US vs. Europe: Standard of Living
NY Times | Paul Krugman | Learning From Europe
Europe's economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe "” official economic statistics or your own lying eyes "” the eyes have it.
This is just silly. Its like walking out on a single day and saying, "well, it doesn't seem any hotter to me" as a rebuttal to manmade global warming theory. I am sure I can walk the tourist and financial districts of a lot of European cities with their triumphal centuries-old architecture and somehow be impressed with their wealth. But the number of upscale shopping options on the Champs-Élysées has little to do with the standard of living of the average Frenchman.
Okay, where did you go in London? Covent Garden? St. James? Soho? Westminster? The City?
Oh, you didn't go to North Peckham, or Newham, or Hackney? You went to the rich areas of the most prosperous city in the country, and not, I don't know, Liverpool, or Leicester, or Middlesbrough? No, you've never been to those places, have you?
Well several million people live there, and no offense to them, but they're not quite as charming as the tourist districts in London. I don't think they'd look to kindly on some rich American spending a vacation watching the Changing of the Guard and taking in a show on Haymarket and concluding he knows about their country and their life.
This really gets back to my post the other day on triumphalism. This is EXACTLY why states build pretty high-speed trains and grand municipal buildings and huge triumphal arches -- as a way to distract both their own citizens (and outsiders) from their own well-being relative to others. Its the magician waving something shiny around in his left hand to take your eyes off the right. And it is pathetic that not only does a former Nobel Laureate fall for it, but he doubles down by telling everyone else to fall for it.
Relevant actual data, via Mark Perry (click to enlarge, this is 1999 data from a 2004 Swedish study but I don't think the relative positions have changed):
Triumphal arches and high-speed trains don't make people wealthy. Wal-Mart has done far more to make the average person wealthier than any number of government projects you can mention.
Along these lines, I have said for years that one of the reasons we spend more on health care than Europe is because we can. We are wealthier, and (rationally in my mind) people choose to spend this incremental wealth on their health and well-being.
> “The first job of government…†is a rough simplification. The US is located in one of the most geopolitically peaceful areas of the globe. It spends twice more than any other nation on defense.
Your response is a rough prevarication.
a) There's a reason it's so "geopolitically peaceful", partly due to history and partly due to geography. But the nature of the world is such that this is not a long-term guarantee. And the existence of that military power is one of the reasons why it stays that way.
b) As a world power, the ability to project military force at will is hardly trivial, either in a logistical nor a social sense.
c) While the military has an overt purpose, it has many world-beneficial secondary purposes, too. There are no other nations who can afford to, or do, maintain the aircraft carriers we do. What is an aircraft carrier? It's a self-contained, largely self-sufficient mobile city, is what it is. Go look at where all the aid came from after the Southeast Asian Tsunami five-odd years back -- hint: it wasn't the UN there providing medical services, food, and clean water for people living in an overwhelmed and collapsed infrastructure. I haven't looked into it but I'll lay you huge odds that there is one or more aircraft carriers off the coast of Haiti (or headed there) right now providing services to people who would otherwise be dead or dying with no hope. In short, take away that infrastructure and you're going to instead wind up with people, like France, who couldn't give a rat's ass about helping those outside their nation, and couldn't even if they wanted to.
d) As far as the value of our "exporting military protection" goes, you know, South Korea had a lot of protest marches regarding the American presence there about a decade ago. The American response was to say "OK, you want us out, we're gone". At which point the people and the government there quickly backpedaled -- "What? What? You thot we wuz seriyus 'bout dat? Naw, naw, wuz joke!! Just joke!! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Similarly Japan -- they've complained from time to time, usually when there is an unfortunate incident of US Servicemen acting rather blatantly inappropriately (their outrage is correct, mind you), and we offer to dial back on our presence. There's usually some minor concessions, but we wind up keeping Japan under our umbrella, so that they don't have to pay for their own security out of their pockets.
In short, your grasp of what the military does, primarily, secondarily, and tertiarily, for not just the USA but the world, is woefully blinkered.
Further, there's O'Rourke's observation:
"A nation with a goofy foreign policy needs a very serious policy of defense."
