I think back to the World Cup with a unified social media message about how awesome American air conditioning is.
Like, that meme was astroturfed right? People in Europe don't talk like that or act like that.
And we also had foreigners from all around the world (Japanese, Korean, etc. etc.) come and be all Costco is amazing or other tidbits of pro-Americanism.
I dunno, something just felt off by it. There's clearly something going on and it doesn't feel completely natural.
It's fine to like America and be patriotic and all. But for it all to strike at the same time with extremely similar messaging? Even memes had more diverse concepts than what happened.
We are IMO in the age of AI boosted memes where people are trying to form large scale reality distortion fields.
I'm from the US, but work has brought me into contact with people from all over the planet. An Austrian friend of mine once asked me "Why are you Americans always trying to sell something? Even when you're not, you're all greedy salesmen."
This has stuck with me for 3 decades now. Because it's true.
I think a lot of strange cultures talking to the rest of the world can feel like that -- especially as it's not necessary how those cultures talk to themselves. And visitors to a country often have a fairly predictable set of wow! (or wtf?) moments. So when there's a moment like a World Cup or Olympics you just see a lot of simultaneous commenting about stuff that isn't usually in the discourse. A lot of UK people (I'm British) fall into a fairly united pattern when addressing strangers about their country: talking up the NHS, queuing, the full english breakfast. Visitors to Britain will love double-decker buses, funny politeness and euphemism, everyday comedy etc, etc.
The air conditioning, Costco, sports complexes. even things like a gun show, or a silly Texas parade, are very often what tourists *individually talk about when they visit the US for the first time.
But I've been an American for decades. I _KNOW_ how foreigners talk about USA.
* Big portions of our meals? Check. If some European were taking pictures or talking up the SuperSize meal at McDonalds then yeah, that's "normal".
* Mega-Highways? Check. Our roads are a marvel to everyone (please ignore our lack of public transit. But at least we have highways). Both the shear size and scale, not just of the roads but also of our cars.
* Gun Ranges? Yeah, that's normal depending on which culture they came from. Some people like hunting and gun ranges.
* Size of the country? (2 hour drive is just one state over). Big road trips? Yeah.
Etc. etc. I already KNOW what foreigners think of my country.
But freaking air conditioning? No. Even poor Filipinos have air conditioning and aren't really wow'd by it these days. Certainly not in 2026. Filipinos will talk about maybe the "new air con bus" (in contrast to the Jeepny they used to take), but that's about how the Philippines has improved... a point of pride for the Filipinos and not an item of foreign wonder when visiting the USA.
If there's wonder or exasperation, its actually a negative. Filipinos find the air conditioning settings way too cold here in the USA to the point of annoyance. They're not "happy" about it like how it happens in these meme videos. If someone's skin is used to 80F, 90F or higher temperatures, sitting in 68F all the time is downright uncomfortable.
Europeans? Japanese? Koreans? They're even richer than Filipinos. They aren't going to be wow'd by this at all. They already have access to air conditioning, maybe not quite as much as us Americans but its not really a point of exasperation or wonder.
Europe and the Philippines have very different climates, though. Most of Europe hasn't historically had the kind of weather where you need air conditioning, hence why many (most?) people still don't have it, whereas the Philippines is obviously tropical. Climate change is just pushing Europe into hotter weather where now air conditioning is, suddenly, worth considering.
I've been to Europe. (Portugal, Spain, and Germany)
They have air conditioning, they just don't leave it running. Its not a point of wonder or amusement. The World Cup meme was so obviously fake to anyone who has actually met Europeans or other foreigners.
A lot of the time individuals in Europe literally don’t have air conditioning. We were in Germany and Italy during a heatwave this summer. In Munich I managed to find a hotel with aircon, in Italy I didn’t. Massive museums in Munich don’t have air conditioning. We visited a friend who lives in a small town in Bavaria. He doesn’t have air conditioning, neither do any of his neighbors. Keep in mind that the heatwave hit like 100 degrees. My European colleagues were visibly exhausted by the heat in our meetings because, again, they don’t have air conditioning.
I’m not saying it’s a technology that’s foreign to the continent, obviously not. I don’t know if this wonder was genuine (I didn’t see that, I mostly saw a lot of Americans expressing contempt of Europeans for not having aircon). But A LOT of places you’d expect to have air conditioning don’t have it, and a LOT of homes don’t have it. It’s not that they simply leave it off in 100 degree heat. Arguably because they simply haven’t needed it until the last few years. But the fact remains.
It’s the same here in San Francisco. Most homes don’t have air conditioning because it’s so rarely necessary. Things get pretty uncomfortable for a week or two if we have a heatwave and I think about buying a window unit then it’s over and I forget for another year.
It’s just a completely different climate to the eastern US where humidity makes even moderate heat unbearable for much of the year.
> they simply haven’t needed it until the last few years
Correct, and that's all there is to it. And once there's a general acceptance on the continent that global warming has permanently pushed summer temperatures into the danger zone, people will start installing aircon. It's a shame, but it's a direct consequence of the damage that humanity has done to our planet.
I'm very glad that I live somewhere where even now, it almost never gets hotter than 25°C.
Europeans have AC in every car and many hotels. We know what it is and that it can be nice in summer. Sure I don't have one at home but I'm not going to go wild over a normal household appliance.
You know why the AC is not common in residential buildings? Because they are build with stones and concrete and can handle a few days of heat during the summer. Close the windows and curtains during the day and let fresh air at night and you'll be fine during the summer in Germany.
I can't speak to your experience directly, and obviously Europe is not a monolith, but I did read this recently:
> Only some twenty-five per cent of French homes have air-conditioning, compared with around sixty per cent in Italy and eighty-nine per cent in the United States.
AC is common enough for everyone to have seen and felt AC. Especially at malls, busses or other public places. USA has more AC but that's not really going to wow anyone.
Even in the Philippines, there's plenty of hotels with AC if the locals want to spend extra money on a vacation. But more realistically, Filipinos will get large amounts of AC at movie theaters or malls. Even if its not something Filipinos can afford in their individual homes, its something that they'd have come across in their daily lives, and it wouldn't be something that they get "wow'd" by.
Fewer than 25% of homes in the Philippines have AC, and I promise you that the climate in the Philippines is much much worse than even USA. Far more humidity and heat. Europe has milder temperatures than USA so they don't need AC (but they have enough money / luxuries that they can afford AC in public places like malls or busses).
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But seriously, have you met anyone who is used to living without AC as they enter the USA and all of our AC? They actually and actively complain about things being too cold all the time. Its a point of discomfort, not a thing to make a Youtube video and brag about.
My office has a routine for entertaining foreign employees who come over for onboarding and that's basically it. Costco, gun range, a restaurant specifically known for it's huge portions, etc.
I assumed those memes were just intended as tongue-in-cheek teasing. Like yeah, the best thing about the US is the AC and the big box stores. Our detachment from nature and consumerism. This is just light-hearted teasing that lines up with stereotypes about us.
The typical way to honestly compliment the US is to say the national parks are nice, right?
The author needs to understand that X/Twitter is its own bubble that does not reflect any real shared cultural or political sentiment in the United States. On November 2nd the conventional Twitter wisdom was that polls were actually over-estimating Democrats and that Republicans were within striking distance of a "Reverse 2022" (No wave; modest D gains only). It was clear a day later that it was an illusion - polls were actually grossly underestimating Democratic performance, with some missing by 15 points, like the HarrisX/Harvard pollster.
Twitter, as they say, is not real life. It's just a broken clock that might be right twice a day by happenstance.
