traveling open your eyes to how terrible the US is in many ways?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taiwan is about the size of MD and Delaware combined. Of course it's easy to run cross-country trains for cheap in a place that small.

The king of Thailand is the richest monarch in the world (estimated net worth $30-70 billion) and Thailand has the strictest Lèse-majesté laws in the world, meaning criticizing the king carries a sentence of 3-15 years in prison.

I've lived abroad in a few countries and traveled to nearly 100. What I look at is things like innovation, economy and standard of living. Thailand's economy is nearly 50% from tourism (it's 3% in the US). For the most part, tourism does not require innovation. Name any innovations from Thailand that you use. They have 0 Nobel prize winners. Compare that to the US, where more than half of all Nobel prizes awarded in 2024 went to Americans, despite having less than 5% of the world's population.

Taiwan does a little better on the innovation scale -- TSMC is a massive semiconductor manufacturing company and you probably have at least one of their chips in some device in your house. But I think people would struggle to name even one major Taiwanese company.

Then look at standard of living. In the US, even low-income people live in a house with air conditioning and usually a dishwasher and a garbage disposal. Meanwhile, every time there's a heat wave in Paris and scores of people die from the heat.. because not all places have air conditioning. Compare that to for example, Montgomery County, where air conditioning has been _required_ in all rental properties since 2020.

Yes, the US has many downsides, crime and violence in particular. I think we as a society choose to live with it because those who are middle class and above are mostly isolated from it, and ther lower class do not have a strong enough voice. Compare that to many countries, especially in Asia, where you can walk around alone at night down dark alleys with zero fear.

The US is by no means perfect, but it's hardly terrible. A 1-week vacation to some tourist land in another country is hardly a typical experience of how real life is like there.

The US is uniquely bad in infrastructure development compared to peer countries and I bet also compared to many “poorer” countries. We just don’t invest in it; and leaving decisions to fragmentary states and municipalities results in an uncoordinated and ineffecient system. What OP was seeing in terms of superior transportation was real. In the US we just accept things like regular air travel delays of hours and cancelled flights; and the lack of rail options in most of the country.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure

When it comes to roads, you seem to be overlooking the interstate highway system. The federal govenrment funds most major transporation infrastructure projects in the US, and for good reason -- the nation's economy overall benefits from having a well-connected country. Yes, states are the ones to propose and implement such projects, but typicallly the feds put in the majority of the funding.

Even with "local" rail, like Metro's silver line, the Feds put in about 40% of government funding.

As for rail infrastructure, the US is just so much bigger and with lower population density than most countries. Why would anyone sit 2+ days on a train from New York to LA when they can fly in 5 hours? The same is in Europe -- Copenhagen to Athens is a shorter distance but no one is going to sit 2 days on a train and bus (there are no inter-city trains to Athens) when they can fly it in 3 hours.

Shhh don’t tell him about high speed trains …

But the point is not only long haul trains but also regional rail. Imagine if instead of the patchwork of WMATA, MARC and VRE we had a comprehensive regional rail system like Madrid?

You mean the patchwork of rail systems serving Madrid?

Madrid Metro, Metro Ligero, and Cercanias.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I often travel and think the opposite- we have it great in America. Central and South America are riddled with poverty, corruption, drugs. I feel unsafe as a woman in the Middle East and India (also riddled with extreme poverty and is unsanitary). Even in Europe, my kids point to laundry hanging across alleys and small apartments and comment how poor those people must be. Nope, middle class Europeans live in small apartments and don’t enjoy many of the day-to-day conveniences we have. They pay dearly for their safety net such as healthcare though high taxes and will complain about the long waits and inefficiencies in their healthcare system. I’d never want to live in communist China or in Russia under Putin. Does anyone think there is anyplace in Africa that has the comforts and safety we have here?

We certainly have our problems, but there are few, if any, places that don’t. I’ll take our issues any day over the issues of any place I’ve visited.

