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.
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
You are immediately referencing yet another number... I don't think you get the point I'm trying to make. I'm probably not the best person to explain this to be fair, it is a bit subtle
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...
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
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 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.
So air conditioning has become a larger topic in Europe, because our summers are getting so much hotter. Here in Germany it feels like we've cut short spring and fall, and summer an winter make most of the year. Air conditioning is very unusual in flats, schools and most public buildings. Hell, even some public transport is still lacking it. So I could imagine coming from that summer to the US and everything is a chill 290K might have motivated some people to tak to social media. But of course, social media is also just incredibly fake.
There's this new brand of dickheads, the Dubai Dudes, and they seem to be a pretty loud and influential voice on social media, amplified by the royal houses down there and bond villain billionaires like Peter Thiel.
> 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.
I would say not necessarily 'marvel' in a positive sense. I've mostly only been to San Francisco (generally there once a year) but that elevated roadway through the city is a blight; it's absolutely awful. Also it seems to constantly have ridiculous traffic.
> 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.
Yeah, this is a particularly weird internet belief about Europe. Regions where the weather historically justified it have domestic air conditioning; in regions where it rarely gets hot it's usually mostly confined to commercial use (commercial spaces have way more waste heat; 100 people in a room is ~equivalent to running a 10kW heating system constantly).
What you're seeing now is that some regions which historically almost never got hot are suddenly getting hot fairly frequently due to climate change; they're shifting from "domestic aircon would be silly, you'd run it for two days a year" to "maybe it's needed now".
Speaking of San Francisco, most homes in San Francisco don't have air conditioning; it hasn't yet come under the sort of climactic pressure which would make it necessary.
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?
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 felt the whole US vs EU air conditioning drama was created by a culture that is so used to its exceptionalism, to being better than everyone else, to feeling they’re the center of the universe, in a time of rapid decline if not betrayal by its own government. I mean, that’s massive trauma shared by 300 odd million people.
So, give them one reason to feel superior once again, to bully the new golden child, they’re gonna latch onto it as if their lives depend on it.
Like the usage of ‘europoor’: it’s been around for decades, but I haven’t seen it so widespread than after Trump 2 started the whole dismantling of the United States from within.
> And we also had foreigners from all around the world (Japanese, Korean, etc. etc.) come and be all Costco is amazing
One funny aspect of this is that they have Costcos in both of the countries you mentioned, so it’s not exactly exotic (like many things that were “lauded”).
This post is an awkward read because it carries a tacit assumption that the bulk of this posting activity is organic engagement - as opposed to merely a new flavor of shit being thrown at the wall by bot-propagandists, which then happens to resonate with some smaller segment of disenfranchised people. The analysis still does apply for why those people are drawn to such a refrain, but the situation lacks the weight of a cultural trend and is better off seen as a subculture - there is no counterveiling force of people disagreeing with the narrative and arguing against it (en masse), because most simply ignore it and go elsewhere.
lovley topic - which I was digging into a bit lately [1] - from an economic standpoint one way to think about the US-Europe income gap is to separate output per hour from GDP per person.
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 portion (though very far from the majority) of people in Germany feel about the USA and China.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Because the people commenting on any site are a weird subgroup of humanity. Most people just browse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
maybe. but you did, ignoring the realities of the social contract in the US. "Europe" is a decentralised region in power terms. France is important none the less, but it is less important than Trump in the US. So a Le Pen or Melanchon wont drive whole Europe into a dictatorship or into the abyss. Trump tried and lots of Americans follow him.
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.
>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.
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 because mechanics have become unaffordable.
I feel about as free as a medieval serf between the health insurance sword of damocles hanging over my family's head and the landlords demanding more every year.
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.
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.
> 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 (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 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.
There are no places where eviction is basically impossible, that is conservative propaganda directed at blue states with slightly more favorable tenant protections. However landlords are not running a charity and when property taxes and mortgage rates goes up so does the rent.
Your comment perfectly highlights how clueless Europeans can be about America.
I was talking about Europe, obviously. 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. I know the US (and Canada) a lot better than you know Europe and, obviously, the US too.
Ok I'm an idiot and I still can't comprehend how European renters consider themselves wealthy. You're saying it only works in Europe if the rents stay low meaning it only works if the state subsidizes landlords, that's a big if for Europeans to stake their future on and an arrangement Americans would never trust. I think Europeans are building themselves a housing trap that has yet to snap shut on them.
In my state we have strong rental assistance programs and it has resulted in a housing crisis second only to Hawaii, we definitely aren't Europe.
> You're saying it only works in Europe if the rents stay low
Yes... but not just in Europe, everywhere the same truth holds.
> meaning it only works if the state subsidizes landlords,
Wrong. The state must support construction and ensure that it's done at low cost at source, without subsidies. The US has too high construction costs due to bad regulation, bad building costs, bad zoning, bad labor laws, everything.
> that's a big if for Europeans to stake their future
It's not a big if, it's called democracy. Markets are not a force of nature, they can be controlled and guided.
> In my state we have strong rental assistance programs
That's subsidizing demand. It doesn't work because it only increases rents.
America also has democracy and it resulted in a housing crisis. China doesn't have democracy and nine out of ten own their homes, I think we ought to take notes from them not 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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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 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 and 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 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 their war he probably would been evicted by some landlord in NYC just like the poor Palestinians.
