As somebody living outside the US, I would find moving to the states highly undesirable even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens.
To me, it would mean a significant reduction in quality of live and I am low-key scared of all the ingredients and additives in food that are pretty much banned everywhere else. Not to mention all risks regarding healthcare.
It very much depends on life situation. For instance, if you are less than 50 and on private health care through your employer than you're very likely going to have better healthcare access than anywhere in Europe and Canada.
I am able to see my PCP and dentist within a week if I want. I read a statistic that in Europe and Canada you have to make those kinds of routine appointments months in advance.
Also, my father-in-law went from consultation to a full knee replacement surgery within 3 weeks. Again, that kind of thing takes 8 months or a year minimum anywhere in Europe or Canada.
For instance, if you are less than 50 and on private health care through your employer than you're very likely going to have better healthcare access than anywhere in Europe and Canada.
Your healthcare insurance being dependent on your employer seems like hell though. They will always have enormous bargaining power over you and I think it also leads to chilling effect, when your health is literally dependent on your job, you will think twice to go on strike, unionize, or freely express your thought, especially when combined with at-will employment.
Secondly, I would also debate the better health care. I recently had two health scares in my direct family (one time cancer, one time another tumor) and in both cases care was quick and excellent. Of course, there is quite a lot of variance between countries. We lived in Germany for a while and I was less impressed by health care there (though it's probably still much better and definitely cheaper than the average health care in the US).
Healthcare varies widely in Europe. It's not one country. But the "on private health care" part is they key. It's really not that different in lots of parts of Europe with the difference that people who do not have that still have access to the healthcare system without going bankrupt, albeit slower.
This is wrong, you can get same-day appointments for anything time-critical including dental. What takes a long time to schedule is mostly free preventitive care.
There is also the same private healthcare that americans enjoy. You have the option of spending $50 to $100 to go to a private clinic and get same-day admission. In the US services like that cost nearly 10 times the price due to the whole insurance bullshit.
I got free same-day heart check-up and $80 paid same-week heart monitoring check-up.
There are horror stories and footage of the UK NHS, but that's mostly just london and in reality pretty much every city that large suffers from that.
A lot of people in the UK (with professional jobs) top up their state health provision with private medical insurance provided by their employer. This isn't a bad mix.
You are misinformed. A lot of people in Europe and Canada also have private insurance, sometimes paid by the employer as well, and with that the wait times are usually very short. Going through the public healthcare system you may indeed wait months for non urgent matters.
You read that? I can get either in a day or two if I need it, they want much longer-term planning though.
For a vaccination I'll call several weeks in advance. If I want an appointment before/after work I'll call well in advance, if I want something tomorrow they may say "11:30, take it out leave it", which isn't great for my work.
Don't trust whoever wrote what you read there. FUD scaremongers.
Not to mention school shooting drills. Teaching kids how to behave when someone tries to shoot up your school, because it happens more than once a decade... And then not doing fuck all to fix the root cause, besides thoughts and prayers, because muh freedom.
Incredible that this is the country that has been the dominant global exporter of technological innovation, pop culture and economic policy for so long.
Yeah the USA has only given lip service for everything it claims to be. Especially in the last 18 months it’s been working overtime to make it even worse.
All the US has done is allow for massive amounts of wealth hoarding and gaslighting of a significant portion of the population into voting and supporting things against their own beliefs or common sense.
If you said “China allows red dye 12 in their food and it’s been proven to cause cancer” they’d freak out about it. But they don’t see any problem back home.
> even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens.
The US welcomes more people legally than any other country in the world, and half of its politicians think welcoming illegal immigrants is a good idea too.
I know what they want to say, but I think their argument is quite weak, because essentially you have US industries that aren't tech. American workers still get higher salaries than elsewhere in the OECD and growth in such industries isn't out competing those same industries in other OECD countries. In fact many industries are lagging behind. So actually US workers are being paid more not less than elsewhere.
Then you have tech. In tech, US workers are again paid more than in other OECD countries. But growth in tech is just insane and it makes a huge percentage of the GDP growth. And there aren't a whole lot of tech workers as a percentage of the total workforce. So although tech workers are paid a whole lot more than in other OECD countries, they aren't capturing as much of the growth of the tech industry.
So really this is an argument that tech workers in the US should be paid even more, and I don't think that sells so well as the populist argument that the authors intended to make.
And to me saying, that an autoworker that works for Ford, is not capturing the GDP growth that is generated by Google, is nonsensical.
> America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD
The US consistently scores among the best countries in the world for paying people [0]. Is there some way I can lodge an application to be exploited in a similar manner, without having to move there? Being wealthy and having to live among really wealthy people sounds better than being poor and living among equals.
They're inventing a metric there that just doesn't matter.
I do wonder how real the base number - the GDP - is. The wealthy have been accumulating wealth rapidly but it’s all on paper and the entire thing is underpinned by assumptions of USD reserve currency status.
And reeks of the same sort of reallocation fallacy that makes people think the rich making too much makes them poor.
If we really just say 4xd everyone’s salary in America. Prices are gonna rapidly rise in everything.
