There are some neat cities with character. For quality-of-life (relatively speaking) you have Austin and Portland. If you think you can make it rich, there's San Francisco and New York. For historic charm, you have Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The upper midwest has a relatively high quality of life, too.
Life in the politically sane parts ("blue states") of the US, if you have a job in tech, isn't so bad. You get paid enough to get by, and you'll have 3+ weeks of vacation at a proper tech company. Just make sure never to get sick; even if you have insurance, they make it hell. Our medical system is the one thing that makes the US a legitimately bad country to live in; if we had universal healthcare, it'd be average-plus (all taken together) in the developed world.
I'd strike Portland and Baltimore off of that list and replace them maybe with Seattle and D.C.?
The greater Portland area ain't bad, but downtown Portland kind of blows. The food scene is okay, but it's hard to get just normal good greasy spoon food without having to find out more than you want to know about the meal. Seattle is nicer is almost every way and has more to do and a far better tech scene.
Baltimore is a hell hole and I wouldn't miss it if it sunk into the ocean tomorrow. I grew up not far from it and avoid it like the plague. It's one of the saddest U.S. cities outside of Detroit. I'd say the same about D.C., but it's improved tremendously in the last 20 years and is actually not a bad city these days. It's not as nice as modern NYC, but it's getting there.
Having done lots of global travel, including to Australia. I'd say the bits of Australia that I've been to (NSW) were "fine". It feels very "American" in lots of ways, but different -- like an episode of Sliders. Public transportation was even worse than the lousy standards of the U.S., if that's believable, and everything from real estate to food was terribly overpriced. But it had a nice feel to the place, people were friendly enough and there's a better fitness culture than in the States if that's important -- it's not to me. The big spaces between the cities were full of the same kind of redneck you find in the big spaces between cities anywhere and only appeal to people who like farming and dust. As an American I could see moving to Australia for a couple years maybe.
Europe has nice bits and "meh" parts as well...even in Western Europe. Growing up in one of the most cultural diverse places in the world, the lack of cultural variety in lots of areas in continental Europe is kind of boring. Unless you count Kebabs and Chinese takeout as culture. London can service this if you need but it's about the only really strongly diverse multi-cultural city in Europe that's on the scale of the typical American city. The racial segregation in most of Europe makes Chicago look like a well integrated city. Europe offers good health insurance, and excellent local food (even if the variety isn't very good). But you also get high taxes, a difficult labor environment and in general an anti-risk anti-entrepreneurial environment.
The Middle East is well...it is what it is. A couple nice cities in a very difficult socio-economic environment with one industry. Depending on how you count it (European or Central Asia), lots of Turkey is actually pretty nice.
I count Russia as its own thing. Cities are pretty new like Asia, industry is highly focused like the Middle East, people can be very friendly once you get to know them, and then everybody's miserable anyways.
TBH These days I'd rather live in one of the newer Asian mega cities: Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore etc. Nicer places to live, better quality of life, more to do, and everything's newer so it's in better shape. Public transport is out of this world, and food is generally plentiful and cheap. People are fine as well in most places. Crime is also low and medical care is stupid cheap even if it's not universal. Most of Asia is also highly entrepreneurial with nearly everybody trying to start a business of some sort.
U.S. is big, varied, cities are generally metropolitan, lots of different industries to work in. The countryside drops down the socio-economic ladder very quickly. Pockets of extreme religiosity can be annoying but are easy to avoid. But it's medium-high entrepreneurial tendencies and high risk acceptance and well regulated banking system make doing business reasonably pain free. Health care costs are absurd, sometimes even with insurance. Food is of a high variety, even if much of it is second rate. Local American cuisine is generally contemptible, but pockets of traditional american greatness exist in the food world. Clothes and goods are cheap and plentiful and of unimaginable variety. In most of the country real estate prices vary considerably within short distances. Public transport outside of a few cities is almost third world.