I thought we were long past the cultural moment where "argument happening on twitter" was considered noteworthy news.
I rarely complain about the contents of the HackerNews front page (people can upvote whatever they want) but I'm confused why this is even interesting. One could find a group of people on twitter saying anything about anything and write an article about it.
Reddit and YouTube is also completely dissociated from reality (and I would assume same goes for all other social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, etc.).
Outside of small, or hobby oriented communities it's so clicks/engagement optimized that the "boring reality" loses out to manifactured content.
> Reddit and YouTube is also completely dissociated from reality (and I would assume same goes for all other social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, etc.).
Yes I think it's pretty universal. But it cannot be all blamed on algorithms -- HN is often unhinged too. Way better moderated than Reddit, but there is still a pretty large disconnect between what looks like reality here and what I see when I step out into the real world.
It's because "boring reality" is the least real thing in the world. No one can experience statistical trends but everyone can relate to a story.
I don't know about you but I see myself and everyone else in my life as a character, with a role in the life-story of every person they meet. And none of these stories are boring. Everyone in the world has a nuanced personality, unique memories and almost infinitely complex mind.
It only becomes boring when you abstract all of that away, to create models (like physics or economics) that are often very useful but don't relate that much to lived experience. The "dissociated" stories win because they're closer to what people actually see.
The middle class in the west collectively has lost purchasing power the last decades, lately that has started to become too apparent, and on both sides of the Atlantic now, there are people who try to deny it. It’s sad no matter if they’re Americans or Europeans
oops, you're right. It's just the purchasing power for life's most important things that has declined: housing, education, health care. But we sure do have cheaper TVs, so all's right with the world.
I mean we only have to wait, what, another decade for the housing crisis to sort itself out, right? Because by then the TV boxes will be large enough to fit a family of four comfortably.
I love how dishonest your comment is. Why did you choose TVs instead of e.g. food? Look at stats how many people were malnourished few decades ago vs now. It’s not just TVs.
Shall I continue? Cars, car repair services, home repair services, major systems for the home (hvac, etc), restaurant meals, electricity, fuel, insurance, …
I'm sorry but if you think looking at a photo of American crowd is good way to determine that more Americans are malnourished now than they were few decades ago then I don't even know what to say.
As a Europoor, I often contemplate trying my luck in America. Doubling or tripling my salary and halving my tax burden sounds lovely. Also not having to learn another language.
But at the same time, my life is so Euromaxxed it's hard to justify changing. I wake up at 8, run or cycle to work in 10-20 mins, or just WFH. I can go into the forest within 15 mins and mountain bike, hike, road cycle whatever.
The grocery stores are great. I literally walk there daily and pick fresh stuff for what i'm cooking that day. Bread is great. We get regional products from other countries fresh.
Healthcare is free. I have a safety net. Don't need a car. I get loads of leave. I'm not so stressed out. Idk, I know people in the US with WAAAAY more purchasing power but they live way less "idealistic" lives if I can put it that way.
But the US is a big place, and so is Europe. I'm sure there are great and shite places everywhere.
For a fair comparison, you also have to compare "salary minus cost of living"; this in particular means subtracting cost for rent and health insurance, too, in both cases.
You additionally have to keep in mind that you have to build up monetary reserves if the risk of getting fired is higher in the USA than in many European countries.
The most happy person I ever met was an elderly Afghan in a mountain village.
He got up before the sun came up and very carefully approached me with two wooden bowls as I was in full combat gear, and drank a bit of milk he carefully poured into his bowl to show me it’s safe to drink, before filling the bowl he gave me and his own with each half of the milk he got.
I did take out my emergency Snickers bar from a front pocket, cut a small piece and ate it to show him the same respect, then sliced it up and put half the slices in his bowl, swirling them around with the knife so the milk would get some of the Snickers flavour, and we watched the sun go up over the most beautiful and deadly patch of land in the country, eating a bowl of goat milk with Snickers. It was no Michelin experience.
But when I looked to the right, he looked at peace with himself and the world and was joyfully chewing every tiny piece of Snickers.
It takes very little to be genuinely happy, and people tend to forget that, myself included.
I pity all these people on Twitter/X, who have truly forgotten that they are sitting in a golden cage if you live in either the EU, US or UK, and who have lost that basic understanding of what the essence of the human experience is.
One day you’ll figure out by yourselves what setting the wrong priorities in life will have cost you.
The only things you should be rich in are knowledge and loved ones. And we all live in a world where it never mattered less how much money you have to acquire both of those assets.
I've had a similar experience with a shepherd in far-away hills in Europe. He lived in a tiny cabin, had little more than his staff and a bucket. He'd be sitting on a boulder, dogs by his side, watching over his flock.
I bet his family owned their land and I wouldn't call that very little, it has become unobtainable for most of us and no amount of fancy things can replace that.
Had Afghanistan not won the war he probably would been evicted by some landlord in NYC just like the poor Palestinians.
This post is an awkward read because it carries an outdated tacit assumption that the bulk of this posting activity is organic engagement - as opposed to merely some new flavor of shit being thrown at the wall by bot-propagandists, which then happens to resonate with some small segment of strung out people. The analysis still does apply for why those specific people are drawn to such a refrain (ie why it resonates at all), but the situation lacks the weight of a cultural trend implied by "tells us more about them than it does about us".
Rather it is better off seen as a subculture - there is no counterveiling mass of people disagreeing with the narrative and arguing against it, because most simply ignore it and go elsewhere. I can't help feel that this type of response, while well intentioned, is ultimately self defeating - regardless of its refutation, it draws attention to the original narrative.
These people are delusional and should not be used as an example of anything. Europeans aren't going broke over common medical issues. How many Europeans are rotting in prison over petty crimes that everyone has to pay for? How does European homelessness stack up to US homelessness? How do the rates of theft compare? All of those things have a cost, and some go far beyond mere financial costs.
How does the median plumber fair between them? The median factory worker? How much time off do most Europeans get compared to most Americans? Everyone likes to compare CEO pay or even software pay here, but those are a tiny fraction of the actual population and clearly the exception to the norm.
Anyone who thinks Europeans in general are poor and Americans in general are rich has got their head so deep in the dirt it is hard to imagine them ever pulling it out to look around.
>How does the median plumber fair between them? The median factory worker?
The median plumber or factory worker in the US makes 1.5 to 2x more than the median in western Europe, and the ratio is even higher post-tax. While in the year 2000 the numbers were similar. That's because US GDP per capita has grown faster over the past couple decades. Americans do have less time off but that's the same now as it was a couple decades ago.
This is incorrect. The median income is higher, but not 2x higher. Besides which American focus on Taxes (and GDP!) is just one of those little propaganda things the article talks about. Even for a plumber earning 1.5x in the US vs the EU, the EU plumber with his higher taxes will still have 3x disposable income after all other expenses, which are much lower in the EU vs the US.
I hate it when people say “give me references” but I struggle to imagine a trade worker who makes 1.5x (or 2x post taxes) has 1/3 the disposable income because expenses. Set aside the hobbyhorse of hardship medical issues and I don’t see possibly being true. Food is still expensive there, a PS5 costs the same the world around, and clothing is globalized. I’ve traveled to several EU countries recently, costs are not much if at all lower.
My go to for lifestyle comparison is "expensive" (high original investment) hobbies that demand resources.
Like sailing for countries that are close to the sea, or multiple day hikes for countries with montain ranges (you have to buy specific clothing, tents and tools, which gets expensive). Playing an instrument as an adult is another way to differentiate (obviously i'm partial towards hobbies i partake in). Well for all three of those, (though i only go on multi day hikes once every two years), i'd rather be French than American. Percentage-wise are more to sail, more often (light sails/foil or cruiser sailing), we are more to hike, more often, and we are more to play, more often.
