[jorvi]

> When taxes and mandatory contributions are subtracted from household income, the result is called net or disposable household income

I don’t understand why Americans always have such a fetish about bragging about their disposable income. Once you allocate for payments into the welfare state, the difference becomes a lot smaller.

And that’s not even mentioning the stark difference in quality of life, beyond “quality of life” graphs. Those graphs don’t account for having to wait 25+ minutes for the store to unlock steaks or vitamins from a security case. Or for mass tent camps in cities. Or Mmss drug deaths. Uncertainty of potable water. Access to and education on safe sex, abortion, etc. Walkability of cities.

Whenever I meet Americans traveling Europe, they virtually always rave about how much better life seems over here.

[bpt3]

Maybe we bring it up because non-Americans (and low income Americans with a lot of free time, i.e. young people) do nothing but describe America as a hellscape online, and it's hard data that demonstrates the benefit of our economic system instead of just debating about a wildly inaccurate caricature.

You don't probably meet many Americans raving about the quality of life in rural Romania, and they may not be so enthralled with the European lifestyle once they saw their paycheck and the living situation it would provide.

[jorvi]

> and it's hard data that demonstrates the benefit of our economic system instead of just debating about a wildly inaccurate caricature.

https://www.axios.com/2024/08/11/retail-theft-cvs-walgreens-...

Literally locking up $9 worth of fruit juice.

As far as non-walkability goes, just watch the top three videos of the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes: https://youtube.com/@notjustbikes

As far as tent camps / drug streets go, I can post videos from San Francisco, Philadelphia, LA, Oakwood, etc. but you’ll bring up it’s “only a Pacific problem”, despite Californian (together with New England) cities often being brought up as the examples for well done cities that compare well to “European”-style cities.

So much for “wildly inaccurate caricature”.

[aidenn0]

The article you link is hardly a slam dunk; it contains, for example, this:

> Yes, but: There is some debate about how deep the problem is and if retailers are using theft as a scapegoat for other challenges.

Things being locked up are very regional. Long Beach: seems like 50% of all things are locked up. Santa Barbara: hardly anything locked up.

[jorvi]

It just blows my mind that anything below, say, $75 is locked up at all.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen food items locked up in Europe, aside from genuine Parmesan, Iberico or expensive alcohol, and even then not consistently. Usually even the lower priced non-food stuff (think a $50 space heater) isn’t locked up.

Don’t get me wrong, we have smash and dash thieves here too, but usually they go for jewelry stores, fashion stores or Apple / electronic stores.

[aidenn0]

Thieves go for things that are easy to fence. For a while Tide-brand laundry detergent was famously easy to fence in some cities[1], so places had to lock up Tide.

[edit]

Teenagers who shoplift also go for things that are embarrassing or illegal for them to buy (condoms and alcohol respectively). So those are likely to be locked up as well.

1: My understanding is that drug-dealers &c. would accept payment in Tide and then sell that to organized crime, that would wholesale it to mom+pop corner stores.

[jorvi]

Thank you for all the context so far!

That Tide factoid is darkly humorous. The selling it back to stores part makes me think of The Wire, Omar stealing a heroin shipment from Prop Joe and then selling it back to him: https://youtu.be/-q2LWHZ6O_M

In America’s defense, I’ll say that certain things are done much better than Europe.

There’s is certainly a better awareness/acceptance that growth = good. The entrepreneurial spirit also runs much stronger in your culture.

National (well, global) security is taken much more seriously, which I feel like is a facet of American federalization and thus unity. You won’t see a combined (and certainly not unified) European army for at least another few decades, everything thinks their own interests, independence and pride are too important.

[lotsoweiners]

I’ve lived my entire life in America (over 40 years) and I’ve never seen any food item “locked up”. I think that would be an indication that you are in a shitty area. Similar to the pictures I’ve seen of Burger King employees working behind bulletproof glass.

[Dalewyn]

>So much for “wildly inaccurate caricature”.

You're flaunting your ignorance (or naivety) of America for all to see, though.

Most stores, even in internet-stereotype "hellscapes" like San Francisco, don't lock up bottles of fruit juice among other sundries. Anyone who actually lives here would know that, like me.

>As far as tent camps / drug streets go

Only a problem in the real megalopolises like the cities you just named. The vast majority of cities (and there are countless many in this literally vast country) are generally fine (some level of crime and homelessness will always exist as a matter of nature). Again, anyone living here would know that.

Internet memes are fun, but if you're going to passionately argue about something you would be wise to actually do your homework first.

[bpt3]

> Literally locking up $9 worth of fruit juice.

