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Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

economist.com

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Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#441

Post by anon291 »

mandmandam wrote: post #374
anon291 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big question is how do we get the bottom percentage to have a life where they don't have to struggle to find a place to live and making sure they never go hungry? I'm sorry this sort of thing is ridiculous. Are you European? The vast majority of American cities have multiple organizations attempting to give away food and unable to find takers. Our own church throws away so many pounds of food that we receive fr…

The US has 13 million hungry children, whether OP is from Europe or the Moon. That's cool your church throws away food and your local homeless people aren't literally starving, but we don't need to rely on anecdata for this one.

My mother was a public school teacher in a very poor district. Realistically, the social science researchers that study these things are often well-off academics who have no idea about the reality on the ground. The majority of hungry children are due to flat out parental neglect. Should the parents be interested in availing themselves of the resources, they would have food for their kids. Unfortunately, the social scientists keep telling us to spend more money despite decades of that not working.

I mean... if a parent leaves a child in the home and doesn't come back for days at a time and the child is hungry, despite social programs to pay for that child's food... is that a problem with food availability or parental neglect?

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#442

Post by HDThoreaun »

tormeh wrote: post #68
marianatom wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are walkable US cities, and one can move to NY, Chicago, Boston, Seattle or its outskirts. However, people choose to stay in the suburbs because they can afford it.

Isn't it the other way around? People have to stay in the suburbs because they can't afford to move to NYC?

not in chicago

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#443

Post by HDThoreaun »

tormeh wrote: post #63
marianatom wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lower life expectancy in US in general can be attributed to a more unhealthy diet and less walking, which is on the flip side due to US's economic success - affordance for more food and richer food, as well as affordance for car as transportation. Another attribution is the larger amount of immigrants, which as a segment has lower income level and thus lower life expectancy

Most industrialized countries have abundant food and access to cars. That's not the issue.

That's very different from choosing to live unhealthy lifestyles.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#444

Post by anon291 »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #348
anon291 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big question is how do we get the bottom percentage to have a life where they don't have to struggle to find a place to live and making sure they never go hungry? I'm sorry this sort of thing is ridiculous. Are you European? The vast majority of American cities have multiple organizations attempting to give away food and unable to find takers. Our own church throws away so many pounds of food that we receive fr…

Ok, that may be but hunger and homelessness is still an issue in the US [0]. Why are there so many people living in the streets of the big cities? I live in a large city in the US. I see streets with tents on the sidewalks with people living in them. The failure is drugs, mental health issues, people unable to understand how to work the system, people unable to work, people just unwilling to work and whatever else. S…

> Why are there so many people living in the streets of the big cities?

Because the US is an extremely decadent society and people have a lot of free time to become addicted to drugs. In my home city of Portland, where we have a huge homeless problem, a solid portion of the homeless actually come from families with higher-than-median income, and are choosing to be homeless. I just recently went to a talk by a local homeless non-profit group and the social worker flat out said the majority of the people he interacts with do not want treatment. They exist on the street simply because the city tolerates it.

> Something failed in their lives.

Yes... indeed. The United States is too rich and this is a 'we have too much money' problem, and a 'too much freedom' problem. No one is willing to do what's necessary to force the homeless to live in a civilized, hygienic manner.

Look.. my family is from a third world country. Whenever we visit... we see true homelessness. True homelessness is when families are simply too poor to be able to afford housing and live in slums. This looks nothing like the homeless in Portland, who are all single men / occassional single women. These are mentally addled drug addicts, not simply 'normal' people down on their luck. Contrary to what the activists say, poverty itself does not cause people to behave this way. In my parent's home country, the poor homeless behaved normally, they just didn't have homes, and should one give them enough money, they would move into one. In Portland, no one wants to move into a home, which is why we have empty beds every single night.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#445

Post by j7ake »

pasabagi wrote: post #377
j7ake wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who did JK Rowling underpay to get to the top ? People can make money through success in positive sum games, which wouldn’t require exploiting other people.

Sure. It's just not the norm. JK Rowling is essentially one of a kind. The tech sector is an outlier too, in that it is normal for founders to be significant technical contributors. In most of the economy, rich people become rich through rent seeking.

If the problem is people gaining through rent seeking, then attack rent seeking itself, rather than rich people in general.

There are poor people who make money through rent seeking too, by playing zero sum games. These zero summers should be targeted rather than the entrepreneurs, artists, writers, and musicians who play positive sum games.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#446

Post by dhosek »

quicklime wrote: post #266
PostOnce wrote: post #166

My 2 cents, some of the reasons America succeeds: (fact) America is a single market with a single language with basically a single set of regulations. Expansion is cheap in America. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to expand to another US city than it does to expand to Norway or New Zealand; but for a company in those countries, expansion is very expensive, expanding requires new laws, regulations, business entiti…

I do agree with many of your points here, but just to nitpick... > (fact) Americans are ambitious to a fault...9 to 5 in the suburbs is not an endgame for me. So you state this as a fact about Americans in general, but then use yourself as the only proof. Isn’t 9 to 5 in the suburbs basically the end goal that most Americans dream of? I definitely think that Americans are more entrepreneurial than most, but other cul…

> I definitely think that Americans are more entrepreneurial than most, but other cultures are equally ambitious in different ways.