This is one of those cases where a basic understanding of history and America’s role in it would absolutely blow OP’s mind.

Yeah those silly Central American nations, they just forgot to develop their economies and political systems!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. I started noticing back in the 1990s that many US cities were 10x more dangerous than any European city. Hearing how others in South America and Caribbean view the US made me realize how silly we look. How we muck things up with the car-centric culture, the lack of accessible health care and child svd elder care, the expense to educate…and now, increasingly, with the huge increase in guns

New York City in the late 90s was magical - clean and safe - and I found it better run than London and Paris at the time by far. Of course, things have changed. Cities don’t stay stagnant as administrators change.

NYC in the 90s was magical? There were more than a 1000 murders a years for the first half of the decade and even in the latter half annual murder rates were more than today.

This absolutely feels like a visiting at the right time of your life or preferring the rhetoric of tough on crime over actual data.

I lived there, wasn’t a visitor but you’re right I should have specified mid/late 90s (true also for early 00’s). As a woman I could wander the streets any time of night and not worry, the city was clean, cops everywhere. This was the Guiliani and Bloomberg era. If you lived there then vs later or now, you’d know what I was talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely not. I live in Germany, and I have to laugh when so many Americans fantasize about moving to Europe and talk about it like some kind of utopia. It's insanely naive. Every place has its problems and issues

The problem in the US is not that we have problems. It is our obstinate refusal to solve any of them while new problems continue to crop up. While many of these problems are sort of relegated to the poorest people in our country, they are increasingly “trickling up” to the middle class.

People are routinely dying from a lack of healthcare or going bankrupt from medical problems. This should have been resolved ages ago, and is simply not such a crisis in other countries.

Same with gun violence. Yes, there are a multitude of tertiary issues related to gun violence but the main issue is simply guns.

And now, we have a huge mentally ill homeless population suffering in our cities and it’s only growing.

And I think the worst part is that people seem so lonely and unhappy.

Why do we tolerate this?

When I go to my parents’ home country, it just isn’t so miserable. I’m staying in a middle class neighborhood, not a luxury hotel. I have been here often over the last 2 decades: People are grinning and bearing it. No one is shot in the street. If I need medicine I can just walk into the pharmacy and buy it for $2. People are out past 8pm having fun. People are just enjoying being with other people more.

Something is just broken at home. I really feel like I get a break abroad, from the horrible political news and violence and apocalyptic weather events. I have not felt this way before.

Totally disagree. The American personality is a go getter, problem solving one and if anything we are overly optimistic about our ability to change things particularly when utilizing the government. PP had it right, you’re entitled to your opinions but I don’t believe your take on things is widely viewed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:US is an undeveloped S hole of backwater rednecks with very low education.

Tens of thousands of their people die per year from guns and go bankrupt for epipens. What a laughably bad society.

Nobel Prizes in 2024:

Physics: American and a Brit
Chemistry: 2 Americans, 1 Brit
Medicine: 2 Americans
Economics: 1 Turk, 1 Brit, 1 American (all from MIT)

At least one American won every Nobel prize this last year for prizes in science and innovation (I left out literature and peace).

Yes, there are many Americans with poor education, but we also have some of the most brilliant people in the world. Look at technology -- the majority of software and devices you use every day are from American companies. Which country can match that?

How long will that last though?

And we need people who can design and build roads, not just Nobel Prize winners.

Well, the US has been dominating Nobel prizes for about 80 years, but I suppose that could come to an end. A lot of the winners are immigrants or children of immigrants, and I think that's the special sauce -- the universities in the US draw the top people in their field from all over the world.

Yes, we need people for all kinds of jobs, not just the handful of people who win the Nobel prize each year. Good engineers to design and build roads are likely to come from the top universities, which the US does quite well in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the British know how you feel. They were once the most developed country and London was an incredible city. Over time, the pace of growth in London slowed while elsewhere it increased. By the time I visited London for the first time in the late 90s, London felt like a relic, preserved for historians. Yes, it was still a bustling city, but it didn’t feel modern like Singapore or Tokyo. In 30 years, the US will start to feel like a historical artifact to be preserved rather than leading the world into the future.