- P.J. O'Rourke, 'Parliament of Whores' -
Glen, I'm not even going to bother with arguing your points, because they're all blatantly ridiculously wrong. A few minutes spent at any of a hundred websites would show how everything you think you know is out-and-out unmitigated crap. You've been fed a self-evident load of equine feces and you've got your head in the feedbag munching away steadily.
If you take the time to provide a source for your statements (no, a single link isn't suitable -- I mean what data are those claims based on), I'll fisk it, otherwise, I'm not going to spend my time attempting to educate you when you appear to lack basic principles of reason.
I will point you to Bill Whittle's essay Rafts.
That essay doesn't directly refute your claim, but it does ask the question which should cause you to seriously doubt what you've said right off the bat -- because the answer to it says that the known reality doesn't match the obvious consequences of your claims.
> How many American apartments compare? My guess: zero.
James: This is largely, in the USA, a matter of the age of the building. That's still common in NYC, for example, because you have a lot of buildings which are old enough that individual bathrooms aren't standard. Most any building built since -- oh, the fifties at a guess -- would have individual bathrooms. I've no idea how much that's the case in Europe, but they're less likely to tear down a huge swath of three to ten city blocks and rebuild the area with new structures, too, I'd suspect. So my bet is that it's still much more the case in Europe than in the USA -- but I'm curious what the likelihood is of a newer building having private baths -- esp. for governmentally-sponsored housing.
AVI, I'd have to hunt for it, but a year or so back there was a study/survey done of which nationalities were the most hospitable to tourists *and* polite AS tourists. The French won hands-down as the worst, and USA, *IF* I recall correctly, wasn't in the top five. Obviously a very subjective assessment but still interesting as to the results.
>> But the French are very proud of Paris, in a way that >does not exist in the US
>
>I grant I haven’t been to Paris, but:
>a) clearly you haven’t been to New York.
>b) Don’t mistake Gallic arrogance for pride. Not the >same thing, but very similar in appearance.
Just to clarify, I was talking about Paris as the capital of France, not it's largest city. I don't think that Americans are proud about Washington the same way that the French are proud about Paris. And I have been to NY, and think it is a very nice city.
Ok, I might have to call BS on that chart you attached. I live in France and definitely way more than 19% of households have microwaves. Plus, wouldn't it make sense to add things like broadband internet adoption, ease/availability of public transportation (yes I know thats a dirty word in the US), etc? If those were added, the US would be way behind in those categories.
Also, if your definition of a high standard of living is owning those things in that chart (clothes dryer, car, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, etc), then you need to get your priorities re-examined. Anyway, another study has the US ranked 7th, under 4 European countries http://www1.internationalliving.com/qofl2010/ (And I disagree with the US's infrastructure score of 100).
In any case, I'd say quality of life is more important to me than standard of living. I could have all the dishwashers and microwaves and cars in the world, but it wouldnt matter if the rest of my life was miserable.
One interesting point in comparing per capita incomes in Europe and the US: Americans do much of their own repairs, lawnmowing, housework,etc. The value of this work does not show up in the per capita income figures. If a person is hired to do the work, it shows up as additional GNP. Has anyone seen estimates of the value of the do-it-yourself work that Americans do? Adding this to the reported GNP would permit a better comparison.
A pointless comment thread if ever there was one. Those native to a non-U.S. nation and those ex-pats who have voluntarily chosen to live outside the U.S., will, by virtue of natural or self-selection, insist that life in country X is better than in the U.S. On the other hand, those who represent the mirror image of the above will support the U.S. as THE place to live. All manner of hard and soft justifications can be marshalled to support either conclusion.
Personally, I find Europeans to be off-putting in the extreme. After all, how is it possible to be arrogant and condescending after having brought forth the 20th century - see WWI, Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, for starters - for the world's entertainment? One necessary adjustments in the U.S. relationship with Europe needs to be the rapid withdrawal of ALL U.S. military forces from Europe. It's about time the looked to their own defense needs. Also, the U.S. must find a way out of it's "free rider" relationship under which Europe pays virtually nothing for the U.S. consumer's subsidy of most original pharmaceutical research through the payment of higher prices. Others, of course, will have a different opinion.
The server might have a different opinion about that.
As for engineers doing "menial labor", I may be biased because I earned my BSEE as an Air Force electronics technician, but my experience is that an engineer that doesn't work with his hands is a poor engineer.