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America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

fortune.com

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Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#121

Post by ghusto »

dzonga wrote: post #65
DarkNova6 wrote: post #2

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.

yeah the hostility started recently with trump and his ilk - fighting for nationalism of a bygone era. if you can afford it - the US has excellent healthcare, you can also get organic food and dare I say better housing, private infra. what the US could/should improve on is have public clinics ie for preventative and quick care. public hospitals in the long run have many problems. in the U.K for example - I used priva…

Housing is the only one I can agree on. The place is so damn big that outside of places like New York, you can get 2/3 times the space for the same money, in a lot of places even more!

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#122

Post by oblio »

TomK32 wrote: post #78
oblio wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you know that it's not dangerous based on... Gut feeling? Have you read the health warning in detail and disagree from an informed point of view or are you just generally opposed to regulation? Even better, can you link the bike model and health warning and let others take a look at it for you? Or just your neighborhood chat bot :-)

The DOT has a list of interesting studies on the active transportation in the form of walking and cycling https://www.transportation.gov/mission/health/active-transpo... You can also search for studies that compare the societal cost/benefit of using a car vs a bicycle. The generally accepted conclusion is that cars have a cost while cycling has a benefit for society.

That's not what I'm saying. Based on OPs phrasing, their specific bike was marked as a health hazard. Maybe their bike is painted with lead based paint. There could be a million reasons a specific model could be unhealthy.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#123

Post by dqv »

glimshe wrote: post #111
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #97

I believe Americans are naive to the bad deal they're currently sitting with. It is the most materially wealthy place on earth, yet with terrible distribution – this is not a technical problem, it is a cultural problem. My favorite example is to describe a suburb. A lot of people in the world do not know how dystopian an American suburb is: many residents do not know their neighbors, acquiring food requires driving a…

I love suburbia. I grew up in "walkable residential neighborhoods with cafes/restaurants/shops where neighbors interact" outside the US. Thank you, but no thank you. Crowded, nosy judgemental people, noisy and small properties with constant fights with neighbors. You're projecting you personal tastes onto others and thinking everybody else is getting a bad deal.

So the stereotypes are true. My friend in elementary school told an amusing story about his friend, in a Swedish family, who moved from our nice suburb to a suburb in another state, one like the grandparent is describing. They didn't understand why there was such a vast difference between the two. It seemed obvious to me, but I guess it's not obvious to foreigners.

You ran right past the GP's statement too:

> yet with terrible distribution

applies to the quality of a suburb too. Obviously. You wouldn't catch me dead in a Texas suburb or Florida suburb.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#124

Post by mcphage »

petcat wrote: post #16
DarkNova6 wrote: post #2

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-…

> 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

Even if it's true now, I wonder for how long—insurance is getting worse and worse every year.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#125

Post by dqv »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #102
roenxi wrote: post #12

> 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 me…

Salary alone is meaningless if you don't factor in purchase-power-parity and other quality of living aspects. E.g. a lot of people are happy to move to Denmark, and accept a paycut because they are leading with their social facilities and family support. Salary alone will not conjure good infrastructure

Yes, at the lower end of those salaries, you have to do things (and this is one single example btw) like have roommates, which drastically increases your housing instability. Why? Because you have to rely on your roommates' ability to pay rent. If they don't, what happens? You lose your PrIvIlIgE to live there! Most places in the US do not have protections for this. So you can try really hard to find another roommate, but you have a very limited amount of time to do so (basically until the next rent payment). So then you get evicted. Now your ability to find a new place to live is damaged because you have a permanent "evicted" mark on your credit/tenant report. Oh, and of course, the landlord can go to court and try to get the court to force you to pay the remainder of the rent or at least continue to pay the rent until they lazily find a new tenant. So now you're financially damaged too. There are so many footguns like this in the US that people, on HN especially, are ignorant to. Imagine trying to keep a job while also dealing with all these shenanigans. Can you even get time off work to go to the court hearing? If you don't, the landlord can get a default judgement.