I visited London for the first time since 2000 this summer and honestly think it has changed for the better. It’s a vibrant, beautiful place with a lot of great energy - definitely didn’t feel like a city stuck in time to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taiwan is about the size of MD and Delaware combined. Of course it's easy to run cross-country trains for cheap in a place that small.

The king of Thailand is the richest monarch in the world (estimated net worth $30-70 billion) and Thailand has the strictest Lèse-majesté laws in the world, meaning criticizing the king carries a sentence of 3-15 years in prison.

I've lived abroad in a few countries and traveled to nearly 100. What I look at is things like innovation, economy and standard of living. Thailand's economy is nearly 50% from tourism (it's 3% in the US). For the most part, tourism does not require innovation. Name any innovations from Thailand that you use. They have 0 Nobel prize winners. Compare that to the US, where more than half of all Nobel prizes awarded in 2024 went to Americans, despite having less than 5% of the world's population.

Taiwan does a little better on the innovation scale -- TSMC is a massive semiconductor manufacturing company and you probably have at least one of their chips in some device in your house. But I think people would struggle to name even one major Taiwanese company.

Then look at standard of living. In the US, even low-income people live in a house with air conditioning and usually a dishwasher and a garbage disposal. Meanwhile, every time there's a heat wave in Paris and scores of people die from the heat.. because not all places have air conditioning. Compare that to for example, Montgomery County, where air conditioning has been _required_ in all rental properties since 2020.

Yes, the US has many downsides, crime and violence in particular. I think we as a society choose to live with it because those who are middle class and above are mostly isolated from it, and ther lower class do not have a strong enough voice. Compare that to many countries, especially in Asia, where you can walk around alone at night down dark alleys with zero fear.

The US is by no means perfect, but it's hardly terrible. A 1-week vacation to some tourist land in another country is hardly a typical experience of how real life is like there.

The US is uniquely bad in infrastructure development compared to peer countries and I bet also compared to many “poorer” countries. We just don’t invest in it; and leaving decisions to fragmentary states and municipalities results in an uncoordinated and ineffecient system. What OP was seeing in terms of superior transportation was real. In the US we just accept things like regular air travel delays of hours and cancelled flights; and the lack of rail options in most of the country.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure

When it comes to roads, you seem to be overlooking the interstate highway system. The federal govenrment funds most major transporation infrastructure projects in the US, and for good reason -- the nation's economy overall benefits from having a well-connected country. Yes, states are the ones to propose and implement such projects, but typicallly the feds put in the majority of the funding.

Even with "local" rail, like Metro's silver line, the Feds put in about 40% of government funding.

As for rail infrastructure, the US is just so much bigger and with lower population density than most countries. Why would anyone sit 2+ days on a train from New York to LA when they can fly in 5 hours? The same is in Europe -- Copenhagen to Athens is a shorter distance but no one is going to sit 2 days on a train and bus (there are no inter-city trains to Athens) when they can fly it in 3 hours.

Shhh don’t tell him about high speed trains …

But the point is not only long haul trains but also regional rail. Imagine if instead of the patchwork of WMATA, MARC and VRE we had a comprehensive regional rail system like Madrid?

You mean the patchwork of rail systems serving Madrid?

Madrid Metro, Metro Ligero, and Cercanias.

Cercanias is what I was thinking of actually but you’re right that different levels of government are involved. However somehow the supposed conflict between Madrid Metro and Renfe ended up with *both* having stations at the airport so …

This is just a really rough comparison but the DC equivalent would be if we had a regional rail with stops at Union Station, L’Enfant, DuPont, Metro Center, Silver Spring, and Largo, and you could take the regional rail out to the burbs in all directions (as well as connecting to Baltimore and Annapolis).