Except the median blue collar worker in Europe doesn’t have the fear that they are one major illness away from bankruptcy or that they might lose their teeth because they can’t afford regular dental care.
Plus as we’re seeing the old social contract in places like France has been breaking down for a while because they don’t have the money or demographics to support it.
Then we often get the “All of the US compared to Norway” or similar comparisons that are more misleading than enlightening. Ask someone trying to get housing in Madrid how well the European dream is going. This isn’t to trumpet the successes of the US, more to puncture the delusional and backward-looking EU mindset.
"Plus as we’re seeing the old social contract in places like France has been breaking down for a while because they don’t have the money or demographics to support it."
Thats right and thats why the American government has a rational government... The "social contract" already broke in America. It created the Trump government. Yet most American point the finger on France.
Most Americans aren’t even aware of the political situation in France, they barely pay attention to the one here. Those who are firmly focused on domestic politics, mostly economic in nature.
Americans think about Europeans faaaar less than a the reverse, although Social Media is deceptive in that regard since it’s one endless, childish slap-fight.
Headline salary comparisons mislead, and the same is true of headline GDP comparisons.
As I was digging in to this topic some time ago [1] let me try to summarize: from an economic standpoint one way to think about the US-Europe income gap is to separate output per hour from GDP per person. On the Penn World Table's international-prices measure, German hourly productivity grew 109% from 1990 to 2022 versus 70% for the US; on the national-accounts measure which PWT recommends for growth comparisons, it's 61% versus 68%.
GDP/person = GDP/hour x hours/worker x workers/person. French hours per worker fell about 8% while hours per resident stayed flat, because employment rose. German hours per resident fell 7.7%, but its 15-64 share fell from 69.0% to 63.6%, so ageing does part of the work. The IMF finds desired hours fell alongside actual hours, so some of the shorter week is chosen. Some of the gap is nonetheless real output per hour lost to fragmented markets and thin risk capital, not shorter weeks. I went down this rabbit hole and wrote up the numbers and sources here:
>Why have Americans suddenly become so insecure about their own supposed greatness?
Because of the K shape economy. Only the rich and maybe the very upper middle class is getting any benefit the current boom. The middle class is struggling and has been for decades. The poor ranks are growing and have even a harder time if that is possible.
Hilarious how so much political discourse now is just downstream from /pol/ shitposting and people believe it's actually worth writing about. I've never seen the term "europoor" outside 4chan before this.
On social media, in the news and even in this thread you can see that if anything it’s striking a nerve of European insecurity: anyone who points out the growing gap between US and European wages and the potential problems with pension systems, political deadlock, instability just gets “school shootings, corruption in the White House, medical debt, warmongering” - which is really just ignoring the issues and acting like they’ll never be a problem even as they’re growing.
ehm, you mean people like the German Chancellor Merz who does it all the time? It is the National topic in Germany. Or on EU level the EU commission had a working group which lead to the famous Draghi report?
Where do you live? Why arent you aware of these things?
Isn't this stuff just dumb ragebait for the algorithm? Step one, post some dumb statement that is false that most people can relate to(they don't have ice/water/dryers/AC... in Europe). Step to, wait for people to reply as if it was a serious statement. Tada, reach boosted!
Europoors would assume I was well off if they saw my salary on paper yet the landlord takes the lions share of it for the privilege of living in hundred year old factory worker housing stock. I plastic the windows every winter, the tumble dryer is coin operated and shared with two other units, and I need roommates to afford this lavish American home. Our cars are small, New England cities also have old narrow streets, they are also two to three decades old and get fixed in the driveway since mechanics are unaffordable.
I feel about as free as a medieval serf between the health insurance and the landlords demanding more every year. The only thing that motivates me to skill up and compete for the good jobs with benefits is fear not the allure of freedom.
It seems the European brain can't seem to comprehend how big North America is and how very different life and cost of living is in different areas, they see the movies and assume we all live in fancy cali houses and have mind blowing bay area tech salaries.
> The European brain can't seem to comprehend how big North America is and how very different life and cost of living is in different areas
Two points:
- In many countries in Europe, the life is much more similar in various part of the country than in the USA (just to be clear: there exist cheap and expensive cities, and areas with much and rather no industry in nearly all countries; but the differences in one country are indeed smaller). When there exist exceptions, at least Germans love to point them out very often (for example: Berlin is very different from the rest of Germany). So, since US-Americans don't point out these differences all the time, many people in Europe simply don't assume that there exist so many differences in the USA.
- The media that is accessible via the web simply writes much less about these parts of the USA.
But concerning
> I feel about as free as a medieval serf between the health insurance and the landlords demanding more every year.
The hate in the USA for health insurance companies is very well-known in European countries.
Fair enough, I've never been to Europe. My American impressions of Germany was that they are a nation of renters whose people have no wealth and depend on the state of welfare.
Now I'm seeing our country become a nation of renters whose people have no wealth except we don't have a welfare state to save us.
> My American impressions of Germany was that they are a nation of renters whose people have no wealth and depend on the state of welfare.
Many people in Germany do rent, but for much more mundane reasons:
- In many area of high population density (where many better-paying jobs are located), buying a house or flat is simply not easily affordable.
- The job security has decreased over the decades, so you have to be more flexible with respect to relocating. You don't know where you will land in, say, a decade. A mortgage binds you to one location for a very long time; such planning is hardly possible anymore.
Concerning your argument "My American brain literally can't comprehend how one could consider themselves wealthy without owning their home. The permeance and stability it affords you is the very definition of wealth as I understand it." you posted in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50501500
- The German federal government is very creative in sucking home and flat owners dry. So, owning a house or department puts you at quite some risks with respect to the whims of the government (or some future government). Thus, there exist quite some Germans who don't have the association of home owning and "permanence and stability".
My American brain literally can't comprehend how one could consider themselves wealthy without owning their home. The permeance and stability it affords you is the very definition of wealth as I understand it.
The American dream is deeply ingrained in our phyche, the housing crisis is a deep existential crisis for us. Most Americans would find your belief politically offensive and yes very European lol.
> My American brain literally can't comprehend how one could consider themselves wealthy without owning their home
Net assets. If rents are kept at a reasonably low value one can invest the rest and become wealthy enough (at least in purchasing power terms).
> The permeance and stability it affords you is the very definition of wealth as I understand it.
In places where eviction is basically impossible, it's possible to have an even higher stability renting than owning in the US, because there's no chance that you can't afford paying property taxes if your fortunes go bad.
Net assets mean jack shit when housing stock is in extremely short supply. Landlords are not running a charity and when property taxes and mortgage rates goes up so does the rent, and those are always going up.
There are no places where eviction is basically impossible, that is conservative propaganda directed at blue states with slightly more favorable tenant protections.
Your comment perfectly highlights how clueless Europeans can be about America.
I was talking about Europe, you idiot. You said you "can't comprehend how one could consider themselves wealthy without owning their home" and I told you how.
> Your comment perfectly highlights how clueless Europeans can be about America.
To be fair I said North America not the USA. The experience is not much different on the Canadian side, their public health care system is a joke.
Land area alone is a misleading, what matters to people is the distances between population centers and that is a huge difference between the two continents.
Of course, everyone knows Americans are ignorant of the outside world why would I be different? My point is Europeans aren't much different and are just as susceptible to sweeping generalizations about America.
This subreddit has an all time classics of stupid american and "It seems the European brain can't seem to comprehend how big North America is and how very different life and cost of living is in different areas" is a prime example.
