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Comment by deregulateMed | Hacker News Reader

Yeah OP is just factually incorrect here. On paper many countries are poorer, and on the ground you can see standard of living is either worse or slightly worse.

Sure there is less corruption in EU healthcare, but outside of that sector Americans get better homes, cars, and disposable income.

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OP is correct, actually. I am not sure how you define or measure "standard of living" but common measurements include human development index [1] and quality of life index [2]. by both measurements the US lags behind many european countries. life expectancy in the US has been declining [3]. and the corruption in US healthcare is massive [4], especially considering that it can be three times more expensive for worse outcomes, and because it takes up such a large portion of the economy.

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

[2] https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j...

[3] https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6753

[4] https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html

PS Am a US citizen who lives in the UK and travels (or did precovid) to the east coast and west coast of the US and to EU capitals regularly.

> besides for healthcare

Ignoring people's actual health in exchange for more expensive things seems like a backwards metric.

Is that why German cars are selling so well in the US, because US cars are better? I also doubt that on average US housing is better than European housing. Don't get even started with health care. All numbers I know show, that consumer debt is way lower in the EU than the US.

A country is much more than just one of its higher paying industries, especially if that industry is such an outlier like SV.

Better in what respect? Larger? That's true, but is largely a reflection of land prices, and if you're able to steal the land it makes it a lot cheaper. In Europe most land was stolen a long time ago and there isn't so much to go around now. In terms of build quality here it is rubbish. Houses here have more in common with sheds than houses in most of Europe.

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