As it stands now you can get MARC at Union Station and New Carrollton, and VRE at L’Enfant, but with limited reach on those lines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely not. I live in Germany, and I have to laugh when so many Americans fantasize about moving to Europe and talk about it like some kind of utopia. It's insanely naive. Every place has its problems and issues

The problem in the US is not that we have problems. It is our obstinate refusal to solve any of them while new problems continue to crop up. While many of these problems are sort of relegated to the poorest people in our country, they are increasingly “trickling up” to the middle class.

People are routinely dying from a lack of healthcare or going bankrupt from medical problems. This should have been resolved ages ago, and is simply not such a crisis in other countries.

Same with gun violence. Yes, there are a multitude of tertiary issues related to gun violence but the main issue is simply guns.

And now, we have a huge mentally ill homeless population suffering in our cities and it’s only growing.

And I think the worst part is that people seem so lonely and unhappy.

Why do we tolerate this?

When I go to my parents’ home country, it just isn’t so miserable. I’m staying in a middle class neighborhood, not a luxury hotel. I have been here often over the last 2 decades: People are grinning and bearing it. No one is shot in the street. If I need medicine I can just walk into the pharmacy and buy it for $2. People are out past 8pm having fun. People are just enjoying being with other people more.

Something is just broken at home. I really feel like I get a break abroad, from the horrible political news and violence and apocalyptic weather events. I have not felt this way before.

^^exactly. Compared to other countries we cannot do anything to improve or solve collective problems. our infrastructure is decaying because of it - it is well known. even making the smallest improvement to traffic or public space is incredibly costly because we’ve set up a system where people can easily throw wrenches into the works - and we have become so miserable and individualistic that people seem to enjoy crusading against change.

Who.appointed you to speak on behalf of the country. You don't know what is going on in people's heads. Your entire goal is to tell people to feel despair. "You need to hate America, I say, this is why!". You have an agenda.

yes … my agenda is that we should have a transit system on par with equally wealthy countries! And for my neighbors to have more of a sense of collective good so that they don’t spend their time crusading against housing development for example.

I don't want collectivism. So look I have an opinion as well.

fabulous, then enjoy the decaying bridges, flight cancellations, endless traffic jams, and uneducated children that are the result. Congrats!

Where did all the Obama and Biden infrastructure money go to? That was supposed to be your party’s plan to fix all this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:US is an undeveloped S hole of backwater rednecks with very low education.

Tens of thousands of their people die per year from guns and go bankrupt for epipens. What a laughably bad society.

What country do you live in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely not. I live in Germany, and I have to laugh when so many Americans fantasize about moving to Europe and talk about it like some kind of utopia. It's insanely naive. Every place has its problems and issues

The problem in the US is not that we have problems. It is our obstinate refusal to solve any of them while new problems continue to crop up. While many of these problems are sort of relegated to the poorest people in our country, they are increasingly “trickling up” to the middle class.

People are routinely dying from a lack of healthcare or going bankrupt from medical problems. This should have been resolved ages ago, and is simply not such a crisis in other countries.

Same with gun violence. Yes, there are a multitude of tertiary issues related to gun violence but the main issue is simply guns.

And now, we have a huge mentally ill homeless population suffering in our cities and it’s only growing.

And I think the worst part is that people seem so lonely and unhappy.

Why do we tolerate this?

When I go to my parents’ home country, it just isn’t so miserable. I’m staying in a middle class neighborhood, not a luxury hotel. I have been here often over the last 2 decades: People are grinning and bearing it. No one is shot in the street. If I need medicine I can just walk into the pharmacy and buy it for $2. People are out past 8pm having fun. People are just enjoying being with other people more.

Something is just broken at home. I really feel like I get a break abroad, from the horrible political news and violence and apocalyptic weather events. I have not felt this way before.

