I was born in the US and lived abroad for 10 years before returning recently. It was a big and very demoralizing culture shock when I returned and, being in the habit of being friendly to strangers, saw how withdrawn and mistrusting people here have become. More so because I'm in Austin, TX, which is widely reported to be a friendly city. Everyone is so obsessed with work and virtue signalling. I didn't notice how competitive Americans are until I had a frame of reference to make the comparison. Living in South and Central America, my impression was that people are far more accepting regardless of whether you are a career professional or a not, or your hobbies or political alignment. In Belize I made a dozen good friends within six months of arriving, and I haven't made a single friend in three years here. I've been extremely depressed since I returned. I'm considering leaving again now that the lockdown has made remote work easier to come by (which was the primary reason I returned to the US in the first place). I'm not trying to slander Americans, and I understand that you can't make sweeping generalizations about any group of people, but the pressure and stress of our society is overwhelming.
I spent some time in Central America radicalizi... err I mean traveling for fun, after college.
One of the things that always stood out to me was how patient everyone generally was with one another.
I remember riding around on chicken buses to get from town to town, and on more than one occasion, the bus would just pull over and the driver would get out, grab some lunch, talk to a friend. Nobody was in a rush.
My friend that I was traveling with and I would stare at each other and be like "what the hell is going on?" as we looked around at everyone else on the bus and nobody seems to care at all that their day has this arbitrary delay. I can only imagine if a driver did that here in Seattle with 30+ people all trying to get somewhere.
I like living in the US, I think it has some massive upsides, but I also think I'm a bit of a hostage to what I think my life is supposed to look like, versus simplification somewhere else.
> My friend that I was traveling with and I would stare at each other and be like "what the hell is going on?" as we looked around at everyone else on the bus and nobody seems to care at all that their day has this arbitrary delay. I can only imagine if a driver did that here in Seattle with 30+ people all trying to get somewhere.
This does happen on Seattle-area transit, but definitely not on every route. Routes on the south end, both of Seattle and in south King County, are far more likely to have a couple of drivers who will pass each other and briefly pop open the door or slide open the window for a minute of chat. I've seen drivers taking their layover or lunch at Burien TC or TIBS who gab like old friends with any other drivers they encounter. But at Northgate or Aurora Village? Almost never happens.
Back before the big restructure in advance of Capitol Hill and UW stations opening, I rode the 72 virtually every day. If I got a particular driver, I mentally built in a roughly 6-minute wait somewhere in Ravenna because he'd pass a friend out walking or also driving a bus and they'd chat. Same for the 4 through the Central District with a different driver.
I like that transit has improved so much around here that it's easier and faster to get almost everywhere I'm going. But I also remember the quirks of transit past with that fondness of memory.
Can you imagine coming to a client meeting 30 minutes late and telling him that the bus driver decided on a whim stop halfway through the route to chat up an old friend?
I mean, sure? How's that different from being 30 minutes late because someone dumped a load of frozen fish on the highway?
This mad rush to be everywhere at a specific time, usually when tens of thousands of other people are also trying to be at a similar spot at the same time, is a major cause of people being traffic. Heck, as the pandemic has shown, we don't even really need to always be in the same physical place to have a meeting; technology can relieve us of that burden.
My family gave up driving years ago, due to cost and stress, and it's been great largely for this reason. I don't worry about dealing with all of the people who have Very Important Places To Be. That's Metro's job, and they do it well.
It's all perspective. If there is an accident then that's kind of unavoidable. The bus driver however is just stealing half an hour from the dozen or more people under his care on a whim.
Right, but from the perspective of the bus rider, it's still unavoidable, as the rider can't control the bus driver. So I'd say it's still an acceptable excuse to give at the client meeting, unless there are other, more timely methods of transportation that you could reasonably be expected to take.
In places where this is sort of thing is common, I wonder if people aren't bothered by it because they truly in their heart of hearts don't mind, or because they've just resigned themselves to the unpredictability of their transportation.
It is hard to imagine anything ever getting anything big done with this kind of attitude. If you have a project were one part being late holds up the rest of the project--which is most of them--an attitude like this is almost impossible to work with. It is ultimately a rather selfish lifestyle.
I mean...it's not really though. There are plenty of countries that don't have the rush/stress/demands of the US (aka what you're referring to as "this attitude") that are getting plenty "done".
> attitude like this is almost impossible to work with.
Again, in reality, it is not impossible and works well enough all over the world.
> It is ultimately a rather selfish lifestyle.
In response to a post about US workers being among the most stressed in the world, you're suggesting that alternative strategies are "selfish"?
Disclaimer: not OP and I'm neither American nor South American.
I think that yes really it is. I agree with the many people in this thread that say Americans are way over the top with rushing and stressing out over things and putting unreasonable demands on themselves and others.
That said I completely agree that no its not fine for a regular bus driver to just stop and take his lunch and chat with friends just because he feels like it. That's would be what I agree is "this attitude" and selfish.
However, in this particular case we might be talking Greyhound style long distance service and it might just be how this service route is planned out and everyone knows. Then it's fine.
Context matters I would say.
Made up example: your company has a rule to end all meetings 5 minutes before the scheduled end (for real, not just a fake rule to 'make people feel less stressed'). In this company, if you are late to your next meeting you better have a good explanation.
Next company over no such rule exists and higher up regularly end their meetings late. Don't even expect me to make up an excuse when I come 5 minutes late to the next meeting.
A route like that presumably doesn't run on a tight arrival time. The departure time will be set, but arrival time varies according to weather, traffic, road conditions and so on.
You certainly wouldn't book any kind of meeting based on the expected arrival time, a healthy amount of buffer time would need to be calculated in, and that just gives you time to go to a local cafe before your meeting.
