- Comparing adjusted disposable income between Scandinavia and the US is highly misleading. The disposable income in Scandinavia doesn't need to cover any healthcare, education and other public services. I wonder how much, if any, the difference is once you adjust for that.
- The argument mistakes distribution of wealth with average output per capita. Portugal is in the bottom of the list in the GDP per capita comparison between US states and EU countries. In Portugal there is a somewhat high wage disparity which means that those with high wages can afford to pay those with low wages to get cheap pizza (the example given). The same disparity exists in the US and pizza is cheap too, even though the US GDP per capita is at the other extreme of the comparison. Scandinavian countries have low wage disparity so things are more expensive by comparison. It has nothing to do with the output of the economy.
Basically it is trying to draw conclusions about the strength of the economies based on statistics that don't properly control for very relevant factors. The only good argument is the 2.2% vs 3% GDP growth rates. Considering the article is from 2005, recent events may throw some doubt into that picture. The latest estimates on Wikipedia were 2.6% in Norway and 1.1% in the US.
The study that compares the US to Europe (linked in another commend) does these comparisons:
- Compare GDP between US and Europe and show that US is higher per capita on average. No debate there.
- Compare private consumption between the US and Europe, specifically stating that it does not control for healthcare and education. From page 14:
Different countries’ choices of public commitment influence, through taxation policy, the scope available for private consumption, at the same time as high taxation countries, through their public sectors, offer some of the things recorded in low taxation countries as private consumption. There is no easy way of getting round this, but it is an important point to bear in mind when comparing private consumption.
- It does then compare retail consumption which shouldn't include any of these things and thus be more objective. That one still shows the US as higher than Sweden. Another table shows that US households have more home appliances. So on that count Americans do appear to be richer, assuming of course they are getting equal average amounts of education and healthcare on their private purchases as the Europeans are getting on their tax dollars. Otherwise you'd just be displacing money from healthcare and education into buying retail goods. An argument can surely be bade that this is in fact the case and that although the higher end healthcare and education in the US is top notch the average over the whole population is not as good as the average in Sweden. Anyone know of any good data on this?
I did notice however that the disposable income argument was made about countries within the EU based on another study. So it is possible that the public/private mix in the several EU nations actually doesn't favor Scandinavia in terms of efficiency. All these things are hard to argue because there is no comparable definition of the extent of public services in the economies and how those are replaced or not by private spending.
> So on that count Americans do appear to be richer, assuming of course they are getting equal average amounts of education and healthcare on their private purchases as the Europeans are getting on their tax dollars.
That assumption is rather dodgy on a couple of points.
One is that a lot of healthcare and education in the US is tax-supported. Another is that a rational person may choose to spend money on things other than healthcare and education. Forcing them to spend it on healthcare and education can make them poorer, aka "less bang for same bucks".
> the average over the whole population is not as good as the average in Sweden.
How about we compare average cancer survival rates?
Relevant fact: a huge fraction of the "uninsured" in the US are eligible for free govt healthcare but simply haven't signed up. (When they run into problems, they typically, but not always, sign up.)
>That assumption is rather dodgy on a couple of points.
I thought so too, that is why I pointed it out.
>One is that a lot of healthcare and education in the US is tax-supported.
It may very well be but less of it is compared to Scandinavia so the point is the same.
>Another is that a rational person may choose to spend money on things other than healthcare and education. Forcing them to spend it on healthcare and education can make them poorer, aka "less bang for same bucks".
Very true of course, but then you can't really argue that the Scandinavians are worse off because they can buy less retail goods because they put more money into their government to get healthcare and education. Choice need not be only about how to allocate private spending, you can also influence the tax/welfare situation.
>How about we compare average cancer survival rates?
I could only find cancer deaths not survival rates once you do have cancer. In a lot of ways that is what matters and can mean better preventive care. On the other hand it adds a bunch of environmental factors. Anyway, according to this:
The US is middle of the board. Sweden, Finland and Norway all beat the US. The only surprising one on that board for me was the Netherlands, with such high rates.
Very true of course, but then you can't really argue that the Scandinavians are worse off because they can buy less retail goods because they put more money into their government to get healthcare and education.
Actually you can. That's part of the deadweight loss of taxation: you are forced to spend money on stuff you don't want and are unable to spend on stuff you do want.
If person X would choose to spend $100 on an ipod, but is instead forced to spend $100 on education which they only value at $80, they have lost $20 of value.
Now, in a democracy, people in the situation of person X may only make up 50% - 1 of the population, but that doesn't change the fact that they lose.
Actually you can. That's part of the deadweight loss of taxation: you are forced to spend money on stuff you don't want and are unable to spend on stuff you do want.
(...)
Now, in a democracy, people in the situation of person X may only make up 50% - 1 of the population, but that doesn't change the fact that they lose.
That is all true of course. What I was pointing out is that the democratic group decision to spend more on healthcare is also a spending decision. The counterpoint is what you mentioned, that 50% - 1 could be against it. In Scandinavia however you will find that support for the welfare state is very high. Another important consideration is that the public healthcare in these countries tends to be much more efficient per person than the one you get for you private dollars otherwise. You could of course argue that that is just the market currently being inefficient.
