I think when you factor in purchasing power parity it goes the other way. Food and non-coastal housing in the US is pretty cheap.
Also, it's much cheaper to live well in a certain style in the US away from the coasts than in Europe. Bubba has a large house, two trucks, a few acres of land, ATVs, a hunting cabin, and hunting licenses. Francois has a small house, pretty much no land, and a single small sedan. Francois might make more money in absolute terms but Bubba would never agree to swap.
Also, "Bubba" might have more cars but that's because his two teenage daughters need a car each to get to school since there is no subway, no busses and no sidewalks. Bubba's land might be 50,000 sq feet 40 miles from DC , but many people might prefer Francois' 5,000 sq feet plot in the outskirts of Paris. American cities are more sprawling, European usually compact - so it's really difficult to compare even simple things like land.
Bubba's McMansion is large, indeed, but it's built with a light frame construction with outer walls of plywood or composite and asphalt shingles as a roof. These American carton box houses just don't convince European home buyers. Francois lives in a brick house with clay tiles on the roof.
Bubba has little or no insulation against winter cold or summer heat. So his eight ACs are running on electricity all year around to heat up or cool down the home. Francois generally only turns up his radiators 5 months of the year and the district heating is very efficient. He only has AC in the three rooms facing South and there is rarely a need to turn them on. What is better?
And how about the quality and integrity of staple foods available to them. What if Bubba's kid grows up and decides she wants an education? Suddenly Bubba needs to pony up $30,000 a year for university or ask his daughter to take on a large debt.
You're absolutely wrong. Even for residents at the well-off University of Texas in the well-off state of Texas pay $5,000 per semester for tuition only (tons of fees added to this). That's $40,000 for four years. In Germany you'd be hard pressed to find tuition higher than 500 euros per semester.
And don't get me started on graduate and professional degrees. In Europe you study medicine, law, dentistry etc as an undergraduate in a 5-6 year program. In the US you need to do an undergraduate degree for four-years plus four more years of graduate school to become a physician. The cost of the graduate degree itself is anywhere from $150,000-$300,000.
I'd observe that if that is literally true, if neither would trade for the other's economic position, the question of which is better off is undefined, for any definition of "better off" that properly takes the subjective nature of value into account.
And that's not just a statistical sort of truth... it's actually profoundly true, something that touches deeply on the question of "affluence" and what wealth really is.
One small thing perhaps worth noting on the subjective side of things is that France has the most foreign visitors of any country, now of course this is offset by the fact that the US is relatively remote, but France as a country has a hell of a lot of things going for it even if it is a bit messed up economically.
I'd say that the higher $ man who lives in the city in a compact space with a compact car is more well off than the man living in an inland state with lots of acres and a hunting cabin.
Why? Because the man in the city can purchase that anytime he wants. Just like you can go take your money to China right now and teach English as a side thing. So that subjective value can still be wrapped around an objectively lookable thing; it's just that the city man is not indulging in that lifestyle yet -- or perhaps he wishes to take that wealth elsewhere.
Not true. In 2011, the ratio of French emigrants into the U.S. to Americans emigrants into France was ~1.7. Adjusting for population implies that the likelihood that a French person would emigrate to the U.S. is much larger than the likelihood that an American would move to France.
Not that it matters any more, but Oklahoma has two good world-class universities (and many smaller ones), and, about 10 years ago, subsidized education to the tune of about 66%: full time tuition (12 hrs) and fees was about $1500/semester
Even now, the junior college-to-university route is still pretty affordable.
Things are somewhat bad now —and getting worse— but it's a relatively new condition.
And so both get what they want. Both are used to 'their' way of living. More freedom would scare Francois because it also means less governement in health care, child-support, rent-support, 3 years of unemployment checks, etc etc.
Can we stop saying things like "more freedom"? Freedom is really poorly defined even to an individual, and tends to lead to sentences like "they hate our freedom".
You could very well argue that freedom means absolutely no laws, absolutely no government, no public sector, period. You could also very well argue that freedom means being able to be confident that you have access to medical care, education, and child-support regardless of who you are, or your income level.
Freedom doesn't actually _mean_ anything anymore, it's just a political catch-phrase.
Can I rephrase your post and say "less government support would scare Francois..."?