Far from the norm but in Boston during the morning rush hour, I once had a driver pull over suddenly, exclaim "back in a minute folks!", and rush off the running bus into a restaurant. I think we all figured he had to hit the bathroom and most of us got a good chuckle out of it. When ya gotta go, right?
> I can only imagine if a driver did that here in Seattle with 30+ people all trying to get somewhere.
I live on the East Coast and had a transit reverse commute for many years. I frequently rode an express bus in the evening on its last return journey from a suburb to the city, and was often the only rider. One day, the driver asked if I'd mind if he made a brief stop for a lotto ticket. I had no problem, so I said "sure". He was able return the favor one night when I was in a hurry but had to stop for groceries. He waited 15 minutes for me to grab some essentials. We got to know each other pretty well over the 18 months I rode the bus and made more than a few other stops as needed along the way.
I personally LOVE LOVE LOVE USA, Miami in particular. I don't know why. Maybe is the weather, the beach, etc. I would love to live there and work one day.
That said, three things worry me:
1) How complicated the health industry is there. Being from Argentina where health is universal, or living now in Germany where is also universal, that is crazy for me.
2) How easy you are fired and that you basically don't get any protection if you are. Again, here in Germany we have insurance that covers for many months, etc.
3) How bad employees are treated there by (most but not all?) companies.
Personal story. My sister, she had to travel in the middle of the pandemic to my home country as my father was sick. She asked for permission to work remotely for 3 weeks. She had to stay 2 more because my father's health was not the best. When she returned, the company told her that that is not what they expected of her and fired her on the spot. Now, I was in my home country so I know my sister worked all the normal hours and more, she was connected all the time, and giving her 120% (if such a thing exists). And still, they said, good by. Crazy.
Yeah, the health care system here is bonkers. It wasn't so bad back around 2008 or so, I had private health insurance for my wife and I, and it was only around $400 or so a month with almost no deductible. Then the government decided to make it "affordable" so it's almost triple that now, plus you'd have an insane deductible.
Yeah, before, insurers could throw out people who have preconditions or have “maximum lifetime benefit”, obviously you were going to pay less in premiums. The bureaucracy / cost of new technologies have not made this any cheaper either, especially as cost-benefit analysis for new procedures and drugs is, somehow, not a thing in the US unlike everywhere else in the world.
The US hates cutting costs via market intervention too (also see our crazy college costs problem), so until we decide to finally tackle it, they’ll keep on rising.
That's one of the weirdest things you figure out traveling. There are really no rules to what life is. It can have a drastically different texture based on things about your environment that don't feel that meaningful when you just think "that's the way things always are" with no alternative to compare it to.
I encourage everyone to take an extended trip to a country with a different culture if they can afford it by any means. The greatest effect it has on you is making it obvious which aspects of your personality and values are just picked up from your surroundings. Every time I moved to a different region it stripped away a little bit of the parts of me that weren't really me, and left me feeling much more confident in my goals and desires, and generally more comfortable with who I am. You really can't put a price on this.
I always find it interesting how people travel and sit in cafes to people watch, but they never do that in their own home towns.
I would be willing to bet if you took a week off work and just went around relaxing at cafes in your home city, you would discover all sorts of interesting things and people without even having to leave the country.
People are people, and you can find stressed out people everywhere. You can also find relaxed, easy going, loving people everywhere too, if you look hard enough.
Being older now (Gen X) I've noticed a change as well. I've wondered if the US culture has grown an unhealthy level of competition. Young people internalize lessons that the people around them (classmates, neighbors) are competitors for spots in prestigious programs and later, jobs. You're taught that you should be friendly, but not "too friendly" as you are going to need to be better than them to get what you want. I don't think this explicit, but something that is incentivized through grades, tests, and gamification of everyday life. That and the deepening divide between classes. If you don't get good grades, get into a good school, get a good job, etc. you may fall off the cliff into the lower classes. If that means you need to be ruthless in your social interactions, that's just the price.
It's like we've decided to let psychopaths dictate how society operates.
I feel like it's just been a shortage of everything going on - the shortage of housing, traffic throughput, the shortage of physical space in the national parks, the shortage of good schools, good jobs. There are many more people, but no more infrastructure than before. And this naturally breeds competitiveness on the already fertile soil of American individualism.
I wouldn't say either one is good or bad, I've learnt to appreciate the differences.
Having lived in latin America and the US, US feels more concerned about individualism, achievements and efficiency and it shows in friendships. Outings are organized days in advance, people are expected to show up on time, calendar invites are not unheard of.
In latin America, life is more about family and being happy. You can call a friend the same day and enjoy a cold beer after work (some time after work, punctuality not required). I think people would laugh in my face if I tell them I'll send them a calendar invite.
I think it just depends, though you may be right that this "regimented life" is more common in the US. For myself, I'm happy to jump out in the middle of the day if a friend wants to go on an impromptu walk. But if I am planning a get-together at my house with more than a couple people, I probably will send out a calendar invitation. Not because I think the other people need it, but I do like to put things on my calendar so I don't forget when things are going on, and it's only a couple extra seconds to add the guests to it, so I might as well.
As another data point, I know people who are introverted and need a little mental preparation before seeing people, even good friends, so impromptu meetings can cause social anxiety.
> You can call a friend the same day and enjoy a cold beer after work (some time after work, punctuality not required)
I've definitely been trying to get better at the last part of this. People finish work at different times some days, sure. So it's fine to just head to the bar whenever you're done, and whoever gets there first will grab a table and just chill alone with a drink until the other person shows up, and that's the norm, not the exception. But I feel like most of the time (where I live) you try to figure out when both people will be done with work and then only meet when you can arrive at about the same time, creating unnecessary anxiety around punctuality.
