Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are?

&gt; <i>In London, Paris, Berlin, I hop on the train, head to the cafe — it’s the afternoon, and nobody’s gotten to work until 9am, and even then, maybe not until 10 — order a carefully made coffee and a newly baked croissant, do some writing, pick up some fresh groceries, maybe a meal or two, head home — now it’s 6 or 7, and everyone else has already gone home around 5 — and watch something interesting, maybe a documentary by an academic, the BBC’s Blue Planet, or a Swedish crime-noir. I think back on my day and remember the people smiling and laughing at the pubs and cafes.</i>[0]<p>No, not everyone in Europe gets to live white-collar worker dream of writing poetry at the coffee shop and coming in late. See the people working at the coffee shop, the construction workers, garbage men, etc.<p>One thing I love about America is that people still get shit done here. One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry.<p>An old joke - <i>&quot;Every MBA in America dreams of starting a billion dollar business. Every MBA in Europe dreams of starting a satellite office of the American business.&quot;</i><p>[0] From the actual blog the author quoted from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eand.co&#x2F;what-do-you-call-a-world-that-cant-learn-from-itself-58ae28cefd23" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eand.co&#x2F;what-do-you-call-a-world-that-cant-learn-fro...</a>

This is the blathering of spoiled rich kid on vacation.<p>&gt; In London, Paris, Berlin, I hop on the train, head to the cafe — it’s the afternoon, and nobody’s gotten to work until 9am, and even then, maybe not until 10 — order a carefully made coffee and a newly baked croissant, do some writing, pick up some fresh groceries, maybe a meal or two, head home — now it’s 6 or 7, and everyone else has already gone home around 5 — and watch something interesting, maybe a documentary by an academic, the BBC’s Blue Planet, or a Swedish crime-noir. I think back on my day and remember the people smiling and laughing at the pubs and cafes.<p>This is so farcical it&#x27;s not even worth trying to rebut.

A lot depends on your particulars. I&#x27;m a minority and the US is great because I can earn opportunities my relatives in some other countries would not be allowed. In some other countries, your ethnicity&#x2F;background&#x2F;religion would get in the way far more than in the US.<p>This is not to say we don&#x27;t have room for improvement, we do. Just that we&#x27;re more meritocratic than certain other first world countries. I know this just comparing experiences, stories, outcomes from many friends, cousins, co-workers in other countries. (Also, I&#x27;ve lived overseas for work many years and got to see things firsthand.)<p>Is it a grind? Yes. Stressful? Yes. But meritocracies [wherever you are on the spectrum] are stressful because you are competing for outcomes rather than being born into them.<p>...And then there is US healthcare. I don&#x27;t know <i>what</i> to say about that...

As an American who has lived in Europe for 5+ years: the single biggest issue with the States is that everything is filtered through a money-first mentality.<p>Reading a book? It better be nonfiction, because fiction “isn’t real” and won’t help you get ahead. Writing a book? It’s only a success if it’s a best-seller. Studying a new language? Only worth it if you can monetize it somehow. Hate your job? Not a problem if your salary is high enough.<p>This baseline mentality underlies everything and injects a market in to places where it doesn’t belong. Europe certainly has its own issues, but at the very least it allows for the possibility that life isn’t primarily a series of financial decisions.

The linked blog is by a notorious America-hater Umair Haque, almost all of his pieces are slammed for similar reasons you see in this comments section. It&#x27;s hate bait, nothing more. (I recommend &quot;Why the Anglo World is Collapsing&quot; &#x2F;s)<p>Take a look at his other work to get an idea of how seriously you should take this guy: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eand.co&#x2F;@umairh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eand.co&#x2F;@umairh</a>

