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US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

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Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#121

Post by lonelappde »

jcheng wrote: post #118
brownbat wrote: post #71

> But debts in the Alpine country are far higher than in the US... Debts make this comparison difficult to make meaningful. A few cases: - Minimum wage earner barely scrapes by but does not seek any credit. - Someone in a high cost of living area takes out a mortgage. - A young neurosurgeon with fresh educational debt takes on a very high paying job. - A billionaire borrows to finance a major real estate project The…

When you take out a loan, it doesn't decrease your net worth, right? If I'm worth $X, then I take out a $1MM loan, at that moment I'm still worth approximately $X (because the $1MM the bank gave me and $1MM I owe the bank cancel each other out). So I'd rank them as: - Billionaire - Home owner - Minimum wage earner - Neurosurgeon

Why is a house an asset but an education isn't? Do you think a potential spouse would pass over the neurosurgeon?

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#122

Post by lonelappde »

rayiner wrote: post #91
Reason077 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But if consumption capacity was equal in Europe, that consumption would shift to something else, such as food and entertainment." Yes. But my point is that not all consumption can be considered equal in terms of the wellbeing and quality of life that it provides. For example, if I was spending $5000 per year on car payments and fuel for my commute to work, that's a lot of 'consumption'. But it isn't something that…

Americans could live in a city where they walk, cycle, or ride a tram to work. For the most part, they don’t want to. They used to have such cities, but they ripped up the tram lines and put in freeways. (Part of that is because most of the US is quite unpleasant to walk or cycle in from a weather point of view. The average high in Amsterdam, a famous cycling city, tops out at 72 degrees. In Atlanta, it’s 80+ from Ma…

Oh, you're right, I'll just go and install a tram line now.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#123

Post by AstralStorm »

rayiner wrote: post #82
Cyph0n wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get from "slower internet" to "there is a pattern"? If you scroll two comments up, you'll see the most crucial difference: free healthcare. Healthcare-related expenses can bankrupt an entire family in the US, even with great health insurance... Then there is free education, but let's leave that aside for now.

That’s also consistent with the pattern. 75% of Americans have either employer paid insurance or Medicare. For those people, premiums and out of pocket costs are on average less than the extra taxes they’d pay in Europe for health insurance: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch... (page 18, showing 5.2% of household income spent on premiums and out of pocket costs). (Note that France doesn’t h…

Sorry, but this is completely factually incorrect. France pays 1100 Euro per year per capita for healthcare.

Private insurance is a tiny cost of average 30 Euro and reimburses you for damages. Does not pay for healthcare. Entirely different kind of insurance.

In US, a single copay with health insurance can take triple this, most common ones are few hundred USD, baseline insurance is still expensive. However, yearly it's... Still more expensive as double the percentage of GDP than France.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#124

Post by tzs »

gnopgnip wrote: post #86
Cyph0n wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get from "slower internet" to "there is a pattern"? If you scroll two comments up, you'll see the most crucial difference: free healthcare. Healthcare-related expenses can bankrupt an entire family in the US, even with great health insurance... Then there is free education, but let's leave that aside for now.

Nearly a quarter of US residents are on medicaid, and have free healthcare. Medical bankruptcy was a big problem, but under the ACA the yearly out of pocket max has all but eliminated these.

> Medical bankruptcy was a big problem, but under the ACA the yearly out of pocket max has all but eliminated these

Not any more [1]. The Trump administration has sufficiently weakened ACA that you can now get insurance that isn't sufficient to prevent you from getting a huge bill if you have the temerity to have a heart attack or something else expensive like that.

Or you might not even have insurance, since they also killed the tax penalty for not having insurance.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012474

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#125

Post by WalterBright »

jcheng wrote: post #118
brownbat wrote: post #71

> But debts in the Alpine country are far higher than in the US... Debts make this comparison difficult to make meaningful. A few cases: - Minimum wage earner barely scrapes by but does not seek any credit. - Someone in a high cost of living area takes out a mortgage. - A young neurosurgeon with fresh educational debt takes on a very high paying job. - A billionaire borrows to finance a major real estate project The…

When you take out a loan, it doesn't decrease your net worth, right? If I'm worth $X, then I take out a $1MM loan, at that moment I'm still worth approximately $X (because the $1MM the bank gave me and $1MM I owe the bank cancel each other out). So I'd rank them as: - Billionaire - Home owner - Minimum wage earner - Neurosurgeon

> When you take out a loan, it doesn't decrease your net worth, right?