These are also gross generalizations and seem to revolve around American big city life which is selective (but to be fair is where the majority of our population lives).
But in smaller cities I've been able to find a great balance of both. Work on ambitious ideas but spend evenings and free time with friends and family.
Do you have any recommendations? :) I've been trying to find a big town or small city with lots of natural beauty and nice weather. I grew up in Seattle and refuse to live anywhere with more than 90 days of cloudy weather per year. One heuristic I've come up with is small towns that are sustained by natural tourism. They tend to be much more laid back, and people are happier and more social because of it. Whitefish, MO is one example, but unfortunately it's too cold for me. :)
If you live/can meet in the northern part of town I’d be happy to have lunch with you some time so you can at least have one friend in town… email is my username @ gmail.com.
As a non-American who has visited for a total of four months, east and west coast, the political differences between America and other countries are way broader and deeper than just a few superficial memes. Especially those from young activist personalities, personalities which are present and busy in many other countries, each of which has its own zeitgeist.
Your roads are scarily broad while your sidewalks are narrow and sometimes just stop suddenly; everyone seems to have a car even if they shouldn’t; the rules of the road seem to be treated as suggestions (at least for cars — jaywalking is verboten), while also being a source of arbitrary revenue precisely because everyone treats them as suggestions; “family” is a much stronger trope in America than in the U.K. or Germany, yet “I love you daddy” is a real Valentines’ day card I’ve actually seen, in a supermarket with many others like it in different variations of phrase and relative; guns feel like a trivial hobby or possession barely worth mentioning, and suggesting even the slightest of limits to the right to bear arms is one of the quickest ways to be compared to a 20th century dictator and some of the critics insisting “a well armed society is a polite society”; your billboards are covered in adverts for loans to cover bail costs, yet sex is hidden away; you’re as loud about Christianity as a minaret is about Islam, far more so than the churches and cathedrals I’ve seen around Europe; there is a constant bombardment of adverts for insurance and health products I don’t see elsewhere (everything from magic drugs to teeth so straight and white they could be a metaphor); there are regional things like the Californian everything-causes-cancer warnings matched only by one British tabloid newspaper; and yes, race related issues are so much louder and in-your-face that even I couldn’t miss them.
(I know the U.K. seems weird to visiting Americans, because they’ve explicitly told me. But the U.K.’s weirdness is different to yours, just as the cultural pain-points are).
Thorough and accurate! I'd hazard the sharper edges of American culture stem from less constrained (and better funded) capitalism than other parts of the world.
"Silence is violence" is such BS, the right to stay silent is literally enshrined in the Constitution. Let's not fall for that kind of extremist rhetoric.
OTOH, I very much agree that the personal is political. Indeed, in an increasingly divisive and politicized society, simply tending to one's garden can be a powerful political statement.
I am mistrustful as hell. I'm guilty of this as an ohioan. To devils advocate my position, a higher stressed group is more desperate and more likely to screw me over?
IDK but there is definitely an atmosphere of us vs them watch your back.
I travel around the US working from different states/cities. The difference in behavior is astounding between the big and small cities. I have the absolute best experiences in small to mid sized towns, and in big cities everyone on the road and in person behaves sociopathically.
It’s often beyond even simple competition / selfishness. You routinely see people going out of their way to be mean even when it doesn’t benefit them. But switch towns and the whole situation is flipped.
I grew-up in San Jose, went to Davis, and came back to the Valley and commuted to Chico until 2019. Most Californians seemed bitter, angry, resentful, humorless, and ready to explode.
I live in ATX now in overpriced, poorly-maintained apartments full of "stock-broker"-types, salespeople, managers, and software dev couples, and people who think they're hot sh%t either because of inheritance or university pedigree. $3k/month isn't like Valley prices; this is a 1400 sq ft cost-saver efficiency for me. I'd happily trade for a 3000 sq ft / $6k/month place if the people were more decent over there, if that's within the realm of reasonable expectations.
There's no apparent stress of amongst the people with more money than sense, but there is stress amongst the hundreds of people living under I-35 when they've been told that their existence is illegal when they have nowhere else to go.
The people you are describing are more a function of where you live, those people tend to congregate in what I calm “yuppie slums”, shitty made multi family units with names like “aloft” and “elevate” with art and random shit in the lobby. There’s a ton in every US city. And they are all the same.
They attract people who don’t know the city very well and have a check list of amenities. When your lease is up I would encourage you to look at different neighborhoods, ideally a little away from the “revitalized former industrial/meatpacking district” which is probably bougie breweries and wine lounges now.
Unfortunately, I may have mistakenly signed a lease in a yuppie slum in ATX because it was the only large apartment available.
It's an "expensive" (for the area), boring, mixed-use development that gentrified an east side area, abutted right next to I-35 and neglected homeless (who's existence are now illegal thanks to hateful bandaid policies).
And, it appears to be populated mostly by Millenial kidults who live to party hard, act like they're still in high school, got their jobs by lying on their resumes, let their dogs pee and poop in the common hallways, and live like their hedonism is more important than anything or anyone else. I dislike most of them because they resemble Seinfeldian, Kafkaesque caricatures and many offer nothing more than shallow, vapid, shitty, ignorant, infantile %sshole, consumerist, ephemerality manufactured by a steady diet of mass media and screen time.
One woman walks around with one hand in the air like Peg Bundy from Married... with Children but seems like a WASP who works-out and dresses to climb up the next richest pole. She won't even acknowledge my presence with a friendly "hello."
