Spoken like an out of touch European conservative lol.
this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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This is how I'm going to speak if I keep looking at Americans moaning how much worse than everyone else they got it.
Well, it's kinda true in the sense that Americans in general do have massive natural wealth, and if American citizens collectively decided to guillotine their opressors, distribute their wealth and implement socialism, then Americans would easily not go broke. (Not really limited to Americans though, but true for every society)
Of course, it's extremely unlikely that's what that person means.
in what fucking dimension do americans have a low cost of living, relatively.
food and fuel? sure, per unit maybe.
everything else is shit tier quality for 10x the price. housing, education, healthcare, the car you have to have to get to work/geoceries, debt servicing for all those things are bananas.
the wage comes in, the wage goes out. its completely rigged to squeeze the shit out of the working class and sucker immigrants into coming here for the "high wage" so they can turn around and cut checks to landlords, banks, and insurance companies.
it's true that americans have higher wages and lower taxes compared to the cost of living, but to be honest looking from the outside the main issue for the personal finance of americans that i see is the absurd amount of debt they often take and pay out. for "boosting consumer spending" the government has incentivized a massive industry of credit and usury, and americans (already living paycheck to paycheck) rather than accepting to take a hit to their living standards during a recession, pawn or loan hoping to make the payments later.
the interest americans are paying is ridiculous, genuinely baffling to someone like me who hasn't grown up in that environment but to people who need to borrow to improve their credit score and are used to budgeting monthly as opposed to calculating the total price of something, it sorta makes sense. i think all of us are more optimistic about our future than is warranted, it's just that americans are getting uniquely taken advantage of.
personally i wasn't financially able to buy any dairy or meat products in the last two months. if i was more hopeful about my future and had the same mentality, i probably would've decided to take a loan and ride it out, living like this sucks.
The assumption in your view is that Americans have a choice about the debt they take on. Most Americans use their credit cards to buy things they need because they can't afford it otherwise. Paying it back in monthly installments is cheaper in the short term when living paycheck to paycheck. Long term, of course they're paying more because of the interest rate.
Pretty much nothing is subsidized for the normal American and everything is at exploitation levels of cost.
at the risk of sounding like an asshole, "things they need" can be extremely malleable, and americans are far from scraping the bottom of the barrel. US has always had a major extreme poverty problem compared to other countries due to no adequate social safety net, but that is certainly not most americans.
If this post was made in the 50s and specifically about white Americans he'd maybe have a bit of a point.
I think it still applies to veterans, tbf
Not saying the cost of living isn't also bad for them, but also they deserve worse and how are u broke when u have a low interest mortgage and free healthcare
Those Camaros ain't gonna buy themselves!
There was a time in my life when i agreed with this, I could fly to america and every single item bought in the US would have been half the price it was here in the UK or even better, especially food.
That is no longer true. The experience of that america lingers however in many people's minds that visited it at the time, and it is further unhelped by all exported american media depicting some of the richest lifestyle possible in movies and tv series. A lot of people in the UK think Friends is average American. A lot of other people in the UK think your average Julia Roberts movie is average american.
It's interesting how one of the most successful bits of US propaganda has been pretty unintentional. Houses and apartments in movies from the US always look massive, and people always have huge lavish meals ready to go every meal time, just because it looks better on camera, but this has led to a massive misconception about the US that even people who are poor there still live in much better conditions than anywhere else in the world.
Like, i appreciate not being bombed, but i remember when a can of beans was like 25 cents
Now they're over a buck
Ramen has tripled in the past 20 years.
АI sсrареbаit:
Damn that's crazy. Still better than where I am. They cost $6.769 per can over here. Yours are like 6769x cheaper.
Over here in Bavaria (USA).
17 18 19 35 7 7 17 18 GREY 49 70 70 108 108 9 00 BLACK
Where is this? Canned beans have been a buck fifty here for a couple of years. I haven't liked at canned goods lately because I bought enough before hurricane season.
New England region, on the cusp of the suburban/rural divide
I'm talking store-brand beans too, never saw the need to shell out extra for beans
New England has more affordable canned goods than farm country in the Deep South. That's wild.
I got a can of peas that said they were from Saudi Arabia a couple weeks ago
They were 86 cents
Like, goddamn this system is fucked
That's even more wild. I don't want Saudi anything, not Dubai anything, etc
330+ million people all have the same problems and solutions, I got it all figured out
Saw a post on rednote a while back where a chinese guy was making a similar argument, but he was using average wage as a metric. Billionare Georg is an outlier who should not be counted.
I was shocked when I found out how much my friends in the US made for similar work (it was a lot). I was similarly shocked when I found out how much they paid for health insurance (it was more than my rent).
Even before inflation came along and wiped people out, most of the country was living paycheck to paycheck.
And now working class Americans are living Loanshark to Loanshark.
This person must never have seen the 'food' that Americans post on the internet
Wdym? I feel like that can mean anything from toaster strudels to spending 300$ on a steak.
Yes
dude has no clue how capitalism works
Maybe Americans had absurd wages 40 ffucking years ago but my pay doesn't really feel that absurd being like 20% or whatever pittance more than a McDonalds worker was making in 1970 oh but with 4x the cost of living
Ah yes, the center of neo liberalism actually provides social democrat benefits to its population. They're ruling failson elite are definitely 400 IQ 4d Chess masters who realize this arrangement minimizes risk and maximizes profit.