Back to apartments. In America, where we're spoiled, an apartment comes with a refrigerator, dishwasher, washer and dryer, heating and usually air conditioning. You often get none of those in a typical apartment in Europe. Even in "top-tier" European cities people dry their clothes on a clothesline like a schmuck.
Also top of the carbon footprint league table. Yeah! USA!
The standard of living in the United States is high by the standards that most economists use, and for many decades throughout the 20th century, the United States was recognized as having the highest standard of living in the world. It so happened that I worked with the guys from https://writinguniverse.com/free-essay-examples/culture/ and wrote an article on the topic. But indeed only people who are at least upper-middle class have high standards of living in the United States. All the others are excluded from that. So it is hard to call the USA a high standard of living country. There are many countries in Europe with a quality of living way better than the United States.
The US is constantly absorbing millions of third World imigrants which keeps the averages down in every catagory...health, education, wealth etc. it's a multi-cultural society unlike many other high ranked european countries.
Rents are a relatively good deal in cities where houses are overpriced. A house valued at $1.5 million can be rented for $3.5k/month. My rent was only raised $86/month in 4 years.
But you bring up another good part of America: options of where to live. We have every climate: desert, mountains, tundra, plains, coast, tropics, rain forest. We have urban and rural version of version. We have cheap and exensive versions of them.
Back to apartments. In America, where we're spoiled, an apartment comes with a refrigerator, dishwasher, washer and dryer, heating and usually air conditioning. You often get none of those in a typical apartment in Europe. Even in "top-tier" European cities people dry their clothes on a clothesline like a schmuck.
In my opinion, someone who has never left the US and only been to a handful of cities in the US can’t accurately compare and rank countries based on standard of living. The propaganda machine that is the US government tells us we’re the best at everything (because they need us to stay to pay taxes), but it’s just not true. Like the old study shows, “the US is last in education among developed nations, but #1 in confidence that we are the best educated.” Blissful ignorance is part of the American psyche.
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Like the old study shows, “the US is last in education among developed nations, but #1 in confidence that we are the best educated.”
What does the abysmal (national government) education system (#2 problem), combined with bad parenting (#1 problem), have to do with standard of living?
If you want a quality education, no better country to get one than in the U.S. That's why people from all over the world compete their butts off to get into U.S. universities. Studies of international standardized tests have shown that people who immigrate from countries that score higher as a country than the U.S. will score higher as an individual in the U.S., meaning that the opportunity for quality education is far better in the U.S., for one thing because you have so many good public schools (which are quasi-private schools in districts where local parents basically run the school system), private schools and the opportunity to home-school.
From what I've learned talking to people from other countries, while their countries might not have the student debt problem, they have the over-educated 20- or 30-something w/ no job opportunities problem to an even greater degree than we do in the U.S. In many countries most people are getting the equivalent of a Master's degree and working as a bartender. In the U.S., our wealthiest entreprenaurers are famously college dropouts.
Another thing is cities. In any other country in the world, there is 1, maybe 2, major cities where you can find employment. Everything else is small villages with no restaurants, maybe a pub.
Best health care system in the world. It's almost a miracle how unhealthy we are and yet we have the technology to keep them alive till their 70s or 80s. We even get advertisements on TV for drugs to ask our doctor about. In countries with socialized medicine, if you want some heart or brain medication, the system makes you visit a general practionioner and there's a very high bar to get referred to a specialist and get perscribed a medication and you might have to wait months and months. In the U.S., you can go straight to any doctor and he'll be happy to provide any necessary or unnecessary service you want to pay for.
Looks like you've never been to Japan, India, or China, Large countries with many bustling cities with major economies.
The US has some of the best medicine in the world but very expensive to access. The picture you paint of universal healthcare are isolated incidents at best. So far you see no countries with universal healthcare wanting to drop their system and copy the American system.
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