This is what most of the apartments on the bay area peninsula are like.
My wife and I realized very quickly that because we didnt fit into the corporate hierarchy of ivy league grad, VP at FANG corporation that we were not worth the time.
Explored more of the bay area and found lovely people in other areas. Every now and then we get a peninsula type here but they move pretty quickly as they cant handle the unbridled good mornings and nobody starting a conversation with their resume credentials.
Sounds like a result of poor urban planning. My travels have taught me that these generally aren't all stuffy people desiring "yuppie slums"—it just happens that these are the only types of housing available near where the jobs are.
Haven't been to Austin lately, but this was my experience in Denver.
It felt... like everyone from the Midwest in their 20s had moved to a city, to live what they took from their childhood TV to be a "hip" life, which developers therefore supplied in the most cost-effective way.
Not to say that it isn't a hoot, or the food is bad... but it just had a "paint hasn't dried yet" weird new feeling to me.
Suburban Denver felt like stable, family-friendly Americana but odd compared to big cities. I noticed the majority of couples were short, plain-looking dudes with above-average attractive women.
I wonder if the root causes here are closer to skyrocketing housing costs, healthcare risks, and relatively stagnant wages making it hard to de-risk the first two.
The article mentions -
By contrast, the daily stress levels for women in Western Europe went down in the last year, which researchers attribute to social safety nets for parents and workers to prevent unemployment.
But then goes on to talk about the workplace. I don't think it's the workplace. I think it's the lack of psychological security as the middle class ceases to exist.
I come from a lower-middle-class family in a decayed rustbelt city and this was never my experience. It's a big country and some places have it harder than others but I thought I'd add a counterpoint to what I honestly read as a pretty pessimistic take.
The study found that the US and Canada had virtually identical stress levels. Therefore I doubt the healthcare system is the driving factor.
Also considering that the least stressed country was Russia, I don’t think that wealth inequality or the lack of a middle class is a major driver either.
Sorry, I edited in that bit just now. But yeah, I agree with you. Hell, I work in tech and do okay, and yet the thought crosses my mind that things could go off the rails quickly. If I get sick, even my relatively good insurance means lots of out of pocket costs. Plus I can't work then, so I'll live on a fraction of my income since I have decent disability coverage. I'll be able to keep a roof over my head, but probably not a lot beyond that, which negatively affects my family - particularly my child, given skyrocketing education costs.
It's a weird place when you think about it. And yet most days I accept this as normal.
yep - I second this. There's definitely a lurking thought about what'd happen if you're sick they find something or what happens if your landlord decides he doesn't want to rent your apartment any more, and now you have to move to a new neighborhood that's 30 minutes further away from work and less safe, or, god forbid if I had kids, in a worse district, etc. etc.
I've been working at a high level for 15 years now and I feel like I'm just barely making it out of the swamp. I have no psychological safety because a single bad decision or an incident of bad luck could completely derail my life.
That is not a symptom, but the problem. People can normalize anything. You could normalize living like a medieval peasant - many people did. Smart people know they can just keep doing something and eventually others will accept it to a degree.
Don't most US cities have social services that provide shelter, food and other assistance?
[How nice that this is getting downvoted. It's a legit question. I have family members who are social workers and know these services exist, and it seems like it's most cities, but don't know for sure, hence the question mark.]
Its hard enough to convince a friend to take unemployment checks, let alone go to a shelter or pull out a food-stamp debit card.
There's a toxic culture in the USA that looks down upon welfare. For those people, welfare doesn't exist, even if they find themselves in that environment. And since they've convinced themselves that they'll never take welfare, they expect others to follow by their own rules.
This culture leads to a particular anti-welfare voting pattern.
You say that, but as someone from bright red Louisiana, you will find that the loudest anti-welfare ranters are the same people who are first in line for every government handout after a natural disaster.
The loudest "anti" voices tend to be those who engage in the very thing they advocate against. It's so common there must be a term in psychology for it.
True, but in many ways I am more afraid of living in a shelter than on the street, or more realistically, in my car. In your car at least you have some sense of ownership, safety, and personal space. In a shelter you are potentially surrounded by mentally ill unstable drug addicts. It makes sense that many people refuse to use shelters.
This is coming from someone who has never lived in a shelter, so I may be wrong, but it's definitely my fear and a source of motivation when working not-great jobs.
If you mean homeless shelters, yes, but they're horrible and most homeless (or underhoused) people would rather live in a tent than go there. The justifications given are usually assault, thievery, and not being able to bring any personal possessions. I can understand why someone wouldn't want to stay in a shelter if it meant leaving all of their belongings unattended (if you're homeless you probably don't have a storage space or a friend's garage).
Most US cities have a policy of buying homeless people one way tickets to another city, and if they do provide homeless shelters, they are often full, underfunded, and have issues that make using them difficult
This is only partially true. There is no “policy” aim any city do do this.
What does happen is that charity groups like catholic churches or st vincent de paul will buy homeless and runaways one-way tickets, but only if they have a verifiable destination.
I just did and it seems generally lower than the USA in quite a few countries. When you look state by state and country by country it becomes clear it's highly localized to certain urban areas. Plus there seems to be a difference in reporting (Germany for instance counts hundreds of thousands of asylum seeking refugees).
Is anyone really that surprised? The United States were built exactly by the folks who wanted to opt out of the overbearing, coddling European system, and it shows.
Yeah. The truth is literally the exact opposite of what they said - early puritan settlers left for America specifically because they wanted to be controlling and overbearing and the European states they set off from were less and less welcoming to this kind of thing.