Things don’t get materially better unless we build the material things we need. We need to come up with a way to build more houses. Lower the cost of healthcare. Not just increase everyone’s money supply.
> We measure resources by using per capita gross domestic product – the amount of money in a country evenly divided among its entire population.
GDP is not "the amount of money in a country".
GDP is the monetary value of goods and services produced within a country during a given period (a flow, measured in dollars-per-year).
The amount of money in a country is a measure at a point in a time (a stock, measured in dollars).
I realize Fortune magazine isn't The Economist, but I'd still expect PhDs in political science opining on economic topics to at least understand the difference between stocks and flows.
>If the U.S. changed some policies – such as increasing the federal minimum wage – 46 million people could earn enough to rise above that fair pay line.
You can't just raise minimum wage and expect people to make more money since businesses need to fire everyone who aren't worth the new minimum wage and then those newly unemployed people will depress wages for other jobs since there is more labor on the supply side.
> You can't just raise minimum wage and expect people to make more money since businesses need to fire everyone who aren't worth the new minimum wage [...]
This way of thinking is what's wrong with USA (among many other things).
You don't (or at least shouldn't) hire lots of people because it's cheap.
It's a voluntary agreement between people. It's not immoral to pay minimum wage to someone when they both agreed. Only ~1% of people in the US make federal minimum wage. ~58% of that 1% are serving related occupations who collect tips that are not counted in BLS wage data.
You need to use median wage - which is ~$24 for all occupations.
This is yet another article that doesn't understand what wealth is. There is almost no point talking about these numbers, because they mislead more than they inform.
As if workers got paid by "what $wealth allows".
As if there was a "right to dignified work" (what is "dignified"?).
As if there was a "right to fair income" (whats "fair"?).
This is, in the immortal words of Norm McDonald, some "commie gobbledygook". I don't think there is any "newspaper", as in traditional print publication, left worth reading.
After all of that, you still seem to be familiar with the concept of "fairness". And yet you feel you shouldn't try anything because you don't have the perfect universal answer... are you sure you're posting on the correct forum?
As somebody living outside the US, I would find moving to the states highly undesirable even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens.
To me, it would mean a significant reduction in quality of live and I am low-key scared of all the ingredients and additives in food that are pretty much banned everywhere else. Not to mention all risks regarding healthcare.
It very much depends on life situation. For instance, if you are less than 50 and on private health care through your employer than you're very likely going to have better healthcare access than anywhere in Europe and Canada.
I am able to see my PCP and dentist within a week if I want. I read a statistic that in Europe and Canada you have to make those kinds of routine appointments months in advance.
Also, my father-in-law went from consultation to a full knee replacement surgery within 3 weeks. Again, that kind of thing takes 8 months or a year minimum anywhere in Europe or Canada.
For instance, if you are less than 50 and on private health care through your employer than you're very likely going to have better healthcare access than anywhere in Europe and Canada.
Your healthcare insurance being dependent on your employer seems like hell though. They will always have enormous bargaining power over you and I think it also leads to chilling effect, when your health is literally dependent on your job, you will think twice to go on strike, unionize, or freely express your thought, especially when combined with at-will employment.
Secondly, I would also debate the better health care. I recently had two health scares in my direct family (one time cancer, one time another tumor) and in both cases care was quick and excellent. Of course, there is quite a lot of variance between countries. We lived in Germany for a while and I was less impressed by health care there (though it's probably still much better and definitely cheaper than the average health care in the US).
Healthcare varies widely in Europe. It's not one country. But the "on private health care" part is they key. It's really not that different in lots of parts of Europe with the difference that people who do not have that still have access to the healthcare system without going bankrupt, albeit slower.
This is wrong, you can get same-day appointments for anything time-critical including dental. What takes a long time to schedule is mostly free preventitive care.
There is also the same private healthcare that americans enjoy. You have the option of spending $50 to $100 to go to a private clinic and get same-day admission. In the US services like that cost nearly 10 times the price due to the whole insurance bullshit.
I got free same-day heart check-up and $80 paid same-week heart monitoring check-up.
There are horror stories and footage of the UK NHS, but that's mostly just london and in reality pretty much every city that large suffers from that.
A lot of people in the UK (with professional jobs) top up their state health provision with private medical insurance provided by their employer. This isn't a bad mix.
You are misinformed. A lot of people in Europe and Canada also have private insurance, sometimes paid by the employer as well, and with that the wait times are usually very short. Going through the public healthcare system you may indeed wait months for non urgent matters.
You read that? I can get either in a day or two if I need it, they want much longer-term planning though.
For a vaccination I'll call several weeks in advance. If I want an appointment before/after work I'll call well in advance, if I want something tomorrow they may say "11:30, take it out leave it", which isn't great for my work.
Don't trust whoever wrote what you read there. FUD scaremongers.
I’m not in the US, but laughed when I saw that my bike is ‘known to cause cancer or birth defects/reproductive harm.’
When everything is dangerous, nothing is dangerous.
Not to mention school shooting drills. Teaching kids how to behave when someone tries to shoot up your school, because it happens more than once a decade... And then not doing fuck all to fix the root cause, besides thoughts and prayers, because muh freedom.
