I'll pay attention.

> You're welcome here.

I don't think that's strictly true. The last time I drove across the border, I got pulled in for extra scrutiny (random, I assume). I happened to be unemployed at the time and was asked a bunch of questions that seemed very strange, since they included things like how much credit limit I had available on my credit cards. The CBSA agent was very nice and eventually explained that it was to make sure that I really was a tourist and wasn't circumventing the procedure for immigration for employment.

My understanding (perhaps incorrect?) is that this procedure is fairly stringent, even for US citizens. Getting a visa for that "reasonable tech scene" requires a degree, last I checked. That makes "education that won't bankrupt you" a bit of a catch-22, until the following generation.

More importantly, though, it's been a fairly recent topic of discussion here on HN that tech salaries in the tech hubs of Vancouver and Toronto are very low, especially considering the high cost of living (mostly land/rent) in those locales, even factoring in "socialist" benefits. It's been causing something of a "brain drain" to the US.

Perhaps less highly-paid workers in lower-cost areas would fare better, but are they being sought from South of the border? Citation needed :)

We have offices in both SF and Toronto, and so far people report that even with an increased salary, the standard of living is higher working in the Toronto office.

Generally, the ones who transfer to SF are young and are looking to sacrifice standard of living in exchange for "being part of the scene," which is perfectly rational.

The standard of living in Toronto is reportedly quite higher for people with kids, but that certainly doesn't apply to everyone.

Come work with us and you can conduct your own experiment: Work a year here, a year there, for as long as you need to gather data.

> We have offices in both SF and Toronto

I have also read that US companies (especially the big-name ones likes FAMG) who open Canadian offices pay more than purely local ones, so I wonder if merely having offices in both places helps increase the otherwise lackluster compensation.

> looking to sacrifice standard of living in exchange for "being part of the scene," which is perfectly rational.

I'd say it's only rational if that scene inclusion imparts a real benefit, rather than a perceived one. It's at least arguable that it does, other than providing greater opportunities for different, more highly-paid jobs.

> The standard of living in Toronto is reportedly quite higher for people with kids, but that certainly doesn't apply to everyone.

Is that across the industry or just for your company? Is there a difference between homeowners (who would have a high degree of immunity from rapidly rising home prices) and renters?

> Come work with us and you can conduct your own experiment: Work a year here, a year there, for as long as you need to gather data.

If only it were that easy (even if you'd hire me). I can't imagine that a year in each place, especially with only one employer, would be nearly enough data, and that's assuming two years at that particular employer would be suitable/acceptable enough not to be the biggest factor in quality-of-life.

The other big confounding factor is that you can't really compare SF-to-Toronto, if only because of weather/climate (though I'm sure there are other aspects, not the least of which is whatever lifestyle details someone has become accustomed to already). You'd probably need to do Vancouver-to-SF and Toronto-to-NYC (or maybe Boston).

It's probably a reasonable option (if it's actually on offer) for a non-homeowner, without children, just starting a career, but, otherwise, it's not a realistic ask.

I'm still not convinced there's any effort being made by Canadian companies or government to recruit employees from the US.

I have not done a rigorous investigation, so YMMV, but what I would say is that Sturgeon's Revelation is at work here.

90% of tech companies are crud. They're froth, undercapitalized, built to flip but doomed. Which is fine, but if we try to measure the mean or median wages while including all of them, we'll get numbers that are ridiculous in any location.

I believe that if we filter down to "good" companies, by some hand-wavey definition of good—Pedigree of founders, pedigree of VCs, existence of a working revenue model, whatever—we'll get the US companies that open Canadian offices plus a bunch of decent Canadian companies. Same in SF, we'll get the obvious big companies plus lots of properly good companies.

It could well be that good SF companies out-pay good Toronto companies, it would be wrong to compare my employer to a startup operating on angel fumes in either location. We compete with companies like Amazon, Google, and Shopify for talent.

But it could also be that we do pretty well against such companies. We work hard to make sure that our pay is competitive, and we are trying our damndest to grow our Toronto office even more.

That pretty much addresses my first question, but only that, from what I can tell.

> it would be wrong to compare my employer to a startup operating on angel fumes

Only if you pre-suppose your hand-wavey definition of good, which I noticed had very little in the way of qualities that affect actual working environment.

> we are trying our damndest to grow our Toronto office even more.

Including "welcoming" US workers? That's what I have yet to see any evidence of.

Flawed premise. The lack of a sane social safety net and of a 1st world healthcare system affects everyone in the US.

Yes, being well paid in tech helps alleviate some of the issues due to them being absorbed by money, essentially, but that is itself an effect on the spending power & mobility of the individual.

The US has effectively mortgaged and remortgaged is population and has not been keeping up on maintaining it. That bill will come due.