Regarding the overpriced-ness of Australia, for a long time our dollar was worth around 2/3rds of the US dollar (at one point in the past 20 years it was down to 50c), and pricing made more sense in comparison, with imported things being generally more expensive due to remoteness. Then we had a mining boom and our dollar increased in value to a peak of around US$1.12. Of course, your local prices don't fluctuate to match the exchange rate, because it doesn't work that way. So for a local, that bus ticket has always been the same price, but it doubled in cost for tourists. The Aussie dollar is now on the way down again. Real estate is ridiculously expensive though - most expensive in the world in relative-to-average-income terms.
Apparently, the volatility of the $A combined with the general stability of the economy makes it the 5th-most traded currency in the world (US$, Euro, Yen, GB pound, then $A... the middle order might be a bit mixed up)
I think it has something to do with the better labor laws (for low-end workers) which push up prices on commodity items. I don't remember any country outside of maybe bits of Northern Europe and Switzerland where I paid more for local food. I've even been on some pretty remote islands and not paid that much, exchange rate adjusted or not. I remember the first time I paid $22 for breakfast and $5 for a smallish, very lackluster, meat pie I knew I was in for a huge hit on my wallet. I know someplace have isolated foreign or exotic foods that are expensive (the famous $11 Japanese hotdogs for example), but even in Tokyo you can find plentiful meals for under $10.
I hit a decent steak house in Canberra (Australia has great beef BTW), and was very happy it was paid for by a local. I think the tab was well over $50 a head for a steak and a couple sides.
It may have been a particularly weird time to go or something (2007), but it left an indelible impression on me.
Don't get me wrong, I'd still readily return, Australia is a lovely country for the most part.
$22 for a breakfast puts you in a fairly well-to-do area. As a comparison, I work in the Melbourne CBD and buy lunch every day from a variety of places for around $10-12, though none of these are trendy cafes. One thing to remember when comparing bought food between the countries is that the US price is usually stated as being before tax and tip, which generally adds 25%. In my experience, bought meals were roughly the same price in the two places (I don't eat fancy though) with the US being a touch cheaper, however the US meals were more substantial. Food you make yourself, bought from a supermarket, was considerably cheaper in the US. Real estate here is ridiculously expensive though; the most expensive in the world compared to average annual salary. It's something like tripled in value over the past 15 years, and that bubble shows no sign of bursting soon.
My steak experience in the US was in Fort Stockton in Texas. A $14 steak came out, so lonely and small that it literally slid right across the plate when it was placed before me. Fort Stockton isn't doing Texas any favours for their steak reputation :)
In 2007, Australia was at the start of it's mining boom's plateau - this was when the dollar started peaking with parity with the $US, and yes, things would have been overpriced for a tourist. Curiously, during the GFC, the assumption was that Australia's economy would crumble and our dollar dropped to US60c. It made no sense, because our economy did alright while the US economy crumbled significantly. It's just a reminder that currency values are set by the gut feelings of a bunch of suits in the city, not by concrete measures.
It's a great place to live, but I have trouble recommending it as a place to visit - pretty much all the nations which produce sizeable quantities of tourists have access to the things Australia provides to tourists, but closer and cheaper. I'm not the guy the tourism board wants to hire...
I think your analysis sounds about right then. I remember walking around area (Potts Point in Sydney) and not finding any sort of reasonable breakfast that wasn't insanely priced. I think I broke out laughing at one place that was offering a special of two pieces of toast, an egg and a cup of coffee for ~$15.
We do have good steaks in the U.S., sorry about your Texas steak experience! I'd expect to pay $15 on the low end for an "ok" steak to $35 on the high end and then $3-9 for sides. Add in some beer or wine and you can hit a pretty price per head in the States. But if you just want to hit a roadhouse and get a steak an potato and a beer, I'd expect to do it for under $30.
>The Middle East is well...it is what it is. A couple nice cities in a very difficult socio-economic environment with one industry. Depending on how you count it (European or Central Asia), lots of Turkey is actually pretty nice.
Ha! I'd probably add it to the few nice cities, and strike it from the singular industry list. But the rest still applies I suppose...particularly the difficult socio-economic environment.