Oh and sorry because this is HN and people will automatically assume I mean owning the property and renting rooms out to others, I mean both people are renters in this case.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#126

Post by mcphage »

logicchains wrote: post #38
throwaway27448 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth inequality itself causes a great number of ills in this country. We should absolutely aim to lower this gap as a goal in itself.

Wealth inequality doesn't cause ills, envy does. Envy should be regarded as a character defect, a sin, not something to be elevated to policy. You're not poorer because someone's richer than you, and indeed policies aimed to reduce wealth inequality will actually make you poorer, that's why average European salaries are much lower than US ones.

> Wealth inequality doesn't cause ills, envy does.

No, it really is the wealth inequality.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#127

Post by oblio »

entrope wrote: post #88
oblio wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you know that it's not dangerous based on... Gut feeling? Have you read the health warning in detail and disagree from an informed point of view or are you just generally opposed to regulation? Even better, can you link the bike model and health warning and let others take a look at it for you? Or just your neighborhood chat bot :-)

I've read the list of materials that California knows cause cancer and birth defects. It lists things that people encounter every day. Alcoholic beverages, aloe leaf extract and aspirin are some of the most notable examples from the "A" section. https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/proposition-65-list

Asbestos, leaded gasoline, lead based paint, etc were things encountered everyday in the past. This is how science progresses and how our life expectancy and active life expectancy go up.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#128

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

cyberjerkXX wrote: post #61
simianwords wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classic reply to this is that inequality reduces the agency of people to make decisions in the society - IOW it causes _power_ inequality. But the reply to that is that it is orthogonal to the discussion. Power should be distributed in a way that increases efficiency and not just for the virtue of doing so.

All human relationships have inequalities. Attempting to use the government to destroy hierarchies is utopian bullshit. It always leads to worse outcomes than intendent because humans are imperfect. Intentions should never be the measure of success, only outcomes.

> Attempting to use the government to destroy hierarchies is utopian

yes, "destroy hierarchies" is utopian. But that's a complete straw man version of "reduce very high levels of inequality that have highly visible political impacts".

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#129

Post by glimshe »

dqv wrote: post #123
glimshe wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love suburbia. I grew up in "walkable residential neighborhoods with cafes/restaurants/shops where neighbors interact" outside the US. Thank you, but no thank you. Crowded, nosy judgemental people, noisy and small properties with constant fights with neighbors. You're projecting you personal tastes onto others and thinking everybody else is getting a bad deal.

So the stereotypes are true. My friend in elementary school told an amusing story about his friend, in a Swedish family, who moved from our nice suburb to a suburb in another state, one like the grandparent is describing. They didn't understand why there was such a vast difference between the two. It seemed obvious to me, but I guess it's not obvious to foreigners. You ran right past the GP's statement too: > yet wit…

You can apply the same argument to wealthy dense neighborhoods in affluent areas full of designer coffee and organic produce vs dense neighborhoods in poor areas of a city with monthly food poisoning at local restaurants. Vast difference, go check Latin America for examples of terrible dense neighborhoods.

My argument is that not even nice dense neighborhoods are that nice compared to nice suburbia.

It's a matter of the person's life values and I believe the majority wouldn't necessarily pick the nice dense neighborhoods over nice suburbia. Also, I'd pick bad suburbia over bad inner cities.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#130

Post by rainingmonkey »

petcat wrote: post #73
iamben wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK: A dentist will see you for an emergency appointment pretty quickly. I can usually get a routine appointment within a few weeks, but if it's a routine check-up I don't mind scheduling it for a few weeks/a month out. If I'm going private I can usually get a routine appointment same week. For more urgent enquiries with an NHS doctor I can usually get a phonecall next day, and they'll ask me to come in if it's seriou…

Aren't NHS medical workers in a constant state of protest over low wages and bad working conditions? I know the doctor/nurse brain drain from Canada and the UK to the US used to be really bad. I haven't seen what the statistics are recently. [0] https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/02/19/uk-nhs-doctor-s...

This is largely due to deliberate underfunding by a succession of governments taking ~~bribes~~ lobbying from private healthcare firms.

https://privatisation.everydoctor.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/...

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