There is more to it than the post-war social-democratic systems in Western Europe. Going back centuries there was never a way to up and move to an uncontrolled space and start anew like on the American continent. The entire European continent was under tight control by whatever authority there was whether church or feudal, with restrictions on movement, residence, and labor.
That does not even seem close to being true. I think more accurately it was a reaction against an established aristocratic and monarchial system that wouldn't share power with a new growing colonial upper class. Don't think the English were codling the peasants much back then.
Ok, overbearing before WW2, coddling after, then? :-) Either way the effect was to drive the more ambitious layer out which I think seeded a very skewed culture relative to their origin.
If I lose my job in Europe, I have trouble paying for my home. If I lose my job in America, I can no longer get prescription medicine to keep myself alive.
Be very careful, before drawing any conclusions, to note that the study is only counting workers.
This is particularly relevant because European economies have significantly higher unemployment rates. Especially long-term youth unemployment. This makes any difference of European and American workers an apples to orange comparison.
You could have a low-skilled 23 year old American working a dead-end McJob. His counterpart in Italy is unable to get any work, has a pittance of disposable income and is stuck living with his parents. Only one is being counted.
We don’t really know who’s more miserable. It’s quite possible the unemployed European still has it better than the Wal-Mary greeter. But the point is this survey doesn’t tell us, because it’s excluding the unemployed from the respondent pool.
I was curious, and after a quick search it seems Gallup has a poll from 2019 that's more generic (across the whole population), and it points in the same direction:
I haven't taken the time to dig in to specific countries or demographic groups, I would be interested to compare, as you did, youth groups in US vs. FR for example.
People like to make a big deal of out the "higher" rate of unemployment in Europe, but for the most part we're talking about a difference of 1-4 percent.
Those links are for youth unemployment rate. I don't know how those are calculated across different countries. The "regular" unemployment rate is supposed to have some level of reliability for cross-national comparisons, and I don't know if that holds true for other metrics.
Looking at the overall unemployment rates, you'll see the variation is mostly in the 1-4% range.
Thanks, you're right. I got crossed wires as the GP was discussing youth unemployment in some places, but I see that there was another claim on general unemployment that you were referring to.
For completeness the corrected 2019 stats from my data source would be USA 3.9% and EU 7.6% which is in the range you quoted.
It seems like broadly speaking everyone has just been stressed here for a few years. Not stressed about work? How about healthcare? Or the economy? Or one of many social topics? Maybe political disagreements with your family members? How about some looming climate related topic? The whole country feels stressed out for one reason or another and it’s gotten noticeably worse over the last decade. The title could very well replace “US Workers” with “Americans” and probably be just as accurate.
Unless I'm mistaken, Denmark also has socialized healthcare, does it not? I know this drum gets beaten to death on forums of all kinds, including this one, so pardon me for banging it once again. Tying one's health coverage (in a meaningful way) to one's job is just shameful for any type of developed nation, and to do so during a pandemic with lock down rules, doubly so. I know people who had trouble getting certain diabetic supplies covered on their state insurance when they were laid off during the lock down, in one of the richest nations of the world.
I'm not sure people are even stressed about vacations. I think people are so stressed that if they lose their jobs, they lose their healthcare and since so many people have so little savings they face homelessness (our school system doesn't do a very good job of teaching economics for the individual - my parents taught me), They're stressed because their hormones are out of whack because for so many our diet and exercise routines are horrible (though, some of that could be blamed on long commutes). It's a symphony of issues that's causing stress derived from work that isn't the work itself, or time away from it =(
It's a combination of weak social safety net and people living paycheck-to-paycheck (or worse). Roughly 1/3 of US households have a hard time covering monthly expenses, and another ~1/3 are a paycheck away from disaster.
If you lose a job in the US, you lose your healthcare (COBRA is way to expensive to be an option). Minimal housing protections in most states means you're one missed payment away from homelessness. Food banks are critically short-staffed and under-stocked across the US. Jobless benefits can take weeks or months to receive and even then they're usually well below what a person needs to survive.
There was such a stigma against moochers and "welfare queens" in the 80s and 90s that politicians would rather cut funding to all benefits than let one person abuse the system. Florida even spent $178 million on drug tests to save from paying out $60k in welfare because addicts don't deserve to eat for some reason.
If we can't "afford" to give working human beings 6-8 weeks off every year, then what even is the point? What are all of these gains in productivity supposed to be for? To make a tiny number of people ever-wealthier or to give all of us the chance to both earn a living and live a life outside of the hours we're doing what our bosses want?
Stressed, isolated, distracted people tend to work for the weekend and live in day-tight compartments.
When something upsets them, they post about it on social media and feel better.
When something really upsets them, they make a petition on change.org and feel better.
When something really, really upsets them, they reach out to a friend, but that friend is too stressed or busy or distracted to care.
When something really, really, really upsets them, they do something violent which plays on the news at 11 to distract some while the rest are too busy or stressed to care.
Get every other country on-board, connect them with a global supply chain, and voilà!
I think this is one of the most important points. Resting = less stress. Additionally, in Europe when you're ill it doesn't count against your holidays.
>Additionally, in Europe when you're ill it doesn't count against your holidays.
The first sick day might be unpaid though. Here it depends on the occupation, as in, which collective agreement your industry uses. I think the idea is that it reduces "unnecessary" sick days, but I think I have my first sick day as paid and I think the last time I had a sick day was around when World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth came out in 2018 (I swear it was a coincidence).
I make low six figures as a single, childless person, and am just barely doing ok. I rent a cheap 1 bedroom apartment, drive a 20 year old Toyota, and end up with just enough for a small amount of savings each month with very little discretionary spending. Buying a home is an impossible fantasy. Being out of work for a couple months would leave me homeless. I literally cannot imagine what it's like trying to support a family on the average salary in this country.