In some ways I'd say Israel is like a very compressed and magnified U.S., huge military industrial complex, lots of immigrants, racial and ethnic segregation issues, big hi-tech industry, intense religious conservative red neck types...it's just all in an area the size of West Virginia.
I understand what you're saying, but I don't know how you can say that with a straight face.
I don't think living a life that "isn't so bad" is good enough for the caliber of people that visit HN. And the fact that your country has "sane" and presumably "insane" political areas is creepy :(
Europe, and hell, the rest of world, have similar sane and insane political areas if I might remind you. Lots of the politics, especially the race/culture/nationalism politics, in Europe shock most Americans.
I'm an American. There are some ways in which I like living here.
Would I come here if I were a Swede? Hell no, except for a $300k+ job in banking or the Valley, and only then knowing that I could get on a plane and leave if I got sick. (You can get 100-200k in the EU; at the 300k level, the jobs start getting rarer in the EU relative to the US, which is why Wall Street gets a surprising amount of French, German, and Italian talent-- if probably not as much as The City.)
If you look at the country in totality and taking into account its full history and what it has overcome, and how rapidly it can change itself when needed, the US is a great country. I don't mean to imply that I think it's better than others (I wouldn't begin to be competent in that comparison) and its history is all kinds of fucked up (genocide of native people, slavery, internment of Japanese-Americans) but there's a lot to be proud of, too.
Would I live here if I were born European? Barring an unusually good job offer that couldn't be found elsewhere, no. And any patriotic pride I might be inclined to have as an American (and I don't have much, because this country is full of assholes, too) I would just as much have if I were born elsewhere. Patriotic pride is a weird thing. I'm from rural PA and it makes me smile every time I meet a successful person with a '717' area code, and I definitely take pride in my rivers and mountains (hills by West Coast standards) but I know there's no rational reason for it; people from central PA aren't superior to people from anywhere else in any way.
I don't get all the apologies in this thread. The US is a great country! Has its warts, but I've lived in Europe, and I've been to Australia, and I wouldn't live anywhere else.
It's the maverick, can-do entrepreneurial spirit that's more prevalent among Americans and the rich cultural diversity that comes with being a melting pot that I love about this country. Outside of a few bad spots in a few cities, it's one of the safest places in the world to live.
Yeah, our history is kinda fucked up, but whose isn't? Bad people do bad things. Name one country in the world that doesn't have fucked up moments in their history.
I just don't understand all the pessimism and self-hate that Americans seem to have lately.
It's because of the cancer I like to call the US government, not to mention corporate media which make a profit obfuscating the process of national theft. Everyone is angry but few know why.
I would argue that it's the media that's stirring that anger up and the fact that partisan hacks turn every small thing into an OUTRAGE more than everything truly being outrageous.
If you're an Australian, if you woke up tomorrow in an American city of an Australian one, you'd probably have a hard time telling them apart until you saw which side a car drove on or somebody spoke to you.
On the flip side, Canada, which isn't the U.S. and has all of the benefits being claimed here about places that are not the U.S. is so virtually identical to the U.S. in most ways that I've watched entire seasons of TV shows and not known they were filmed in Canada with Canadian actors. After a night of bar hopping in Toronto, I once woke up in Canada and thought we had made it back over into the U.S. overnight. It took me a few hours and trying to pay at a diner with the wrong money to figure it out.
How do you argue for that? Life here is largely fine, but it's tough to support that because "fine" encompasses everything. There isn't much you can do besides shoot down all the incorrect statements about how it's not fine.
Most people here live decent lives, make decent money, live in decent dwellings, don't experience significant quantities of crime, etc.
Yes, there are many problems with the USA at the moment. But that does not mean that life here is somehow terrible for everyone, or even most people.
Robust free speech protections, ability to rough it in a country that's still in the first world, and the ability to enter industries that don't exist to the same extent elsewhere.
We're also much less racist than Europe, for example: We haven't banned wearing traditional Muslim garb, for example, and we don't have the hatred of the Roma which is endemic to the European continent.