^^exactly. Compared to other countries we cannot do anything to improve or solve collective problems. our infrastructure is decaying because of it - it is well known. even making the smallest improvement to traffic or public space is incredibly costly because we’ve set up a system where people can easily throw wrenches into the works - and we have become so miserable and individualistic that people seem to enjoy crusading against change.

Who.appointed you to speak on behalf of the country. You don't know what is going on in people's heads. Your entire goal is to tell people to feel despair. "You need to hate America, I say, this is why!". You have an agenda.

yes … my agenda is that we should have a transit system on par with equally wealthy countries! And for my neighbors to have more of a sense of collective good so that they don’t spend their time crusading against housing development for example.

I don't want collectivism. So look I have an opinion as well.

fabulous, then enjoy the decaying bridges, flight cancellations, endless traffic jams, and uneducated children that are the result. Congrats!

Where did all the Obama and Biden infrastructure money go to? That was supposed to be your party’s plan to fix all this.

I think it was a good start but I think you characterizing it as inherently partisan is the whole issue I’m talking about.

[Anonymous]

A lot of the US problems are related to crime, homelessness, and the social contract of acceptable norms of behavior in public spaces. I don’t see the US improving until these issues are addressed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taiwan is about the size of MD and Delaware combined. Of course it's easy to run cross-country trains for cheap in a place that small.

The king of Thailand is the richest monarch in the world (estimated net worth $30-70 billion) and Thailand has the strictest Lèse-majesté laws in the world, meaning criticizing the king carries a sentence of 3-15 years in prison.

I've lived abroad in a few countries and traveled to nearly 100. What I look at is things like innovation, economy and standard of living. Thailand's economy is nearly 50% from tourism (it's 3% in the US). For the most part, tourism does not require innovation. Name any innovations from Thailand that you use. They have 0 Nobel prize winners. Compare that to the US, where more than half of all Nobel prizes awarded in 2024 went to Americans, despite having less than 5% of the world's population.

Taiwan does a little better on the innovation scale -- TSMC is a massive semiconductor manufacturing company and you probably have at least one of their chips in some device in your house. But I think people would struggle to name even one major Taiwanese company.

Then look at standard of living. In the US, even low-income people live in a house with air conditioning and usually a dishwasher and a garbage disposal. Meanwhile, every time there's a heat wave in Paris and scores of people die from the heat.. because not all places have air conditioning. Compare that to for example, Montgomery County, where air conditioning has been _required_ in all rental properties since 2020.

Yes, the US has many downsides, crime and violence in particular. I think we as a society choose to live with it because those who are middle class and above are mostly isolated from it, and ther lower class do not have a strong enough voice. Compare that to many countries, especially in Asia, where you can walk around alone at night down dark alleys with zero fear.

The US is by no means perfect, but it's hardly terrible. A 1-week vacation to some tourist land in another country is hardly a typical experience of how real life is like there.

The US is uniquely bad in infrastructure development compared to peer countries and I bet also compared to many “poorer” countries. We just don’t invest in it; and leaving decisions to fragmentary states and municipalities results in an uncoordinated and ineffecient system. What OP was seeing in terms of superior transportation was real. In the US we just accept things like regular air travel delays of hours and cancelled flights; and the lack of rail options in most of the country.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure

When it comes to roads, you seem to be overlooking the interstate highway system. The federal govenrment funds most major transporation infrastructure projects in the US, and for good reason -- the nation's economy overall benefits from having a well-connected country. Yes, states are the ones to propose and implement such projects, but typicallly the feds put in the majority of the funding.

Even with "local" rail, like Metro's silver line, the Feds put in about 40% of government funding.

As for rail infrastructure, the US is just so much bigger and with lower population density than most countries. Why would anyone sit 2+ days on a train from New York to LA when they can fly in 5 hours? The same is in Europe -- Copenhagen to Athens is a shorter distance but no one is going to sit 2 days on a train and bus (there are no inter-city trains to Athens) when they can fly it in 3 hours.

