<story><title>Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA</title><url>https://kyso.io/eoin/rich-countries-tend-to-have-a-bigger-middle-class-except-the-usa</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>umvi</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t have anything to prove it but I swear countries like Japan and Germany are very good at this sort of thing because the people have a culture of strict obedience to authority be it the government or whatever. They love having and following well defined rules and are nonplussed (in the original sense of the word) when people break the rules.&lt;p&gt;People in USA have the opposite attitude towards authority and rules.&lt;p&gt;Go someplace in Europe that doesn&amp;#x27;t have this culture and it breaks down. Italy&amp;#x27;s healthcare is a circus. When I was in Italy not even that long ago a doctor came in to see me with a lit cigarette in his mouth.</text></item><item><author>ixtli</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t even get me started. I did a year and a half of university in Tokyo and I used and paid for the health care system there a few times. Cavities filled for 20 dollars at high end central Tokyo offices. Skin doctors for zero dollars and prescribed creams for 800 yen. I knew a brain surgeon there who told me that the max price you could pay for his services was equivalent to 700 dollars. He didn&amp;#x27;t even bother going to conferences in America, and this was 10 years ago.&lt;p&gt;Oh, and people love to talk about wait and access to doctors: not only did none of my experiences have a wait they didn&amp;#x27;t even have a &lt;i&gt;schedule.&lt;/i&gt; I simply walked in to an office and was seen immediately, and the Tokyo metro area has 35 million people living in it.</text></item><item><author>yardie</author><text>In all my travels no one is more deluded about the middle class than in the US. Healthcare is cheaper in Europe therefore it must be worse, somehow. The government is completely dysfunctional and we are worse off for it. Rather than pay slightly more to fully fund a working city&amp;#x2F;state&amp;#x2F;federal government everyone would rather pay slightly less and have a government that can&amp;#x27;t work at all. Then, complain about the fact the government doesn&amp;#x27;t work at all. Yes, the DMV sucks, but guess what, that is the level of service voters decided they wanted and that is what the DMV can deliver based on it&amp;#x27;s funding; 1-2 hour wait times with 2 or 3 agents at the counter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>whatever_dude</author><text>The USA&amp;#x27;s ethos in based in the motto of doing it their own way. Sometimes that&amp;#x27;s good: when everybody is doing the same, it breaks from the status quo and can become a leader in an industry, or just generally break ground in scientific and civil progress. That has happened many times in the past.&lt;p&gt;The flipside is that there are many things are a consensus worldwide because they _are actually better_ but that the US still refuses to adopt, generally because it would mean following others&amp;#x27; lead, or because there are special interests in keeping the current status quo.&lt;p&gt;To me nothing is more emblematic of this problem than the country&amp;#x27;s refusal to adopt the metric system: the alternative is objectively worse, but the country is pretty much the last developed country on earth to refuse to use it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA</title><url>https://kyso.io/eoin/rich-countries-tend-to-have-a-bigger-middle-class-except-the-usa</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>umvi</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t have anything to prove it but I swear countries like Japan and Germany are very good at this sort of thing because the people have a culture of strict obedience to authority be it the government or whatever. They love having and following well defined rules and are nonplussed (in the original sense of the word) when people break the rules.&lt;p&gt;People in USA have the opposite attitude towards authority and rules.&lt;p&gt;Go someplace in Europe that doesn&amp;#x27;t have this culture and it breaks down. Italy&amp;#x27;s healthcare is a circus. When I was in Italy not even that long ago a doctor came in to see me with a lit cigarette in his mouth.</text></item><item><author>ixtli</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t even get me started. I did a year and a half of university in Tokyo and I used and paid for the health care system there a few times. Cavities filled for 20 dollars at high end central Tokyo offices. Skin doctors for zero dollars and prescribed creams for 800 yen. I knew a brain surgeon there who told me that the max price you could pay for his services was equivalent to 700 dollars. He didn&amp;#x27;t even bother going to conferences in America, and this was 10 years ago.&lt;p&gt;Oh, and people love to talk about wait and access to doctors: not only did none of my experiences have a wait they didn&amp;#x27;t even have a &lt;i&gt;schedule.&lt;/i&gt; I simply walked in to an office and was seen immediately, and the Tokyo metro area has 35 million people living in it.</text></item><item><author>yardie</author><text>In all my travels no one is more deluded about the middle class than in the US. Healthcare is cheaper in Europe therefore it must be worse, somehow. The government is completely dysfunctional and we are worse off for it. Rather than pay slightly more to fully fund a working city&amp;#x2F;state&amp;#x2F;federal government everyone would rather pay slightly less and have a government that can&amp;#x27;t work at all. Then, complain about the fact the government doesn&amp;#x27;t work at all. Yes, the DMV sucks, but guess what, that is the level of service voters decided they wanted and that is what the DMV can deliver based on it&amp;#x27;s funding; 1-2 hour wait times with 2 or 3 agents at the counter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ska</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think your analogy holds unless you cherry pick a bit - neither the French nor the British are particularly known as rule followers in the sense you are suggesting. Both have good (even great, in Frances case) health care.&lt;p&gt;The line you are drawing probably has at least as much to do with economics as culture.</text></comment>