Support for "the welfare state" in the abstract is irrelevant. The relevant question is "would person X purchase retail goods or health care if given the choice?"
People might support the welfare state for various other reasons, including signaling [1], compromise and ignorance [2]. Regarding more efficient public health care (assuming it to be true for the moment, I've seen no compelling evidence for this), all this does is reduces the deadweight loss by lowering the price of the unwanted goods.
[1] I voted for X because I'm {religious/moral/not racist/hard working/$OTHER_TRIBAL_IDENTITY}.
[2] This is due both to politicians lying ("I won't force people to buy health insurance they can't afford") as well as to people not having a clue ("death panels").
> >One is that a lot of healthcare and education in the US is tax-supported.
> It may very well be but less of it is compared to Scandinavia so the point is the same.
Not so fast. You wrote "It does then compare retail consumption which shouldn't include any of these things and thus be more objective." You otherwise assumed that health care is largely private in the US. It's not - it's about half public. Moreover, the public spending is concentrated on the poor. So, they're getting govt healthcare and buying big screen TVs.
> I could only find cancer deaths not survival rates once you do have cancer. In a lot of ways that is what matters and can mean better preventive care. On the other hand it adds a bunch of environmental factors.
As someone else has posted, the "not get cancer" stuff, which isn't due to health care, overmatches what happens when you get cancer, which is when health care matters.
Not so fast. You wrote "It does then compare retail consumption which shouldn't include any of these things and thus be more objective." You otherwise assumed that health care is largely private in the US. It's not - it's about half public. Moreover, the public spending is concentrated on the poor. So, they're getting govt healthcare and buying big screen TVs.
What I assumed and is true is that healthcare is more private in the US than in Scandinavia, which it is. So the argument still holds that if you are comparing private spending in the US that will include more healthcare than in Scandinavia. Retail spending however will not as you don't buy healthcare as a retail good.
>As someone else has posted, the "not get cancer" stuff, which isn't due to health care, overmatches what happens when you get cancer, which is when health care matters.
What makes you think "not get cancer" has nothing to do with healthcare? Two very large healthcare factors come to mind. If you die sooner from another illness you won't get cancer and if you get continuous preventive medicine you won't get as much cancer. Diet and other unrelated factors will be important as well but "not getting cancer" has a lot to do with health care.
The other flaw in the whole "cancer survival is higher so healthcare must be better" argument is that although cancer is a very important illness it is far from the only important one and not even the major cause of death. Having very good cancer survival rates could just mean that the US healthcare spends an irrational amount of resources on it, neglecting other diseases. But I don't really know.
> What I assumed and is true is that healthcare is more private in the US than in Scandinavia, which it is.
You're ignoring the fact that US poor get govt healthcare. Unless you want to argue that said govt healthcare is better than the private healthcare that the rest of us get, the US has "govt healthcare or better" and more stuff. By cohort, our poor people have govt healthcare and more stuff than yours and our richer people have better than govt healthcare and even more stuff.
Which gets us to the question of how our govt and private healthcare compares to yours, because the "more stuff" conclusion seems pretty solid.
> Retail spending however will not as you don't buy healthcare as a retail good.
What is the basis for your claim that healthcare can not be a retail good? You may not think of healthcare as being available as a retail good, but I see it in stores and the like. I happen to received an advertisement for a "get an MRI to see anything interesting is happening inside you" service in the mail today, and that sort of thing is reasonably common.
Surely you're not going to argue "necessity", as food, clothing, and shelter are both necessities and retail goods.
> if you get continuous preventive medicine you won't get as much cancer
Oh really? We just started to see vaccines for a common form of cervical cancer, and that was a first. How about some supporting evidence. Be precise - what types of cancer and what kind of healthcare. (Note - precancerous growths are not really pre-cancerous - they're early stage, as evidenced by the fact that the success in treating them is evaluated the same way that we evaluate other cancer treatments.)
> The other flaw in the whole "cancer survival is higher so healthcare must be better" argument is that although cancer is a very important illness it is far from the only important one and not even the major cause of death.
I didn't say that cancer survival rates were a decisive argument. I said that they were more relevant to the healthcare quality argument. I'd be happy to see more and better data, but see no reason to assume anything about that data before it shows up.
Here's the link with the original "cancer rates" article
"U.S. Cancer Care Is Number One
No. 596
Thursday, October 11, 2007
by Betsy McCaughey
During this presidential election season, candidates are urging Americans to radically overhaul our “broken” health care system. Before accepting the premise that the system is broken, consider the impressive evidence from the largest ever international study of cancer survival rates..."
OK, we heard you already - you don't need to spam the comments with the same thing quite so many times.
I'm in the UK and this is the first I heard about "death panels". I looked at the top listing in the NYT and on ABC, as returned by Google, in order to get a definition.
