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Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway22032

Old world aristrocratic mindset.

It's not just the European Union, the UK is the same.

There is a heavy bias towards what works for the incumbents.

One of the ways in which this plays out in Britain is that almost everyone is culturally conditioned to consider themselves as being a certain "class" of person e.g. they'll never start a business, they'll never earn above a certain amount, they'll work 50 years for a company (not the same necessarily, just "a company"), if they're lucky they'll get a mortgage on a 2 bedroom house. They look down on others who want more than that, which works very well for those who have it and want to maintain that moat.

Contrast that with the US in which success is celebrated and even the poorest dream of one day "making it".

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The US dream of "making it" is all about money.

What we in Spain consider "making it" is to enjoy life, having time to relax, pursuing hobbies, spending time with family. And not having to worry about healthcare bills and pensions. We don't need a lot of money for that. I don't always want more. I just want enough.

In the US the vast majority never "makes it" and they are far worse off than we are here. I think Europe is great the way it is. I would not move to the US even if I was offered a job there. In fact I don't even want to visit and never have though I've lived in many countries around the world.

I don’t understand where this overused rhetoric comes from. I enjoy my life, spend time with my family, have hobbies… and make money. These things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Yeah, it's odd. I have more time to do those things the more I earn too. Earning more doesn't have to mean working more.

>In the US the vast majority never "makes it" and they are far worse off than we are here.

Mississippi, the poorest state in America, has 33% higher GDP per capita than Spain does.

You're proving the point of the commenter you're replying to. ;)

They're pointing out that "richness" comes from measuring all parts of a person's life.

But you immediately revert to talking about only money. It's super ironic.

I'm just pointing out how implausible the claim is that the vast majority of Americans are far worse off than Spaniards. Of course there's more to life than money and GDP/capita is an imperfect measure, but the median American leads a very comfortable life.

The median spaniard will have fewer working hours, more holidays, more paternity leave, lower risk of abruptly loosing their job, have a longer life expectancy, less likely to struggle with extreme medical bills, need to put away less money for children schooling, etc?

> I'm just pointing out how implausible the claim is that the vast majority of Americans are far worse off than Spaniards.

Perhaps you have the wrong idea about Spaniards?

> GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living; however, this is inaccurate because GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income.

It also doesn’t take into account cost of living. You might as well make 300% more but if everything is 500% more expensive I don’t see why that’s an indication of things being better.

GDP per capita is not a useful measure of living standards. Or most other things, really; it’s a very crude metric.

To take an over-simplistic example, imagine that the cost of healthcare in Mississippi just rose 5k per capita. Mississippi’s GDP just rose 5k per capita (simplified almost to the point of being nonsensical, but increased healthcare cost will raise gdp), but Mississippians got worse off!

For a glaring example, take Ireland; gdp per capita is over 3x Spain. Is the standard of living in Ireland 3x that of Spain? Definitely not; I think you could actually make a case for it being lower, especially for the more economically disadvantaged (wages are much higher, but so is cost of living).

I think where all this comes from is that gdp/capita _used_ to work a bit better as a proxy for standard of living (though still not well) when economies were more manufacturing-oriented.

Nice example. I actually moved from Ireland to Spain a few years ago.

Indeed my wage went down but my standard of living went up. The exception being if I want to pay goods that cost the same everywhere (e.g. computers, cars). But it's not a big deal.

Also, my quality of life increased considerably. In Ireland public transport is horrible and almost nonexistent. A car is always necessary for those living outside of Dublin or Cork. Now I can do without a car and spend 20 euro monthly on all my travel needs, and not having the hassle and costs of a car. Driving is very stressful to me (especially in Ireland where until recently people could just buy their license at the post office so driver skills are very low).

And the weather is way better which affected me greatly in Ireland (during winter it was raining almost every day where I lived, and the days were super short leading to depression). Here in Spain life is much more outdoors. And healthcare here is free and much better (in Ireland even though I had expensive private insurance I still had to pay 70 euro just to see the family doctor. Here I pay nothing).

GDP-per-capita is a meaningless comparison tool (especially for the US because it neglects healthcare costs in retirement), look at PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) and quality-of-life metrics.

Also, for stats on the US, there's so much variation; beware the tyranny of averages (statewide/nationwide); you want to avoid being in the bottom quartile/50% but the top quartile is probably quite nice. Many US indicators (education, violent or property crime, health outcomes, economy) are very heavily linked to zipcode(/county/metro), more so than in Europe. [0] says if you excluded the MS Delta from those metrics, MS is solidly in the middle of the pack in many of those metrics

[0]: r/mississippi: 'Mississippi often has the lowest "quality of life" metrics in the nation. Do residents believe this data, do they care about it, and does it affect them?' https://www.reddit.com/r/mississippi/comments/108ts12/seriou...