Freedom used to have a perfectly good definition: the absence of coercion. During the 20th century the word was co-opted by people, such as yourself, arguing that freedom should mean something else, such as "access to medical care, education, and child-support regardless of who you are, or your income level". Unless intended in a strong negative sense (that no-one can prevent anyone from procuring these services, which was by no means always the case), those freedoms can only be realised when someone else are ultimately coerced to provide them.
Those services might well be worthwhile enough to warrant such coercion, but it's downright Orwellian to insist on the coercion being called 'freedom'.
This use of freedom is much older than the 20th century. Already from the middle of the 19th century, socialists and others were arguing that freedom is contingent on the means to exercise them, and so that there is no true absence of coercion unless resources are distributed in such a way as to give people actual choice, not just legal choice.
I find it downright comical that you call this Orwellian, given that George Orwell was a lifetime socialist.
I take a fair amount of offense at this statement. I am stating that, given that the word "freedom" is commonly being used not as a word, but as a political catch-phrase with multiple, often contradicting meanings, I prefer to clarify the usage, either by substituting it with another word, or defining carefully what one means by "freedom". Far from attempting to redefine "freedom", I am attempting to _totally ban its usage goddamn it_, since, as you have pointed out, its definition has been co-opted to mean something entirely alien to its original meaning.
Edit:
To clarify, when I said ban, I was exaggerating. I am not supporting literally banning the word "freedom", nor sending anyone to the gulags. I simply would prefer if people were to choose other, more exact, less politically-charged words in the place of "freedom".
>Those freedoms can only be realised when someone else are ultimately coerced to provide them.
The same argument actually applies to pretty much anything you care to call "freedom".
If you say freedom means no slavery, you have to coerce people not to keep slaves.
This is why the word "freedom" is so useless. There is no such thing as a system with no coercion. What people mean when they say freedom is "coercion is only used to enforce the balances I think are important".
When I visited San Francisco some years ago I was appalled by the many comments on all the people living on the streets as being "homeless by choice". It also seems to me as if having to switch to the other side of the street or by having to circumvent a dangerous block as some form of coercion resulting from a very inconsiderate and self-serving illusion that everybody starts life with a similarly equivalent set of cards.
As a privileged individual (middle class, white, male, above average IQ) I've always found the liberal point of view naturally alluring but ultimately it seems to be dishonest and unethical no matter how many ideological writings on anarcho-capitalist theory I keep reading. So again, while I like the ideas of extreme freedom (voluntaryism, etc) in the end it seems like it's just extreme ideology disconnected from reality and actually resulting in less freedom.
It also seems to me as if having to switch to the other side of the street or by having to circumvent a dangerous block as some form of coercion resulting from a very inconsiderate and self-serving illusion that everybody starts life with a similarly equivalent set of cards.
Can you elaborate on the first part? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
The point I was trying to make was essentially that it seems logical to me that a higher crime rate can be connected to substantial inequalities in terms of opportunities / wealth.
Having to switch to the other side of the street or having to circumvent a dangerous block is a loss of freedom, a kind of coercion born of inequality, normalized by the very inconsiderate and self-serving illusion that everybody starts life with a similarly equivalent set of cards.
Of course. I should have said freedom of choice. Francois has less choice. About a third of his wages (and 20% of everything he buys) is used for the different types of government support. In return, he has the welfare-state benefits.
What you call "choice" is empty of meaning or significant because you leave out the very relevant context in which that "choice" may be exercised. For example, it's dishonest to say a person with $20,000 in savings has the "choice" to pay cash or take a mortgage for a $200,000. Such "choice" is not real or meaningful, because it can't really be exercised. Likewise, it's dishonest to suggest that "choice" in America is not correlated strongly to income and wealth. The lower one's income and means, the fewer real, meaningful choices one has about a great many things--including medical care, food, housing, and basically everything else humans need to subsist.
I have lived in every income spectrum up through my current one--from severe poverty to relative affluence. One of the most important observations I've made is how little "freedom of choice" there is the further down the socioeconomic ladder one goes in this country. It's just an empty phrase most often spouted by people who have never known anything other than a life of upper-middle-class or better living.
Well, "most often" isn't "always", and that your family was on welfare doesn't mean anything with respect to the fact that you seem to not understand how empty the phrase "freedom of choice" is. The one has nothing to do with the other.