Being well payed is supposed to alleviate these issues to the point where it wouldn't normally justify moving _because of those issues_. You can move because a certain aspect is more appealing to you, as is the case with vacation days for another commenter, for example, but that makes it more a particular case rather than a general trend.

But being well payed means the prices go up for everything consummately for the area you live in.

So any gains in living improvements are offset.

>> Well, virtually nobody browsing HN can say they share the pains of the workers of the US that 'suffer when compared with the rest of the world'.

Thats a huge generalization. Not everyone reading HN is a top earning software engineer. Some people are just genuineley inerested in HN-topics but earn their wage with something else entireley. And there are lousy paid IT jobs as well. And there are software developers, that don't live in the US or Western Europe and could be in the same situation. Moreover:

>> All those things are true for the 'disadvantaged', and engineers, technologists, computer scientists etc. are _not_ part of the population

But there are 'disadvantaged' engineers, technologists etc.. There are numerous medical conditions that can make employment nearly impossible, while actual work is possible. Just talk to some HR people if they would hire someone with some sort of chronic disease. Most will be very reluctant, despite the fact that this condition might nevery have material consequences on the work you are doing.

>> Thats a huge generalization.

True. Although now I'm curious what the proportions are.

>> And there are lousy paid IT jobs as well.

In comparison to other IT jobs, absolutely. In comparison to other industries, not so much. The most basic jobs in IT pay at least as well as other industries, and more often than not from a little to a lot better, no? Anyway, I doubt there are many IT jobs that pay so little that those workers are stuck in the category the article is broadly laying out, though.

Your other points all stand. YOu are correct, but the piece is not about these cases and more about the general state of employment and compensation

Well, some of us arent in the private sector anymore. I enlisted few years ago because i was tired of the ratrace. Im still doing much of the same tech stuff, near my old home. Pay isnt great but no ratrace and the benifits are amazing. Anyone else get paid exercise days? Im booked for a paid day firing machine guns next month.

So, no. Not everyone here is a standard brogrammer.

> nobody here will come to the conclusion they better leave to the EU

We don't have Trump here ;-)

"Anyway, at a _personal_ level, nobody here will come to the conclusion they better leave to the EU because they'd be better there"

Well, for what it's worth my wife and I did just that because we wanted more vacation time and nobody in the US was competitive in that regard, especially for her. I was also pretty near the start of my career and had what you might call a crappy job in LA - I've progressed quite a bit in the 5 years since I got here.

Sure, this is in line with other comments about healthcare and other benefits. But the piece (and my comment) were more about general employment and compensation

This article has a lot of numbers in it. But it does a pretty poor job of describing what set of people, or even how many people are struggling with the issues it describes.

- 20% of employees leave or lose there jobs every year, but it would be a lot more helpful if that number weren't corrupted by the "leave" part when we're only concerned with the "lose" part.

- Half (or whatever number) of employees do not have union representation. But what fraction of employees want or need a union. Many, for sure, but as a software developer employed by a company I certainly do not need or want one.

I'm all for confronting issues with the way our national economy is structured and assessing its pros and cons relative to the world's other countries. But I think these issues deserve better reporting.

With any job in any country there are measurements for many things but worker mental stress doesn't seem to be taken into account. I know companies send out engagement surveys but they are pointless since employees feel like they can't answer truthfully.

I may be employed, the pay may be OK, some vacation time if permitted (probably not when I want), work about eight hours per day. But it doesn't take into account your manager screaming at you, that aggressive coworker who always gets their way, pushy employees exceeding the scope of their position, timid managers and supervisors who don't talk to bad employees.

I wouldn't agree about the US being the only OECD country that doesn't give notice before lay off or firings. I'm in Canada and I was laid off two hours into my day mid-meeting by an aggressive manager who I complained about to HR nearly a decade ago.

Original version has charts:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/07/04/is-it...

Not available to read unless you agree to their tracking.

Interestingly the original has a bad interaction with my adblocker where the "x" to dismiss the popup dumps me back at the homepage rather than the article

While it may be true for a subset of posters here, the idea of just finding a new job if it doesn't suit you is not possible for most people. The majority of people need to be able to do something mildly productive and be able to live a happy life as a result. If your economic model is leaving this many people behind--or they even feel they're being left behind it's not a good model.

Everyday I find it harder to argue against things like medicare-for-all. Private healthcare only adds unneeded pressure to workers--heck even me sometimes. Even if it weren't cheaper which it should be[1], there is surely some value that soulless accountants could extract from lower stressors in the workplace.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/upshot/why-single-payer-h...

I read an interesting perspective on universal basic income recently that suggested that it was MORE capitalistic than not: by freeing people from limits imposed by needing to supply food/shelter for themselves/their families, it allows more participation in the market.

That seems a radical but obvious-in-hindsight idea to me: a majority of the population cant participate in the competition the system itself needs because they cant accept the risk of failure that the system requires of us. Meanwhile anyone who is already successful chides them about thow they should just work harder.