It all comes from the individualism and egocentrism and bullying of US culture. &quot;It is made up of littler myths about greed being good, the weak deserving nothing, society being an arena, not a lever, for the survival of the fittest&quot;. You&#x27;ve been raised and thought to only think and work for yourself and consider your interests first...Until someone gets cancer and you have to launch a GoFundMe campaign and hope it&#x27;ll not ruin your entire family. We sure have a lot of issues in Europe and by no mean are perfect societies or have the greatest companies. But at least we help each other, we support the less fortunate, we protect the weakest. And that&#x27;s how you improve quality of life, life expectancy, a build a better society overall. I&#x27;m happy to give a significant part of my income to the government if it helps people survive and live better. And what you don&#x27;t actually realize is that people are doing the same for you, because you might one day need it. Now why don&#x27;t we have as many unicorns as you do in the U.S.? Because we&#x27;re a bit more precautious and risk-averse, it&#x27;s true.We don&#x27;t go as fast and as strong as you. We first think &#x27;Is this possible? safe? legal? right?&#x27; and then go on making the thing. While you just go, build it and ask questions later... which is an amazing fearless mindset which allowed you to accomplish incredible thing but which also leads to Facebook fucking up all over the world, Amazon treating their employees like slaves, or Boeing killing 350+ people because a 2nd safety system is too expensive.

Americans don’t travel. If we did, we wouldn’t buy the myth of American exceptionalism.<p>But then, we are largely becoming a country controlled by global financial interests rather than the population. Money is the deciding factor in our elections, and the most concentrated forms of wealth out there are sovereign wealth funds and large multinational corporations whose executives are largely above the law. Which means you don’t need to be an American citizen to have a voice in the political process that affects the quality of life for hundreds of millions of us.<p>We need publicly funded elections. Otherwise, corporate and foreign money with zero interest in the wellbeing of American citizens will dominate the politics agenda (just like they have for the last 20-ish years).

This article is blog spam, here&#x27;s the actual link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eand.co&#x2F;what-do-you-call-a-world-that-cant-learn-from-itself-58ae28cefd23" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eand.co&#x2F;what-do-you-call-a-world-that-cant-learn-fro...</a>

As an American living abroad, I can subjectively confirm what the author writes. I have a hard time keeping a straight face when returning.

One constant thing in every country is there is always a narrative among certain percentage of population about how shitty their country is, America is no different, usually the people who feel this way are not nationalists.<p>If you immigrated to US from third world country you would know how amazing this country is.<p>It always be your choice to live how happily you want to live, you can quit wanting to climb the ladder, you can quit watching news telling you how shitty country is, you can quit watching TV constantly telling you to upgrade your house, car, phone etc.

Many, dare I say the majority, of Americans don&#x27;t have any desire to have the European way of life, culture or institutions. We like heavily processed Walmart peanut butter on our goddamn Wonderbread made from GMO wheat with jelly sweetened with corn syrup. We like our Budweiser and $10 &quot;Chinese&quot; buffet. We like driving our cheaply registered, insured, and fueled cars. We&#x27;d prefer to sit in traffic than wait for a train.<p>Sure our healthcare could be better but we&#x27;re working on it and pretty much nobody expects the current situation to persist for all that long.<p>I and millions of other people like out way of life. I get that the author is entitled to his opinion but my opinion is that his opinion is crap. I hate to be this guy but if he likes Europe that much he should move there, or at least move to a state that&#x27;s more like it.

Given the number of Americans and the breadth of places they can live, you&#x27;re not going to be able to generalize this sentiment. There is Poor as in lacking wealth, there is Poor as in lacking quality, and Poor as in lacking community. Which are we talking about?<p>There is a persistent social churn in the US. It is a side effect of what we consider progress. Progress is generally an outcome of building businesses that emerge, grow and die. Employees that are valuable to one business may not be valuable to the next, and that transition takes them from being prosperous to being poor and struggling.<p>One example is the shift from a primarily industrial economy to a primarily service economy. All the factory workers who provided for and raised families in the 50s - 70s came into jeopardy in the 80s-90s as US companies off-shored manufacturing. The families that could not make the transition suffered. They had to buy based on price and low cost won, in spite of the quality.<p>At the same time, new companies with different business models emerged and the workers of those companies prospered. Consider the semiconductor industry. In the 70s and into the 80s, the US dominated. Then, again, the technology spread globally to Europe and Asia and US fabrication facilities shut down, families were again in jeopardy.<p>Today, the wealth creation and prosperity is centered on technology companies, which dominate lists of the most valuable companies globally. It is likely that as in the past, these firms will ultimately give way to global competition, and their employees will need to shift.

