Comment by tester756
5 years ago
>Cost of living is often lower in America than in Poland (excepting Seattle, NY etc.). So materially the average American is a lot better off.
Is it?
5 years ago
>Cost of living is often lower in America than in Poland (excepting Seattle, NY etc.). So materially the average American is a lot better off.
Is it?
No way, only if you look at cars and iPhones. If you include healthcare and education, the median Pole is miles ahead.
Poland is not miles ahead of the US on education at the median, that is not remotely close to being true.
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/
Nationally the US is near the OECD middle, and ahead of both Britain and New Zealand on education. Poland certainly scores well, not "miles ahead" well.
About 1/3 of Americans are getting a four year degree these days. The university systems in the US are vastly superior to anything Poland has. A third tier university in the US is as good as a first tier university in Poland. Forget about the second or first tier universities, Poland has nothing like a University of Virginia, Michigan or UCLA (all second tier), much less the elite schools. Which is why Poland isn't producing very much in the way of innovation or economic output. Poland's economy hasn't net expanded since 2008 (even before the pandemic), if their education system was so great it would show up in their economy.
Poland is also not miles ahead on healthcare at the median. The median American has full healthcare coverage and has faster access to healthcare than most socialized medicine nations, including Canada (where you'll wait months or years for procedures that Americans can get in weeks). We're talking about the median here, which is: an American earning $40,000 to $60,000 per year, with health insurance and richer than the median in either Germany or Sweden. The median American also has routine access to the latest medical technology, which the median Polish person has zero access to.
Miles ahead? Nope.
And if we're comparing fairly on demographics, the median white American demolishes the median white Pole, dramatically and across the board. The median white American is among the wealthiest medians on the planet (three times richer than the median Swede or German) and has an extreme income only comparable to nations like Switzerland and Norway. The US has taken on a dramatic amount of third-world immigration over the past ~45 years, which has persistently pushed against its median scoring as poor third world immigrants flood into the US (which debases the median as it happens). It takes a long time to lift the education and income levels for tens of millions of people coming from the third world with absolutely nothing and having to learn a new culture and language. That said, pretty soon the median Hispanic person in the US will be richer than the median German or Swede as well, so progress is occurring rapidly.
Why on earth would you exclude non-white Americans from your demographic comparisons? That's the very definition of cherry picking. Your argument about non-white Americans being all recent immigrants is just plain wrong. 13% of people living in the US are immigrants and 40% of Americans are Non-white or Hispanic. Many Black, Hispanic and Asian American families have been in the country for centuries. And of course Native Americans have been here for thousands of years.
Poland has more average years in education, a higher high-school graduation rate, higher PSIA scores. More Poles get tertiary degrees, 44%, a full 10% higher than the USA. 7/10 of those degrees are masters level. And by the way, no one needs to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for their degrees.
I have no idea where you got that talking point about no net economic expansion since 2008. Poland's inflation adjusted GDP is one of the fastest growing in Europe, all while its population is dropping due to low birthrates and net migration to the rest of Europe. Its life expectancy is one year lower than the USA, which is already one year lower than the OECD average, but at least you can't be bankrupted by your medical bills.
Rich Americans have it great. The best schools in the world, enormous houses, new cars, the best cutting edge medicine, and extremely high paying jobs that build products the whole world uses, and a government and social system that always works to maintain and magnify that advantage.
Things are nowhere near as rosy when you look at how the other half lives and they can't be just excluded from the comparison as "non-white".
>A third tier university in the US is as good as a first tier university in Poland. Only according to international rankings which measure scientific output which has a ton of confounding factors like how well funded the university is, how well regarded is in the research community or how many guest researchers can it attract. I wonder if people in the US who are involved in hiring, and hire from Eastern Europe use other metrics that allow for more direct, meritocratic comparison of individuals (Leetcode etc.)? If so, do they found that, for example first-tier Polish uni grads perform at the same level as third tier US ones?
I think that the bell curve works the same everywhere, and even most US schools (excepting the very top ones), don't have the opportunity to fill more than 20-30% of their student body with brilliant kids from abroad.