> that suggested that it was MORE capitalistic than not

That's an awesome (but not very honest) way to sell it to the leftophobic right. But, again, capitalism doesn't mandate small government and vanishingly low taxes.

> The majority of people need to be able to do something mildly productive and be able to live a happy life as a result

A happy life is not a luxury most workers have.

Article appears, is rendered fully, and then shows adblocker-blocker popover. Dismissing the popup results in being redirected to the start page.

This is very anti-web. Nope.

They need to pay for the reporting, after all. Having said that, you can sneak in by anonymously browsing there.

This article fails to understand the true costs of European economic arrangements.

Let's consider healthcare. Often touted as an example of how much "better" Europe (and Canada, etc) is than the US, consider:

1. Wait times are often much greater in countries with socialized medicine and this has serious implications: in Canada between 1993 and 2009, around 40,000 people died as a result of increased wait times due to socialized medicine. [1]

2. The US has "significantly lower rates of 30-day-stroke-induced mortality than every other OECD country aside from Japan and Korea". [1]

3. Cancer survival rates in the US are equivalent to or higher than in similarly developed nations. [1]

Furthermore, let's consider the places where innovation in medicine is most robust.

European nations do not get cheaper drugs for free. That is to say, there is a real cost for the price ceilings and controls imposed on the European healthcare sector in the form of reduced ability for European forms to produce new drugs and therapies which has real implications for future mortality rates.

The US, by contrast, has become an engine of growth for the healthcare sector owing to its free(r) market.

Among the US to France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and the UK, the US share of drug discovery (based on inventing company headquarter location) has increased from 31% from 1971-1980 to 57% from 2001-2010. This clear upward trend will likely continue for US innovation as European nations grapple with rising healthcare costs by continuing to clamp down on the free market. [2]

If the US were to adopt a European approach, it's likely that drug discovery and innovation would collapse and as a result many millions of people in the future who would have been saved by novel therapies would instead have to suffer death at the hands of the socialistic stranglehold on innovation.

This is not to say the US is perfect or that it is always better than Europe, but it is to say that discussions of the merits of US vs European healthcare often fail to capture nuanced facts and realities that cannot be ignored. European healthcare may be more available to European citizens, but it is in general of lower quality (given wait times) than comparable US healthcare. And the US, through its free market approach, has become the global engine of healthcare innovation which directly benefits other nations who have shunned free market principles in healthcare.

[1]: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/if-american-he...

[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/05/16/sure-w...

I would agree that American policies have increased the size of our healthcare sector, but is this really something that can be attributed to free market decisions? How much more growth can we handle when it is already 18% of our GDP ($3.4 trillion)? There is probably an argument to be made that healthcare in the USA is better than a place like Canada, but I really don't think it is 2 times better (~$10,000 vs ~$5,000 per capita).

European healthcare is lower quality than not having healthcare, which a fairly large percentage of Americans do not? Any healthcare is better than no healthcare and no amount of waiting is going to flip that equation.

Not having health insurance is different from not being able to access healthcare. Everyone in the US is entitled to healthcare regardless of their ability to pay. I don't really know if that's the best policy or not, but it simply isn't true that people don't have access to healthcare.

The US is one of the best places in the world to be a business owner, that's why its economy is so much more dynamic than European economies. In order to create such an environment worker protections cannot be as robust as in Europe. This biased article of course ignores that fact.

Many workers are much better off in the US than in Europe as well. They get to keep a greater portion of their income, their income goes farther in the US than it would in Europe, and they have more opportunities to change jobs and careers because the flip side of weaker worker protections means businesses can hire with greater agility than in Europe.

Yet, social mobility is higher in Europe. Also, americans can keep more of their income, if they skimp on health insurance and pensions savings. I don't think americans in general grasp how much higher quality the healthcare system is in Europe.

Example: get scorned at by your GP doctor for seeing them for a bad cold. Get billed $20.

Receive open heart surgery and triple by-pass. Get billed $20.

Social mobility doesn't really matter when everyone more or less has the same quality of life, as in Europe. That's what many don't understand. The Europeans have essentially nullified the value of social mobility in the first place. That is why their economies are more stagnant than that of the US.

As a European: lol no.

This is completely incorrect.

Have you... been to Europe? This is in no way accurate. There are definitely classes of citizen here, from the working class all the way to billionaires.

Honest question: what do you think social mobility is? When studies say EU has higher social mobility, what do think they are actually highlighting?

> They get to keep a greater portion of their income

If only that greater portion wasn't immediately being eaten up by rapidly rising healthcare, college, etc. costs.

Between premiums, copays, and non-covered stuff like compounded medications and dental, I spent $33k last year for a family of four on healthcare. The college I went to - $36k in 2001 - is now $60k/year. I'll take the higher taxes...