Incredible that this is the country that has been the dominant global exporter of technological innovation, pop culture and economic policy for so long.
Yeah the USA has only given lip service for everything it claims to be. Especially in the last 18 months it’s been working overtime to make it even worse.
All the US has done is allow for massive amounts of wealth hoarding and gaslighting of a significant portion of the population into voting and supporting things against their own beliefs or common sense.
If you said “China allows red dye 12 in their food and it’s been proven to cause cancer” they’d freak out about it. But they don’t see any problem back home.
> even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens.
The US welcomes more people legally than any other country in the world, and half of its politicians think welcoming illegal immigrants is a good idea too.
I know what they want to say, but I think their argument is quite weak, because essentially you have US industries that aren't tech. American workers still get higher salaries than elsewhere in the OECD and growth in such industries isn't out competing those same industries in other OECD countries. In fact many industries are lagging behind. So actually US workers are being paid more not less than elsewhere.
Then you have tech. In tech, US workers are again paid more than in other OECD countries. But growth in tech is just insane and it makes a huge percentage of the GDP growth. And there aren't a whole lot of tech workers as a percentage of the total workforce. So although tech workers are paid a whole lot more than in other OECD countries, they aren't capturing as much of the growth of the tech industry.
So really this is an argument that tech workers in the US should be paid even more, and I don't think that sells so well as the populist argument that the authors intended to make.
And to me saying, that an autoworker that works for Ford, is not capturing the GDP growth that is generated by Google, is nonsensical.
> America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD
The US consistently scores among the best countries in the world for paying people [0]. Is there some way I can lodge an application to be exploited in a similar manner, without having to move there? Being wealthy and having to live among really wealthy people sounds better than being poor and living among equals.
They're inventing a metric there that just doesn't matter.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
"We set the bar at half of what a typical American household earns. "
Yeah, relative income isn't really a good measure. You want to raise the floor for people, not (necessarily) narrow the gap between rich and poor.
I do wonder how real the base number - the GDP - is. The wealthy have been accumulating wealth rapidly but it’s all on paper and the entire thing is underpinned by assumptions of USD reserve currency status.
This is a weird number.
And reeks of the same sort of reallocation fallacy that makes people think the rich making too much makes them poor.
If we really just say 4xd everyone’s salary in America. Prices are gonna rapidly rise in everything.
Things don’t get materially better unless we build the material things we need. We need to come up with a way to build more houses. Lower the cost of healthcare. Not just increase everyone’s money supply.
As an (in)famous philosopher said recently, if you workers are not bone-skinny it means you are doing Capitalism wrong and are paying them too much.
That's why they let in massive number of immigrants from poor countries.
> We measure resources by using per capita gross domestic product – the amount of money in a country evenly divided among its entire population.
GDP is not "the amount of money in a country".
GDP is the monetary value of goods and services produced within a country during a given period (a flow, measured in dollars-per-year).
The amount of money in a country is a measure at a point in a time (a stock, measured in dollars).
I realize Fortune magazine isn't The Economist, but I'd still expect PhDs in political science opining on economic topics to at least understand the difference between stocks and flows.
That text is linked to a graph where the X axis is years.
it's not that either. it's the total value of all transactions.
if you paint a masterpiece worth millions and keep it in your closet it has negligible impact on GDP. only once it is sold does it have an effect.
And if its sold 5 times in the year its 5x the GDP. Of course the value of the painting hasn't changed and their remains only 1.
And on the contrary, there’s this method of increasing GDP.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37395566
>If the U.S. changed some policies – such as increasing the federal minimum wage – 46 million people could earn enough to rise above that fair pay line.
You can't just raise minimum wage and expect people to make more money since businesses need to fire everyone who aren't worth the new minimum wage and then those newly unemployed people will depress wages for other jobs since there is more labor on the supply side.
Check out https://arindube.substack.com/p/a-minimum-wage-natural-exper..., very good post comparing states with minimum wage and without, that seem to go against this often repeated argument.
> You can't just raise minimum wage and expect people to make more money since businesses need to fire everyone who aren't worth the new minimum wage [...]
This way of thinking is what's wrong with USA (among many other things).
You don't (or at least shouldn't) hire lots of people because it's cheap.
It's a voluntary agreement between people. It's not immoral to pay minimum wage to someone when they both agreed. Only ~1% of people in the US make federal minimum wage. ~58% of that 1% are serving related occupations who collect tips that are not counted in BLS wage data.
You need to use median wage - which is ~$24 for all occupations.
But if they made the minimum wage $1m/year then we would all be rich! /s
This is yet another article that doesn't understand what wealth is. There is almost no point talking about these numbers, because they mislead more than they inform.
As if workers got paid by "what $wealth allows". As if there was a "right to dignified work" (what is "dignified"?). As if there was a "right to fair income" (whats "fair"?).
This is, in the immortal words of Norm McDonald, some "commie gobbledygook". I don't think there is any "newspaper", as in traditional print publication, left worth reading.
After all of that, you still seem to be familiar with the concept of "fairness". And yet you feel you shouldn't try anything because you don't have the perfect universal answer... are you sure you're posting on the correct forum?