Still bad. I grew up in Norway. I moved to the UK at 25. Employment rights and social welfare in the UK is a joke compared to in Norway - the UK is "US light" in those respects.
Yet I felt I had much more freedom of choice in Norway: Becoming truly destitute in Norway is pretty much only possible if you refuse to apply for government support.
This, to me, meant I was free to make a lot of decisions without considering consequences that would put me at substantial risk in the UK, and much more so in the US. It is hard to describe the feeling. I've mentioned before, how I started my first company (an ISP) pretty much on a whim because we were dissatisfied with the available ISPs; we threw together a business plan, found an angel investor, found offices and moved into them (literally; three of us lived there for a while) in the span of a few months. During this time, not once did the potential consequences of failing enter my mind, for the simple reason that there'd pretty much not be any consequences: I'd be able to get government support if I needed it, and I'd "just" go back to my studies or find another job.
Not really needing to worry about healthcare, or housing, or whether or not you might starve, are important forms of freedom to me. I'd take that over a few percent lower taxes any day, and I'd argue that I get more freedom of choice from those benefits than what few percent more disposable income could buy me in other ways.
> About a third of his wages (and 20% of everything he buys) is used for the different types of government support.
If Francois makes enough to pay 1/3 of his wages in income taxes, he's earning enough that he'd pay roughly 1/3 of his wages in taxes in many pats of the US too. Sure, if Francois went to live in Utah, he'd be better off, tax wise. If he were to go to California, on the other hand, the difference would be minimal.
VAT makes up very little of the typical tax burden. I'm in the UK, and 20% VAT translates to about 4% of my gross wage, because most of my income does not go to products that are taxed at the 20% bracket (for starters, I pay tax with some of them; then I pay my mortgage, and so on; and food is zero-rated).
Tax differences are not as great as people tend to think. My tax burden in Norway was about 1-2 percentage points higher than in the UK. A salary giving me the same purchasing power in Silicon Valley, would cut my tax bill by about the same as my added costs for healthcare insurance, and certainly wouldn't cover my increased transport costs... I did the maths for this to excruciating detail because we were considering moving to the US at one point. There may be specific income levels where the differences are more pronounced due to differences in tax policies, and certainly some countries / states are more or less expensive (as I learned the other day: stay clear of Belgium... )
Agreed that the tax burden argument is bunk unless you live in a US state with no income tax.
I was recently surprised to find that if I earned $80,000 in Australia, married to a partner who does not earn, and with two children, my effective tax rate would be ~ 15% (!), even if self-employed, once you factor in the Family Tax Assistance payment ($500/mo) and the government rebate for private health insurance purchase. That doesn't include other benefits I could receive such as child care rebate (50% of child-care costs up to $7,500 per child).
Compare to NYC, where as a self-employed person I pay 30-40% on $80k, with high property taxes on top! And I get no government assistance and certainly not healthcare.
This is astounding. And yet Americans think these countries are "socialist" and "high tax." Not true, US scores lower on economic freedom and higher on government size and tax as %GDP.
There are so many cool things about living in the US, but raising a family here just sounds absurdly stressful and expensive.
That is completely irrelevant to the argument. Replace Norway with Sweden or Denmark. Or for that matter France or Germany or any number of other European countries. The argument would be exactly the same:
That strong welfare systems can provide more freedom of choice by removing a lot of concerns that you have to consider when those systems are not available.
The 2013 budget had a deficit of 3.3%, which it used capital from the oil fund to fill. The biggest deficit that they are allowed to have - and to cover with that kind of money - is 4.0%.
In addition to the direct 3.3% - Norway's petrochemical economy provide 36% of government funding through taxes.
In addition, 445 Billion dollars from the oil fund is in reserve for pensions.
Simply put, the Norway model is not repeatable unless you're have a natural resource reserve. One could argue that the US shale reserves should be used in similar fashion.
> In addition to the direct 3.3% - Norway's petrochemical economy provide 36% of government funding through taxes.
That is a pretty big industry. Crude petroleum and crude gas consists of over 50% of exports. A lot of economical activity leads to a lot of tax revenue. Imagine if this industry did not exist, that the petroleum simply did not exist to begin with - the people that work in this industry now would be working in other sectors and industries. (The real problem is to replace this industry with something else once the well dries up. But that is a problem brought by such a big oil industry, not a problem that exists in spite of it).