I can assure you, income and wealth difference are huge in Europe + different cultures + different laws so people are intuitively aware of these concepts.
Yeah it's a common sentiment among Americans when discussing international topics online (a popular genere of comedy for the rest of the world no doubt).
I think it's because there is so much variation in culture, laws, and economics in Europe that, in comparison, it may appear that America is far more homogeneous than it really is.
I think we all tend to have that bias especially looking at large nations, I bet Americans and Europeans tend to imagine China as being more homogeneous than it really is too.
The degree to which Europeans are less wealthy than the US, and the degree to which that gap has been growing, is important, and no amount of rhetoric will change that. Of course calling them Europoors is rude and serious people should not do it. But the policy differences are not pure upside for Europe and there are serious open questions about the sustainability of the European social compact, especially in France. If anything Europe is in a significantly worse position now than 15 years ago.
Europe might be in certain aspects worse, but the thing is we need to deal with wars and their consequences, as they are closer, the US only starts and feeds off them, maybe less now, due to incompetence and general no longer behind the scenes corruption.
Besides all of this, I’d rather be poor in Europe than in the US.
You have to be careful saying that blindly on the internet with that username. There are a few potential answers and some are reasonable while others indicate a...subscription to concerningly murderous ideologies...
ok and? The article is about some Americans care obsessively about Europe and their weird criticism. And you do find this behaviour in EVERY discussion regarding EU tech policy in HN. Its very annoying.
> The article is about some Americans care obsessively about Europe and their weird criticism. And you do find this behaviour in EVERY discussion regarding EU tech policy in HN. Its very annoying.
It goes both ways. I can't tell you how many comments sections I've seen where someone goes out of his way to diss the US, even though that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I agree that it's nasty behavior when Americans do it in the other direction too, I just wanted to point out that there's hate-slinging all around.
Quality of life is still better in Europe though, that's not cope it's just a fact.
I agree Europe has real issues that Europeans should acknowledge and don't, but americans' quantity brains are funny - to americans if it can't be measured, it doesn't exist.
Really sad way to live, unfortunately it's infecting Europe and especially the UK as well
This is an "argument" between relative elites. Both Europoors and USAian-poors don't spend time on the internet caring about each other. Most Europoors don't even speak English, and USAian-poors don't speak anything but English, so they literally couldn't communicate easily until recently, and they still haven't found a reason to.
That being said, this is largely European cope. Europeans are falling into the toilet. But the Brits they're arguing with are British elites who spend most of their time online pretending to be American Britishly (which amounts to being rude while using US slang), and the Americans they are arguing with are dimwitted xenophobes in debt up to their eyeballs and just pretending to have money. American elites (i.e. people with assets who only work as a hobby) are also doing very, very well, but they don't care about arguing with Europeans online. They think of Europe as fancy and fashion, and avoid most direct contact with Europeans (except expats and when they're on vacation) in order not to ruin that image.
But I have to repeat that Europeans are absolutely delusional. The future is looking terrible for them, and their elites feel like their only hope is war with Russia. They feel like they can regulate and judge things that the world is accomplishing around and without them. They've been coddled (by US arms and political meddling) into an unearned sense of superiority over a generation or two that is leading them into disaster. They have beautiful infrastructure and a big healthy, educated population, and they're losing simply because they let themselves be ruled by venal morons and will believe the dumbest neoliberal fairy stories.
Instead of propping them up to create the image of an international consensus, a failing US has just decided to treat Europe as a resource to be drained. Its only interest is to keep Europe alienated from China, who would also use them just as a resource to be drained. Somehow, Europe has even lost Russia's energy supplies to China and India, and cultivated such hate in Russia that this relationship might be harder to repair than the US-Russia relationship, which is insane. Somehow, the US has been able to fob off its ongoing (virtually hot) war against Russia onto Europe, and is successfully pushing them to pay for it (like Trump used to say about the border wall and Mexico.)
I have to agree that it reflects on American insecurity. Americans feel like they're living in a failing state heading into civil war and they're all going to die. Then they look at Europe, and they see a state born from war that failed to come together at all, and is somehow getting worse. It makes them feel better about themselves for a second, until they see the price of hamburgers and get depressed again.
> But I have to repeat that Europeans are absolutely delusional.
As a German, I find this very unfair. Most people in European countries are not delusional, but know very well how deep in the shit they and the countries in which they live are.
And, by the way: hardly any German person would tell how great things in Germany are. Many Germans are far too cynic to utter this kind of argument. These posts, in my experience, nearly always come from people from other countries.
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> Americans feel like they're living in a failing state heading into civil war and they're all going to die.
Except for "heading into civil war" and "we're all going to die", this is also how many Germans feel about their country.
In my feeling, the difference is rather that US-Americans are afraid to die because of this, while quite some Germans wouldn't really care if they all had to die in consideration of the mess everything is in.
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> Instead of propping them up to create the image of an international consensus, a failing US has just decided to treat Europe as a resource to be drained. Its only interest is to keep Europe alienated from China, who would also use them just as a resource to be drained.
This is exactly how a socially significant share (though very far from the majority) of people in Germany feel about the USA and China.
Oh please you just moved the goal posts to "the" Ukraine and now claim Russia is attacking Europe. Unless you live in an ex-soviet buffer state rich in mineral resources and arable land I think you're gonna be ok.
As an European, I'm glad we have lost Russian energy supplies. Only a fool wants to be dependent on a madman like Putin. Half a million Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine for nothing, and there you are still defending them, blaming the West for everything. How pathetic.
Russia is not a victim, it is the aggressor, as it has always been historically. Regardless of its other flaws, Europe is acting very rationally when it comes to Russia and Ukraine right now. We are in deep shit, but surrendering to Russia is not the answer, as it has never been. It would lead to even deeper shit. People who lived under Warsaw Pact generally do not hold very favorable views of Russia, nearly all of those countries joined NATO as soon as they gained independence.
Yeah ok buddy the IMF had nothing to do with it, totally not a proxy war over strategic resources. Putin just went crazy for no reason, everyone in Ukraine was holding hands and singing kumbaya when he invaded lol.
I think back to the World Cup with a unified social media message about how awesome American air conditioning is.
Like, that meme was astroturfed right? People in Europe don't talk like that or act like that.
And we also had foreigners from all around the world (Japanese, Korean, etc. etc.) come and be all Costco is amazing or other tidbits of pro-Americanism.
I dunno, something just felt off by it. There's clearly something going on and it doesn't feel completely natural.
It's fine to like America and be patriotic and all. But for it all to strike at the same time with extremely similar messaging? Even memes had more diverse concepts than what happened.
We are IMO in the age of AI boosted memes where people are trying to form large scale reality distortion fields.
I'm from the US, but work has brought me into contact with people from all over the planet. An Austrian friend of mine once asked me "Why are you Americans always trying to sell something? Even when you're not, you're all greedy salesmen."
This has stuck with me for 3 decades now. Because it's true.
I dunno, that comment just comes across as really rude and reductive.
Yes, the Austrian was clearly not trying to sell anything.
I think a lot of strange cultures talking to the rest of the world can feel like that -- especially as it's not necessary how those cultures talk to themselves. And visitors to a country often have a fairly predictable set of wow! (or wtf?) moments. So when there's a moment like a World Cup or Olympics you just see a lot of simultaneous commenting about stuff that isn't usually in the discourse. A lot of UK people (I'm British) fall into a fairly united pattern when addressing strangers about their country: talking up the NHS, queuing, the full english breakfast. Visitors to Britain will love double-decker buses, funny politeness and euphemism, everyday comedy etc, etc.
