America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD
55 points
1 hour ago
| 9 comments
| fortune.com
| HN
DarkNova6
27 minutes ago
[-]
As somebody living outside the US, I would find moving to the states highly undesirable even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens.

To me, it would mean a significant reduction in quality of live and I am low-key scared of all the ingredients and additives in food that are pretty much banned everywhere else. Not to mention all risks regarding healthcare.

reply
petcat
8 minutes ago
[-]
It very much depends on life situation. For instance, if you are less than 50 and on private health care through your employer than you're very likely going to have better healthcare access than anywhere in Europe and Canada.

I am able to see my PCP and dentist within a week if I want. I read a statistic that in Europe and Canada you have to make those kinds of routine appointments months in advance.

Also, my father-in-law went from consultation to a full knee replacement surgery within 3 weeks. Again, that kind of thing takes 8 months or a year minimum anywhere in Europe or Canada.

reply
himata4113
42 seconds ago
[-]
This is wrong, you can get same-day appointments for anything time-critical including dental. What takes a long time to schedule is mostly free preventitive care.

You also have the option of spending $50 to $100 to go to a private clinic and get same-day admission. In the US services like that cost nearly 10 times the price due to the whole insurance bullshit.

I got free same-day heart check-up and $80 paid same-week heart monitoring check-up.

reply
basilikum
2 minutes ago
[-]
Healthcare varies widely in Europe. It's not one country. But the "on private health care" part is they key. It's really not that different in lots of parts of Europe with the difference that people who do not have that still have access to the healthcare system without going bankrupt, albeit slower.
reply
gadders
5 minutes ago
[-]
A lot of people in the UK (with professional jobs) top up their state health provision with private medical insurance provided by their employer. This isn't a bad mix.
reply
potatototoo99
1 minute ago
[-]
You are misinformed. A lot of people in Europe and Canada also have private insurance, sometimes paid by the employer as well, and with that the wait times are usually very short. Going through the public healthcare system you may indeed wait months for non urgent matters.
reply
Arnt
3 minutes ago
[-]
You read that? I can get either in a day or two if I need it, they want much longer-term planning though.

For a vaccination I'll call several weeks in advance. If I want an appointment before/after work I'll call well in advance, if I want something tomorrow they may say "11:30, take it out leave it", which isn't great for my work.

Don't trust whoever wrote what you read there. FUD scaremongers.

reply
philipallstar
8 minutes ago
[-]
> even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens.

The US welcomes more people legally than any other country in the world, and half of its politicians think welcoming illegal immigrants is a good idea too.

reply
lostlogin
23 minutes ago
[-]
I’m not in the US, but laughed when I saw that my bike is ‘known to cause cancer or birth defects/reproductive harm.’

When everything is dangerous, nothing is dangerous.

reply
isoprophlex
14 minutes ago
[-]
Not to mention school shooting drills. Teaching kids how to behave when someone tries to shoot up your school, because it happens more than once a decade... And then not doing fuck all to fix the root cause, besides thoughts and prayers, because muh freedom.

Incredible that this is the country that has been the dominant global exporter of technological innovation, pop culture and economic policy for so long.

reply
fuckinpuppers
20 minutes ago
[-]
Yeah the USA has only given lip service for everything it claims to be. Especially in the last 18 months it’s been working overtime to make it even worse.

All the US has done is allow for massive amounts of wealth hoarding and gaslighting of a significant portion of the population into voting and supporting things against their own beliefs or common sense.

If you said “China allows red dye 12 in their food and it’s been proven to cause cancer” they’d freak out about it. But they don’t see any problem back home.

reply
roenxi
9 minutes ago
[-]
> America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

The US consistently scores among the best countries in the world for paying people [0]. Is there some way I can lodge an application to be exploited in a similar manner, without having to move there? Being wealthy and having to live among really wealthy people sounds better than being poor and living among equals.

They're inventing a metric there that just doesn't matter.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

reply
Havoc
13 minutes ago
[-]
I do wonder how real the base number - the GDP - is. The wealthy have been accumulating wealth rapidly but it’s all on paper and the entire thing is underpinned by assumptions of USD reserve currency status.
reply
nbardy
10 minutes ago
[-]
This is a weird number.

And reeks of the same sort of reallocation fallacy that makes people think the rich making too much makes them poor.

If we really just say 4xd everyone’s salary in America. Prices are gonna rapidly rise in everything.

Things don’t get materially better unless we build the material things we need. We need to come up with a way to build more houses. Lower the cost of healthcare. Not just increase everyone’s money supply.

reply
philipallstar
8 minutes ago
[-]
This is yet another article that doesn't understand what wealth is. There is almost no point talking about these numbers, because they mislead more than they inform.
reply
feverzsj
8 minutes ago
[-]
That's why they let in massive number of immigrants from poor countries.
reply
sokoloff
23 minutes ago
[-]
> We measure resources by using per capita gross domestic product – the amount of money in a country evenly divided among its entire population.

GDP is not "the amount of money in a country".

GDP is the monetary value of goods and services produced within a country during a given period (a flow, measured in dollars-per-year).

The amount of money in a country is a measure at a point in a time (a stock, measured in dollars).

I realize Fortune magazine isn't The Economist, but I'd still expect PhDs in political science opining on economic topics to at least understand the difference between stocks and flows.

reply
jibal
9 minutes ago
[-]
That text is linked to a graph where the X axis is years.
reply
pydry
15 minutes ago
[-]
it's not that either. it's the total value of all transactions.

if you paint a masterpiece worth millions and keep it in your closet it has negligible impact on GDP. only once it is sold does it have an effect.

reply
PaulKeeble
6 minutes ago
[-]
And if its sold 5 times in the year its 5x the GDP. Of course the value of the painting hasn't changed and their remains only 1.
reply
stefanfisk
9 minutes ago
[-]
And on the contrary, there’s this method of increasing GDP.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37395566

reply
charcircuit
11 minutes ago
[-]
>If the U.S. changed some policies – such as increasing the federal minimum wage – 46 million people could earn enough to rise above that fair pay line.

You can't just raise minimum wage and expect people to make more money since businesses need to fire everyone who aren't worth the new minimum wage and then those newly unemployed people will depress wages for other jobs since there is more labor on the supply side.

reply
frotaur
7 minutes ago
[-]
Check out https://arindube.substack.com/p/a-minimum-wage-natural-exper..., very good post comparing states with minimum wage and without, that seem to go against this often repeated argument.
reply
thatwasunusual
5 minutes ago
[-]
> You can't just raise minimum wage and expect people to make more money since businesses need to fire everyone who aren't worth the new minimum wage [...]

This way of thinking is what's wrong with USA (among many other things).

You don't (or at least shouldn't) hire lots of people because it's cheap.

reply
gadders
4 minutes ago
[-]
But if they made the minimum wage $1m/year then we would all be rich! /s
reply
MrBuddyCasino
12 minutes ago
[-]
As if workers got paid by "what $wealth allows". As if there was a "right to dignified work" (what is "dignified"?). As if there was a "right to fair income" (whats "fair"?).

This is, in the immortal words of Norm McDonald, some "commie gobbledygook". I don't think there is any "newspaper", as in traditional print publication, left worth reading.

reply
officialchicken
7 minutes ago
[-]
After all of that, you still seem to be familiar with the concept of "fairness". And yet you feel you shouldn't try anything because you don't have the perfect universal answer... are you sure you're posting on the correct forum?
reply