Notice how every sector of the economy that the government is highly involved with (health care, education, real estate) keeps increasing its costs?

Your inflated health care bills helped pay for the 280k average salary of physicians (source: https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overvie...), which is over 2x as high as Western european doctors' salary. You can thank the aggressive occupational licensing that the AMA engages in that prevents more potential doctors from joining the workforce and keeps salaries high. For instance: Western european doctors do not need a 4-year bachelors degree just to _enter_ medical school.

You are also sponsoring drug discovery. United States pays for the drug research, eats the high drug costs, and then Western Europe mooches off our R&D spending.

And guess what? Western Europe's free health care is not free: The 50% higher taxes in Western Europe are required to pay for all this.

Europe spends half what we do on healthcare per-capita (and the gap is widening, as their costs historically don't grow as quickly - https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...).

Just because our government does a shitty half-assed job of it doesn't mean all governments have to.

PolitiFact, a liberal site, rates your claim as FALSE: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/...

That graph is not even accurate.

This says Canada's health care spending is $6600 per person: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-to-spend-more-than-6-60... while your graph says its $4500. Those numbers aren't even in the same ballpark.

The graph is inaccurate because the 2017 and 2015 numbers are different?

Find any source - any reputable source - that indicate US healthcare costs are anywhere near the rest of the OECD.

Your graph (2015): United States: $10300 Canada: $4400 Ratio: 2.34

My actual findings (2017): United States: $9250 Canada: $6600 Ratio: 1.40

I think your graph is fake news.

Sources: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/04/20/5247741... https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-to-spend-more-than-6-60...

"Different sources have slightly different numbers" isn't the same as "fake news". The OECD's numbers are publicly available.

The NPR link you cite has Canada at 4576 and the US at 9237, for a ratio of 2.02. The CTV link (citing a different organization; perhaps one considers dental/eyeware and the other doesn't, or something along those lines) doesn't offer US numbers to compare against.

Wikipedia has a consistently-sourced list you can peruse, too, for multiple years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

For one, you seem unaware that Canada has its own currency. You are comparing CAD with USD.

It's highly involved, but maybe not involved in the right way... the relationship looks rather incestous.

And yet health care costs are lower in countries where the government runs healthcare.

Our system of government involvement, where it’s neither a free market, nor a single payer system, is indeed an example of the worst way government can be involved.

And the Western European governments have _death panels_ to decide who deserves medical care and who deserves to die.

And, in Western Europe, you must wait over a month for your non-urgent surgery, and much longer to be admitted into the ER. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/world/europe/uk-national-.... And you might die while waiting for your medical care: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/bacchus-barua-/wait-times-cana...

And guess what, your taxes are 50% higher to pay for all this.

> And the Western European governments have _death panels_ to decide who deserves medical care and who deserves to die.

In the US, we just call them "insurance companies".

> And, in Western Europe, you must wait over a month for your non-urgent surgery

Have you ever tried to get non-urgent surgery in the US?

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-rel...

> In a survey of 15 large U.S. metropolitan areas conducted by national physician search firm Merritt Hawkins, researchers found the average patient waited approximately 29.3 days to see a family medicine practitioner in 2016, an increase of approximately 50 percent since 2014.

> And guess what, your taxes are 50% higher to pay for all this.

Europeans pay half what the US does for their healthcare, including taxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

> Have you ever tried to get non-urgent surgery in the US?

Whatever you say on this does not line up with reality.

The UK, a nation of 60 million, has 120,000 people waiting over 6 months for surgery: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-patients-waiti...

That would be equivilant to over 640,000 people waiting over 6 months for surgery in a country with 320 million people.

The wait times do not compare. They are 10x, 20x worse in Europe.

> The wait times do not compare. They are 10x, 20x worse in Europe.

What's the surgical wait time for an uninsured American?

That's 12.2% of America, or forty million people. http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/16/news/economy/uninsured-ameri...

In some cases, this winds up being an infinite wait time: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02...

Side-note: I'm citing a whole bunch of sources in my replies to you. Maybe you could do so for your "10x, 20x" numbers?

You just moved the goalpost. We were talking about wait times for insured people, which is 88% of Americans. Can we stick to one topic until it is resolved?

For the 88% of Americans who are insured, their wait times are lower than in rich Western European countries and Canada, and far lower than poorer Western European countries like Italy.

Here's an article about people in Canada paying for surgery in the U.S. to avoid waiting forever for their surgery: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgary/Long+Canadian+wait...

Have you ever seen an article about people going to Canada for superior medical care? No. Canadian medical care is clearly cheaper but also inferior.

> We were talking about wait times for insured people, which is 88% of Americans.

No, we're talking about wait times for people in the respective countries. If you think wait times of six months are excessive, you should be incensed about "forever".