Both systems think they are right, both are coping. One is slave to hustling and greed with no time/chance to enjoy basic things in life. The other will always be under the boots of the employees/managers and complain while enjoying basic things. Both are slaves to their masters, just enjoying a comfort enough to keep going at it.

> The other will always be under the boots of the employees/managers and complain while enjoying basic things.

No, not really.

Employees have actual rights here in Europe :) Most of my (ex-)managers are also my friends. There is no boot. We get lots of holidays, we get a good lump sum when we are laid off because there is no "at will" employment and grievances can be discussed fairly.

There's always reason to complain of course but we're not bad off.

The UK leads in Europe for start up founding…

Almost nobody in the UK works for the same company for 50 years and this used to be a thing in the US too.

Canada has similar laws/issues.

Social mobility is also higher in the UK than the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

Now I don’t trust these indices tbh, but I trust them more than a nice sounding anecdote.

There is a class divide in the UK but it's more complex/nuanced than what is described in this comment.

That's why Canada also is one of the worst countries in G8 and maybe the most mediocre countries when it comes to actual startup investment and building something new for the world and growing the share of the pie. On top of that, they have a horrible system where nobody can get a doctor. Everybody has to pay double to get a block of butter and housing is so high that you get a whole neighborhood in the US for that price.

That is why the countries like uk canada and also Europe are incredibly poor.

Class system and anti-innovation.

American here.

I was under the impression that Canadian healthcare was incredible. At least, that's what I've been told for years by randos online.

If you have a serious health problem, you will generally be seen "immediatly" and free of charge.

For the rest, mindset plays a role in the perceived doom in Canada. Conservative talking points only ever focus on the gloom.

Source: am canadian.

Trust me I spent a huge portion of my life there. The reason why I speak so much against Canada these days is because the country is delusional. Nobody wants to take any risks and yet they think things will always fall into place for them.

If you do a global comparison the US is incredibly richer rather than these countries being incredibly poor.

>why the countries like uk canada and also Europe are incredibly poor

They are not that poor if you adjust for cost of living and hours worked. If you look at the Wikipedia thing "GDP per working hour (2019 US$ PPP)" some results are:

Denmark 76

USA 74

Canada 57

Spain 56

UK 54

So the pay isn't that much worse per hour. People probably work a little less over here, maybe because we don't have the whole if you don't work you won't get health cover and will be doomed thing.

Also life expectancy is 76 years in the US vs 84 years in Spain. There's more to life than working all hours then croaking.

A company, not the same company.

I don't think that social mobility can be measured statistically, because it depends on people actually trying. I actually think that the UK does have fairly high social mobility _but_ the vast majority of people get stuck in local maxima, and the laws are influenced by that (e.g. stuff like obsession with the mediocre outcome).

Having said that, the index you've pasted is complete bollocks. I don't know what they are measuring but it has nothing to do with what I would consider social mobility (e.g. ability to move into a different social class or perhaps earn a significantly different amount to your parents). The factors they use seem super focused on socialist policies which I don't think have anything to do with mobility.

Self employment is 3 times higher in the UK than in the US actually: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SL.EMP.SELF.ZS/r...

Interesting that you consider it socialist, because the World Economic Forum has often been considered as the embodiment of neoliberalism. Around 2000, when there were huge anti-globalization protests by left / green / anarchist activists around the world, WEF was one of the primary targets.

My use of the term "socialist" was lazy.

I think that the main issue is that it tries to come up with a metric that works across every country which is basically pointless because a lot of them are failed states where income information isn't reliable or meaningful.

So they come up with stuff like "how high is teenage pregnancy" and "what is the male female work balance" which they define as being proxies for social mobility I assume because if you have five kids at age 20 and you're forced to stay at home then you have none.

The problem is that it just introduces a billion ways to influence the actual rankings, they are value judgements.

If you look at well functioning countries only, then you can pretty much look at how many people in the bottom decile of parental household income end up in the top decile of household income.

You still have the issue though that this only tells you how the distribution actually ends up, not how it _could_ look in a specific country if everyone actually tried their hardest to climb the social/financial ladder.

The US has lower social mobility than most developed countries; in particular if you’re in the bottom quintile in the US, your chances of making it out are particularly low relative to other countries.

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