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Comment by trh0awayman | Hacker News Reader

Food standards might be lower, but I would argue that the food quality is better, depending on the country in the EU.

Here in Germany, 25% of meat bought in grocery stores doesn't follow the most basic of butchering standards set forth: https://www.ua-bw.de/pub/beitrag.asp?subid=0&Thema_ID=2&ID=2...

What you get in the US is choice - and as a software engineer, you have the money to make those choices. Shop at Whole Foods, not the local gas station, and you will see there is a world of difference.

That's one mistake I see Europeans make - they apply a European world view to the US, and don't understand the wide spectrum of choices. Here in Europe, most things are equal or about the same. This mentality is even applied to universities (ask a German which university is "the best", and you will receive a confused look).

Whether you think all of this is morally correct is a different question.

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For a fair comparison, what percentage of meat bought in US grocery stores follows the most basic German butchering standards?

It's true that any given German grocery store has fewer choices than any given US one, but extrapolating that to "there are no choices" is absurd. Germany has more choices of grocery store, and in both countries if you really want good meat you go to a real butcher (definitely not Whole Foods) anyway.

Your comment about universities must be a joke, or your social circle lacks any kind of discrminating ability. I've had multiple conversations with a dozen Germans about exactly this topic in the past month regarding our recruitment/hiring practices.

I don't know the statistics, but I've never encountered bone splinters in any meat I've ever eaten in the US.

As for the universities, it's not like I made this up. I'm well aware of the broad differences in quality of education (and futhermore, healthcare) here, but my comment wasn't about me and this is not an invention of mine, it is a widely held belief: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAGerman/comments/ay5nrs/which_un...

I also didn't say "there are no choices", so I don't know who you're quoting here. What I was trying to explain is the European worldview being applied to the US, where there is much vaster inequality between universities, products, income, etc. I didn't attempt to make a value judgement about it, I was trying to show a common pitfall of Europeans arriving in the US: it's important that you know where you're shopping, it's important that you know where you're going to school, and it's important that you know what neighborhood you're in. In Germany, you don't need to know what neighborhood you're in: they are all roughly the same in terms of crime.

> In Germany, you don't need to know what neighborhood you're in: they are all roughly the same in terms of crime

I was never to the US and maybe it is worse there. Don't want to compare but your statement is just plain wrong and the people always telling this as a mantra just never have lived in a bad neighborhood and/or do not have kids.

A reddit thread with 15 comments, several of which disagree with your claim, is not a "widely held belief"!

> you don't need to know what neighborhood you're in: they are all roughly the same in terms of crime.

This is unreal. Is this some Bavarian bullshit? Nobody in the north believes it.

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