The functional difference between free speech in Australia and the United States isn't that strong. On the idealistic part of the spectrum, the US does win, but in terms of how it affects your life, they're pretty comparable. It is interesting to note that Australia is consistently rated superior to the US on the Press Freedom Index, and both are outscored by a passel of European countries.
> In theory, the objective of defamation laws is to balance protection of individual reputation with freedom of expression. In practice, defamation laws are frequently used as a means of chilling speech. A threat of (costly) defamation proceedings and damages, whether or not a plaintiff's claim is likely to be upheld by a court, is often used to silence criticism not only by a particular person or group but also as a threat to others.
Basically, defamation laws in the USA are much more defendant-friendly compared to their equivalents in Commonwealth countries. Australia deserves much praise for apparently being much better in this regard compared to the UK, for example: Australian law recognizes truth to be an absolute defense, which is not generally the case in Commonwealth libel laws.
Canada deserves special approbation for its insane hate speech laws:
There have been just as many substantial fascist parties in places with those laws as there are in places without them: Zero. They're an attack on free expression, a universal human right, and they're an absurd over-reaction, an example of terrified cowering at a few worthless fools. What's worse, they do nothing to solve any of the real problems modern Europe has with anti-Roma and anti-Muslim racism.
-- OK, to begin with, Australia still bans things. This is something the USA grew out of decades ago:
BULL and SHIT. In Australia, there is no routine pixellation of middle fingers, likewise pixellating the mouth of someone swearing.
It's an utter fabrication that there's no censorship on things in the US: It is a violation of federal law to air obscene programming at any time. It is also a violation of federal law to air indecent programming or profane language during certain hours.", from http://www.fcc.gov/guides/obscenity-indecency-and-profanity
And I've already mentioned the Press Freedom Index, which indicates the Australian press is freer (scum that they are) than the US press. There's a difference between idealism and how the place is actually run. Hell, the US even introduced the anglosphere to the concept of "Free Speech Zones".
Hell, even movie ratings are a form of censorship, and the US has those. Those movie ratings cause movies to be modified in order to meet them. The US even introduced the world to "Parental advisory: explicit lyrics" which was a soft form of censorship; some stores would not carry such marked CDs, and some shopping centres would not allow stores within to carry them.
Some US states prevent atheists from holding political office - that's an explicit penalty for exercising freedom of speech.
When I was in San Francisco, it was illegal for me to take a photo of a school. Standing in a public place, it was illegal for me to take a normal point'n'click photo facing one direction but not another. Similarly, both countries ban public nudity except in some specific areas.
Then, of course, there's all the provisions for the support of US IP law and legislating against filesharing that Australia has had to engage in duty to treaty obligations with the US.
Ultimately, when you say "Australia still bans things", you make it sound like a commonplace experience. It really isn't - and banned items are few and far between. Your wikipedia link has little that Australia has banned in the past couple of decades, and includes paragraphs like: Explicit sex scenes have also become more common. Channel Nine's crime drama Underbelly has frequent coarse language and sex (including explicit anal rape) with one episode featuring a "drug-fuelled orgy with prostitutes accompanied by the Spiderbait song "Fucken Awesome"". I am actually interested to hear if you can name more than a handful of banned items from the past couple of decades. By the way, does exporting cryptography count?
The US does have better protections for individual freedom of speech, but the gulf between the two nations really isn't all that large, nor is it all in the US's favour.
-- Which are similar to the insane laws against denying the Holocaust or even using certain images in parts of Europe:
One thing that we here in the Anglosphere need to remember is that in WW2, we were unequivocably on the side of moral good. We were fighting the clearest moral evil humanity has known. All of the Anglosphere, undivided. For the European continent, the experience was much more complex and painful, and even those countries that fought against the Axis had plenty of collaborators. Idealism is nice... until it's tested, then pragmatism needs to have a voice.
In any case, you're talking about a very specific incident in history, which in Europe has a very real knock-on effect of lending support to neo-nazism. You can go hog-wild about denying the efficacy of Bismarck's reforms. Question Kaiser Wilhelm all you want. But the pragmatism of legislating against holocaust denial or sporting the swastika is basically the same as anti-defamation legislation: it's saying 'don't diminish this'.
