[catmanjan]

>ability to rough it in a country that's still in the first world

Does rough it mean suffer? I don't know if that's a point in favor...

>We're also much less racist than Europe

That's like comparing apples and oranges or countries and continents

[pyre]

> Does rough it mean suffer? I don't know if that's a point in favor...

I think it refers to enjoying the outdoors. E.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Crest_Trail

[karamazov]

The entirety of the US is more comparable to Europe as a whole than to any individual European country.

[eli_gottlieb]

Indeed. There's an extreme inequality of quality of life and public services, and it shows up in statistics.

For instance, taken individually, Massachusetts has a higher Human Development Index than the fabled social-democratic paradise of Norway.

[lotharbot]

> "Does rough it mean suffer?"

With a few seconds on your favorite search engine, you could discover that "rough it" is an idiom commonly used to refer to camping in a nature-heavy setting (without electricity/plumbing.)

[catmanjan]

Haha, excuse me for not jumping to that conclusion straight away, I have never heard the ability to live in the bush being used as an argument for another country in a discussion about Australia!

Also first link in Google: rough it - to live in a way that is simple and not very comfortable

Don't pretend search engines deliver the same content to everyone

[lotharbot]

> "excuse me for not jumping to that conclusion"

I'm not suggesting you jump to conclusions. I'm suggesting you do basic research when you don't understand an expression. By the time you skim the first page of results, whether or not it's the same as my first page of results, you should have a clear idea what the idiom means.

> "an argument for another country in a discussion about Australia!"

The immediate discussion was about whether there were arguments for living in America, not whether there were arguments against living in Australia. The US has a lot of things going for it; whether or not some of those things also apply elsewhere isn't really relevant.