&gt; There is a myth of exceptionalism in America that prevents it from looking outward<p>Which is frankly such a common sentiment from every European I’ve ever met that it’s become almost a cliche. Perhaps we are a bit arrogant but at some point don’t you have to realize that maybe you’re doing the exact same thing in reverse?<p>All the things he listed out as being of lower quality are completely subjective. The food is worse? Compared to where? Yes, you can get a lot more variety of crappy fast food... nothing is preventing you from NOT stopping at McDonald’s though. It’s like saying all furniture is crappier in Sweden because IKEA is everywhere...

Well, the funny thing is that ‘America’ <i>is</i> the standard in <i>lots</i> of countries, even in places where many things are superior to the US. I’ve been to the US a few times, and the experience was abysmal. I didn’t expect 1Gbps public Wifis in public transportation (well, we have them), but... I mean, super dirty subways and buses that don’t go much (moving only with public transportation and foot was a painful experience), super-slow LTE&#x2F;WLAN speeds (I mean... weren’t they supposed to be called ‘LTE’?), basically non-existent medical system - (going to the doctor takes a whole day?? We go to the doctor in lunchtime..., and super high prices even with medical insurance), and my list goes on and on.<p>However in South Korea everybody’s saying.. ‘Hey let’s do it the <i>American</i> way!’<p>The world is totally insane.

Odd that he includes Paris in that list of superior places. My two weeks in Paris last summmer left me shocked at how filthy it is, how crowded the public transit is, and how unremarkable (compared to expectations). the food is. And I say that as a San Franciscan.

From the actual post:<p>&gt; In London, Paris, Berlin, I hop on the train, head to the cafe — it’s the afternoon, and nobody’s gotten to work until 9am, and even then, maybe not until 10 — order a carefully made coffee and a newly baked croissant, do some writing, pick up some fresh groceries, maybe a meal or two, head home — now it’s 6 or 7, and everyone else has already gone home around 5 — and watch something interesting, maybe a documentary by an academic, the BBC’s Blue Planet, or a Swedish crime-noir.<p>I mean, if you are a Europhile of course the US is going to suck. You can always move to Quebec I suppose? No train to hop on, though.

I am European, but I understand why America is the way it is. America is a country of strangers trying to coexist. They cannot agree on what way of life is the best so they cannot have strong convictions, and thus they cannot have government programs as intrusive as countries in Europe. All the good things in our European countries come at the cost of choice. Yes, we have universal healthcare, but it is mandatory and you have no say in the matter. This is fine if everyone is convinced that it is the best solution, but what if they are not?

Obviously the quoted author has never lived an upper-class American life. Context is important when speaking about America. We have the third-largest population in the world and a larger degree in inequality than most of the countries in our GDP-bracket. There is no better place to live in the world if you are intelligent, determined, healthy, and ideally, rich and well-connected. As for the justice of such a situation, well, this is the perennial American debate: is inequality actually a good thing, or are we in a zero-sum game where wealth is a pie that never grows? See Paul Graham’s essays, as always.

There are some objective problems fairly raised here (e.g. quality of public transit) but set against the rest of the world, the net immigration numbers simply suggest we are not all as bad as the author makes out.

This won&#x27;t do well on a forum where all Americans are in the top 10% of social class.<p>Also, don&#x27;t forget that Europe as a whole is poorer than the US. Sure, it&#x27;s better to be poor in the EU than in the US but the top class can go much, much higher. A €80k salary is really on the higher end here in Europe, while Americans in IT seems to sometimes start on it.<p>Even though his points regarding GMO are too extreme, I think food quality and health might be the only 2 things the US is worse at than the EU. But again, you don&#x27;t notice this if you&#x27;re in rich in the US.

