451–460 of 619 posts
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My guess would be agricultural subsidies more than food standards.
Really? The US spends about 1% of its budget on agricultural subsidies compared to the EU's 40%.
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It's the case not just in Korea and Japan but in most cities outside of America. It's one of American peculiarities, like checks or no public health care. China has a fantastic subway system in most big cities, for example. I once took a subway ride from the Shenzhen airport to the Hong Kong border, crossed the border, switched to another subway and arrived in downtown Hong Kong. That's around 65km (40 miles) by publ…
There is public health care in US. Medicare for old people, Medicaid for poor people, and anyone without insurance can go to the ER. It may not be great, but it does exist.
So Americans are already paying for socialised health care, they're just not receiving it.
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I live in Europe (in Prague right now) and I never needed to own a car here. I would say it depends on the city in Europe. However, if you occasionally happen to be outside of the city center where only cars go you would call Uber. I am fine with that when 90% of my daily transport is covered by public transport.
I live in Germany, and use the bike, e-scooter/bikes/... and public transport for everything. I have owned a car before, and I did not use those other transportation methods any less. We don't own a car anymore because it does not make economic sense for us. When we need to travel by car inside the city, we just use Uber (~30 EUR/month is what we currently pay). When we need a car for a couple of hours to pick up stu…
I occasionally drive a 20 year old Opel that was purchased 7 years ago for €2500. It works great. I ride my bike most of the time, but it's really handy to have a car to haul kids or heavy/bulky stuff.
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This seems like a pedantic point. The US AFAIK is the only healthcare system that is as dysfunctional as it is in the first world.
While traveling outside the US, I have found many people think Americans are cold and heartless and just let people die. It is an understandable conclusion the way people talk about the US system in the media and internet, but it also isn't true. The US has dysfunctional, public healthcare but it isn't so dysfunctional that you just die if you fall or get an ear infection without insurance. So saying the US has "no p…
So there's plenty of drama. Medical bankruptcy in particular is something that I don't think occurs anywhere else.
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You can walk in SF, I also did it, but the difference is that you don't really see much of the city if you do, compared to Berlin, London, or Tokyo. In those cities you can go from pretty much anywhere in the city to anywhere in less than an hour with public transport and on foot. Less than half an hour if you restrict yourself to the touristy center area. That is just not possible in SF.
>You can walk in SF, I also did it, but the difference is that you don't really see much of the city if you do What are you talking about? The first time I visited SF I just stumbled upon Haight-Ashbury and Japantown by walking around.
I’m personally not a huge fan of driving everywhere. But I wonder whether HN’s view on this isn’t out of touch with the average middle class American’s. The average American commute is 48 minutes round trip, significantly shorter than France (71 minutes), Italy (65 minutes), or Spain (61 minutes): https://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF2_6_Time_spent_travelling... That’s mainly because Europe has higher public transit us…
> where middle class people can afford big houses with a pool And where each person (in the country) consumes twice as much energy as an average French person does [1] and more than 3 times as much water [2] The "American way of life" is not sustainable. Mind you, many French can afford a house with a pool as well. The problem is in fact that they do buy houses with pools these days... There were 700k private pools i…
I lived in a city with extensive public transportation infrastructure (Moscow) for 7 years without a car. TBH, I would not trade my current suburban US lifestyle for a high density city. Want groceries? Gotta carry them in all the way from the store (which usually within walking distance, but still, shit's heavy unless you buy groceries every day, which can be quite wasteful). Job not within walking distance (which i…
The wheel is 5,000 years old. How did you spend 7 years walking to the grocery store without realizing you could buy a cart instead of carrying your groceries by hand? Also I live in a dense city and have a 10 minute subway commute. A regular city lifestyle does not involve a 2 hour commute, you just lived too far from work for your own good.
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I tend to agree, but I think it's worth considering that public transit commutes might be longer because people find time on public transit more pleasant, and are willing to do more of it. To look at two extremes, 45 minutes of bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go driving is a lot less compelling than 45 minutes of reading on a commuter train with a comfortable seat.
Have you actually commuted long distance > 70 Miles each way? I worked out in the UK it costs (after allowing for tax) £10k pa to commute the 70 miles to central London - and thats not counting the costs of the extra hour and a half out of your day.
Plus house prices/rents are cheaper too.
I'm so glad I live basically on the East Coast mainline, it's the only decent line in the entire country.
I’m personally not a huge fan of driving everywhere. But I wonder whether HN’s view on this isn’t out of touch with the average middle class American’s. The average American commute is 48 minutes round trip, significantly shorter than France (71 minutes), Italy (65 minutes), or Spain (61 minutes): https://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF2_6_Time_spent_travelling... That’s mainly because Europe has higher public transit us…
I would like to see what data you assumption that public transit is slower than car is based on but I'm quite sure it's not true. From my experience, car as always been slower than walking + public transport. And much more painful and stressful. Those numbers might also mean that having a good public transport infrastructure allows people to work from further away than car does. Comparing salaries is also quite a bro…
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The French have the RIB system, wherein you can send a snapshot of what your account details are, and the bills are automatically deducted from there. In practice, that means you need to use cheques MUCH less frequently than in the US. What's worse, the US doesn't have an easy way to transfer money electronically between banks! Thus requiring even more cheques.
Why would you need checks at all if you can just pay by card or transfer money using your bank online page?