Yes, in a high crime area. It's article-worthy because it's an anomaly. The only thing locked up in stores in my area is drugs.

> As far as non-walkability goes, just watch the top three videos of the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes: https://youtube.com/@notjustbikes

lol ok, am I supposed to take this as an unbiased source?

> As far as tent camps / drug streets go, I can post videos from San Francisco, Philadelphia, LA, Oakwood, etc. but you’ll bring up it’s “only a Pacific problem”, despite Californian (together with New England) cities often being brought up as the examples for well done cities that compare well to “European”-style cities.

See above. You continue to cherry pick examples that no one is denying exist and pretend they are ubiquitous.

Maybe I should go take some videos of homeless in central London or Paris and claim that's representative of the entire EU?

> So much for “wildly inaccurate caricature”.

Thanks for proving my point.

[jghn]

> do nothing but describe America as a hellscape online

To be fair, the largest news network in the US spends a lot of time doing the exact same thing

[aidenn0]

> You don't probably meet many Americans raving about the quality of life in rural Romania

Actually you probably do, but such raving is about as valuable as residents of NYC raving about the quality of life in upstate New York -- it's a case of stated preferences vs. revealed preferences.

[otikik]

It's the gofundmes of people with cancer that paints the negative picture to me, not the young americans.

[jncfhnb]

I’m googling at it seems that this locked up steak thing is coming from a single Walmart in Florida

Fear not, Europe has isolated incidents too

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tesco-locking-steaks-a...

[nightski]

I mean I live in America and I have never experienced a store needing to unlock steaks or vitamins from a security case, seen a mass tent camp, or lived near many drug deaths. Our water is top quality, I took sex ed in high school (back in late 90s/early 2000s), and my wife and I walk or bike almost every day in our neighborhood. We don't live anywhere rich or fancy either, quite the opposite. Just a normal city of around 200,000 people in a lower population state.

[jorvi]

Could you name a similar-sized city that has the same qualities as yours?*

I’d love to learn, because I’ve mostly gotten the impression that the smaller an American city is, paradoxically the less walkable/bikable it gets due to lack of public transit, sidewalks, bike lanes etc.

*or your own city, but I understand the hesitation on geolocating yourself

[nightski]

I never said it was walkable per se, in the sense that is commonly used to mean everything you need in life is a few blocks away :) I'm not sure the large appeal with that anyways.

I work from home so no commute, but my wife does drive to work. However the grocery stores are less than a mile away and her work is a 5 minute drive (the nice thing about small cities / towns is that if you have to drive, it usually isn't very far).

That said, we do indeed walk or bike almost every day for exercise and to get outside. Myself I only use the car once or twice a week really when we go to stores or out to eat. But even if I lived in a "walkable" city I'd probably do that anyways because we'd want to try something new.

[GiorgioG]

Hey feel free to stay in Europe, seriously we don’t care what you think of the way we live. If Europe was so awesome my parents would have stayed there, but thankfully they moved here for a more prosperous future for their kids.

[jorvi]

> my parents would have stayed there, but thankfully they moved here for a more prosperous future for their kids.

Social mobility in the US has dropped from 90% to 50%, so good luck with the coin flip.

[GiorgioG]

You keep making statements from things you've read online about the US, but you've never lived here as far as I can tell. I've lived in Europe, and it's not for me. The difference is I'm not shitting on Europe. In my firsthand experience, some (not all) Europeans have a superiority complex towards the US. To those and you, get over yourselves.

[bdangubic]

“europe” is not awesome. case in point - whatever shithole your parents lived at forced to leave and come to US of all places :)

but many _parts_ of europe are really, really nice :)

[GiorgioG]

You know, it's possible for both Europe and the US to be really, really nice - to different people. But some people need to feel superior. I have lived in both places, and I prefer the US.

[bdangubic]

I may be wrong but I don't think it is about "superiority" ... I think Europeans look at how US workers (VAST majority of them) are treated by their employers and go "who in their RIGHT MIND would live like this - regardless of what the 'income/compensation' for that might be. America has an entirely different way of life. I have been "best man" at 5 weddings and have christened 11 kids. I hardly see any of them. Everyone is "busy" running around, work work work, then errands etc etc... in most of Europe this would be unheard of, there is higher value placed on social aspects of life. Hence the myriad of studies and stories and... about general loneliness in America (these studies often include people that are married and have children).