Surely any country with limited healthcare resources requires someone (maybe a panel) to decide where to restrict application of resources. In many cases this failure to provide infinite resources to any health problem will result in premature death. So you could call the panels deciding on restricting care "death panels".
There's nothing controversial about that, is there. We have such panels in the UK, the only controversial part is that location within the UK gets factored in ("postcode lottery") when we are supposed to have a "national health service".
Some drugs and treatments are too expensive for the public purse.
If you are so out of the loop of American politics that you were not aware about the whole "death panels" uproar, you really aren't aren't in the loop enough to be discussing the rest of this subject matter on this thread either
"Palin: Obama's "Death Panel" Could Kill My Down Syndrome Baby
In a new posting on her Facebook account, former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) made a dire statement about health care reform -- that it could result in an Obama-created "death panel" killing her infant son with Down Syndrome:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil...."
You cite %change in GDP as a measure of economic growth in your third point, after claiming in your first and second points that GDP itself is not a good measure for quality of life/economic well being/etc, in points one and two. Does that make sense?
I think you're letting your terminology run away from you in your first point. It's true that "Disposable income" doesn't need to cover educational, medical, and other social expenses in Scandinavian welfare states, but those expenses still have to be paid out of tax receipts.
I don't see how the Scandinavian governments can get $35000 per person in value out of $25000 per person in income.
>You cite %change in GDP as a measure of economic growth in your third point, after claiming in your first and second points that GDP itself is not a good measure for quality of life/economic well being/etc, in points one and two. Does that make sense?
My first point was about disposable income which is a subset of GDP. My second one only said that high relative costs can just mean flat income structures independent of GDP (hence the two extreme cases of Portugal and the US with high and low GDPs both having low costs for pizza compared to Sweden. I never really argue that high GDP doesn't make you richer.
> I think you're letting your terminology run away from you in your first point. It's true that "Disposable income" doesn't need to cover educational, medical, and other social expenses in Scandinavian welfare states, but those expenses still have to be paid out of tax receipts.
I don't see how the Scandinavian governments can get $35000 per person in value out of $25000 per person in income.
I agree with you that the pure GDP comparison makes the disposable income point less important. But GDP by itself doesn't seem comparable either. If the Scandinavian population consumes on average more healthcare and education on a per-service not per-dollar basis than the US one, you can have a higher purchasing power just because you buy a higher percentage of Chinese goods produced with low wage costs instead of locally supplied healthcare and education delivered by higher-earning local wages (ever increasing since you are getting richer). But now I am way out of my league. IANAEconomist
All this discussion naturally forgets the next point of how much this added GDP/wealth actually drives happiness. From what I saw from Happiness research Europe has actually been obtaining gains in overall happiness while the US has stagnated. One theory was that productivity gains in Europe were used to reduce number of work hours while in the US they were used to increase GDP. Europe would be doing the better tradeoff as both were already at diminishing returns for money but time off had a good return. An interesting theory at least.
Then I guess this story from ABC Chicago is a big lie, and the food bank is really just gonna buy $5 Dominos pizzas for everyone?
"CHICAGO (WLS) -- A food pantry on Chicago's far South Side says it has run out of food to help the needy.
The Greater Chicago Food Depository says food banks throughout the city are in desperate need of donations.
The economic downturn is making it harder for many to feed their families.
The food depository says there has been a big jump in demand for help at area food banks. That's expected to go up as the holiday season approaches. And they need more supplies to meet the demand."..."
1) Malnutrition is not starvation due to not affording food.
2) Thats a whooping 0.0009 of all deaths.
3) If you are poor in America, you are most likely to die from heart disease from eating to many $5 Pizzas and other high caloric food because it's so cheap!
My sister in law's family (parents and siblings) are all on welfare and receive food stamps. They find clever ways of using their food stamps to get cigarettes, drugs and alcohol (such as "selling" them to family and friends for cash), and more often then not they run out of food by the end of the month. Her teenage sister just had a baby and they were asking around for money for formula, even though they get hundreds of dollars a month in food stamps (more money per family member then my own family spends each month on food). I wouldn't be surprised if at least a few of her family members are malnourished, but you can't force feed people.
You need to present evidence people are starving due to poverty.
There are all sorts of reasons one might die of malnutrition. Bulimia, for instance, is said to affect about 0.2% of men and 1.3% of women. Anorexia affects another 0.3% of people, mostly women.
Which with 350 Million people comes out roughly to 7 in every million people.
Meanwhile 1 out of 218 die from falling, 1 in 63,000 from legal execution, and 1 in 350,000 from a fireworks discharge.
So you've got a 30,000 times greater chance of dying from falling down than from hunger in the United States.
Hardly a statistically significant problem, especially since in every community I know of, multiple sources of free food are available. Sometimes dozens of sources. You could argue at these rates these are "accidental" starvations and not due to prevailing societal conditions -- perhaps due to mental illness, bad weather, age, etc.
Are you guys saying this video ABC report from Chicago about A food bank Chicago emptied of food is a lie?