Shhh don’t tell him about high speed trains …

But the point is not only long haul trains but also regional rail. Imagine if instead of the patchwork of WMATA, MARC and VRE we had a comprehensive regional rail system like Madrid?

Just get a car

And then join the wailing and gnashing of teeth about beltway traffic and the cost of parking … ?

Honest question as someone who hasn’t lived in DC in decades, what’s wrong with the metro? I’ve never had bad experiences on it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely not. I live in Germany, and I have to laugh when so many Americans fantasize about moving to Europe and talk about it like some kind of utopia. It's insanely naive. Every place has its problems and issues

The problem in the US is not that we have problems. It is our obstinate refusal to solve any of them while new problems continue to crop up. While many of these problems are sort of relegated to the poorest people in our country, they are increasingly “trickling up” to the middle class.

People are routinely dying from a lack of healthcare or going bankrupt from medical problems. This should have been resolved ages ago, and is simply not such a crisis in other countries.

Same with gun violence. Yes, there are a multitude of tertiary issues related to gun violence but the main issue is simply guns.

And now, we have a huge mentally ill homeless population suffering in our cities and it’s only growing.

And I think the worst part is that people seem so lonely and unhappy.

Why do we tolerate this?

When I go to my parents’ home country, it just isn’t so miserable. I’m staying in a middle class neighborhood, not a luxury hotel. I have been here often over the last 2 decades: People are grinning and bearing it. No one is shot in the street. If I need medicine I can just walk into the pharmacy and buy it for $2. People are out past 8pm having fun. People are just enjoying being with other people more.

Something is just broken at home. I really feel like I get a break abroad, from the horrible political news and violence and apocalyptic weather events. I have not felt this way before.

^^exactly. Compared to other countries we cannot do anything to improve or solve collective problems. our infrastructure is decaying because of it - it is well known. even making the smallest improvement to traffic or public space is incredibly costly because we’ve set up a system where people can easily throw wrenches into the works - and we have become so miserable and individualistic that people seem to enjoy crusading against change.

Who.appointed you to speak on behalf of the country. You don't know what is going on in people's heads. Your entire goal is to tell people to feel despair. "You need to hate America, I say, this is why!". You have an agenda.

yes … my agenda is that we should have a transit system on par with equally wealthy countries! And for my neighbors to have more of a sense of collective good so that they don’t spend their time crusading against housing development for example.

I don't want collectivism. So look I have an opinion as well.

fabulous, then enjoy the decaying bridges, flight cancellations, endless traffic jams, and uneducated children that are the result. Congrats!

Where did all the Obama and Biden infrastructure money go to? That was supposed to be your party’s plan to fix all this.

I think it was a good start but I think you characterizing it as inherently partisan is the whole issue I’m talking about.

What made it a good start? You think we have no transit system and decaying bridges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:US is an undeveloped S hole of backwater rednecks with very low education.

Tens of thousands of their people die per year from guns and go bankrupt for epipens. What a laughably bad society.

What country do you live in?

50,000 people die a year in the US from guns and medical bills are still a factor in most US bankruptcies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Totally disagree. The American personality is a go getter, problem solving one and if anything we are overly optimistic about our ability to change things particularly when utilizing the government. PP had it right, you’re entitled to your opinions but I don’t believe your take on things is widely viewed.

The joke among my entrepreneur friends is businesses in the US success despite their government, not because of it. Private industry innovates around the government's incompetence.

Look at California. Full of regulations, yet Silicon Valley manages to be a hub for startups. It's due to the pool of talent and finance, not because of the government, that's for sure.

Or look more locally. Because the local DMV will take you hours to get a tag and title for your car, there are private services who will do it for you. Because DC is inept at trash pickup, if you have a multifamily building, you can just contract with your own refuse hauling company and they'll even give you a credit on your property tax bill for doing so!