Quite right. If you dissipate the borrowed money, though, your net worth will go down by the amount of the loan. If you invest it, and the investment does better than the interest on the loan, your net worth goes up.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#126

Post by AstralStorm »

rayiner wrote: post #114
cadlin wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France pays less for healthcare than the US and gets more. A lot more. To pick a statistic, their maternal mortality rate is 1/3 of the US. Because the US is a wealthier country overall it can waste more money and receive worse results. That isn't an argument in favor the US healthcare system. Also, do you realize that the graph you are citing isn't tracking the cost of US healthcare to a US citizen, it is literally…

The point is that the cost of healthcare doesn’t eat up the income difference between the typical American family and typical European family. Note also that trying to compare health outcomes between countries is extremely difficult. Asians in the US live longer than Asians in countries with excellent healthcare systems like Japan.[1] Puerto Rico has a similar life expectancy to Denmark or Germany, even though if it…

Did the cost match when you add the school debt, a thing that in general does not exist in EU?

Did you use PPP to evaluate value?

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#127

Post by indecisive_user »

lonelappde wrote: post #121
jcheng wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you take out a loan, it doesn't decrease your net worth, right? If I'm worth $X, then I take out a $1MM loan, at that moment I'm still worth approximately $X (because the $1MM the bank gave me and $1MM I owe the bank cancel each other out). So I'd rank them as: - Billionaire - Home owner - Minimum wage earner - Neurosurgeon

Why is a house an asset but an education isn't? Do you think a potential spouse would pass over the neurosurgeon?

A house is a nearly guaranteed asset. The value will likely steadily rise throughout the years, and with good homeowners insurance you'll get paid even if the house is destroyed.

An education guarantees nothing. The neurosurgeon could die, or suffer an injury preventing them from performing surgery, or just plain quit and decide to pursue art instead.

Of course the neurosurgeon has a significantly higher potential future value, but it's an unrealized asset.

Also, it's possible to discharge a mortgage through bankruptcy, while student loans are much more difficult to discharge, so you're effectively stuck with that debt forever regardless of your career choice.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#128

Post by AstralStorm »

rayiner wrote: post #102
ineedasername wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicaid isn't bad, it's better than many bottom-tier private plans, but it's also got some problems. For one, finding a doctor can be hard. Not so much with general practitioners, but definitely with specialists. Also if you're in the higher qualified income band, you can still get stuck with 10 to 20% of the bill, and making 150% of the poverty limit doesn't make you any better equipped to deal with $100,000 in exp…

That’s what the ACA is for! For people up to 400% of the poverty line, the ACA caps premiums at 10% of income. That’s what you’d pay in health insurance taxes in France.

Actually 7% in France, basing it off budget for 2017.

The tax burden is higher because education, public transport, agriculture and social (mostly retirement) are paid in tax rather than mostly privately.

US has the private system for retirement plans and it sometimes fails utterly. The nationalized one does not, though it may not be as big of a payout. And education saddles people with debt, as well as causes cost (admin) inflation.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#129

Post by AstralStorm »

cm2187 wrote: post #85
Cyph0n wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get from "slower internet" to "there is a pattern"? If you scroll two comments up, you'll see the most crucial difference: free healthcare. Healthcare-related expenses can bankrupt an entire family in the US, even with great health insurance... Then there is free education, but let's leave that aside for now.

It’s not free. Taxes in France are massive. It’s one of the highest tax to GDP in the world. That and inflexible labour law also comes at an additional cost: high unemployement and sluggish growth even when the whole world is doing great.

Yes, whole world is doing great, by which you mean China with 6,9%, Romania 6,9%, India with 6,6% and not USA with 2,3%. (Which is better than usual. 2017 numbers.)

Growth is not tied to employment policy, but only cost of labor. It correlates almost 1:1 as selfish big businesses move or outsource where it's cheaper. (Including big tax breaks. USA doesn't have these enough to balance very expensive employment.)

Example from EU: Poland has 4,6% and France 1,8%. Switzerland 1,1% and Finland 2,6%. The number for France is not too dissimilar from USA and not anything special. Poland has baroque labor (improving) and especially tax laws.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#130

Post by AstralStorm »

rndgermandude wrote: post #80
hartator wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the 20% poorest in the US has it better than the average EU middle class. Ref: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20...

That uses consumption data for 2010, coinciding with the year the EU financial crisis really hit and dominated the news, while the financial crisis in the US was already in downswing.

Yes, I've checked data for 2017 and USA does not look too rosy anymore, matching most of western EU.
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