> Have you ever seen an article about people going to Canada for superior medical care?

I would suspect the citizenship/residency requirements make this difficult in practice, as does their legal ban on a parallel private system.

Meanwhile, if going overseas for care is a bad sign, as you allege, the US sees the same thing:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/02/americans-fle...

"Lots of people are pointing out that this isn’t really true, but I want to point out something different: Americans flee the US in pretty similar numbers to Canadians fleeing Canada. The best numbers we have suggest that about 45,000 Canadians left the country for medical care in 2015. (That’s all destinations, not just the US.) Meanwhile, about 250,000 Americans left the US for medical care abroad. And these numbers don’t even count the number of Americans who get their prescription drugs from overseas."

I'm sorry but Mother Jones is not a reputable news source. Can you link to some other site?

You should at least briefly skim it if you want to debate constructively. If you'd done so, you'd have noticed that the line "Meanwhile, about 250,000 Americans left the US for medical care abroad" is a link. To a US government publication at https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/c....

> Whatever you say on this does not line up with reality.

This sounds like you refuse to consider that you could be wrong. Is there evidence that would convince you, or will you simply decide any evidence is wrong and find a new justification?

I could be wrong (feel free to prove me so! ;) ) and there is nothing wrong with being convicable-but-unconvinced (as I currently am about the superiority of the US healthcare system) but that is not the impression I have taken from your comment.

Why is this a competition and quest for superiority?

The US is very different from its founding principles, priorities, and government structure. Comparing on just the basis of healthcare costs reduces these complex differences to simple sound bytes and obliterates any nuance.

This is not healthy for discussion.

You are correct that there are cases where the nuances make it impossible to have one be "superior" to another, and I'm not arguing otherwise.

That does not mean that some systems can't be objectively worse than a collection of others. I also never brought up costs - healthcare outcomes matter, because...health.

I never made it a quest for superiority - I insisted that everyone participating in a discussion should be in a place where they CAN be convinced of some points - arguing from a place of facts, not unshakeable emotion.

To do otherwise is unhealthy for discussion.

> And the Western European governments have _death panels_ to decide who deserves medical care and who deserves to die.

Private insurance is also a death panel, they decide who deserves medical care and who deserves to die.

> And guess what, your taxes are 50% higher to pay for all this.

The US health-care is not tax-free, you already pay more in the US for health-care with just the taxes than Western Europe. It's just that you also pay insurance on top of those taxes as well.

Even here in the UK with our avowedly socialist NHS you don't have to wait for anything - if you want you can always go private.

> Your inflated health care bills helped pay for the 280k average salary of physicians (source: https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overvie...), which is over 2x as high as Western european doctors' salary.

I doubt that's the majority of the massive cost difference.

> For instance: Western european doctors do not need a 4-year bachelors degree just to _enter_ medical school.

Don't know where you are basing this but in France, Pharmacist is High School Diploma + 6 years or + 9 year depending on the specialty. So you get out at 24 or 27 year old (best scenario), I doubt that's longer in the US or otherwise there's a big problem there.

Entry to both medical school and law school is usually done straight from high school in the UK.

Right, and it's two years longer than American medical school, as it's essentially combining the undergrad and the graduate into one program.

Same in France, I guess the US is structured differently but overall it's probably the same amount of years. I doubt they study more than 6 or 9 years after high school or otherwise it's a bit too long.

Post-high school schooling for a standard family doctor (one of the lowest paid doctors): 4 years bachelors + 4 years medical school + 3 years residency = 11 years post-high school education.

Ah yeah, there's maybe something wrong there then, it's a bit too long I think. For a standard doctor, it's 9 years in France and it's already quite long.

Seems to be between 9 and 12 years after high school for a GP in the UK:

https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/lengt...

Except, in the UK, med school graduates at age 22 are "junior doctors" and are getting paid starting Year 5 (first year of foundational school)

UK: Start getting paid year 5

USA: Start getting paid year 9

Big difference

> Many workers are much better off in the US than in Europe as well

Workers are not better off, there are way worse off in the US. They get less money due to the minimum wage being very low and the cost of medical care, they work more in average, they have less holidays and less social mobility than in Europe.

Big businesses however are better off so I agree in part with your first paragraph.

This is true for middle-class and upper-middle class workers. But there has always been an underclass of people who barely make enough to survive, lack the market power to negotiate for better wages, lack the ability to acquire new skills in order to get different jobs, and/or are stuck with their current employers for lack of other opportunities. This population is also susceptible to overtime abuse and wage theft.

As for the middle and upper middle class, taking home more of your income is only part of the story. I don't have statistics on this, but I am sure that much of that take-home pay is offset by higher medical costs and the need for more retirement savings. Not to mention the fact that the American work week is longer and vacation days are rarer.