With respect either you left out some major details or you have a skewed perspective of what it means to be "doing ok." My position matches what you stated almost exactly (low 6 figures, single, childless, 17 year old Toyota) and I'm doing _very_ well. I bought a house last year, max out my 401k and Roth IRA contributions with additional savings on top, have a decent emergency fund, paid off my student loans five years early...
I'm not trying to brag, but a single person making six figures should be doing quite well anywhere in the US. I really suggest sitting down and carefully tracking how you spend money for a month or two to find out where it's going.
There are many factors aside from spending habits that might lead to discrepancies between purchasing power of a 6 figure salary.
One example: discrepancies in the local cost of living. For example, someone could live like royalty on a 6 figures is Arkansas, but might barely scrape by with the same salary in San Francisco. According to nerd wallet, a salary of $106k in San Francisco is roughly equivalent to a salary of $50k in Little Rock, AR.
It's pretty presumptuous to suggest that they need to sitting down and carefully tracking spend without knowing more information. Especially considering the original poster wasn't asking for advice (or judgement) from a random internet stranger.
If you can muster up 10k-15k you can buy a $300k house with 3% down. There are down payment assistance programs as well. After a few years you can refinance to remove PMI etc…. It’s not impossible but it is certainly difficult.
Unfortunately if the OP is located in California, there are very few places left in the state where one can purchase a home for just $300k; these are generally places in the southern half of the Central Valley (e.g., Fresno, Bakersfield) or places in the far north of the state (e.g., Chico, Redding). Sacramento, my hometown, is no longer cheap; last I checked the average price for a home there was around $440k, and homes in Sacramento's nicer suburbs tend to average in the $500k range (and homes in Sacramento's walkable core are even more expensive).
There are out-of-state alternatives where $300k is doable such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Houston, but if the OP is a lifelong Californian like myself, then moving to another state may be quite a change.
I'm in a similar situation as the OP. I currently rent an apartment in a coastal area near Silicon Valley that I love. I can afford to purchase a place up to about $425K based on my income, savings, and DTI, but $425K isn't enough to purchase anything near commute distance from Silicon Valley, and while I could have afforded Sacramento two years ago, the pandemic-era rise of prices in the Sacramento area have priced me out of the neighborhoods I want to live in. Thus I still rent.
I'm very interested in a low down payment, not to buy a house beyond my budget, but instead to avoid locking in more cash than I have to. Could you recommend any guidelines or important factors for me to determine whether I should prefer minimal down payment vs standard (>=20% iirc)?
Are you planning on living there for a short period of time (<~5yrs)? It may end up being cheaper overall to pay minimum down and go with the private mortgage insurance and a 30-year mortgage so you pay as little as possible while you're living there. But if you're planning on staying there long-term, a 15-year mortgage may be a better option.
How good is your credit? If it's good and you have a high income to debt ratio, your PMI will likely be pretty minimal. If so, you may end up netting better if you invest what you'd put down and let that money grow instead. Or you can put some of that into points for lower interest rates.
These things are pretty easy to figure out if you know what your home budget. There are a few places you can get rough estimates based on your credit score.
What would a "pretty minimal" PMI look like? My partner and I both make pretty good income and have zero debt. I've heard about places like Ally where you can get a mortgage estimate without a hard credit pull; is that the kind of thing you mean?
I wasn't talking about an actual estimate just a rough listing of your options like this [1]. A pretty minimal PMI could be like $50/month depending on the cost of the property, and there are some calculators for that too [2].
By my calculation, if this person made ~$120k year and lived in a typical $3000/month 1-bed apartment in San Francisco, they should have about $40k/yr left after taxes and housing costs are paid. Out of this $40k they'd need to pay food, transportation, discretionary, and savings. Definitely puts efficiently saving a large downpayment on a home in California out of reach, but I'm surprised OP feels at risk of becoming homeless with that much budget slack. A generous $2000/month budget for non-housing spending (food, transportation, discretionary) would still leave $16k/yr they could save. Not a lot, but a lot better than many. Large debt payments or lifestyle inflation could pretty easily skew this person more toward an experience of paycheck-to-paycheck living.
When I lived in San Francisco, it seemed like the hedonic treadmill was in full force. People came to the Bay Area stunned that they could start out making more money than their parents ever dreamed of, then a few years later they feel grumpy because they're ONLY making $300k/yr when their buddy is making $450k/yr at FAANG and driving a new Tesla. It's easy for lifestyle inflation to happen in an environment where people all around you seem to have Scrooge McDuck levels of money and all the lifestyle bloat to go along with it.
My advice is to take your tech skills and leave for greener pastures. I see absolutely no reason to pay all those extra California taxes and housing costs.
Yeah this sounds about right. If they were in a fancier place and were hitting $4000 per month in housing costs (parking spots aren't cheap I guess), that'd put them down to $4k savings per year with the rest of the spending held constant.
Highly recommend creating a ledger of all spending. It's amazing how quickly the little things add up, by simply taking the time to write things down it becomes much easier to see where it all goes.
Many credit cards claim to do this for you, but to me that defeats the point. If you aren't taking the time do your own accounting, it simply becomes another email/HTML table/push notification/whatever to ignore.
I do this. I have a daily planner with plenty of blank pages and write down, by hand, every transaction I make. I start with my monthly budget, subtract rent, groceries, a video game, a movie, etc. Anything beyond my budget, whether it's salary or a stimmy, goes to saving/investing.
It's been incredibly helpful for being aware of my spending. In fact it's so helpful I actually forgot how much I'm saving and was pleasantly surprised when I remembered how much it is. It's also very effective for staying on top of lifestyle creep.