Do know that unemployment runs 70% among people with partial disabilities trying to find work? What do you think these perpetually unemployed partially disabled people are doing, living off their trust funds?
Just because this food bank doesn't have food doesn't mean there are millions of people starving in Chicago. There are a myriad of reasons for why the food bank might not have food, chief among them is that in a major recession like we have been experiencing, fewer people donate.
Do people exist in the US who are consistently hungry? Yes. Do they starve on a regular basis? No. It has nothing to do with whether your link is a lie or not.
Does unemployment run 70% among people with partial disabilities? I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that 70% of people with partial disabilities who are trying to find work are unemployed. It doesn't sound like a particularly useful stat. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that 70% of all people who are trying to find work are unemployed. They are looking for work after all.
So all those blonde homeless guys I see lining up for free meals at the Mission downtown, I guess those guys would all be of German-American descent, huh?
Domestic goods are cheap because the labor is cheap, and because the cost of living is lower.
iPhones are expensive because China Unicom is stupid. Plus, iPhones are made in China, so they're not imported. And the irony is that the imported phones, which originated from China too, actually cost less.
First of all, averages aren't that significant. What are the numbers on the median?
Furthermore, what about debt? How much credit card debt do Americans have relative to Europeans? When I lived there, almost no one even had a credit card. They spent money they had.
This is really a very bad picture of the situation. I spent a lot of time in a lot of places in Europe from Italy to the arctic circle and from spain to Poland and I found it to be a generally richer place over all.
In fact, I was amazed at what I saw. I thought, "Wow, look at how amazing this place is. They have everything!"
I find this article really hard to believe. Really, I couldn't care less about the numbers, I've been there and I've seen it and Europe is a richer place than America. It doesn't matter if we spend more on cars or not. They don't put value in those things like we do. Europe isn't about what you have or where you work, it's about who you are and enjoying life.
I remember once asking someone in a group, "What do you do?" just curious. The response was, "You're so American." I didn't even realize how much status we put on people's jobs. It's how we define ourselves.
Actually it's not just that averages are bad indicators -- the examples that he chose are obviously hand picked to make his case -- which to a knowledgeable reader destroys the credibility of the article in which he does most likely have a valid point.
For example he picks a mixed drink as a buying power indicator, but Norway has an off the charts "sin tax" on alcohol, which has little to do with the buying power for, say, a burger.
Perceptions of quality of life are always skewed by the attitude of the perceiver: you being on vacation, or the author being sick of Norway, for example.
I think the real thesis of the article is that there's a gap between Norway's perception of its own wealth and actual buying power, which really hit home for me when I interviewed for a job there (and ended up moving to Germany instead).
The more deeper seated cultural values, notably between how the wealth of a society is measured, are naturally harder to measure analytically. My theory (having grown up in the US and spent most of my adult life in Europe) is that the US is a society that is more "hero" driven -- and people that "make it" are more rewarded across the spectrum, whereas Europe tends to focus on a well-functioning welfare state. As a result, the American version of poverty is rare in most western european countries, but society is also less structured for empowering individuals. Both have their up and downsides.
In the US the average worker works 1,777 hours per year, in Norway it's 1,328. That's a lot of extra time for family, friends, hobbies, etc. They've made a choice about their work/life balance and we (or our capitalist masters) have made a choice about what is important to us. How much salary would you give up in exchange for 25% less time at work?
Also, the Norwegian bottom 10% makes twice as much as the American bottom 10%. Again, it's a matter of choices, how much of your income would you give up to not have poor people in your community and the associated crime and social problems?
Because you don't believe that there are rich people in the US profiting from exploiting the poor, or indeed that that is the innate structure of capitalism?
Not quite sure what you meant, be less flippant and more explicit please.
It absolutely is germane to this site. Many of us are entrepreneurs, hacking capitalism. I think that "capitalist masters" is actually a succinct treatment of the state of things in the US, and challenge you to better articulate the nature of things so concisely.
All this is, is handwaving and opinions, though, because we can't very well agree to or define what this "capitalist masters" business is, can we? Is PG one of the capitalist masters? People are bound to have different opinions, and it really comes down to politics, which is poisonous for sites like this.
Also, entrepreneurship isn't really "hacking capitalism" - it's part and parcel of it, and it seems to me that if you don't believe in capitalism in some form (be it the Norwegian, American or some other variety), this site doesn't seem to be appropriate.
I suppose it is a matter of perspective, but many people choose to be entrepreneurs because they don't want to work for people with more capital than them, hence the term "capitalist masters."
Just off the top of my head, 25 days off a year (not including public holidays) is the norm in Britain, compared to, what, 5-10 in the US? The attitude towards work is very different in Europe, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if working hours were lower.
The article, as many of its ilk, presupposes that certain things are "good" and others are "bad".
Purchasing power is used, rather than GDP as some other commenters have assumed, but it only tells you what is possible to purchase rather than how closely what is possible matches what is desired by that population!