Additionally every time the underclass bargaining power is about to raise due to shortage of labor the ruling elite imports competition that has even less rights and has to work for less, in worse conditions and in constant fear of being deported.

The most important thing to change is stopping illegal immigration. Either allow more people in and give them equal standing in the job market to citizens or don't allow them in at all.

Simpler to just punish the people and companies that exploit illegal labor.

And of course doing that would reduce the incentive to come here and work illegally...

> I am sure that much of that take-home pay is offset by higher medical costs and the need for more retirement savings

This is not true. Those same workers get most or all of their insurance costs covered by the company. Same goes for retirement with 401k plans, etc.

> Not to mention the fact that the American work week is longer and vacation days are rarer.

This is true.

This comment betrays an incredible misunderstanding or naivety of how medical insurance works in the US, and what/how it covers people.

Also a completely bizarre use of 401(k)’s which are not available to most citizens and are highly volatile.

Compared to the rest of the world the US spends more individually on healthcare & gets less. It’s average retirement savings are amongst the lowest in the developed world!

Hand waving away like you’re doing is not supported by the facts.

I'm reminded of this almost every time I read a novel set in a modern western European country. Protagonists can be poor and receive reliable legal and medical care that smashes my suspension of disbelief, yet the author (inevitably from said country) did not think twice about it, presumably because the idea isnt ridiculous on its face to them.

Anecdote, not data, but it has come up enough and this background detail isnt the author TRYING to persuade me, so it has been very effective at doing so nonetheless.

Why are you being downvoted? Even after employer subsidies, group rates, and tax savings from income deduction, health insurance can cost a lot of money, and you will still have routine non-covered medical expenses, as well as quite a lot of downside risk depending on your plan.

There are a lot of people kneejerk downvoting things that don’t support the idea of American exceptionalism.

It’s a shame because that attitude is what is keeping America from doing better.

Even after employer subsidies, group rates, and tax savings from income deduction, health insurance can cost a lot of money, and you will still have routine non-covered medical expenses, as well as quite a lot of downside risk depending on your plan.

Same with 401(k). Employer match is a nice bonus but it is not enough.

> but it is not enough.

Not enough for what? It's clearly enough for millions to live very comfortably.

>that's why its economy is so much more dynamic than European economies

What do you mean with more dynamic?

"Dynamic" is a word intended to invoke the idea that the USA is young, fast-moving, growing, while Europe is old, slow, near-death.

It doesn't have any meaning other than to invoke this common US belief. It's part of the American exceptionalism story.

No, it has a real meaning. How many new businesses are started each year in the US vs the EU? For an existing company, how easy is it to enter a new line of business? How easy is it to hire new workers?

Those things are how dynamic the economy is. It's hard to measure in a rigourous way, but in the US it is distinctly easier for a business to start/expand than it is in the EU.

Digression, so I can get shot at from all sides: This dropped under Obama. Again, it's hard to put concrete numbers on it, but things started happening more slowly - I suspect because regulation became more onerous.

> They get to keep a greater portion of their income

I always see this come up during discussions about how the US compares to other developed countries. I think the mentality is slightly different in the EU. If you were raised knowing that your income was going to be taxed at 50% but you also got free healthcare, education, welfare assistance, etc., you’d probably learn to value those things over buying a bigger TV or whatever. The only reason we complain about how they have less disposable income is due to the fact that we spend so much of ours on healthcare and education so it looks like a scarce resource that we need to hoard.

This is really what it comes down to.

This is also where the basic argument to "tax the rich" comes from. For the price of a yacht, you could feed and house multiple families for a year in some cities.

I was once asked how much money I could sustainably spend every single day without explicitly trying to waste money. I settled on 10,000/day (I assume big ticket items like house/car would be absorbed by that effortlessly).

Then I was asked to do the math on how long it would take to spend 1 billion - the minimum amount to qualify as a billionaire - at that rate.

IIRC, ignoring interest and inflation, it worked out to 216 years.

Now billionaires dont have a bill sitting around in liquid cash, this is just a thought experiment to try a grasp how much a billion is, but it is an effective one. (Also cool as a party trick, as people tend to always pick a power of ten, so based on their answer you can whip out 2161 years or 21.6 years or whatever)

This is how I feel. I'm taxed a lot, but I can see that money being used for things to benefit me and those around me. I appreciate that I don't have to worry about bike infrastructure, or healthcare, or education, or my coworkers being stressed out about taking time off after having a kid. If I had that money in-hand those are the same things I'd want to buy with it anyway (except then I'd have to worry about actually taking care of all the details myself whereas now I don't). At the same time I feel like I can afford what I need/want even if I take home less money than I would in parts of the US.

The problem with free education is that as more people become educated, the signaling effect of education becomes diluted. So the Europeans are paying for something that decreases in real value the more that people have access to it. That's a self defeating policy, especially since it encourages people to remain in academia for significantly longer than they would otherwise, because hey, it's paid for by the taxpayer.

