Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are?

I think they have us beat on the reality cooking show front- British Bakeoff is an oddly positive show while the judges are still providing a valuable critique of the contestants skills. Compare this to to Chopped, which just feels rushed and intensely competitive and cutthroat.

> One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry.

This does not dispute the central point of the quoted piece, which is that the quality of life of most Americans is very poor contrast to that of the average person in some subset of European countries. I would wager that most coffee shop employees are more concerned with labor protections, healthcare, social welfare, the ability to afford housing and take vacations than whether their country’s economy is producing “innovative companies” (read: tech startups?). This was certainly true of myself when I worked in food service.

Even so, this point does not stand well on its own. It may be that Europeans are deincentivized from creating enormously overvalued startups because their quality of life is much better (although I question whether this is worth bragging about, from a US standpoint). Nevertheless, I’d consider things like lack of a single market, fragmented languages and cultures, completely different VC environment, and so on to be much more impactful in that regard.

Well, the funny thing is that ‘America’ is the standard in lots of countries, even in places where many things are superior to the US. I’ve been to the US a few times, and the experience was abysmal. I didn’t expect 1Gbps public Wifis in public transportation (well, we have them), but... I mean, super dirty subways and buses that don’t go much (moving only with public transportation and foot was a painful experience), super-slow LTE/WLAN speeds (I mean... weren’t they supposed to be called ‘LTE’?), basically non-existent medical system - (going to the doctor takes a whole day?? We go to the doctor in lunchtime..., and super high prices even with medical insurance), and my list goes on and on.

However in South Korea everybody’s saying.. ‘Hey let’s do it the American way!’

The world is totally insane.

When my company sent me to South America to work, it was pretty revealing how American company culture is toxic.

People from the home office in NY were literally complaining about South Americans getting too many vacation days, 1 hour lunches, and a lot of other perks that are guaranteed by law. All of this despite the south american employees making 30% of the NY salary. The head of HR complained about guaranteed 1 hour lunches for the employees because "she ate lunch at her desk working everyday". They were jealous because it was only a 10 minute walk to a gorgeous beach from the SA office.

I was involved in a lot of discussions with HQ about the office and it became abundantly clear, that all the HR and execs wanted to keep the salaries of South American's low or else they would have "too good of a life" and "live like kings" if they paid them the NY salary, despite things like computers and cars costing like 2x the cost of USA. and while rent was cheaper, the difference in rent was only like 24k a year (1k for an apartment vs 3k). I was still living on my NY salary, and would get constant criticism from the home office that I was living too well, despite all the benefits (access to the beach, nice weather, etc) were free.

It seemed like the entire office thought everything in south america was pennies on the dollar. In reality to lead an equivalent life as the USA (modern apartment, nice neighborhood, eat at nice restaurants, have a nice car), its not really that much cheaper, like 20-30% cheaper. Not 66% cheaper.

Anyways, what really opened my eyes was that was south america. I think we think of South America as being underdeveloped, but my life was very nice there, and it was very very difficult to justify going back to the USA.

And it really opened my eyes, how blatantly envious American HR employees can get when they see the more relaxed lifestyles of other countries and instead of improving themselves, they seek to tear others down.

Yeah, we convince people if they kill themselves for corporate, they'll get a minuscule slice of money from the top. American dream and all that.

At least people in Europe have hobbies.