Hacker News Reader

Comment by tiatia | Hacker News Reader

Vote me down again:

Because Germans have the idea of "Germans" and the politicians do at least to some degree try to improve the living standards for all?

The same thing in China. Whatever the government in China may be, they still try to rise the standard of living for all.

So it is no surprise that China considers to adopt the German apprentice system and both, China and Germany have very good public transport.

"America is a business" as Brad Pitt said in one movie. Both, heavy investment into public infrastructure and something like a subsidized apprenticeship would always be seen as "interfering with the free market" in the US. Hope it ends well.

View on HN

Chinese and Germans in the United States also do very well in the economy. Maybe there's some third factor that we're missing.

These kind of articles make the implicit assumption that countries are the same except for being located in different locations, and that successful institutions from one can be transplanted to another. But each is an organic entity, with different histories and cultures

How well do expats do in general? It seems that if you are able to afford to leave your country to work or study you are already doing quite well.

Not all expats are created equal. For example, Mexicans living in the US tend not to do so well in education or the economy, dragging a lot of US national statistics down. This is because a lot of Mexican-Americans come from lower class backgrounds and not Mexico's educated elites.

As another discussion pointed out on HN, Mexicans and poeple of lower class backgrounds will be referred to as "immigrants", while people from richer countries will be referred to as "expats".

I have started trying to swap the two around in my own language, to avoid stereotyping people based on class.

Since over 60% of America's federal spending is aimed at improving people's living standards, I find your comment a bit hard to understand.

Couldn't you argue that 100% of federal spending is aimed at improving people's living standards (military, police, firefighters, global economic trade relations, etc)?

What specifically do you mean by the 60%?

You could also argue that it's much closer to 0%.

I suspect that's the number with military backed out. But even that isn't the right thing to do because the military is essentially a big employment program.

You took the words right out of my mouth. Pretty much everything can be ultimately justified by a "it improves or preserves living-standards" if enough mental leaps are made.

Subsidies? Living standards through economic growth.

Military? Living standards better if not conquered. Improved if we conquer or control something good.

My Dictatorship? Only I can be trusted to give the people the living standards they need.

I made a rough estimate of direct payments to individuals through welfare, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

The problem with saying all of the budget improves people's living standards is that it gets you nowhere. I just drew the line at direct payments.

How does that square with existing taxpayer funded schools, then?

I googled it and the US does OK with schools, at least in regards to funding: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/figures/images/figure-cmd-1....

Another example would be health insurance. The US is approaching 20% of GDP and they are not getting anything for it (Germany 10%, UK 7.5%, numbers out of my head). Until Obamacare, only around 80% of the US population had coverage and they the US population had a lower life expectancy than the UK or Germany. China would never let run things so out of hand.

(After Germany and the US, I live now in China. This makes me reflect on a lot of things. Not all is good here but here are opportunities. I regret that I did not come earlier to China.)

Hong Kong, or mainland proper?

Mainland. HongKong is a great place to visit but I am not sure I want to live there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com