Someone earning a second Master's degree in Russian literature is not a productive use of taxpayer money.

In the US by contrast, people are able to make decisions for themselves about how to educate themselves because loans are widely available and are just a tax on their future income. If they want to pursue a high income career, they will take out a loan to cover educational expenses since it makes financial sense to do so. If their desired career is less lucrative, they will not take out more loans than absolutely necessary, freeing that money up to be put towards more profitable projects in the broader economy.

> If their desired career are less lucrative, they will not take out more loans than absolutely necessary

This is not in fact what is actually happening. Lots of people take out loans whey they are first starting college, when they are young, inexperienced and by definition uneducated. Few of them even try to calculate the expected value of college for their future income, and the ones who try don't have high quality information.

The information is available to them, they have no one to blame but themselves. It is not the duty of the taxpayer to fund poor decision making.

That's one of the major philsophical differences between the US and Europe: people must take responsibility for themselves and their own lives.

The problem with the 'personal responsibility' screed in regards to university in America is that more or less my entire generation was hoodwinked into going to college and doing anything and to totally not worry about the cost because loans are available and you'll never get a job that will amount to anything if you don't go to college. Ironically enough, a large portion of my high school class that's doing the best financially are the kids who didn't think they were smart enough for college that went into trade school or apprenticeships. When your parents, guidance counselors, and basically the entire system are yelling that you'll never do more than flip burgers if you don't rack up a lot of student debt going to school, and you're a young impressionable youth that trusts these people...well, I think you have to be somewhat willfully ignorant or just an obtuse asshole to blame those of us who took that advice and got burned.

Everything you say (except for the bit about me being willfully ignorant or an asshole) is true.

The solution to the problem is getting people to be realistic about their prospects. Guidance counselors play a role in this solution. So do parents. And the students themselves.

But the solution absolutely does not involve raising taxes to pay for everyone to go to college.

I agree that we need to get people to be realistic, but I disagree that we should just be saying "tough shit" to an entire generation that got thrown under the bus by a mixture of predatory student loan practices and well-meaning adults who did more harm than good attempting to provide guidance.

That's a nice economic theory you've concocted, but it seems like you're living in a bubble. The reality on the ground in the US is that college degree inflation happened every bit as much in the EU by a generation of middle-class people who saw a college education at the ticket to prosperity. Now to get any kind of decent job requires a college degree. Federal loans are handed out like candy, and people snap them up despite not having any financial basis for that decision. Because the loans are unforgivable in bankruptcy, there is much lower risk in handing them out. Because the loans are easy to get, college tuition rises higher and higher outside the realm of real market forces.

The fantasy that the US system is someone leveraging market forces to optimize efficiency is ludicrous. 18-year-old kids have no idea of the impact of 5 or 6 figure loans at various interest rates and their expected ROI. Even many of their parents, who had good post-war working class union jobs with a nice pension and affordable homes they could buy in their early 20s have a blind spot around this because all they know is that the career paths they enjoyed are dead and gone and just some vague ideal that "college-educated" is still a meaningful adjective.

Frankly, it's an embarrassment to even try to sell the idea that the US system is better. The only significant difference in outcomes is that a huge portion of young Americans are destroying their lives with unmanageable debt, where EU citizens may get an inflated degree but they won't be an indentured servant for the rest of their lives.

So essentially:

You're trying to argue that forcing the entire population to pay for college education for everyone is justifiable even when the people going to college may study subjects or intend to enter fields that have very poor financial prospects or lack productive value for the society as a whole.

As opposed to....

A system in which people have the freedom to decide for themselves how to allocate their own financial resources based on their career goals and not use other people's money to fund 4 years of useless study (if they study a useless subject)?

You have a very skewed understanding of what is fair and justifiable.

If people make poor financial and educational decisions, that's on them. Don't punish the rest of society by forcing it to foot the bill for someone else's foolishness.

The sad thing is, Europeans will be the indentured servants for the rest of their lives because of the depressed wages they'll have to endure and the high taxes they'll have to pay.

>>> The problem with free education is that as more people become educated, the signaling effect of education becomes diluted.

That's only true if money is the only criteria for going to college. Just because it's free, it doesn't mean it's open for everyone.

> The problem with free education is that as more people become educated, the signaling effect of education becomes diluted. So the Europeans are paying for something that decreases in real value the more that people have access to it.

This assumes that the only value of education is the signaling value. I strongly disagree with that assumption.

For most it is. For some it is not.

> Someone earning a second Master's degree in Russian literature is not a productive use of taxpayer money.