My anecdotal experience is that the Mexicans¹ I have known have been way more entrepreneurial than the Americans. If the Spanish-speaking Americas were to establish economic union a la the E.U., I suspect that they would become the dominant economy in the world in a generation.

⸻

1. Speaking here, specifically, of Mexicans living in Mexico and not immigrants to the U.S., although come to think of it, the immigrants are likewise also highly entrepreneurial, but this is a self-selecting segment of the population who are willing to undergo great hardship and go to a whole other country, suffer discrimination and struggle with living outside their language and culture to make a better living for themselves. Which, of course, is true of the vast majority of immigrants to the U.S. which is probably a big factor in American (U.S.) entrepreneurship.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#447

Post by epolanski »

refurb wrote: post #418
epolanski wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not worked in America, but I have worked with Americans so this is hard for me to confirm, but I simply think that weaker work-related laws simply lead to people having on average more fear of losing job and thus there's more internal/social pressure. Anyway I did travel America though and lived 7 months in Ohio (went to OSU for exchange) and I don't know in which fields do you think where expectations are hig…

I'm speaking of professional white collar jobs. The kind of jobs where you can work independently, nobody is really keeping track of what you're doing and it's not hard to blow off work without causing concern. I agree that service jobs I don't see much of a difference, but I assume in those jobs you can't really slack off without it being a problem really quick.

Could you make examples? Do you think European bankers work less hard than their american counterparts? Or who does that?

European software engineers? Or is it European lawyers that do less? Or accountants?

It seems to me like you're overgeneralizing.

While I don't doubt that US can have a more competitive nature compared to many countries (in Europe we care much less about status or what other people think about our car and how big is our house, we aren't that insecure) I still think that the scenario you present is just an average where there's more incentives for great performers and low performers to perform better, but the median isn't different at all.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#448

Post by tambourine_man »

coryrc wrote: post #309
tambourine_man wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most things, it depends. There’s no money you can pay to get a donated organ faster in most decent countries. There are treatments too expensive for even the best health plans and are only available through government sponsored systems. You couldn’t buy yourself a vaccine ahead of anyone else for any price during the covid peak, etc. Health is as much a collective issue as it is an individual one.

Those things are all available to the ultra-wealthy. For your last example: https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/03/how-rich-and-privileged-...

That's why I prefaced the statements with “most decent countries”, etc. The U.S. health care system doesn't qualify as decent for the richest country on earth in the XXI century, unfortunatly.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#449

Post by dzonga »

dhosek wrote: post #446
quicklime wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree with many of your points here, but just to nitpick... > (fact) Americans are ambitious to a fault...9 to 5 in the suburbs is not an endgame for me. So you state this as a fact about Americans in general, but then use yourself as the only proof. Isn’t 9 to 5 in the suburbs basically the end goal that most Americans dream of? I definitely think that Americans are more entrepreneurial than most, but other cul…

> I definitely think that Americans are more entrepreneurial than most, but other cultures are equally ambitious in different ways. My anecdotal experience is that the Mexicans¹ I have known have been way more entrepreneurial than the Americans. If the Spanish-speaking Americas were to establish economic union a la the E.U., I suspect that they would become the dominant economy in the world in a generation. ⸻ 1. Spea…

what makes america great, is the current system or ie rule of law and institutions. those yeah are being destroyed bit by bit. by oligarchs and nefarious individuals. but in terms of laws / institutions that are not easily influenced by current politics - america is still ahead.

mexico etc the courts etc are easily corrupted. hence they can never be #1.

same for every other poor country.

the other country that I can think of with almost comparable laws to the states is the uk i.e favourable to enterprise -- but they're not doing enough to encourage labor participation

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#450

Post by JohnBooty »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #345
JohnBooty wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive the nitpick, but absolutely nowhere near 80% of Americans are encountering homeless on a regular basis. Homelessness in particular and inequality in general are major problems! I don't mean to sweep that under the rug! However, I don't think it's true that anywhere near a majority of Americans encounter homeless people on a daily basis. Something like 80% of Americans live in an urban setting Yes, for the Cen…

I just looked up the math and this is probably right. It looks like 1 in 3 Americans live in a city of >100K people, which, again, just in my experience, is where you’d be hard pressed to not encounter a homeless person. This however probably skews higher when we factor in things like working age adults vs the total population.

Even within large cities that have many homeless people, the homeless are not evenly distributed. Police often keep them out of "desirable" shopping and business areas, and homeless often cluster in camps.

I'm most familiar with Philadelphia where you'll either see multiple homeless people every day... or rarely. Depends on where you live and work. Every other city I've been to in my life seems similar.

Anyway, I don't want to get too far in the weeds with my nitpickery. I don't even remember what we were originally talking about!

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