Think about it this way: those laws are very specific in terms of what they ban. So you can't show the swastika in Germany. It doesn't mean that they're going to 'slippery-slope' their way to banning other images. There seems to be a belief in America that Germans want to obscure the past - they don't. From a friend in Germany, they're acutely ashamed of that past, and these laws help to avoid obscuring that past and lessening the impact of the resulting lessons. The laws you speak of here aren't things that hit people in their everyday lives, they're specific, targeted laws. The laws would not be around in an ideal world, but in a practical world, there is a tangible reason for them. As laws go, they're not 'insane'.
I'm not sure how the side-effects you see of these laws is any better or worse than the routine emotional pain that folks like the Westboro Baptist Church deal out under freedom of speech laws. Not showing a swastika in a manner other than historical education, compared against having a lunatic scream at me while I'm burying a loved one? Which one actually has the more social or psychological harm there?
-- What's worse, they do nothing to solve any of the real problems modern Europe has with anti-Roma and anti-Muslim racism.
US free speech also does nothing to solve any of the real problems modern America has with anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim racism. The holocaust denial laws are not there to solve racism. They're there to stem violent nationalism, the European forms of which don't exist in the US.
> BULL and SHIT. In Australia, there is no routine pixellation of middle fingers, likewise pixellating the mouth of someone swearing.
We don't ban whole works. Australia does.
> Hell, even movie ratings are a form of censorship,
Nonsense. Self-imposed rating systems are in no way comparable to governmental censorship.
> Some US states prevent atheists from holding political office
Wrong. Those laws may be on the books, but they could never be enforced, due to the First Amendment of the Federal Constitution.
> Your wikipedia link has little that Australia has banned in the past couple of decades
It's the principle of the thing.
> Idealism is nice... until it's tested, then pragmatism needs to have a voice.
Wrong. Utterly wrong. If you abandon your principles the moment they're tested, they were never your fucking principles at all.
> But the pragmatism of legislating against holocaust denial or sporting the swastika is basically the same as anti-defamation legislation: it's saying 'don't diminish this'.
By making it seem that it can't fight deniers on an equal footing, that it needs laws to bolster its argument.
> those laws are very specific in terms of what they ban
So? That doesn't make it better.
> US free speech also does nothing to solve any of the real problems modern America has with anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim racism.
We don't ban face veils. Talk to me about racism when you've stopped banning veils.
> They're there to stem violent nationalism, the European forms of which don't exist in the US.
We had the KKK, which was just as violent and just as nationalistic as European forms of it. We were able to destroy it (twice!) without resorting to the destruction of fundamental freedoms.
Name some that have happened in the past couple of decades, given that this was your initial point of note. Then explain to me how those particular selected works are anything but a narrow gap between the US and Australia, in real terms rather than purity of ideology.
And need I remind you again about IP laws? Lifetime of author plus 70 years is a very real ban on associated works by other people. Something can enter the public mindspace and yet be forbidden for people to freely reimagine for around a century? Yeah, that's not a 'ban', because in principle, your grandchildren could publicly release your writings, right? US IP laws are particularly onerous and reduce the freedom of expression of people in other countries through treaty obligations, yet apparently the US principles of free speech remains clean as a whistle to you?
-- Your wikipedia link has little that Australia has banned in the past couple of decades > It's the principle of the thing.
So, Australia has the principle of being able to ban entire works and yet doesn't ban anything. This to you is insane totalitarianism. (conveniently you think that partial censorship is okay, it's just total bans that are so outrageously offensive)
On the other hand, states in the US have laws stating that you can't take office if you are an atheist. You state that this is fine and dandy, despite the inherent requirement for someone to challenge those laws to engage in a lengthy and costly court engagement, with plenty of social fallout. This to you is fine principle.
So, a 'bad' law seldom enforced = terrible, while a 'bad' law that can be overcome only through heavy investment of resources (ie: limited to the very wealthy) = awesomesauce. There is a world of difference between idealistic principle and how things work pragmatically.
-- If you abandon your principles the moment they're tested, they were never your fucking principles at all.