Well, yeah, the Europeans have good work-life balance. But that comes at a price. European rates for software developers are way below what they are the US. Also, there are far fewer big opportunities. There simply aren&#x27;t any FAANG-tier companies in Europe. They&#x27;re all American, and there are a few players in that league in Asia. But Europe doesn&#x27;t have any.

The days when typical food and drink in Europe is better than in the US are also mostly gone. Whenever I go to a fancy restaurant in, say Frankfurt, it doesn&#x27;t measure up to a comparable restaurant in my home town of Chicago (with the exception of ethnic German restaurants, which are often pretty good)<p>Same with coffee: Twenty years ago German coffee shops had superior coffee to American ones, but whereas American coffee has vastly improved, European shops have in general been content to remain static in quality.

Because their lives by global standard are actually very very good?

If you look at America like a giant company then the American dream was somewhat alike to company vision statement. Having a vision statement like that seems to have helped a lot in the past, perhaps better than companies with no vision. One of the biggest issues with these kind of top level visions is they are pretty much set forever and even if they are not working anymore it is extremely hard to replace them with something else.<p>But perhaps it&#x27;s time to start trying?

&gt; Everything I consume in the States is of a vastly, abysmally lower quality. Every single thing. The food, the media, little things like fashion, art, public spaces, the emotional context, the work environment, and life in general make me less sane, happy, alive<p>This is more a reflection on the author than a reflection on America. There are plenty of extremely high quality things available here and it&#x27;s not America&#x27;s fault if OP settles for junk instead

I worked a few years in Paris and then in Canada... often for American companies. Even if he exaggerates a bit the points many of my colleagues who did similar stints is that &quot;In Europe you work to live. In North America you live to work.&quot;<p>And don&#x27;t get me started about food... many Americans think whipped cream is that sweetened white colored oil in a can.

Are they really? I can own a 6000 square foot house for $2,500&#x2F; month in most of the country. Try doing that in Europe.

Why, just look at Mick Jagger!<p>This week he could have used the fine health care provided by the UK&#x27;s government system. Instead, he opted to pay for service in an American hospital.<p>What&#x27;s wrong with Mick? Doesn&#x27;t he recognize superior quality in healthcare when he sees it?

I don&#x27;t think the author understands how extraordinary his life is. His complaint is essentially that there&#x27;s nothing satisfying on his trello board? That&#x27;s a great problem to have. It&#x27;s a good thing he has clean water, an education, an aptitude and the opportunity to participate in the upper echelons of a technological revolution. He isn&#x27;t living under war, famine or a communist dystopia where his options would be far more limited. He&#x27;s in relatively good health and perhaps he hasn&#x27;t yet suffered the extraordinary personal losses we&#x27;ll all face as our loved ones grow old, sick and die. It&#x27;s a good time for him. It&#x27;s a fallacy to extrapolate one&#x27;s mental state to the entire nation. We are living under the greatest conditions in all of human history. If you can&#x27;t be satisfied here then by all means go on a soul searching adventure and figure yourself out. It&#x27;s your journey, it&#x27;s your time on Earth and it&#x27;s literally never been better.

First world problems meme is taking on a whole new level

Don&#x27;t get me wrong; vast numbers of Americans <i>do</i> have plenty of experience with the world outside America.<p>The simple (and unfortunate) answer is that because America is geographically isolated, many Americans literally don&#x27;t see how folks in other countries live.<p>Also, thanks to the Cold War, we spent half a century being indoctrinated to believe that socialism is evil and capitalism equals freedom and that&#x27;s why the American way of life is the best one.