I make low 6 figures and support a family of 4. We have to budget, but we definitely aren't struggling, we are able to afford plenty of luxuries. Buying a house was not too big of a task. You should move to the Midwest.
Others have done ballpark figures based on what you've said. And as someone who has lived in San Francisco making even less at times, I agree that you should be able to build up at least several months savings.
Unless: you have some crippling college debt ($20k/semester*8 semesters paid over ? years), or have a persistent medical issue ($10k/yr out of pocket), or another terrible corner case that I haven't had the displeasure of encountering.
Because for most employees you can be fired on the spot for something you did ten years ago, or just because you’re the least percentile ranked member of a team, so you have to go. US workers are the most stressed because, with few exceptions, an employer can pull the rug out from under them, while awarding themselves massive bonuses.
Being fired at anytime definitely adds some just general existing anxiety, or laid off. What's worse, in tech at least, is how hard it is to get a new job. Not trying to beat a dead horse, but just losing your job and being forced to go through interviewing again. I think i have some slight ptsd from the last job search, what a horrible experience in every way.
If US workers feel stressed now, just wait. Your knowledge and service jobs are next on the chopping block as foreign competition from Rwanda to Rangoon moves up the value ladder; and as automation continues encroaching. We wanted cheap products from overseas, cheap debt, big state/federal spending & billions spent on sustainability boondoggles, D&I initiatives & regulation. Congrats! Mission accomplished and the bill is coming due. Grievance culture is costly as hell for society.
If you think FAANG is going to outsource jobs to Rwanda and Rangoon any time soon - you're wildly out of touch.
Education - especially science - is pretty lackluster almost everywhere in the world.
If you really think the average person in Rangoon has as comfortable of a life to spend time educating themselves as Americans or Europeans or people from any other advanced economy - you're kidding yourself.
Sure - they might have more desire on average, since they have a lot more to gain. But that's only going to get you so far.
Also - you have to think that China and India are already almost half of the world's population. The developed world is another ~18%. Most of the effects of globalization have already been felt - especially for knowledge workers.
> Education - especially science - is pretty lackluster almost everywhere in the world.
You're wrong, just because it is not visible to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist.You only have to visit a random science postgrad program and see students from all over the world represented - even at prestigious US universities, having immigrated after doing their undergraduate studies elsewhere. Their science education is good enough for Ivy league admissions departments, and those who get admitted are the very tip of a large iceberg.
> Most of the effects of globalization have already been felt - especially for knowledge workers.
This is a bold claim, which I think is wrong: a lot of developing countries don't have sufficient infrastructure (yet) to unlock their full potential. The talent is already present, but lacking connectivity and experience. The population share of the developing countries will balloon over the next few decades as developed world population flattens or shrinks.
> You only have to visit a random science postgrad program and see students from all over the world represented - even at prestigious US universities, having immigrated after doing their undergraduate studies elsewhere.
Why would you expect students to not be represented proportionally?
If anything, you should expect a disproportionate share because admissions weight races and ethnicities - especially, if as you claim - science education is better (it's not) in Rwanda or Rangoon than The US or the EU.
> The talent is already present, but lacking connectivity and experience.
You are pretty much reiterating my argument. The developed world is, by definition, behind. This puts people who live there at a disadvantage - in general - to people who live in the developed world.
I already mentioned China and India which are >90% of the technology outputs from the economies you mentioned.
One would expect a country the size of Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Brazil, and Mexico to produce something. It is not surprising that they do.
Are you current with the fact that FAANG+M alone are bigger by orders of magnitude than the tech scene in any of those countries AND, importantly, that they are growing much faster?
I have a Bachelor's degree in IT, hold a whole alphabet of certifications, and am happy to work part time at the company I work at making $20/hr. Why? Because I'm actually treated like a human being with tons of autonomy. I can crack jokes, control my own schedule, take breaks if I get frustrated, and do basically whatever I want as long as I'm honest with my work logs.
So many jobs here are dehumanizing. We are treated like cogs by a highly stressed management, and if you don't "pull your weight" and overwork yourself then you are cast from the group. Try to push back, and you get a talking to by silver-tongued executives who just don't understand why we don't Work Harder. In a previous job, I was scheduled shifts from 7am-9pm just a week after being in the hospital.
I find this individualistic view of the problem fascinating.
It treats companies as individuals and thinks they're all different, which is bolstered by the BS terminology about "corporate culture" that the companies themselves push.
But to anyone who sees the big picture, it's obvious that this is capitalism. Under capitalism, you are a cog in a machine. Always have been, always will be.
This isn't some particular company treating its employees like trash. It's the entire system of commodifying all aspects of life in order for the line in the chart to keep going up indefinitely.
But individualism has people so utterly blind to this that they treat companies as people, which is dystopian to the max.
I could see someone argue that, but would a monarch, for example, really hyperfocus nearly as much on optimizing crops to the point of driving the farmers to suicide, just so he could point to a line going up on a chart in a meeting with investors?
No, it's more likely to be a vague, emotional impulse for "more", without the bureaucratic apparatus to enforce it in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with human life.
Capitalism demands constant growth in ways and for reasons that are different from any other hierarchy.
Companies do differ. Not a high proportion of people are fortunate enough to work for a successful worker's co-op, but there the forces you describe take a quite different shape.
Even in a capitalist-owned firm, enlightened self-interest can lead to decent management practice.
What city did you work in before? I live in the midwest and have hopes to move to NYC one day but you're painting a picture between the world I live in now and the world I want to live in. Meaning, the more relaxed environment but "lower" pay (relative to the tech field but definitely well paying for where I live) place is where I live. NYC I somewhat envisioned as a bit more cutthroat if I wanted to live in Manhattan (which I don't) but maybe not so much if I wanted to live in Brooklyn, Queens, or even Jersey City.
