[trimethylpurine]

I live a few months out of each year in Europe. Usually max out my 90 day stay with ABnB.

It's a hard life in Europe. My friend owns 11 bars that are packed 24/7 on a Mediterranean shoreline. He is what anyone would call successful. But he lives in a little apartment and drives a beat up old Mercedes, not because he's modest but because that's what "rich" looks like in Europe. If you ask him, he'll tell you that taxes ensure that you can never be rich in Europe.

My friend in middle America owns one bar, multiple houses, multiple cars, kids in private school. And what's mind blowing is that no one in America would consider him "rich." That's just middle class America.

I'd love to visit wherever you're going to point to as a counter example. Let me know where I'm headed this summer.

Btw I checked about health outcomes. It's actually only true if you look at America as an average. Middle America has much better health outcomes. Look at Utah for example. Again, point was that middle America isn't like the coasts.

[laurencerowe]

It's true that non-coastal Utah, Colorado, and Minnesota have good life expectancy for the US but they lag behind California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Hawaii.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/state-life-expec...

Utah is 1.7 years behind the EU average. Even Hawaii with the highest life expectancy in the US is behind all but the former Eastern Block EU countries.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240324032202/https://www.ined....

(Archive link to get comparable 2022 data.)

[trimethylpurine]

Sounds about right. I'm surprised by California. Nice.

But I bet healthcare costs are way higher there. To match with higher income, I guess.

[laurencerowe]

Median income is not much lower in Utah than in California. Utah's low healthcare spending per capita is likely a reflection of Utah having the lowest median age of any state. Most healthcare costs are spent on elderly people.

I should add though that life expectancy is affected at least as much by social policy as by healthcare spending. Much of the difference is a result of cars/guns/drugs killing more people earlier in life in the US than in Europe.

[trimethylpurine]

Doesn't seem like big correlation in this case. Violent crime rate is roughly double in California compared with Utah.

[laurencerowe]

While Utah has a lower homicide rate than California (2.2 vs 5.1 per 100k) like many rural states it has a much higher suicide rate (21.5 vs 10.1 per 100k). Accident mortality (mostly overdoses and car accidents) are similar (49.7 vs 51.1 per 100k).

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/state-stats/deaths/homicide.html

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/state-stats/deaths/suicide.html

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/state-stats/deaths/accidents.html

More on the drivers of lower life expectancy in US here:

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/what-dr...

[trimethylpurine]

All really interesting stuff. Thanks.