Interacting with Scandinavians I've found that the concept known variously as hyggelig , gemytligt, hyggw, koselig, gemuetlichkeit (in various northern European languages) is very central to their cultural identities. It represents a sort of... "social coziness", a comfortable harmony, and this is what is sought. To me this stands in contrast to states of mind that would make an American happy.
Don't take my comment as saying that this cultural concept somehow renders Scandinavians superior. I find that my own preferences tend towards having the greatest purchasing power, but without delving into the murky depths of cultural relativism it's important to understand that the subjective evaluation of objective economic parameters can vary wildly.
While I don't know about the rest of Scandinavia, Sweden also has a prominent cultural idea of "lagom" - that enough is better than too much or too little. "Enough is as good as a feast."
The statistics are misleading, but the problems they point out are inherent in the political system of Norway. The distribution of wealth using taxes (income, land and VAT) for all political parties is more or less the same. T
here are few really rich people and few poor people. The real difference to the US as I see it is the purchase power of the middle class and upper middle class. In Norway, oil and the middle class is paying the bill for the expansive and expensive state. 5 years of uni education only gets you a 25%-40% extra pay when you start out (compared to uneducated work), but makes it possible to double it over time.
This confirms my brother's stories. He has a penchant for dating Scandinavian women--thusfar he's dated women from Denmark and Norway and has visited them and their families.
Denmark was, of course, expensive by US standards. But upon returning from Norway, he remarked on the absurdly high cost of living. He made lasagna for his Norwegian girlfriend's family and it ended up costing around $60 US--just for the ingredients and a soft drink. Eating out at a burger-type joint ran nearly $100. It's not affordable unless you're absurdly wealthy.
My wife is Norwegian. I've been here 12 years, and love it.
In terms of salary: I've never heard of a college graduate making less than 250.000NOK = $43,000 USD, even in the most trivial, entry-level job. Note that that's for 32.5 hours/week, with 5 weeks paid vacation and full health care included.
I don't have the lasagna ingredient prices available at home (most items don't have price tags, but shelf-tags at the store), but I can tell you that gasoline is over $7/gallon, if that's something to go by.
The Timbro study that makes up the bulk of the author's argument can be found at http://www.timbro.se/bokhandel/pdf/9175665646.pdf. Most of the numbers are based on the US economy circa 1995-2000.
Bonus points for equating the economic prosperity of Spain with the alcoholic content of their drinks.
At the low point (2000) the EUR was 0.8 USD. At the high point (2008) it was 1.6 USD. The (old) EU and the US are close enough economically for a factor two to decide the outcome of most comparisons.
Also, when people say Norway is rich, it is not just because it has the second highest GDP of the world. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway#Economy). It is also because they have saved a good part of the oil money (more than USD 100.000 per capita, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Government_Pension_Fund_of_...) preparing for the combination of an aging population and finite North Sea oil resources). So they are rich also in the literal sense of having a lot of money, not just spending a lot of money.
It's a testament to the differences between perception and reality. The NHS in the UK regularly gets poor ratings, in fact they're regularly flat out abysmal on national satisfaction scales, yet all out-patient questionnaire's regularly return with satisfaction rates >90%.
People perceive the NHS as this behemoth incapable of performing, but the reality is that it performs amazingly well and provides one of the best health care in the world.
Perceptions of America suffer a similar thing, it's always direly low in many countries. A very recent poll in Canada showed that they like Obama, and that a vast majority like Americans as individuals. Yet respondents states that Canadians dislike America on a whole more since Obama took office than before, and that Canadians feel less safe visiting the US than before.
Even I have recognized the cognitive dissonance of liking many Americans, liking the Presidency, I even like a vast amount of Americas culture, yet there's something ingrained in me that dislikes 'America'. Perhaps it's just the politics.
" Yet respondents states that Canadians dislike America on a whole more since Obama took office than before, and that Canadians feel less safe visiting the US than before."
Funny you mention that. I just took a train tonight from Vancouver Canada, to Seattle WA. The difference between the two places for night and day, and what you just said sums it up perfectly.
When I got on the train on the Canadian side, the streets are bustling with activity, they're also clean. Homelessness is a problem, but overall the city is kept in good shape and business is booming. The train station is old, but kept in good repair, with many travellers milling about.
I get off the train in Seattle and I see a crumbling train station that can't even afford to replace its light bulbs. The moment I walk out the door I am accosted by a group of homeless folk. I am yet accosted by more homeless folk as I make my way to the bus stop. As I ride the bus downtown the streets are deserted, there's homeless folk everywhere, people picking fights in streets... it's like a bad 80s dystopian movie come to life. It reminds me of Demolition Man without the open firefights in the streets. I've lived here for several months now and I do not feel safe walking these streets at night. Hell, sometimes I don't feel safe walking these streets in broad daylight. There's garbage everywhere, poverty at levels I could not even imagine before moving from Canada. There are shootings in my neighbourhood weekly. People I've mentioned this to blame me for living downtown, and imply that this comes with living in an urban centre. I call bullshit: I've lived downtown in 3 different Canadian cities, and none were anywhere this bad. One is also much larger and denser than this one.