That's because America is the land where misery is virtue. We could have all trappings of a true first-world country with ease if we wanted to. But where's the fun in that? Much better to pretend that everyone else is a leech or a slob and decide that the only way to get quality work out of them is to make them as miserable as possible. Do honest manual labor because book learning isn't your thing? Better have 3 jobs to be as virtuous as the guy who drank through 4 years of college.
I know people are going to draw conclusions about safety nets and such, but they grouped in American AND Canada, though honestly who can know what that means in terms of grouping those two together (I have no idea how about Gallup's weightings between the two countries). But they did include Canadians as well in their misery index.
Canada has the same housing cost issues that we have in the US, with arguably worse wages. Healthcare is provided, but all I'm taking from that is that it isn't a silver bullet.
True there's certainly commonalities, but I see a lot of people taking on specifically American ideas, and I wanted to point out that it's probably more than that.
Not me, I find my engineering job in a large US corporation fun and rewarding and pretty well paid. I was more stressed out early in my career, though, when I worked at smaller startups.
Many countries around the world have an "untouchable" class. I'm most familiar with the burakumin in Japan (disclosure: lived next to a burakumin community while teaching there). These untouchable classes function in society as a way to keep the lowest rungs of the "official" social classes in line. If you don't do your terrible job we can always cast you down there.
The United States has untouchable classes as well, they're just called "homeless" or "undocumented" and we are taught to believe that "it's their own fault" rather than the result of a shitty traditional caste system.
The last couple decades have expanded this class and made it more visible. I don't think this was a conspiracy, but the existence of this class is certainly advantageous to corporations that want to keep people down.
I guess it has a lot to do with worker's expectations.
in the 3rd world, for example, for the same job categories, the working conditions etc are much worse...
It wasn't like that at all when I worked there. Quite the opposite, people were very quiet so we could do focused work, we did our work, then went home. We usually ate lunch together. Many of my coworkers had kids to go home and take care of. No one was looking to hang around. I'm sure it varies throughout the company though.
I was pretty amazed when someone on HN told me that American salaried jobs don't usually have a concept of overtime. I didn't even know that it was a thing.
> “The most important thing employers can do is to equip managers to have the right kinds of conversations with people,”
and the rest,
This puts a lot on managers. I don't think leaders in organization are incentivized to make their reports happy. Managers don't get promotions because their team is happy. They get promotions doing things that make quality of life worse, empire building, adding responsibilities, team closing tickets, disruptive changes that only sound good. I don't think managers see happiness as part of their job.
I think its a lot to ask people and companies to do this out of the goodness of their heart or expect them to be forward thinking enough to see that happier employees mean better performance. And that second might not even be true, we could be stressed because were trying to be most efficient possible at all times.
The only country I heard of people working multiple jobs to make ends meet is USA. Definitely not a compliment to the most powerful and influential country in the world.
About forty years ago, a housemate lost his job, he said because Reagan put a hiring freeze on at EPA. He told me that it made people deeply uncomfortable at parties when they asked him what he did and he said, Nothing. This was in Washington, where I still live.
IT's funny the title only mention the USA but the article mentions USA and Canadian workers, both having the same percentage of stress. But Canada isn't mentioned in the headline.
Americans are in constant competition with each other for everything.(jobs,houses(and with foreign investors too),social media points)
Fighting, fucking, sleeping... it's all we know how to do anymore. We used to make things, build things, share accomplishments as a society and a nation with each other. Now everything is about the personal accumulation of power/money. Not sure how a society like this is meant to last.
Given the events of the last few years and the fact that a cretin like Trump was ever elected President, I'm pretty sure we are 100% fucked.
Unless you were born to neglecting parents or went to a shitty school or learned the wrong major (arts major anyone?) or chose a low paying job (schoolteachers in the house?) or had something bad happen to your health or a million other possibilities. Or maybe your parents are super cool, the school was nice but your cognitive abilities are just not right for the high paying jobs (most high paying jobs require high cognitive abilities like finance, software, medicine) and you are working as a car mechanic (don't get me wrong, it's an awesome career but not likely to be viewed as "successful" the same way you mean it).
Actually the equation "work hard = success" is quite ridiculous. Do you think Uber drivers don't work hard? Shop clerks? Construction workers? Nurses ? Teachers ? Where is this idea even coming from?
Also reading all this thread make me thinking: this is rich country problem.
I could put here examples from eg. Africa where kids do not go to school becouse no cents for bus or they need to take care for younger siblings. Or no sweater. But this will not really help. Looks like it's advanced civilisation problem. Pretty much like in sci-fi movies: overcrowd, no money, health problems... But no worry, just like in 60's abundance of drugs will help ! \s
Would be nice to have something to help USAmerica (and others, becouse same problems are in other places too) but most likely any real help needs time and good society consciousnes.
One thing, I belive, could immediately help is peace in heart and mind which cames from God.
Just the mere idea of visiting the USA gives me more stress than I care to experience. After 7 years away I don’t even have a desire to visit.
It takes a solid 5 years to get over what my friends call “that American Fight or Fight instinct”, and I don’t miss the amount of fear,distrust and readiness to fight that is always in the back of your mind being from the USA.
Also, remotely siphoning $$$ off of bay area tech companies while living in the third world helps with stress a lot.
Hardship leads to innovation and America is built on innovation. Once folks become too comfortable, the desire to do something new or unique diminishes dramatically. The Calvinist ethos is a foundational driver of American culture and thought process.
