It's always hilarious to see HN users claim how the "quality of life" is so much better in the EU than the USA. When in reality most of them only ever visit a handful of EU first-tier cities for short vacations or business trips, and never have to deal with the reality of living and working under an oppressive bureaucratic state.
I'd trade "not being able to access Cloudflare-websites for some hours per week" over "My neighbors can't afford healthcare, there is no public transport for anyone nor can I walk to a cafe on the other side of town", but we all have different priorities :)
Don't get me wrong, it sucks, makes no sense and I hate the responsible people for it, but in the grand scheme of things, Spain does have a higher quality of life than so many other places out in the world, most important, way higher than the country you're comparing it to, on almost any useful metric.
Or you can have all of those things but also not block cloudflare. Because blocking cloudflare is in the interest of just a few company's profits and is unrelated to everything else you mentioned.
Yes, sure, as mentioned, I agree with that it's fucking stupid, but when someone complains about that, while referring to "quality of life" in a place which more depends on other things, it's worth to zoom out a bit and gain some perspective, which was frankly missing in the comment I was responding to.
Nah, I didn't miss anything. I've spent enough time in the EU (including the poorer parts that most tourists don't visit) to have a crystal clear perspective on the real situation.
Yeah, no sure, generalizing "the reality of living and working under an oppressive bureaucratic state" across the EU because specifically Cloudflare being unavailable in Spain for couple of hours a week is totally a nuanced, measured and accurate take and representation of how it is to live and work in the EU in 2026.
I don't think Spain has such amazing quality of life if you are not already set.
It's very tough for young people. It doesn't reward hard work and education. If you have your nice house in a nice place and a good government job it's a happy place but from what I see around people, especially young productive people are not in good place here.
Spain is lucky that it gets around 20% of its economy because of nice weather (tourism + foreign real estate buyers) but I don't think it's enough to sustain the quality of life if there are no reforms.
> I don't think Spain has such amazing quality of life if you are not already set. It's very tough for young people. It doesn't reward hard work and education
When I first came here I literally spent 2 days sleeping outside as I couldn't afford housing, and had very rough 4-5 years before I even got my first programming job. Today I'm financially independent though, and it's probably all thanks the type of environment Spain has fostered together with my own willpower, compared to the environment in the country I'm from where it'd be short of impossible to do what I did, with zero education.
I think it depends on what you compare it to. Plenty of places are way worse, and many other places are surely better. It's definitively possible to achieve amazing quality of life even if you aren't "already set", even outside of government jobs (that don't even pay that well anyways).
Thank you for your perspective. As the beginnings were tough (sleeping outside) can you briefly describe how Spain helped you along the way? From your description it sounds you got there mainly by your own resolve so I am curious why you are praising Spain.
Imo USA is much better than EU (and especially countries like Spain) on this one.
I live in EU, my family (both immigrants from different countries) live in USA. I don't think it's comparable. In USA if you are somewhat smart and somewhat hard working you will do very well vast majority of the time. There are significantly more opportunities there for people who want to take them.
You're welcome to walk to the cafe on the other side of town... however, if you're in a larger city in the southwest, you can expect that walk to take several hours. Just driving from one edge of the Phoenix metro area to the other corner can take upwards of over an hour and a half, and our traffic isn't nearly as bad as other cities.
As for healthcare... that's a mixed bag... you can go to the ER and you will be treated, but the bill afterwards may or may not be impactful... There have been some improvements, but the healthcare lobby is massive, and pretty much stops most reasonable and some unreasonable improvements.
On public transportation, it varies... you need to realize that the main part of the US is by itself about the size of Europe... I would assume there are plenty of areas of Europe where public transit is likely limited. Not even getting into Alaska, which is by itself massive and largely unpopulated. It's probably better to compare individual US States to EU nations in terms of transit.
My last ER trip ended up over $1,000,000. Fortunately after out-of-pocket maximum it was all covered by insurance but this kind of debt would be life ending to the uninsured.
No it wouldn't be. If you were uninsured, the price would magically drop to $50,000. And if you couldn't pay it you'd simply file for bankruptcy and it would be socialized onto the rest of us that way. Worst case scenario, post-bankruptcy you'd have to rent a home for 7 years instead of getting a mortgage until your credit resets. But even people who have gone through bankruptcies can still get mortgages.
Yes, the US healthcare system is insane/dumb. But the stupidity of it can just be stated matter-of-factly without inventing falsehoods like "life ending $1,000,000 debt for the uninsured."
I get it... I had an ER trip, pre ACA (Obamacare) where my health insurance max was 500k, and my bill was like $370k after all was said and done... I worked a lot the next 7 years to pay off/down what I could, then at that point, I just stopped as it was off my credit score, and everyone that took reasonable payment arrangements or settled for an amount that fit in my tax return, bonus, etc.. had been paid.