The air conditioning, Costco, sports complexes. even things like a gun show, or a silly Texas parade, are very often what tourists *individually talk about when they visit the US for the first time.
But I've been an American for decades. I _KNOW_ how foreigners talk about USA.
* Big portions of our meals? Check. If some European were taking pictures or talking up the SuperSize meal at McDonalds then yeah, that's "normal".
* Mega-Highways? Check. Our roads are a marvel to everyone (please ignore our lack of public transit. But at least we have highways). Both the shear size and scale, not just of the roads but also of our cars.
* Gun Ranges? Yeah, that's normal depending on which culture they came from. Some people like hunting and gun ranges.
* Size of the country? (2 hour drive is just one state over). Big road trips? Yeah.
Etc. etc. I already KNOW what foreigners think of my country.
But freaking air conditioning? No. Even poor Filipinos have air conditioning and aren't really wow'd by it these days. Certainly not in 2026. Filipinos will talk about maybe the "new air con bus" (in contrast to the Jeepny they used to take), but that's about how the Philippines has improved... a point of pride for the Filipinos and not an item of foreign wonder when visiting the USA.
If there's wonder or exasperation, its actually a negative. Filipinos find the air conditioning settings way too cold here in the USA to the point of annoyance. They're not "happy" about it like how it happens in these meme videos. If someone's skin is used to 80F, 90F or higher temperatures, sitting in 68F all the time is downright uncomfortable.
Europeans? Japanese? Koreans? They're even richer than Filipinos. They aren't going to be wow'd by this at all. They already have access to air conditioning, maybe not quite as much as us Americans but its not really a point of exasperation or wonder.
Europe and the Philippines have very different climates, though. Most of Europe hasn't historically had the kind of weather where you need air conditioning, hence why many (most?) people still don't have it, whereas the Philippines is obviously tropical. Climate change is just pushing Europe into hotter weather where now air conditioning is, suddenly, worth considering.
I've been to Europe. (Portugal, Spain, and Germany)
They have air conditioning, they just don't leave it running. Its not a point of wonder or amusement. The World Cup meme was so obviously fake to anyone who has actually met Europeans or other foreigners.
A lot of the time individuals in Europe literally don’t have air conditioning. We were in Germany and Italy during a heatwave this summer. In Munich I managed to find a hotel with aircon, in Italy I didn’t. Massive museums in Munich don’t have air conditioning. We visited a friend who lives in a small town in Bavaria. He doesn’t have air conditioning, neither do any of his neighbors. Keep in mind that the heatwave hit like 100 degrees. My European colleagues were visibly exhausted by the heat in our meetings because, again, they don’t have air conditioning.
I’m not saying it’s a technology that’s foreign to the continent, obviously not. I don’t know if this wonder was genuine (I didn’t see that, I mostly saw a lot of Americans expressing contempt of Europeans for not having aircon). But A LOT of places you’d expect to have air conditioning don’t have it, and a LOT of homes don’t have it. It’s not that they simply leave it off in 100 degree heat. Arguably because they simply haven’t needed it until the last few years. But the fact remains.
It’s the same here in San Francisco. Most homes don’t have air conditioning because it’s so rarely necessary. Things get pretty uncomfortable for a week or two if we have a heatwave and I think about buying a window unit then it’s over and I forget for another year.
It’s just a completely different climate to the eastern US where humidity makes even moderate heat unbearable for much of the year.
> they simply haven’t needed it until the last few years
Correct, and that's all there is to it. And once there's a general acceptance on the continent that global warming has permanently pushed summer temperatures into the danger zone, people will start installing aircon. It's a shame, but it's a direct consequence of the damage that humanity has done to our planet.
I'm very glad that I live somewhere where even now, it almost never gets hotter than 25°C.
Europeans have AC in every car and many hotels. We know what it is and that it can be nice in summer. Sure I don't have one at home but I'm not going to go wild over a normal household appliance.
You know why the AC is not common in residential buildings? Because they are build with stones and concrete and can handle a few days of heat during the summer. Close the windows and curtains during the day and let fresh air at night and you'll be fine during the summer in Germany.
I can't speak to your experience directly, and obviously Europe is not a monolith, but I did read this recently:
> Only some twenty-five per cent of French homes have air-conditioning, compared with around sixty per cent in Italy and eighty-nine per cent in the United States.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/24/the-end-of-the...
Yeah, like the Philippines.
AC is common enough for everyone to have seen and felt AC. Especially at malls, busses or other public places. USA has more AC but that's not really going to wow anyone.
Even in the Philippines, there's plenty of hotels with AC if the locals want to spend extra money on a vacation. But more realistically, Filipinos will get large amounts of AC at movie theaters or malls. Even if its not something Filipinos can afford in their individual homes, its something that they'd have come across in their daily lives, and it wouldn't be something that they get "wow'd" by.
Fewer than 25% of homes in the Philippines have AC, and I promise you that the climate in the Philippines is much much worse than even USA. Far more humidity and heat. Europe has milder temperatures than USA so they don't need AC (but they have enough money / luxuries that they can afford AC in public places like malls or busses).
-----------
But seriously, have you met anyone who is used to living without AC as they enter the USA and all of our AC? They actually and actively complain about things being too cold all the time. Its a point of discomfort, not a thing to make a Youtube video and brag about.
>> Filipinos find the air conditioning settings way too cold here in the USA to the point of annoyance
As European I find AC settings ridiculously low. It's summer, why should I carry a hoodie just for a bus ride?
Other countries (including the ones mentioned above) have Costcos. Many of those stores are more impressive than in the US.
We have a Costco in Sweden. It's not impressive. Maybe they are more impressive in the USA.
My office has a routine for entertaining foreign employees who come over for onboarding and that's basically it. Costco, gun range, a restaurant specifically known for it's huge portions, etc.
When I worked for the American branch of a Japanese megacorp, we'd take visiting engineers for hot wings the first day. Never failed.
They were still disappointed by BART though.
That was 100% astroturfing, yes
See https://youtu.be/ZNSS4sTHAAQ
I assumed those memes were just intended as tongue-in-cheek teasing. Like yeah, the best thing about the US is the AC and the big box stores. Our detachment from nature and consumerism. This is just light-hearted teasing that lines up with stereotypes about us.
The typical way to honestly compliment the US is to say the national parks are nice, right?
The author needs to understand that X/Twitter is its own bubble that does not reflect any real shared cultural or political sentiment in the United States. On November 2nd the conventional Twitter wisdom was that polls were actually over-estimating Democrats and that Republicans were within striking distance of a "Reverse 2022" (No wave; modest D gains only). It was clear a day later that it was an illusion - polls were actually grossly underestimating Democratic performance, with some missing by 15 points, like the HarrisX/Harvard pollster.
Twitter, as they say, is not real life. It's just a broken clock that might be right twice a day by happenstance.
I thought we were long past the cultural moment where "argument happening on twitter" was considered noteworthy news.
I rarely complain about the contents of the HackerNews front page (people can upvote whatever they want) but I'm confused why this is even interesting. One could find a group of people on twitter saying anything about anything and write an article about it.
Well it's a social network owned by man who makes Nazi salutes. It is self-selecting.
I find that it's not just X/Twitter.
Reddit and YouTube is also completely dissociated from reality (and I would assume same goes for all other social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, etc.).
Outside of small, or hobby oriented communities it's so clicks/engagement optimized that the "boring reality" loses out to manifactured content.
> Reddit and YouTube is also completely dissociated from reality (and I would assume same goes for all other social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, etc.).