I didn't say anything about principles. I was talking about idealism being tested. These are not the same thing.
-- We don't ban face veils. Talk to me about racism when you've stopped banning veils.
You have a pretty tortured definition of racism, if it requires the banning of face veils before it's a problem.
How about the US's problem with 9% of black men currently being either in jail or on parole? Can we talk about that as a problem of racism, or is it off the cards because US muslims can wear face veils, unlike a couple of selected European countries?
And, once again, I'd like to point out that despite your lauding of how free speech is in the US, the US press is still less free than the Australian press - actual implementation of speech is curtailed in the US more than it is in Australia when it comes to the press. All your pontificating about one particular ideal means little in terms of how things are actually done pragmatically. I mean hell, in the US, despite your puritanical ideal of free speech, you have a whole selection of two political parties to vote for. What a range of expression available for your political voice! Here in Australia, there were so many parties available for the last federal election, that the ballot paper was over a meter long. Yeah, you're right, Australia has such a limited freedom of expression, because one book on euthanasia was banned in the past 20 years. That single point completely trumps all other freedoms a country has, and means that there is a vast gulf in comparison to the US.
Get over your puritanical idealism and have a look at how things are actually run - this is what affects peoples' lives, not the nominal principle they say they adhere to. There are plenty of avowed christians who behave in a very non-christian manner, for example. In real terms, there really isn't that much difference in free speech between the US and Australia.
To the best of my knowledge it is not "illegal to dress as a Muslim" anywhere in Europe. In France it is prohibited to cover one's face while in public. The argument for this law is not grounded in any religious objection, as I understand it, but rather in the fact that face coverings make identification difficult and do not fit in with the expected norms for social interaction in that country.
France also has a ban on the display of religious symbols in public schools. The ban is applied wholesale and does not discriminate against any one particular group. This law, as I understand it, is motivated by a strong desire for secularism in the public education system.
> but rather in the fact that face coverings make identification difficult
A poor reason to assault someone's culture and religion. Rather Big Brotherish, in fact.
> and do not fit in with the expected norms for social interaction in that country.
Back in the day, allowing blacks and whites into the same schools didn't fit in with the expected norms for social interaction in the USA. We got over it.
> France also has a ban on the display of religious symbols in public schools.
This I don't have a huge problem with, even though it seems a bit over-broad. Does it also prohibit people from wearing cross necklaces, for example? How about if someone had put ashes on their face for Ash Wednesday?
I can only comment on the situation as I understand it; I.e. that the law does not specifically mention Islam and it does not prohibit, as you have misrepresented, "dressing up as a Muslim". Moreover, as others have pointed out, there are already plenty of places that prohibit face covering attire.
Also accusations of Big Brother coming from Americans at this point is rather hilarious.
I agree with your entire comment, but the "Rather Big Brotherish" part made me laugh, considering the recent NSA scandal, and the fact that the entire public is basically carrying around a 'telescreen' for all intents and purposes.
Off-topic but funny in and of itself. Also a small note, but even in America some places view face coverings with extreme caution, wearing one in a bank for instance is a big no-no. Not a religious issue in those sorts of cases, really an identification, wariness that you might rob the place issue.
With a few seconds on your favorite search engine, you could discover that "rough it" is an idiom commonly used to refer to camping in a nature-heavy setting (without electricity/plumbing.)
Haha, excuse me for not jumping to that conclusion straight away, I have never heard the ability to live in the bush being used as an argument for another country in a discussion about Australia!
Also first link in Google: rough it - to live in a way that is simple and not very comfortable
Don't pretend search engines deliver the same content to everyone
I'm not suggesting you jump to conclusions. I'm suggesting you do basic research when you don't understand an expression. By the time you skim the first page of results, whether or not it's the same as my first page of results, you should have a clear idea what the idiom means.
> "an argument for another country in a discussion about Australia!"
The immediate discussion was about whether there were arguments for living in America, not whether there were arguments against living in Australia. The US has a lot of things going for it; whether or not some of those things also apply elsewhere isn't really relevant.
