EU-US convergence ?

The problem here is that Baldwin has missed the point that household labor is productive.

Wonkish question #1: How productive, roughly, is household labor in general in the EU? I ask because household labor in the EU is potentially less automated than in the US, as far as I am aware of (there are contrary cases, but I mean the general level).

Wonkish question #2: Your estimation that EU/US output is roughly equivalent; is that estimation based on the premise of household labor being equivalently productive as commercial, or another premise?

Wonkish question #3: Anecdotally, my impression is that the higher rate of renting rather than homeownership in some parts of the EU and the smaller space of dwellings would suggest less household labor and more commercialized production (renters work less on their homes than dweller-owners, with the maintenance work being done by the landlord or landlord’s contractors); the higher rater of ownership in the US of such items as lawn tractors, industrial-sized home vacuum systems, large-scale DIY home renovation work et cetera would also suggest more household labor.

I have tried to find some indication in your post; but perhaps due to my own lack of technical chops I have been able to locate the answer(s). I know that question 3 contradicts questions 2 and 1; no need to lambast me on that point.

Where did you get your data for the U.S. E/P ratio? This is the graph I’m used to:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SkzHV6nOv9I/AAAAAAAAFuk/MqcsiWBbceA/s1600-h/EmployPopJune2009.jpg

US workers may spend dramatically less time on housework than their German counterparts. But the housework still needs to get done somehow! They must either

a) invest more in technology (a dishwasher means less time spent hand-washing dishes)
b) hire a maid

The wages of the latter are, presumably, lower (otherwise, it would not have made financial sense to hire her). So, hiring her (and thereby allowing her employer to spend an extra hour at the office, instead of scrubbing the bathroom back home) is a net boost to GDP per capita.

Moreover, either mechanism is a clear boost to productivity/worker, regardless of whether economists have properly accounted for household labour in computing GDP per capita.

John, I’d genuinely like to get a clearer sense of how you see the relative performance of the US and European models in the crisis.

The European model is clearly superior in terms of maintaining the standard of living of the bulk of the population. Unfortunately, in the world we live in,t aht doesn’t necessarily go far in sustaining it.

In terms of aggregate output, I would have said the US model — or at least its international component — has an advantage, since it’s free of the neo-gold standard deflationary pressures the peripheral (i.e. non-German) countries of Europe.

Do you disagree? Do you think the US will have a harder time, under the current institutional setup, of returning to something like full employment?

Again, not a rhetorical question.

In terms of market labour and household labour. Yes, of course, more market labour means a higher GDP (because that’s what we’re measuring in GDP) and yes, we need to adjust both European hours of work for the greater household labour and also consumption (or production) upwards for the output of that household production.

“I know which looks more appealing to me, but there’s no obvious way of saying which is best.”

Well, we can have a stab at it actually. The Stiglitz/Sen thing they did for Sarkozy looks at this very thing. They suggest that this household production, given how difficult it is to value the production, should be valued at the value of the labour that goes into it. And that valuation should be at the “general undifferentiated labour rate”.

However, the average labour rate in the market economy is higher than this general undifferentiated rate. The reason being that in the market we can have the division of labour and its specialisation, in a way which we can’t (or at least not as fine grained) within a one or two adult household. Market labour is therefore more productive (one child carer can care for four kids, a mother doing it at home only for her own. A cook in a restaurant can take 2 hours to prepare food for 15 people, not just three and so on…..entirely made up numbers just to put forward the point) than household.

If we assume that the basic human motivations are greed and sloth, the desire to get the most for the least amount of work possible (extreme assumptions if we try to apply it to every corner of life but reasonable working ones for at least part of it) then we’re better off, we get more for less labour, with market work rather than household.

None of this addresses preferences: it might well be that some/many/all people prefer to clean their own house, raise their own children 24/7, cook their own food.

But in terms of purely goods and services more market labour and less household labour should be making people richer.

I take it “household labor” in Europe includes this.

“I’m a little baffled. Is the higher European household labor all about home-cooked meals?”

Maybe it’s all about cleaning the house once a week, instead of once a day?

And cleaners and gardeners and child care and other outsourcing of housework.

….the top percentiles of US households collect a much larger share of total income, and there doesn’t seem to be any net economic payoff for this.

Net economic payoff to you, perhaps….

What’s the point in building the world’s grandest tree house if you can’t pull up the ladder?