> In addition, 445 Billion dollars from the oil fund is in reserve for pensions.
I think the whole point of the fund(s) is for them to be pension funds. But it may vary how strictly they are ear marked.
Now you're undermining your original point of the oil sector subsidizing the budget. The whole point of the Pension Fund is so that the incumbent government can't go on a spending spree and leave the future generations in the mud.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Norway's welfare system funded by oil revenues (including returns on an enormous sovereign wealth fund created through said revenues)?
It's easy to have a rich developed country with a high quality of life when you have a small population and lots of natural resources.
This argument is entirely orthogonal to the argument I was making: That welfare systems can provide more freedom of choice than increased taxes takes away: The incremental "freedom" that a slight difference in taxation provides in the form of disposable income does not do much; the incremental freedom from having a lot of concerns pretty much taken away because the welfare system reduces the worst case impact substantially, on the other hand, is a big deal.
As I said in a response to someone else: Replace Norway with Denmark, or Sweden, or Germany, or France or any number of other European countries in my comment above, and the argument still stands.
No it doesn't. It would stand if Microsoft, Google, IBM, transistor, Apple, etc, etc were all from socialist (regulated economies) Europe and not capitalistic (economic freedom) US. If the system in Europe is so full of freedoms why people are not so creative there? Because they aren't. Whatever it is from IT to movies, from cinema to healthcare, most of the innovation always comes from the US. You tell me why.
It probably has to do more with being open to immigration and innovation than being ruthlessly capitalistic that the US has been able to maintain its competitive edge.
Immigrating to the US has become harder over the years and "regulators" are against potentially disruptive technologies like Bitcoin while countries like Denmark are trying to embrace those kinds of technologies.
It remains to be seen if the USA can maintain its position going forward. In any case it's tough times ahead for many highly privileged economies. I'm from Austria and the disconnect between what used to be and the current realities is often huge. I guess the most important thing is to not get blinded by your own success, then you survive and possibly even thrive.
Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has a formal definition of freedom: "The right to be left alone." This is a very frequently quoted phrase in USSC decisions. BTW: the right to privacy is considered by many to be half of this.
Me again. I committed a serious spelling error. The Actual phrase is the "right to be LET alone."
This is actually quite explicit in the Fourth Amendment. Privacy was not "invented" by the Supremes. As far as citation, here is a list: http://law.justia.com/lawsearch?query=%22right%20to%20be%20l.... As I said, this is commonly quoted phrase. I stand by my original comment, with the change of one word.
You are off base here. I'm not aware of any SCOTUS definition of freedom.
The phrase you quote is most associated with Louis Brandeis' conception of a right to privacy (it was his in-a-nutshell definition).
Privacy and freedom are not the same, obviously. And, there is nothing explicitly in the Constitution (or the Amendments) about privacy per se, which is why Brandeis had to write the article grappling with the issue.
"Freedom" to me is defined as being able to do what I want with my life. Should I choose to be an ambitious workaholic, I should be allowed and encouraged to do so. Should I choose to live a simple life, I should be permitted. How can I do that in the US when there's so much "overhead" to living here? $700/mo to insure a family of two mid-30s adults and their two small children with a high deductible? $30,000 per year for university for the kids? High property taxes based on the market value of my house even though I bought and paid for it decades ago? This is all ludicrous and does nothing more than enslave you to a life of endless work to cover your overhead. And I'm so free that my beloved Congressmen don't let me play a hand of poker online should I want to do so.
Oh, yeah, freedom bonus: As a US citizen I'm forced to pay taxes on my worldwide income even if I no longer live in the US. And if I want to get rid of this beacon of freedom, my US citizenship, I have to pay an "exit tax" on my assets. Freedom my ass.
Oh, you mean "more dependence upon private and corporate interests".
Or, "less democratic control over the services provided, instead left to whoever has money to influence the market to decide".
[added]
I'm kidding (only slightly), because I took offense of Francois liking "less freedom". How about he has a different concept of freedom? That could be either equally valid, or less valid, or even more valid.