I definitely couldn't handle working that much today. I've also got some serious health issues that aren't being addressed. That said, I don't feel that the US can handle socialized medicine well, and the best that we could do is take the spend that is already in place with the govt and establish a first party option to compete with commercial providers that anyone can buy a plan from. I also think that there are single-payer approaches and fiduciary requirements for insurance carriers could go a long way combined with such an approach as opposed to a whole sale socialist takeover.
Just what we need, another Rube Goldberg machine to lay over the current Rube Goldberg machine in order to avoid "socialism." Somehow a socialist army, police, and fire department work, but not healthcare, because it is special.
Well, I see lots of calls from left/socialist leaning people to abolish the police and army as it stands. How much corruption already happens in the govt across local and national programs as it stands.. do you think this would be better if it gets expanded?
Police and Fire agencies are local, not national for the most part.
Also, What would it cost to buy all the hospitals and urgent care facilities across the US? Do we just print more money for this? I mean, what would that do to inflation for the next decade as it would be greater than all the COVID spending increases by a pretty wide margin.
Having worked in both the US and EU, I can tell you the quality of life is vastly better in the EU.
US does have some perks for sure. But there are so many issues of its own and those issues are almost always pushed downwards to the most vulnerable groups. Which means, on average, you do end up with a better quality of life outside the US.
Any metric that treats the US as one single data point instead of 50 should be taken with a grain of salt. Denmark has 6 million residents, Minnesota has 5.7 million. You can't compare an entire continental nation, whose 50 states all set their own 50 different health, education and public spending policies, against e.g. Sweden or Spain. That's a bad comparison.
Why do we judge other geographically large and politically divided nations like Canada, Russia or China in aggregate but the USA gets special treatment that conveniently provides an excuse for facing the reality that America is not actually a very good place to live unless you are very wealthy?
I don't know who does this except mostly western Europeans trying to score points on the "I happened to be born in the place that has the most perks for people like me" scoreboard. If you want to compare large geographic areas, you could at least start by including Eastern Europe in these "Europe versus everyone else" comparisons, which would make things look much less flattering for Europe.
Because we don't and we shouldn't? Don't defend bad practice in discussing the US by inventing bad practice that people you just made up are using to discuss Canada, Russia, and China.
> provides an excuse for facing the reality that America is not actually a very good place to live unless you are very wealthy?
You are literally insisting here that aggregate data conceals differences between groups of people. The end of your sentence angrily argues against the beginning of your sentence.
edit: the reason we need to disaggregate is because we need to talk about Mississippi. We need to talk about black America. We need to talk about Chicagoland separately from downstate Illinois. We need to talk about black Chicago separately from white Chicago. Aggregation helps us avoid things.
Hm no I don't think so, my healthcare is ass and I'd love to be on the state-sponsored insurance that my wife has, for example. But if we're going to shoot for the stars, I think it's important to make truthful comparisons instead of starting from a bedrock mired in bad data, bullshit and jingoistic spite.
Well, there are lots of EU countries where governments aren't as idiotic as that of Spain, and where bureaucracy is mostly under control as well.
As a citizen of a Nordic country I would never want to live in America, except maybe if I was rich. Especially for people with children my country offers a superior quality of life in many ways.
As a Swede living in Spain for over 30 years, i much prefer to stay down here. My personal feel is that the Nordic countries "nanny" their populations too much. Too much say in way you can or can't do, and the culture encourages it (O my why are they talking so loud, O my they are arguing outside in public!.... My own experiences when visiting). The governments also don't know how to deal with the ingress of immigration as well as having a extensively privatized system that does not work (healthcare, schools, transport - i think its slowly getting better). Now there are great things too... But i feel safer walking the streets of Barcelona then the streets of Malmo.
Now Spain have their own issues - there are a lot of very light leaning people around still... there was no revolution when the dictator died. A lot of judges and military police officers that had murdered people under Franco continued in service. And of course, lets not forget how the countries plays everyone against Catalunya and Pais Vasco, everything is our fault if you ask people in the south and just like i mentioned above, all we hear about is the Vox and other ultra right people talking crap.
I think one of the few good things we still have down here in Spain is that there is still a memory of Franco, of the dictatorship. If not you, then one of your parents or grandparents lived it.
In other news NY is working on banning air guns that are not transparent or brightly colored and have plugged barrels. Yes plugged, making them useless.
Which oppressive bureaucratic state are we talking about again?
Rage bait as it is; please stay over there in the US, I will stay here in Spain. I will live with this 'opression' that I have to read about on HN to notice. All good!