I think this Vox video explains it well. TLDR American TV does a good job distracting people from real issues in order to keep funneling funds to the rich. My guess is European elites are catching on to American tactics and are following suit.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RNineSEoxjQ&amp;t=100s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RNineSEoxjQ&amp;t=100s</a>

I found this rather satisfying answer.<p>&quot;Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.&quot;<p>- John Steinbeck<p>Are you temporarily embarrassed?<p>You may not realise it, but you could be a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Do you plan to someday in the future have more money? Are you concerned that your taxes are too high, because someday you might pay too much tax. Do you ride the bus only because this year you can’t afford that luxury car you’re going to have? Do you live pay cheque to pay cheque like most people just because you haven’t had your lucky break.<p>You aren’t rich and it’s very unlikely you ever will be. The economic and power systems of this planet are not designed for you to get rich. The American dream doesn’t exist and it never did. Stop being a temporarily embarrassed millionaire and just be a person.

But he doesn&#x27;t mention where he&#x27;s from?

In a hyper-capitalistic society, money will be disproportionately allocated to the winners of whatever the society values at that time.<p>And that disparity causes agony and longing for the have-nots, the hope for better conditions. Some rise, some don&#x27;t. But it&#x27;s a constant wrestling match of allocations.<p>But the positive byproduct of disproportionate money allocation is innovation. That the Haves are able to accelerate their capitalistic interests because of their monetary rewards.<p>Suffering and disparity are functions of hyper-capitalism, innovation is another byproduct of that system, and no one embraces that system more than America.

The book &quot;Capitalist Realism&quot; by Mark Fisher is very, very appropriate here

We live in a society

Is this satire?

Might not be the typical american, consider myself pretty aware of both me, my fam, and surroundings. Maybe it&#x27;s all the drugs i did in college but &#x27;chasing the dream is not for me anymore&#x27;. My mind was opened to things other than buying cars&#x2F;clothes&#x2F;homes, watching the latest shows etc. Hell I still get hours of enjoyment playing old SNES games on my laptop haha.<p>My family has carved out a little slice of life for ourselves and we are happy. Sure it&#x27;s hard when you go on social medias (like the wife) and see &#x27;friends&#x27; flying around the world, doing &#x27;cool&#x27; things. meanwhile we are in midwest working every day trying to raise a little baby. Sometimes it&#x27;s hard for folks to not get jealous. Let those millenials travel the world on their parents dime. I know people taking 30 day honeymoons going on global excursions. My wife and I paid for our entire honeymoon and spent a week in southern cal...<p>If you are able to ignore the outside signals, focus on what makes YOU happy. I have done that and apparently have found success in life. I&#x27;ve even gotten lucky with some jobs. Jobs i decided to stick with instead of jumping ship.

&gt; Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life?<p>That final question he&#x27;s quoting is from the alcoholics anonymous literature. I wonder if he knows that?<p>Another good one:<p>&gt; Selfishness - self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows...

&gt;I planned on waking up early and revisiting said collection, but slept through my alarm, going from a planned 8 or so hours of sleep to almost 10.<p>This person and their DHH (dear honorary husband?) obviously don&#x27;t have any kids. I&#x27;m starting to see where her idealized view of life in Europe is coming from. I&#x27;ve been to Europe many times and she is clearly living in some sort of upper class bubble. Why don&#x27;t upper class Europeans understand how unrealistic their lives are?

I&#x27;d like to believe the hallmark of a truly great society is that they are capable of shamelessly copying good ideas from elsewhere.<p>I&#x27;m not sure this idea of &#x27;everything [in the US being] lower quality&#x27; is going to hold up to close inspection though. He cites life expectancy; that statistic is probably going to suffer from Simpson&#x27;s Paradox - it is reasonable to expect that the better the poor and are treated, the lower average life expectancy will be. It would be easy to have great life expectancy by raising the cost of living to be so high the poor are all forced to leave.<p>It isn&#x27;t to say that America is all sunshine and roses; there are a lot of problems in how people are rewarded and punished for their choices. But it isn&#x27;t obviously worse and looking in from the outside it does seem to be easier to be the change you want to see in America.<p>There is also the irony that these ideas aren&#x27;t being communicated on a world-leading European message board using world-class European software. It isn&#x27;t that telling, it just made me smile.