> The "American Experiment" isn't an empty concept, but it is about democracy and law and rights as opposed to conservative cultural values, and when people in power start to argue that the former must be sacrificed for the latter they certainly deserve to be clowned on. Not because they are wrong to imagine an American Ideal, but because they have its contents exactly backwards.
From the many responses on this thread, it appears that many either don't want a defintion of "pro-American" or "anti-American" or "an American Ideal" or don't have one but these are core to your point.
That's a very American mindset. I've worked across both the US and EU at a variety of companies with customers, partners, etc and it's a clear pattern:
- Americans are usually willing to skirt the rules and figure it out later. This comes with risk but is ideal when you're early stage, low stakes, and you couldn't follow the rules anyway.
- Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book and will be shocked if you suggest otherwise. Being process oriented is great for high stakes industries where lives and safety are on the line but destroys startups, likely slowing or even killing innovation.
There is no floor to the level of "petty" that can happen here: the UK - granted, not the EU - goes after individuals who don't pay their TV license and determine the who by triangulating unlicensed TVs via radio trucks and inspectors looking in your windows.
The TV license is silly but the detector van situation is bogus, at least in the present day; really they just blanket mail demand letters to every address in the database on the assumption that everyone watches TV.
> Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book
Again on HN, I don't think conflating Europe and all Europeans into a uniform culture works. This might be true of Germany but as you get further from Berlin it is .. less so.
(Famous story from the Greek debt crisis of using satellite photos to find swimming pools and therefore people who were probably underpaying income tax, which was at such poor compliance levels the state was struggling)
Yes, it appears the "detector vans" are an urban legend/propoganda.
Even more fun, in the lead up to Greece joining the EU, they had to get their government pay under control so they were given monthly caps on what they could pay people. No problem, they created a 13th month.
* As detailed in Michael Lewis' Boomerang: https://amzn.to/4cXJnjE - He's the same guy who wrote The Big Short and Moneyball
Depends on what Europe you mean. Europe can be quite different depending on where you are. I wouldn't say northern Europe wants to do it by the book all the time like the Germans.
Quite common to view Europe as all the same, but Europe varies much more than what US does.
Perhaps one explanation is personal bankruptcy? At least in Scandinavia/Finland this is an unknown concept. You mess up your business (Ireland has EPR fines upto 500ke) and end up paying company loans for the rest of your life.
I don't think any bank will give you such a huge personal loan that you could end up in debt for your whole life, since they typically want the loan repaid. The only way I can imagine that happening is if you're a sole proprietor and you get sued or fined. I can't think of another way to get exposed to that much liability.
100ke might be enough. Once the debt is in enforcement (ulosotto in Finnish), interest can keep accruing at roughly 10%. If your earnings are low, you can pay for years without reducing the principal at all.
What are you doing taking on that kind of risk and starting ventures if your earnings are low? I'm sorry, but if you're a delivery boy living from paycheck to paycheck, you should be trying to get an education, not start a business. That's true in Finland and in the US.
I don't really have this experience. A lot of business I have worked with followed the "let's just do it and figure out the risk later" approach. In highly regulated environment it was different, but then looking for ways to squirt around the rules was the game. See for example the CumCum (don't blame me, it was called like that) tax-evasion scheme put in place by french banks.
Most people are under the impression that those triangulating trucks can't detect anything and they're just an obvious looking enforcement truck used as a scare tactic, is that not the case?
I find this hard to discuss among others as it often results in heated discussions, but in my experience, Europeans have a completely different understanding of what is considered "rude" so much that I struggle to work with a vast majority of them.
That's not to say that there aren't extremely nice people all other Europe... there are. But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that would get them fired in the US.
Not sure if it's a pattern but when I interviewed with an EU company recently, they explicitly asked if I was married and if I had kids. They explained it as they had a "European mindset towards weekends and holidays" and they expected me to NOT be online.
I was fine with the mindset but never expected to get those questions in an interview, as it'd be illegal in the States.
To be clear: the question isn't illegal. What is illegal is using it to discriminate against a protected class, so as a result, no interviewer with half a brain will ask those questions.
Whenever I call out things like this to European friends they just think I am being an overly-sensitive American. But saying that to a colleague can absolutely get you fired in the US.
The unfortunate truth is that if you break life expectancy out by ethnicity, it tells a different story. Generally Asians, Latinos, and Whites are above while Blacks and Native Americans are below and pull down the average: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9256789/#S12 If you break the groups out and individually compare against countries of similiar ethnicity, the US is often ahead.
For infant mortality specifically, in the US we count every baby with a sign of life, regardless of the age. In many developed countries, they simply don't count too premature (under 22 weeks or 500 grams, iirc) and therefore don't consider them in the metrics. It makes for an apples to oranges comparison.
You're right on "preventable and treatable deaths" with heart disease and diabetes being the biggest contributors. The question for that comes down to "is that a result of systemic issues or individual choices?" because we can do lots about one of those.
Statistical hustling is common, but the most usual form is that the US excludes uninsured individuals to make itself look like it belongs in the developed country cluster.
This means that the average life expectancy of white Americans is actually slightly below the average life expectancy of all Americans.
Incidentally, while a lot of developed countries do not track life expectancy by ethnicity, the UK seems to have a few some studies. (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...) Though the data is very old (2011-2014), and the data is broken out by sex with no summaries, whites actually fare the worst. Black African females came out at the top, with a life expectancy of 88.9. I asked Google's search what the comparable black American female life expectancy was in 2011, and it gave me 78.2, along with a link. (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6244a8.htm)
Our overall ranking generally is below all "developed countries" that I can see, which range from Germany (~80) to the ~84 of "developed" countries like Japan, Switzerland, and Sweden (along with a few countries still classified as "developing" like Kuwait). It's not completely terrible, but considering how much the United States spends on health care, that's quite a poor value.
There are multiple identified factors for explaining life expectancy, but access to healthcare is identified as a very significant factor. In a system, like America, that is very expensive (likely due to highly inefficient, over-bureaucratic, overly complex, and over-quasi-monopolized systems) and without universal coverage, it follows that those who are poorer may not have the same access to healthcare and may succumb to entirely curable illnesses. So I don't think it's a coincidence that the racial breakdown above almost matches the median ethnic household income (the median white American household earns more than the median Hispanic household, but elsewise it aligns).
On infant mortality, at least one link I found -- https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/infant-... -- which adjusted data due to the reported difference, and still found significantly higher infant mortality in the United States. Though the data is a little old (2016).
Cite the source for "access to healthcare" as a "very significant factor" in US life expectancy? We have pretty good numbers on the mortality cause differences between the US and other countries and they don't align with this claim (unless you're doing some bank-shot argument about how access to health care makes our car crashes more lethal or something).
You'd want to be looking for a scholarly source that puts numbers on this. It's been done! As I noted elsewhere on the thread, the study we're commenting on is based on 1990s numbers about differing mortality of the uninsured. But here you're looking breakdowns of all mortality causes and tying them to insurance, a trickier proposition. Will be interested in whatever you come up with.
From the many responses on this thread, it appears that many either don't want a defintion of "pro-American" or "anti-American" or "an American Ideal" or don't have one but these are core to your point.
How would you define each?