Yes I think it's pretty universal. But it cannot be all blamed on algorithms -- HN is often unhinged too. Way better moderated than Reddit, but there is still a pretty large disconnect between what looks like reality here and what I see when I step out into the real world.
It's because "boring reality" is the least real thing in the world. No one can experience statistical trends but everyone can relate to a story.
I don't know about you but I see myself and everyone else in my life as a character, with a role in the life-story of every person they meet. And none of these stories are boring. Everyone in the world has a nuanced personality, unique memories and almost infinitely complex mind.
It only becomes boring when you abstract all of that away, to create models (like physics or economics) that are often very useful but don't relate that much to lived experience. The "dissociated" stories win because they're closer to what people actually see.
The middle class in the west collectively has lost purchasing power the last decades, lately that has started to become too apparent, and on both sides of the Atlantic now, there are people who try to deny it. It’s sad no matter if they’re Americans or Europeans
That’s just not true. Look up statistics instead of vibes.
How about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_of_wages_from_produ...
Irrelevant to the claim above. Purchasing power =/= share of production.
How does it prove that
> The middle class in the west collectively has lost purchasing power the last decades
? Please, don’t try to derail it and actually address the claim that was made, not something tangentially related.
oops, you're right. It's just the purchasing power for life's most important things that has declined: housing, education, health care. But we sure do have cheaper TVs, so all's right with the world.
I mean we only have to wait, what, another decade for the housing crisis to sort itself out, right? Because by then the TV boxes will be large enough to fit a family of four comfortably.
I love how dishonest your comment is. Why did you choose TVs instead of e.g. food? Look at stats how many people were malnourished few decades ago vs now. It’s not just TVs.
Shall I continue? Cars, car repair services, home repair services, major systems for the home (hvac, etc), restaurant meals, electricity, fuel, insurance, …
All of these are far, far more affordable than they were few decades ago.
You only have to look at a photo of an American crowd today to see that Americans are very poorly nourished, to the point of being sick.
I'm sorry but if you think looking at a photo of American crowd is good way to determine that more Americans are malnourished now than they were few decades ago then I don't even know what to say.
As a Europoor, I often contemplate trying my luck in America. Doubling or tripling my salary and halving my tax burden sounds lovely. Also not having to learn another language.
But at the same time, my life is so Euromaxxed it's hard to justify changing. I wake up at 8, run or cycle to work in 10-20 mins, or just WFH. I can go into the forest within 15 mins and mountain bike, hike, road cycle whatever.
The grocery stores are great. I literally walk there daily and pick fresh stuff for what i'm cooking that day. Bread is great. We get regional products from other countries fresh.
Healthcare is free. I have a safety net. Don't need a car. I get loads of leave. I'm not so stressed out. Idk, I know people in the US with WAAAAY more purchasing power but they live way less "idealistic" lives if I can put it that way.
But the US is a big place, and so is Europe. I'm sure there are great and shite places everywhere.
> Doubling or tripling my salary and halving my tax burden sounds lovely.
If you're going to be in a major tech hub in USA, your tax burden definitely won't be anywhere close to half.
For a fair comparison, you also have to compare "salary minus cost of living"; this in particular means subtracting cost for rent and health insurance, too, in both cases.
You additionally have to keep in mind that you have to build up monetary reserves if the risk of getting fired is higher in the USA than in many European countries.
Just googled, and you're right, it's not as drastic as I had imagined.
Except for Seattle/Bellevue.
FYI, this article is dated April 18, 2024
The most happy person I ever met was an elderly Afghan in a mountain village.
He got up before the sun came up and very carefully approached me with two wooden bowls as I was in full combat gear, and drank a bit of milk he carefully poured into his bowl to show me it’s safe to drink, before filling the bowl he gave me and his own with each half of the milk he got.
I did take out my emergency Snickers bar from a front pocket, cut a small piece and ate it to show him the same respect, then sliced it up and put half the slices in his bowl, swirling them around with the knife so the milk would get some of the Snickers flavour, and we watched the sun go up over the most beautiful and deadly patch of land in the country, eating a bowl of goat milk with Snickers. It was no Michelin experience.
But when I looked to the right, he looked at peace with himself and the world and was joyfully chewing every tiny piece of Snickers.
It takes very little to be genuinely happy, and people tend to forget that, myself included.
I pity all these people on Twitter/X, who have truly forgotten that they are sitting in a golden cage if you live in either the EU, US or UK, and who have lost that basic understanding of what the essence of the human experience is.
One day you’ll figure out by yourselves what setting the wrong priorities in life will have cost you.
The only things you should be rich in are knowledge and loved ones. And we all live in a world where it never mattered less how much money you have to acquire both of those assets.
Lovely story, thanks for sharing.
I've had a similar experience with a shepherd in far-away hills in Europe. He lived in a tiny cabin, had little more than his staff and a bucket. He'd be sitting on a boulder, dogs by his side, watching over his flock.
Never seen anyone quite as serene.
I bet his family owned their land and I wouldn't call that very little, it has become unobtainable for most of us and no amount of fancy things can replace that.
Had Afghanistan not won the war he probably would been evicted by some landlord in NYC just like the poor Palestinians.
This post is an awkward read because it carries an outdated tacit assumption that the bulk of this posting activity is organic engagement - as opposed to merely some new flavor of shit being thrown at the wall by bot-propagandists, which then happens to resonate with some small segment of strung out people. The analysis still does apply for why those specific people are drawn to such a refrain (ie why it resonates at all), but the situation lacks the weight of a cultural trend implied by "tells us more about them than it does about us".
Rather it is better off seen as a subculture - there is no counterveiling mass of people disagreeing with the narrative and arguing against it, because most simply ignore it and go elsewhere. I can't help feel that this type of response, while well intentioned, is ultimately self defeating - regardless of its refutation, it draws attention to the original narrative.
These people are delusional and should not be used as an example of anything. Europeans aren't going broke over common medical issues. How many Europeans are rotting in prison over petty crimes that everyone has to pay for? How does European homelessness stack up to US homelessness? How do the rates of theft compare? All of those things have a cost, and some go far beyond mere financial costs.
How does the median plumber fair between them? The median factory worker? How much time off do most Europeans get compared to most Americans? Everyone likes to compare CEO pay or even software pay here, but those are a tiny fraction of the actual population and clearly the exception to the norm.
Anyone who thinks Europeans in general are poor and Americans in general are rich has got their head so deep in the dirt it is hard to imagine them ever pulling it out to look around.
>How does the median plumber fair between them? The median factory worker?
The median plumber or factory worker in the US makes 1.5 to 2x more than the median in western Europe, and the ratio is even higher post-tax. While in the year 2000 the numbers were similar. That's because US GDP per capita has grown faster over the past couple decades. Americans do have less time off but that's the same now as it was a couple decades ago.
This is incorrect. The median income is higher, but not 2x higher. Besides which American focus on Taxes (and GDP!) is just one of those little propaganda things the article talks about. Even for a plumber earning 1.5x in the US vs the EU, the EU plumber with his higher taxes will still have 3x disposable income after all other expenses, which are much lower in the EU vs the US.
I hate it when people say “give me references” but I struggle to imagine a trade worker who makes 1.5x (or 2x post taxes) has 1/3 the disposable income because expenses. Set aside the hobbyhorse of hardship medical issues and I don’t see possibly being true. Food is still expensive there, a PS5 costs the same the world around, and clothing is globalized. I’ve traveled to several EU countries recently, costs are not much if at all lower.
My go to for lifestyle comparison is "expensive" (high original investment) hobbies that demand resources.