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.
It's kind of complicated comparing different societies where many people have different experiences and choices. I've noticed a bit of a change though over the forty years or so of going to Europe and the US. Forty years ago the part of Italy we went to was quite poor - still using donkeys in agriculture and the like and the US was way ahead. Now the Italians all have cars, internet and the like and the US has kind of gone to extremes with millionaire with five huge cars driving past homeless living on the street which is kind of odd as a lifestyle I guess.
I live in a particular corner of Europe, have temporarily lived in the US and worked with US companies traveling quite a bit across the country. I have repeatedly considered moving to US permanently over the past 20 years and always found it makes no sense for me. If I look at the “soft” things around me (kids walking to school, access to airport and nature, sporting facilities, retail, culture, healthcare process etc.) I always find that most of it is not even attainable in the US or attainable at a salary that makes no sense for my line of work. E.g. healthcare. It’s not just that it’s expensive, but the process around it is so _complicated_. Why would I want that much paperwork and risk (maybe I’m covered and maybe I’m not and there’s no easy way to tell) in my life?
It comes up around Ukraine defending itself against Russia. Successful covert operation? Must have been the CIA helping them, they could never do such a thing on their own. (Never mind that many such operations, like long range strikes against oil refineries going explicitly against US support). Before getting F-16s it was all "they couldn't learn to fly or maintain them fast or well enough to make a difference" and yet now they fly every day. It's a completely arrogant attitude that Americans are the only ones with skill or ability.
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[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 72.6 ms ] threadIt 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.
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
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...
Fair warning.
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.
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.
* 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.
As European I find AC settings ridiculously low. It's summer, why should I carry a hoodie just for a bus ride?
There's this new brand of dickheads, the Dubai Dudes, and they seem to be a pretty loud and influential voice on social media, amplified by the royal houses down there and bond villain billionaires like Peter Thiel.
I would say not necessarily 'marvel' in a positive sense. I've mostly only been to San Francisco (generally there once a year) but that elevated roadway through the city is a blight; it's absolutely awful. Also it seems to constantly have ridiculous traffic.
> 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.
Yeah, this is a particularly weird internet belief about Europe. Regions where the weather historically justified it have domestic air conditioning; in regions where it rarely gets hot it's usually mostly confined to commercial use (commercial spaces have way more waste heat; 100 people in a room is ~equivalent to running a 10kW heating system constantly).
What you're seeing now is that some regions which historically almost never got hot are suddenly getting hot fairly frequently due to climate change; they're shifting from "domestic aircon would be silly, you'd run it for two days a year" to "maybe it's needed now".
Speaking of San Francisco, most homes in San Francisco don't have air conditioning; it hasn't yet come under the sort of climactic pressure which would make it necessary.
See https://youtu.be/ZNSS4sTHAAQ
The typical way to honestly compliment the US is to say the national parks are nice, right?
This has stuck with me for 3 decades now. Because it's true.
So, give them one reason to feel superior once again, to bully the new golden child, they’re gonna latch onto it as if their lives depend on it.
Like the usage of ‘europoor’: it’s been around for decades, but I haven’t seen it so widespread than after Trump 2 started the whole dismantling of the United States from within.
One funny aspect of this is that they have Costcos in both of the countries you mentioned, so it’s not exactly exotic (like many things that were “lauded”).
[1] https://philippdubach.com/posts/us-europe-productivity-worki...
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.
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 portion (though very far from the majority) of people in Germany feel about the USA and China.
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.
What? Russias threats to Europe is not the source of hope for anyone.
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.
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.
Because the people commenting on any site are a weird subgroup of humanity. Most people just browse.
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.
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.
Similarly, the alpha-beta-matrix-pills and adjacent nonsense was all over /b/ in the early 2010s.
gr8 b8 m8
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1VbRI
>see AI slop image
>close tab
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 because mechanics have become unaffordable.
I feel about as free as a medieval serf between the health insurance sword of damocles hanging over my family's head and the landlords demanding more every year.
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.
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.
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 (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.
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.
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.
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.
There are no places where eviction is basically impossible, that is conservative propaganda directed at blue states with slightly more favorable tenant protections. However landlords are not running a charity and when property taxes and mortgage rates goes up so does the rent.
Your comment perfectly highlights how clueless Europeans can be about America.
> Your comment perfectly highlights how clueless Europeans can be about America.
I live in the US. I know the US (and Canada) a lot better than you know Europe and, obviously, the US too.
In my state we have strong rental assistance programs and it has resulted in a housing crisis second only to Hawaii, we definitely aren't Europe.
Yes... but not just in Europe, everywhere the same truth holds.
> meaning it only works if the state subsidizes landlords,
Wrong. The state must support construction and ensure that it's done at low cost at source, without subsidies. The US has too high construction costs due to bad regulation, bad building costs, bad zoning, bad labor laws, everything.
> that's a big if for Europeans to stake their future
It's not a big if, it's called democracy. Markets are not a force of nature, they can be controlled and guided.
> In my state we have strong rental assistance programs
That's subsidizing demand. It doesn't work because it only increases rents.
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".
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.
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 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 and 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.
Had Afghanistan not won their war he probably would been evicted by some landlord in NYC just like the poor Palestinians.
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.