I've only been to a handful of other American cities - but if Seattle is the best you've got (and by national rankings it's pretty far up the list of good cities), you guys have a big, big, big problem.
Funny, you just described my exact experience going from Washington D.C. (one of the Murder leaders in the U.S.) and then later from NYC to Toronto.
At least in D.C./NYC the homeless people can play music in the metro/subway. And you really don't find too many of them unless you go to the absolute crappiest part of town. In Toronto it was hard to walk more than a block or two in broad daylight without getting accosted by some drug addled homeless person wanting McDonald's money. And we're talking about places like around Queen's Park and the St. James Park area.
I also call B.S. on your Seattle description (but not your Vancouver description which is a very nice city). Last time I was in downtown Seattle I think I saw maybe 2 or 3 homeless people. And my threat level was darn near 0 compared to an average day in D.C.
I've never been to Seattle but it wouldn't surprise me if, in general, the homeless tend to congregate in or near major train stations. They're open 24/7; they're warm; the opportunities for panhandling are good (because of the number of people passing through).
Out here the homeless are just all over downtown. Without being a city planner I'm not really qualified to say why, but I have some pet theories:
- Seattle's transit sucks. It's one of the worst in any city I've ever lived in. This plus the lack of any natural borders around the city (mountains, large bodies of water, etc) has resulted in massive suburban sprawl, leaving downtown to rot. Unlike most cities, downtown is not a hub nor a destination.
- As a result of this, there's very little in the way of commercial development that you would see in most cities. Where you would see the hip shopping district in most cities, bustling with people day and night, downtown Seattle is mainly office buildings, and thus completely deserted at night. There is no such thing as the restaurant/hangout district that I've seen in just about every other city I've been to.
- Lack of social programs and policing have resulted in major arterial streets being taken over by aggressive panhandlers and drug dealers/users at night. People stay home as a result - I know many people who admit to staying home at night because of sketchy characters milling about. This adds to the desertedness, which further harms potential commercial development.
Seattle as a city is perhaps 30 years behind in its civic development. Even with the new light rail system there is still no effective way for most people to get downtown - the entire city reeks of crime, poverty, and dirtiness. Walking downtown you don't get the impression of a bustling, growing city - you see a city in slow decay, desperately trying to hold onto the image of better times.
That's because "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".
I also like many things about the US, but on the whole I don't like the US especially because of their foreign policies.
Individuals are often very nice people (not just in the US), but in large groups their mentality can change drastically, developing a "herd behavior" ... and part of a mob people are capable of doing stuff that aren't thinkable. This is pretty scary since we've seen where this can lead.
I live in Poland, so maybe I'm not the right person to criticize your NHS, but from what my friends who live in GB say (and I have a lot of them:)) NHS is worse even than our polish NFZ. And man, does NFZ suck.
It may be because in Poland NFZ is "tax and corruption" funded, so it has more money than only tax funded NHS.
But - in Poland you goes to first contact doctor with regular cold, or head pain, or normal flu, and you have 100% chance of seing the doctor, and he probably will right away prescribe you some antibiotics and send you to tthe blood tests.
In GB, I've heard, the first contact doctor is nurse in reality most of the times. And he/she will just prescribe you the painkillers and send you away, till it's something more serious.
I live in the UK. When I get an appointment at my doctor's surgery, I see a doctor, not a nurse. (Unless it's for something that's done by nurses because their skills are more relevant than a doctor's, such as ear syringing.)
I've only once been to the doctor and gone away thinking I'd been deprived of treatment or tests that I needed; on that occasion, there didn't turn out to be anything wrong with me, so I'm not going to complain too loudly.
If your doctor is prescribing antibiotics for a cold or the flu, then s/he is incompetent and you should not be using this behaviour as evidence that your system is better than ours. Antibiotics do nothing for viral diseases like colds and flu.
(Note: for some of my life I have had private medical insurance paid for by my employer. I believe I have made use of it twice. The first time, there turned out to be nothing wrong with me. The second time, I think I did benefit from the private treatment, but I'd actually probably have been best off if I had been seen by a nurse first rather than my doctor.)
About flu - when you have really serious consequences after a flu it's because some bacteria get a "free ride" on your immunity system compromised by a virus, so antibiotics are sometimes good thing to take when having a flu.
Still - I agree, doctors are prescribing them too often.
Anyway - Polish emigrants (immigrants from you POV:)) are commonly returning to Poland to go to doctor, and that means it's in some ways better, so two way ticket is worth it. Sometimes they return to go to private doctors because private healthcare is much cheaper in Poland, but they also return to go to regular NFZ, and there must be a reason for that (maybe immigrants in GB are given worse treatment?).
I'm not a doctor, so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that it's a Really Bad Idea to take antibiotics when you don't know that you have a bacterial infection and roughly what it is. Sure, it might happen to help if you happen to have just got infected, or to be about to get infected, with bacteria. But it also might happen to be harmful, e.g. if you get infected by something when you're near the end of the course of antibiotics -- seems like a great way to breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria inside your body.