Like sailing for countries that are close to the sea, or multiple day hikes for countries with montain ranges (you have to buy specific clothing, tents and tools, which gets expensive). Playing an instrument as an adult is another way to differentiate (obviously i'm partial towards hobbies i partake in). Well for all three of those, (though i only go on multi day hikes once every two years), i'd rather be French than American. Percentage-wise are more to sail, more often (light sails/foil or cruiser sailing), we are more to hike, more often, and we are more to play, more often.
And by resources i also mean time and friends.
Except the median blue collar worker in Europe doesn’t have the fear that they are one major illness away from bankruptcy or that they might lose their teeth because they can’t afford regular dental care.
Plus as we’re seeing the old social contract in places like France has been breaking down for a while because they don’t have the money or demographics to support it.
Then we often get the “All of the US compared to Norway” or similar comparisons that are more misleading than enlightening. Ask someone trying to get housing in Madrid how well the European dream is going. This isn’t to trumpet the successes of the US, more to puncture the delusional and backward-looking EU mindset.
"Plus as we’re seeing the old social contract in places like France has been breaking down for a while because they don’t have the money or demographics to support it."
Thats right and thats why the American government has a rational government... The "social contract" already broke in America. It created the Trump government. Yet most American point the finger on France.
Most Americans aren’t even aware of the political situation in France, they barely pay attention to the one here. Those who are firmly focused on domestic politics, mostly economic in nature.
Americans think about Europeans faaaar less than a the reverse, although Social Media is deceptive in that regard since it’s one endless, childish slap-fight.
Headline salary comparisons mislead, and the same is true of headline GDP comparisons.
As I was digging in to this topic some time ago [1] let me try to summarize: from an economic standpoint one way to think about the US-Europe income gap is to separate output per hour from GDP per person. On the Penn World Table's international-prices measure, German hourly productivity grew 109% from 1990 to 2022 versus 70% for the US; on the national-accounts measure which PWT recommends for growth comparisons, it's 61% versus 68%.
GDP/person = GDP/hour x hours/worker x workers/person. French hours per worker fell about 8% while hours per resident stayed flat, because employment rose. German hours per resident fell 7.7%, but its 15-64 share fell from 69.0% to 63.6%, so ageing does part of the work. The IMF finds desired hours fell alongside actual hours, so some of the shorter week is chosen. Some of the gap is nonetheless real output per hour lost to fragmented markets and thin risk capital, not shorter weeks. I went down this rabbit hole and wrote up the numbers and sources here:
[1] https://philippdubach.com/posts/us-europe-productivity-worki...
>Why have Americans suddenly become so insecure about their own supposed greatness?
Because of the K shape economy. Only the rich and maybe the very upper middle class is getting any benefit the current boom. The middle class is struggling and has been for decades. The poor ranks are growing and have even a harder time if that is possible.
This is not true. Real wages have increased the most for the lowest paid.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1VbRI
Hilarious how so much political discourse now is just downstream from /pol/ shitposting and people believe it's actually worth writing about. I've never seen the term "europoor" outside 4chan before this.
the great Europoor vs. Amerifat conflict of 2026
You're getting downvoted, yet I too remember the term "europoor" and similar sentiments on 4chan more than a decade ago.
Similarly, the alpha-beta-matrix-pills and adjacent nonsense was all over /b/ in the early 2010s.
gr8 b8 m8
Nice trips bro (nnn)
Hell yeah, America...!
>click link
>see AI slop image
>close tab
On social media, in the news and even in this thread you can see that if anything it’s striking a nerve of European insecurity: anyone who points out the growing gap between US and European wages and the potential problems with pension systems, political deadlock, instability just gets “school shootings, corruption in the White House, medical debt, warmongering” - which is really just ignoring the issues and acting like they’ll never be a problem even as they’re growing.
ehm, you mean people like the German Chancellor Merz who does it all the time? It is the National topic in Germany. Or on EU level the EU commission had a working group which lead to the famous Draghi report?
Where do you live? Why arent you aware of these things?
Isn't this stuff just dumb ragebait for the algorithm? Step one, post some dumb statement that is false that most people can relate to(they don't have ice/water/dryers/AC... in Europe). Step to, wait for people to reply as if it was a serious statement. Tada, reach boosted!
> tumble dryers, bigger houses, bigger cars, higher salaries and, of course, freedom
Europoors would assume I was well off if they saw my salary on paper yet the landlord takes the lions share of it for the privilege of living in hundred year old factory worker housing stock. I plastic the windows every winter, the tumble dryer is coin operated and shared with two other units, and I need roommates to afford this lavish American home. Our cars are small, New England cities also have old narrow streets, they are also two to three decades old and get fixed in the driveway since mechanics are unaffordable.
I feel about as free as a medieval serf between the health insurance and the landlords demanding more every year. The only thing that motivates me to skill up and compete for the good jobs with benefits is fear not the allure of freedom.
It seems the European brain can't seem to comprehend how big North America is and how very different life and cost of living is in different areas, they see the movies and assume we all live in fancy cali houses and have mind blowing bay area tech salaries.
> The European brain can't seem to comprehend how big North America is and how very different life and cost of living is in different areas
Two points:
- In many countries in Europe, the life is much more similar in various part of the country than in the USA (just to be clear: there exist cheap and expensive cities, and areas with much and rather no industry in nearly all countries; but the differences in one country are indeed smaller). When there exist exceptions, at least Germans love to point them out very often (for example: Berlin is very different from the rest of Germany). So, since US-Americans don't point out these differences all the time, many people in Europe simply don't assume that there exist so many differences in the USA.
- The media that is accessible via the web simply writes much less about these parts of the USA.
But concerning
> I feel about as free as a medieval serf between the health insurance and the landlords demanding more every year.
The hate in the USA for health insurance companies is very well-known in European countries.
Fair enough, I've never been to Europe. My American impressions of Germany was that they are a nation of renters whose people have no wealth and depend on the state of welfare.
Now I'm seeing our country become a nation of renters whose people have no wealth except we don't have a welfare state to save us.
> My American impressions of Germany was that they are a nation of renters whose people have no wealth and depend on the state of welfare.
Many people in Germany do rent, but for much more mundane reasons:
- In many area of high population density (where many better-paying jobs are located), buying a house or flat is simply not easily affordable.
- The job security has decreased over the decades, so you have to be more flexible with respect to relocating. You don't know where you will land in, say, a decade. A mortgage binds you to one location for a very long time; such planning is hardly possible anymore.
Concerning your argument "My American brain literally can't comprehend how one could consider themselves wealthy without owning their home. The permeance and stability it affords you is the very definition of wealth as I understand it." you posted in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50501500
- The German federal government is very creative in sucking home and flat owners dry. So, owning a house or department puts you at quite some risks with respect to the whims of the government (or some future government). Thus, there exist quite some Germans who don't have the association of home owning and "permanence and stability".
You know you can get some wealth besides living on rent?
My American brain literally can't comprehend how one could consider themselves wealthy without owning their home. The permeance and stability it affords you is the very definition of wealth as I understand it.
The American dream is deeply ingrained in our phyche, the housing crisis is a deep existential crisis for us. Most Americans would find your belief politically offensive and yes very European lol.
> My American brain literally can't comprehend how one could consider themselves wealthy without owning their home
Net assets. If rents are kept at a reasonably low value one can invest the rest and become wealthy enough (at least in purchasing power terms).
> The permeance and stability it affords you is the very definition of wealth as I understand it.
In places where eviction is basically impossible, it's possible to have an even higher stability renting than owning in the US, because there's no chance that you can't afford paying property taxes if your fortunes go bad.