Basically, what you wrote, I understood as:
"I don't believe in democratic governance and voting, for me the government is some kind of enemy I want to see less of, and more wallet-voting".
Which if fine by me, but it should be stated more explicitly. Other people find wallet-voting mighty inneficient, and to me doesn't sound very different than "the rich get what they want".
Freedom?
A democracy with only two electable parties?
The world's highest incarceration rate bar none.
The world's highest military spending.
Huge prevalence of guns.
etc etc
Listen, the US is a wonderful country for many many reasons. But we should get off the high horse of 'freedom'.
Sure, for a rugged individualist who wants nothing to do with broader society, America might be better, but this is really a romantic fringe case, and most of rural or inner- America suffers from widespread poverty, high unemployment, drug abuse, etc. And it's less relevant as jobs and people continue to concentrate into large cities. The closer you live to your neighbors, the more it's in your best interest that they be stable, happy people.
I've lived in rural Normandy, and it's pretty cheap there too. You can get your large house, land, hunting licence, etc.
It's even cheaper in the bit in the middle where no-one lives.
Tax allowances in France mean you don't pay much (if anything) if you don't earn much.
No doubt the tax burden is higher in France than the US, but there's no political will to slash public services to US levels, nor would there be public support. Sarkozy tried to move in that direction, and despite being elected to do so, it was incredibly unpopular and he basically made no progress.
The problem is your "Bubba" is not remotely middle class, I'm struggling to think who could afford that as a middle class kind of dude. Maybe retired .mil officer double dipping into a career in police/fire administration (aka the local police chief). But the local police chief is not a middle class bubba that all HS grads can aspire to. Maybe a highly skilled laborer... my stationary diesel mechanic relative makes about twice what I make...
I am in the 80th percentile graph, far away (but not too far) from Chicago, for inflation / COL reasons I'm locally about 90th percentile, and my family is in a really nice suburb perhaps the 3rd wealthiest in the local area, but its a relatively cheap 1950s era 1600 sq ft house, a middle aged Prius and a brand new Yaris instead of two $75K trucks, only one acre of suburban land (which is actually pretty good, the mcmansion people only have 10 ft by 5 ft front lawns and no back lawn or side lawn at all). No hunting cabin, those cost almost as much as my house. Hunting licenses are dirt cheap, right up there with fishing licenses as we are a major deer hunting destination and every tourist business would scream bloody murder if the .gov discouraged their income stream. I could afford ATVs pretty easily but I'd have to give up some expensive technology hobbies, or perhaps give up a couple years of travel/vacation to afford that. The most expensive part of owning ATVs would be purchasing something capable of carrying them and then burning 10 MPG to go hundreds of miles away to use them. Its much like owning a boat in that way. Boats are pretty cheap, its the boating lifestyle that comes with owning a boat that gets extremely expensive, dock fees, tow vehicle, etc. So that's what 80th percentile income for a couple decades actually buys you.
I would expect Bubba at a 30% lower income percentile would be my situation minus the new imported cars, maybe a couple years old, or if trucks they would have to be 90s models to be affordable to Bubba, and a much dumpier suburb with virtually no land, higher crime etc. Needless to say bubba's not going to be able to afford an ATV much less multiple ATVs unless it becomes a hobby/rebuild project and bubba is handy. Your description of Francois sounds a lot more like Bubba, although Francois has better cheaper schools and better cheaper health care, so Bubba would move up to Quebec and swap in a heartbeat, plus or minus local relatives, language issues, etc.
"Bubba" is usually a local skilled blue-collar guy like a mechanic. The mainstream rural family with lots of toys like ATVs is living in a doublewide with a ten year old F-150, wife with an old Buick.
Until Bubba get serious illness or want to study or already have college debt to pay. Jobs that do not require college degree will not pay the above and if you have college degree you got that debt.
So essentially, your Bubba inherited the above or is not exactly the norm e.g, he has business that does exceptionally well. Exceptionally well doing business is not the norm.
Also, it's much cheaper to live well in a certain style in the US away from the coasts than in Europe. Bubba has a large house, two trucks, a few acres of land, ATVs, a hunting cabin, and hunting licenses. Francois has a small house, pretty much no land, and a single small sedan. Francois might make more money in absolute terms but Bubba would never agree to swap.