Contrary to what your article says, the British system does not take you straight from "see your GP" to "be hospitalized" with nothing in between. If you have, or might have, something wrong with you that requires specialist treatment, your GP will refer you to a specialist. (Who will typically work at a hospital, so you'll see them there, but why does that matter?)
If Polish GP-equivalents are typically able to see you the same day as you call them up, that's certainly better than in the UK. (Though if you have something that seems like it may need urgent attention, you will likely get a same-day appointment from your GP in the UK too. For instance, I think every time we've taken our 3-year-old to the doctor we've had an appointment the same day as we called.)
I am not trying to argue that the system in the UK is perfect or close to it. But some of these specific criticisms don't match up with my own experience.
Are you serious? Check the poor cancer survival rates in UK compared to the rest of world:
"Since that time, cancer survival rates in England have been steadily improving for but we (Department of Health spokesman) accept that there is further work to do to reduce the gap between us and the rest of northern and western Europe and America."
Full Disclosure: Cancer Researcher here. I looked into how to analyze data over time to elicit better outcomes in a former life.
Cancer is a hard problem, REALLY hard. Hematological Cancers as well, super hard. It is less than wise to judge a health care system by its ability to treat cancer. Literally, there are often times when a patient is being attended solely for the purposes of learning as much as we can before she dies. Thus, hopefully, getting us into a better position to help the next person.
Let's try to confine the discussion to areas where you get the most bang for the buck. Primary care for instance.
Further disclosure: I am American. Limited experience with using UK health system. So 'good' or 'bad' are assessments it would be out of place for me to make. This is simply a post to add context to the discussion.
I think it's fair enough to ask how come a country that claims to have one of the best healthcare systems in the world (the UK) has such bad cancer survival rates?
Cancer is what kills you if nothing else does. Either that or heart failure. If people are dying from TB or other easily treated (or prevented) diseases, then it's time to question the health system.
Early detection is a huge factor in treatable cancers, and that might be social factors (Brits refusing to go for a checkup), rather than their health-care system.
The biggest difference is between men and women; not between countries. Perhaps women are more likely to get their lumps checked?
From what I have seen about the UK system it is very much based on a cost-benefit tradeoff for treatments. Basically they do all the treatments that fit in the budget ordered by how many extra years of life expectancy each will add on average to the patient. Other countries have much less rational ways of going about it so it may very well be that on the specific case of cancer they are bellow standard just because the standard is irrationally high.
Statistics about life expectancy at birth put them at number 25 slightly above the EU average and the US. They are still bellow a bunch of other European countries and of course life expectancy is a function of more than the health service itself but also the habits of the population in terms of diet, exercise, etc.
The UK actually beats the US and most of Europe on the number of actual cancer deaths. So either its healthcare or its eating/exercise habits is doing enough about cancer prevention to make them perform well on general survival. Maybe they do perform badly once you have cancer though.
I think it fair to show the video of John Stewart destroying Betsy McCaughey, author of both the death panel lies and now this cancer survival rate lies.
"...Two interesting things about this Daily Show interview with GOP health care demagogue Betsy McCaughey: (1) It was cut off in the middle, with Stewart directing viewers immediately after to the website, where the unedited second part would be waiting; and (2) Stewart patiently, politely, and firmly smacked down her exaggerations, misrepresentations and lies. I hope every other newscaster in America was watching...."
Norway in this case. I'm not sure what America's delusion would be.
I've been living here too long to tell.
In any event, I think America's dirty laundry has been thoroughly scrutinized at this point.
Every time I return to Europe most people are all too happy to remind me what precisely is wrong with America (income disparity, minority incarceration rates, healthcare, etc etc).
I agree that continuously pointing out those gets tiring fast (even though they are true). But then the US response tends to be "but on average we make more money". It's great that the US produces more (and can borrow more) and can buy more stuff, but that in itself does not guarantee quality of living. Diminishing returns on happiness of having more money kick in too soon for that to be a full argument.
If Norway is as Sweden/Finland, the food prices can be seen as a result of monopolists/oligopolies, Microsoft-style.
Since the population still mostly read local media, they aren't aware of reality. And it is possible for the food chains to avoid getting the population enlightened using large ad accounts in the media.
This has become a bit better in Sweden over the last decade, but e.g. Finland is still almost as expensive [edit: almost as expensive as Norway].
A fun data point is when the only non-ad supported tv in Sweden found a big scandal about remarking minced meat, almost certainly based on whistleblowers. Those whistleblowers have certainly talked to other media -- and to the controlling government agency for years... without effect.
(I've never heard the term "regulatory capture" in Swedish, it seems our political masters don't want us to know. 1/2 :-)
These comparisons are obviously bogus. If Norway is worse than the US, why do they have a good public healthcare system and a much lower poverty rate? And don't get me started on that slur about 'drug users crowding the streets'. Please, check your facts.