How could you possibly know if this is a productive use of taxpayer money or not? Someone with a master's in Russian literature could potentially be very valuable as a spy, a diplomat, a business leader, etc. No matter the degree, having an educated population is incredibly valuable to society as a whole. Government should encourage education and provide it for as low a cost as possible or free. The idea that liberal arts, foreign language, fine arts, etc. majors do not contribute to society that I see mentioned often is frankly ludicrous and insulting to the people who work hard to achieve their education.

You seem to have a greater concern with who pays for education than you do for its macro-level effects. You simply don't think its the function of society to provide an education, even though it is society exactly that reaps benefits from it. These macro-level benefits to an education don't stop at high school graduation, even though the U.S. stops paying for it at that point. The demands on education are pretty much the same in (developed countries) worldwide, but the U.S. system of unsupported education causes overvaluation especially when student loans are government-guaranteed and so easy to get. Since the last few generations in the U.S. have been smaller due to decreased birth rates, colleges & universities have met increased competition for smaller student populations with fancier facilities and amenities. They show no concern with price sensitivity of students because demand for college education is pretty inelastic, close to that medical care and students can always get loans. Actually affording the debt service on those student loans is another subject, though.

So if education is undervalued in the European model, and overvalued in the U.S. system, perhaps it just a matter of finding out which system properly values education? Currently, the U.S. system is seeing runaway inflation in education costs, isn't it? How does it serve America to have such education this expensive? In the 1970's, its possible their model was sustainable but once demand was cut by subsequent, smaller generation size, and the supply of colleges stayed the same, its pretty easy to see how unsustainable this is. The European model simply remove education from the job qualification equation, much as the developed world has done for health care, for instance. You certainly need to be at a certain level of health if you're going to be employed, so developing countries at the start of the 20th century made great investment in public health to cut the communicability of disease with public health infrastructure around inoculations and early detection of epidemics, etc. Think of the impact of diseases such as Spanish Flu and later, polio. Much of this public health investment was done to preserve the stability of the workforce, and less so out of humanitarianism. But, of course, the workforce support society and humanity at large, too.

The only hope for many Americans paying student debt in their mid-twenties (and beyond) is the inheritance they will receive from their boomer parents. While I am not quite that young, I do know many that are factoring inheritance into their retirement planning.

I'm not even sure that we really get to "keep" more of our income. We have to hoard more of our income to buffer ourselves against emergencies that can drive people into bankruptcy, such as medical care. We have to save for college if we have kids. We need to cover ourselves in old age. It's "our" money, but it isn't really ours to spend.

I would love a citation on this.

Anecdotally, I have lived in both the United States and United Kingdom. My tax rate was similar and in the UK I largely paid less for rent, healthcare and public transportation while paying more for staples like food. All in all costs were largely equaled out, although in the UK I enjoyed more vacation and worker protections I did not have as a US employee.

I don't know about the UK, but my net annual savings in the US is about equal to what my gross income would be in France or Germany. If I worked in the tech industry I'm sure the difference would be even greater.

Also, healthcare is a problem in the US for people who don't get it from their employer. For those who do, it's often relatively inexpensive. I pay ~$100/month for really good coverage.

It's the lower to lower-middle class that has it difficult in the US.

Statistically speaking you are an incredible outlier. Good for you, of course, but you shouldn’t generalize your experience to the entire population.

That greater agility comes at a cost of stability. It's better for those with the means to not worry about the instability - those who are better able or willing to gamble upon an unsure thing, but it punishes those less risk adverse, or less capable of taking advantage of the system (the poor, those with dependents or debt).

I live in Australia. I pay about as much tax as someone living in California, but with that I also get healthcare.

I also get 11 days of public holidays, 20 days of normal leave, and 10 days of sick leave.

I'm pretty happy with what I've got, to be honest.

How does Australia compare to NZ? I'm hoping to move down under later this year.

This is highly generalized. Check the numbers from Switzerland compared to any high income city in the US the take away and living standard almost always seems a lot better in switzerland.

Generally we talk about less taxes, cheaper health care and a higher or similar income.

"They get to keep a greater portion of their income,"

If you are not in the very high income range this gets eaten up by health care and education.

As well as rent and transportation.

If the USA is good for business, why has business formation been in decline for 30 years?

Understanding the 30 year Decline in Business Dynamism

https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed015/1333.html

"Recent empirical work has drawn attention to an unmistakable shift in U.S. firm dynamics since the late 1970s. Principally, the entry rate, measured as the share of new employer firms out of all employer firms, declined by nearly 40 percent from 1977 to 2007, even before the impact of the Great Recession. Remarkably, this steady decline occurred relatively uniformly within geographic areas and within relatively narrow industry aggregations. Taking this trend decline or startup deficit as given, Pugsley and Sahin (2014) show that both its direct effect on business formation and its indirect cumulative effect through a shift in the employer age distribution partly explain the emergence of slower employment recoveries with each business cycle."

Declining investment since the early 1960s:

http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-decline-of-usa-inve...

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