Net assets mean jack shit when housing stock is in extremely short supply. Landlords are not running a charity and when property taxes and mortgage rates goes up so does the rent, and those are always going up.
There are no places where eviction is basically impossible, that is conservative propaganda directed at blue states with slightly more favorable tenant protections.
Your comment perfectly highlights how clueless Europeans can be about America.
I was talking about Europe, you idiot. You said you "can't comprehend how one could consider themselves wealthy without owning their home" and I told you how.
> Your comment perfectly highlights how clueless Europeans can be about America.
I live in the US.
Europe is 4% larger than the USA. And no, we don't assume that all of you have the same standard of life in all states.
To be fair I said North America not the USA. The experience is not much different on the Canadian side, their public health care system is a joke.
Land area alone is a misleading, what matters to people is the distances between population centers and that is a huge difference between the two continents.
Your comments are a good candidate for r/shitamericanssay. Holy smoke, esspecially you never been in Europe.
Of course, everyone knows Americans are ignorant of the outside world why would I be different? My point is Europeans aren't much different and are just as susceptible to sweeping generalizations about America.
This subreddit has an all time classics of stupid american and "It seems the European brain can't seem to comprehend how big North America is and how very different life and cost of living is in different areas" is a prime example.
I can assure you, income and wealth difference are huge in Europe + different cultures + different laws so people are intuitively aware of these concepts.
Yeah it's a common sentiment among Americans when discussing international topics online (a popular genere of comedy for the rest of the world no doubt).
I think it's because there is so much variation in culture, laws, and economics in Europe that, in comparison, it may appear that America is far more homogeneous than it really is.
I think we all tend to have that bias especially looking at large nations, I bet Americans and Europeans tend to imagine China as being more homogeneous than it really is too.
The degree to which Europeans are less wealthy than the US, and the degree to which that gap has been growing, is important, and no amount of rhetoric will change that. Of course calling them Europoors is rude and serious people should not do it. But the policy differences are not pure upside for Europe and there are serious open questions about the sustainability of the European social compact, especially in France. If anything Europe is in a significantly worse position now than 15 years ago.
Europe might be in certain aspects worse, but the thing is we need to deal with wars and their consequences, as they are closer, the US only starts and feeds off them, maybe less now, due to incompetence and general no longer behind the scenes corruption.
Besides all of this, I’d rather be poor in Europe than in the US.
[dead]
That's because, for the past 15 years (at least), we've been under attack.
By...whom...?
You have to be careful saying that blindly on the internet with that username. There are a few potential answers and some are reasonable while others indicate a...subscription to concerningly murderous ideologies...
Fair warning.
ok and? The article is about some Americans care obsessively about Europe and their weird criticism. And you do find this behaviour in EVERY discussion regarding EU tech policy in HN. Its very annoying.
> The article is about some Americans care obsessively about Europe and their weird criticism. And you do find this behaviour in EVERY discussion regarding EU tech policy in HN. Its very annoying.
It goes both ways. I can't tell you how many comments sections I've seen where someone goes out of his way to diss the US, even though that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I agree that it's nasty behavior when Americans do it in the other direction too, I just wanted to point out that there's hate-slinging all around.
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Quality of life is still better in Europe though, that's not cope it's just a fact.
I agree Europe has real issues that Europeans should acknowledge and don't, but americans' quantity brains are funny - to americans if it can't be measured, it doesn't exist.
Really sad way to live, unfortunately it's infecting Europe and especially the UK as well
This is an "argument" between relative elites. Both Europoors and USAian-poors don't spend time on the internet caring about each other. Most Europoors don't even speak English, and USAian-poors don't speak anything but English, so they literally couldn't communicate easily until recently, and they still haven't found a reason to.
That being said, this is largely European cope. Europeans are falling into the toilet. But the Brits they're arguing with are British elites who spend most of their time online pretending to be American Britishly (which amounts to being rude while using US slang), and the Americans they are arguing with are dimwitted xenophobes in debt up to their eyeballs and just pretending to have money. American elites (i.e. people with assets who only work as a hobby) are also doing very, very well, but they don't care about arguing with Europeans online. They think of Europe as fancy and fashion, and avoid most direct contact with Europeans (except expats and when they're on vacation) in order not to ruin that image.
But I have to repeat that Europeans are absolutely delusional. The future is looking terrible for them, and their elites feel like their only hope is war with Russia. They feel like they can regulate and judge things that the world is accomplishing around and without them. They've been coddled (by US arms and political meddling) into an unearned sense of superiority over a generation or two that is leading them into disaster. They have beautiful infrastructure and a big healthy, educated population, and they're losing simply because they let themselves be ruled by venal morons and will believe the dumbest neoliberal fairy stories.
Instead of propping them up to create the image of an international consensus, a failing US has just decided to treat Europe as a resource to be drained. Its only interest is to keep Europe alienated from China, who would also use them just as a resource to be drained. Somehow, Europe has even lost Russia's energy supplies to China and India, and cultivated such hate in Russia that this relationship might be harder to repair than the US-Russia relationship, which is insane. Somehow, the US has been able to fob off its ongoing (virtually hot) war against Russia onto Europe, and is successfully pushing them to pay for it (like Trump used to say about the border wall and Mexico.)
I have to agree that it reflects on American insecurity. Americans feel like they're living in a failing state heading into civil war and they're all going to die. Then they look at Europe, and they see a state born from war that failed to come together at all, and is somehow getting worse. It makes them feel better about themselves for a second, until they see the price of hamburgers and get depressed again.
> But I have to repeat that Europeans are absolutely delusional.
As a German, I find this very unfair. Most people in European countries are not delusional, but know very well how deep in the shit they and the countries in which they live are.
And, by the way: hardly any German person would tell how great things in Germany are. Many Germans are far too cynic to utter this kind of argument. These posts, in my experience, nearly always come from people from other countries.
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> Americans feel like they're living in a failing state heading into civil war and they're all going to die.
Except for "heading into civil war" and "we're all going to die", this is also how many Germans feel about their country.
In my feeling, the difference is rather that US-Americans are afraid to die because of this, while quite some Germans wouldn't really care if they all had to die in consideration of the mess everything is in.
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> Instead of propping them up to create the image of an international consensus, a failing US has just decided to treat Europe as a resource to be drained. Its only interest is to keep Europe alienated from China, who would also use them just as a resource to be drained.
This is exactly how a socially significant share (though very far from the majority) of people in Germany feel about the USA and China.
>[...] feel like their only hope is war with Russia
What? Russias threats to Europe is not the source of hope for anyone.
Oh please you just moved the goal posts to "the" Ukraine and now claim Russia is attacking Europe. Unless you live in an ex-soviet buffer state rich in mineral resources and arable land I think you're gonna be ok.
As an European, I'm glad we have lost Russian energy supplies. Only a fool wants to be dependent on a madman like Putin. Half a million Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine for nothing, and there you are still defending them, blaming the West for everything. How pathetic.
Russia is not a victim, it is the aggressor, as it has always been historically. Regardless of its other flaws, Europe is acting very rationally when it comes to Russia and Ukraine right now. We are in deep shit, but surrendering to Russia is not the answer, as it has never been. It would lead to even deeper shit. People who lived under Warsaw Pact generally do not hold very favorable views of Russia, nearly all of those countries joined NATO as soon as they gained independence.
Yeah ok buddy the IMF had nothing to do with it, totally not a proxy war over strategic resources. Putin just went crazy for no reason, everyone in Ukraine was holding hands and singing kumbaya when he invaded lol.
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