About 'frugal living' and 'underpaid teachers': perhaps we feel rich, precisely because we are satisfied with our ten year old toaster and our home-made lunch. Partly because we don't feel the need to consume-consume-consume, as the US has brainwashed its citizens to do. Partly because of simple cultural differences: Norwegians like to bring their own lunch; Spaniards like to go to a neighbouring lunchroom. The relative cost of said lunchroom has nothing to do with it.
In addition to the other superficial claims presented in the article and exposed here I'd like to point out that the average age of regular cars in Norway is now 10.3 years [1], compared to 9.4 years for the US [2]. Hardly worthy of the emotional statement "they drive around in wrecks".
For bigger cars, SUVs or vans, the age difference is flipped, 6.9 years in Norway and 7.5 years in the US. There is enough difference in the car models between the two continents to explain staring googly-eyed at trucks when you get to the states, without resorting to emotionally inflated statistics.
This article is pretty shallow in my eyes. It adds nothing to any debate (I'm not sure what debate it is supposed to add to) and is full of hyperbole and superficial conclusions based on one person's observations.
Plus I suspect New York is not representative of the whole US, but I could be mistaken.
I had the same "eyes falling out" effect in Germany when I visited Leipzig, a nice city in the former east German parts. It is supposed to be poor compared to Munich (where I used to live), yet all the houses looked so new and shiny. Reason: lots of money from the government for rebuilding (economic improvement plans), and also I think a famous house building scam that let to a huge influx of money into building houses. Not all the housing is put to good use now.
Just to say that not all things are what they seem at face value.
We don't feel the need to consume-consume-consume, and we certainly aren't brainwashed. This is really uncalled for - we do like a certain standard of living, but it doesn't mean we're brainwashed consumption machines born to satisfy an economic purpose as laid out by the federal reserve.
Yes, most of my friends have playstations, flat screen TVs, and leased cars. Some of this stuff is financed by debt. But they do lead a pretty good life and they're not crippled by debt or three backbreaking jobs.
We love to play, and we work hard to do it. It's a different mindset - there is no reason to be insulting.
> This is really uncalled for - we do like a certain standard of living, but it doesn't mean we're brainwashed consumption machines […]
>
> Yes, most of my friends have playstations, flat screen TVs, and leased cars.
See? That's how brainwashing works: you don't realize it. That's the point.
And it's just as easy to say that Europeans have been brainwashed to say things like all Americans are brainwashed to consume, consume, consume. It's a highly condescending argument on several levels to make sweeping statements like that about people who have different motivations for doing what they do.
We might as well all be brainwashed, there's no proving we're not if that's your argument.
The original poster in this thread was being insulting and condescending. There's no other way to look at it, whether he meant to or not.
You do realize the US has one of the highest debt to income ratios in the world. So while your friends aren't drowning in debt, the picture for the rest of the country doesn't look so rosey.
Doesn’t look so bad for Germany anymore if you consider there will be a tomorrow, does it?
I know, this is a simplification to, but it’s up to you to investigate further using a little more trustworthy source than something like “Loans & Debt Consolidation - Get Cash NOW!”
How does buying stuff on credit increase your standard of living? At short notice, this may be the case, but this kind of behaviour is not sustainable. You know, there will be a day when the bills become due. What are you going to do then? Pass them on to your children?
It is really weird that Americans feel “we’re rich, you’re not” because of all the things they “possess” (on credit).
I wonder how many members of these armies of homeless that populate the US streets are where they are because they lived a live today they couldn’t even afford tommorrow.
"Yes, yest... they have great education and great healthcare for everybody BUT ..BUT.. they have to use old furniture and prepare their own meals!!!!!! THE US IS STILL THE BEST"
In the US, putting more people in prison both makes the GDP go up and reduces the number of homeless. Nothing is distorted as GDP statistics or its GDP per capita derivative.
I can get drunk for few euros (certainly less than 5), yet I don't feel rich (neither happy). By which I don't mean the article is completely wrong, just the presented metrics are quite strange.
Bruce Bawer reminds me of a religious zealot, having been confronted with facts forcing him to accept that the world is more nuanced than what the American post-war era he grew up in propounded. The reaction is predictable, but ensues nonetheless.
- Comparing adjusted disposable income between Scandinavia and the US is highly misleading. The disposable income in Scandinavia doesn't need to cover any healthcare, education and other public services. I wonder how much, if any, the difference is once you adjust for that.
- The argument mistakes distribution of wealth with average output per capita. Portugal is in the bottom of the list in the GDP per capita comparison between US states and EU countries. In Portugal there is a somewhat high wage disparity which means that those with high wages can afford to pay those with low wages to get cheap pizza (the example given). The same disparity exists in the US and pizza is cheap too, even though the US GDP per capita is at the other extreme of the comparison. Scandinavian countries have low wage disparity so things are more expensive by comparison. It has nothing to do with the output of the economy.
Basically it is trying to draw conclusions about the strength of the economies based on statistics that don't properly control for very relevant factors. The only good argument is the 2.2% vs 3% GDP growth rates. Considering the article is from 2005, recent events may throw some doubt into that picture. The latest estimates on Wikipedia were 2.6% in Norway and 1.1% in the US.