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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Look at the size of their homes, their furniture choices, their kitchens. Look at their cars (or lack of cars). You have your answer.

It costs a lot of money to have a gourmet kitchen, a 3k foot house, two new cars, landscaping, travel soccer fees, competitive dance fees, and flights to Europe and the Caribbean. It costs less money to have a 1k foot apartment or row home, two bikes, no yard, and a tiny induction stove. [/quote]

Do you think Europeans don't travel or do activities or cook?

They do! But in lots of places they pay less for childcare, healthcare, and yes have smaller homes and transit options which are healthy and more affordable.[/quote]

Of course they travel but they aren’t regularly taking vacations with long flights (at least not most of them and not 2-3 per year). They can get to places by train and by short cheap flights way easier than Americans can. And of course they cook, my point was they don’t have 200k “chefs kitchens” with 15k Wolf ranges and 2 dishwashers and two paneled fridges and marble countertops. American kitchens are ridiculous status symbols. [/quote]

I'm a middle class American and I also don't have a "chef's kitchen" nor do I take a lot of long haul flights (maybe once every 10 years), mostly domestic travel via car or short flights.

But I also have to pay for lots of stuff people in Scandinavian don't -- childcare, college, healthcare, save for retirement. And saving/paying for those things is much more inefficient for me, and a major source of stress. So my quality if life is lower than the average Danish or Swedish person's QOL, because they can take based vs for granted but I have to worry about things like my health insurance premiums going up or a pediatrician being out of network and charging me a fortune. Or losing all my retirement savings on Trump's tariff boondoggle and having to work into my 80s. Or being unable to find childcare because the market for childcare is so broken in the US (what most families can afford results in very low wages for childcare workers, plus regulatory demands and increasing rents push prices higher making it simply an unprofitable business to be in, leading to shortages).

I would happily pay higher taxes and own less stuff in exchange for simply not having to stress out about all this stuff all the time. Recently my health insurance through work changed and I had to find a bunch of new doctors and a new dentist because the new plan is not covered as my old providers. My premiums stayed the same but now my copays are higher. It sucks. Being a middle class American is like this all the time. You work hard to get less and less every year. You worry all the time. A health crisis or broken appliance can upend your finances and push you two steps back on whatever progress you might have thought you were getting via a raise or diligent saving.

Most of the people in this website are UMC or wealthy and don't really get this. You go to Copenhagen and think "oh, restaurants and hotel rooms and clothes and jewelry are expensive, how do people live here?" Lol those things are expensive everywhere, most of us aren't dining out or traveling or shopping that much.[/quote]

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