Another personal example - my sister is highly educated, has two PhD and I consider her the smartest person I know. Years ago we were discussing something and I mentioned that one of my dear friends is seeing a psychiatrist. My sister scoffed... And I was taken aback to say the least. How can someone that smart and that educated dismiss someone who is basically a Doctor and spent years educating themselves in this field. After talking through it I realized that if you have robust social life, myriad of friends, different friends to talk to about different things (as well as family) you just might not need a psychiatrist to talk to... Just an entirely different kind of life/existence...

[autoexec]

It doesn't matter how many sunny stats people throw around the reality is visible on the ground. Homelessness has soared over the last 10 years and is at record breaking highs. Utility disconnections for non-payment have gone up significantly in the last decade as well. Even clean healthy tap water is unavailable to hundreds of millions of Americans and that's only counting the heavy metals, not PFAS.

People are struggling in ways their parents and grandparents never had to, and they often feel they are unable to obtain the same standard of living. Healthcare spending has gone way up too as prices keep going up at a rate above inflation and more people having been getting sicker.

There's a very real reason for the disconnect between the "soaring economy" and how the majority are feeling about it.

[lovich]

>hundreds of millions of Americans

Given that only two hundred million Americans would be more than half, I’d need to see some data that the majority of the US doesn’t have access to clean drinking water.

Are there parts that don’t or even a disturbingly high percentage, I could believe, but the majority of Americans not having clean drinking water is a high claim

[autoexec]

Here's one: https://abcnews.go.com/US/tap-water-millions-americans-erin-...

For lead alone there's a lot of variation in how many homes are impacted. The white house recently said 10 million are connected to lead service lines (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...)

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>Once you allocate for payments into the welfare state, the difference becomes a lot smaller.

Yep, I think this stat adjusts for welfare payments: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=t...

>And that’s not even mentioning the stark difference in quality of life, beyond “quality of life” graphs. Those graphs don’t account for having to wait 25+ minutes for the store to unlock steaks or vitamins from a security case. Or for mass tent camps in cities. Or Mmss drug deaths. Uncertainty of potable water. Access to and education on safe sex, abortion, etc. Walkability of cities.

As an American in an unremarkable medium-sized city, this sounds like a caricature based on unrepresentative viral anecdotes.

* I've never had to wait long for something to be unlocked. Most things are not locked. Maybe a bit more stuff is locked up post-BLM.

* I can't recall ever seeing a tent camp in my current city. I can't recall ever seeing more than, say, 10 homeless tents in the same place. Big camps probably exist somewhere, but not where I see them.

* I don't know anyone addicted to drugs, but that probably says more about my social network than anything.

* I've never lived somewhere without potable water. If you offered me $1000 to find you some non-potable tap water, I wouldn't know where to go. Flint maybe? Googling suggests that Flint's water was fixed years ago. EDIT: I did find this map; my guess would be that a violation is not equivalent to the water being 'non-potable': https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data-portal/physical/map?age=0...

* Was taught about safe sex as a teen.

* In my 30s, I still have no driver's license (should really get one some time). Walkability is acceptable, could be better depending on the area.

>Whenever I meet Americans traveling Europe, they virtually always rave about how much better life seems over here.

There might be a selection effect, where Americans traveling in Europe tend to be dissatisfied. Europe did not seem notably better when I visited, but my visit was not extensive.

[pembrook]

OECD disposable income per capita numbers already account for the benefits of the European welfare state vs. self funded ones in the US.

[jorvi]

> over the dominant anecdotal narrative

> updating priors is hard

[Upthread commenter edited his comment removing some stuff]

It’s trivial to find complaints on the epidemic of security cases in American stores, and especially the fact that there’s not enough personnel in stores leading to long waiting times.

In a similar vein, are you really going to claim with a straight face that America isn’t extremely car-centric anymore?

> As someone who actually moved there, I can tell you the numbers are also anecdotally felt on the ground if you go outside of wealthy tourist capitals.

Then you should travel more. I got these remarks even in smaller Croatian towns. I live in The Netherlands myself, and I’ve heard similar things said in mid-sized cities in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Gdansk, Poland, Denmark, Sweden Bulgaria, hell even in Italy in a place like Naples.

And if you’re gonna claim that wasn’t small town / countryside enough, do you really think quality of life is going to be higher in a hick town in Mississippi rather than a countryside town in Portugal?

Not to mention the sliver of vacation days Americans have.

Money isn’t life.

[lotsoweiners]

> Not to mention the sliver of vacation days Americans have.

You are generalizing here for sure. I get almost 5 weeks vacation, 2 weeks sick, 11 holidays, and occasional personal and administrative leave. These also roll over. The people making 45k at my job get the same leave as the hire paid people.