Unless what are more properly considered leisure activities are being counted as household labor – e.g gardening.

What a fantastically crass and stupid opinion.

Although, about trade-offs, has anyone tried to be in Paris in August? And tried to get anything done?

Or tried to purchase anything in any place in Germany on Sundays?

One of the nice things about the U.S. system is that anytime that my whim pleases, I can amble into a Walgreens or CVS and get most whatever I want. More importantly, at perfect-competition prices. Try getting three large bags of chips and two 12-packs of soda and several pints of Ben & Jerry’s at 11 p.m. at the gas station, and you’ll find yourself soaked. Of course, such places exist elsewhere as well, but the scale and degree are different.

If I fix my own car, the tax is 0%. If I take it into the shop, the tax is probably 20% of the transaction, altogether. So if Eurodweebs work the same hours all-in, household and market combined, but the household is taxed at 0%, does that equalize the tax rates?

Myles,
I’ve lived in Germany and rarely needed to buy anything on Sunday because I, like 90% of all Germans, bought everything I would need on Saturday. If I did need anything on Sunday, I, like 100% of the Germans who needed something on Sundays, went to the train station and bought whatever I needed. Damnedest those Germans and the exclusion they carved out for train stations. It’s almost like they thought of your objection and neutralized by allow, whaddaya call it, an exemption. The main station in Leipzig had full scale grocery open 7 days a week which was priced about the same as regular places. Honest. Halle a/d Salle had a kind of ripoff place, the 1mark beers were 1,5 or so, but with great marinated pork steaks, these were to be honest the one thing I would wait to buy on Sunday even though I could get them any day of the week, and in Berlin, why you could even buy shoes.

What was your point again?

Is the idea here that European decreased private consumption necessitates increased household labor? Can increased social services ever reduce the need for increased household labor?

There’s a perfectly good reason why market work might not be a productive as household, and that is transport costs.

It’s also a bit weird that many of these surveys include ‘looking after your own children’ as a chore (and eating).

What’s the gender breakdown of this household labor? Are we talking about stuff both men and women do around the house instead of putting in more hours at the office, or is this comparison really just fretting about the menace of working mothers?

(This is also something that nags at me about the whole Michael Pollan foodie business. I know he specifically blames feminism for making us eat wrong.)

I speculate that on average Europeans spend much more time than Americans preparing meals. And they do it because they have a different relationship to the food they eat. I think the Europeans have made the right choice.

Does time spent driving to the supermarket, or to half a dozen separate stores, count as time spent on household work? What about time spent ordering groceries online, or filling out an order for the milkman? Does time spent shopping for bathroom tiles and supervising building contractors count? Watching the kids’ (organized) soccer game?

Similarly, does time spent keeping up with the field, or doing research to keep up with competitors in your firm and others, or to pretend you know something about your boss’s pet interests, count as “work”?

Paul B @36: I think the Europeans have made the right choice

What? You’d prefer gracious and civilized dining at home to being able to walk into a tacky convenience store at 11pm and buy “three large bags of chips and two 12-packs of soda and several pints of Ben & Jerry’s” at perfect-competition prices? You don’t deserve freedom!

It’s time to ditch capitalism.
For good.
Anyone who can’t see the potential for harm in allowing capitalism to become the cannibalistic monster it now is must have just arrived from another solar system.

What? You’d prefer gracious and civilized dining at home to being able to walk into a tacky convenience store at 11pm and buy “three large bags of chips and two 12-packs of soda and several pints of Ben & Jerry’s” at perfect-competition prices?

I’m sorry? Have you been to Walgreens? Exactly what part of it strikes as tacky rather than just working-class New England? As for CVS, the CVS in Amherst MA for example is the only reasonably stocked general store, convenience or otherwise, close to Amherst College. There are a lot of descriptors for Amherst College students’ shopping habits, but I daresay “tacky” isn’t one of them.

I am somewhat amused when people who clearly are unfamiliar with the U.S. Northeast spout this sort of nonsense. You do realize that I used the technical term “perfect competition” with some degree of awareness of its irony, right? Because there’s actually no local competition but the Quaker method of single fair price still prevails?

Re alex @ 39: If there is a discourse about what we now consider “best,” it hasn’t trickled down to where I am yet. My suspicion is that what we see are panics about some single issue, with no pushback to ensure the issue-lobbyists don’t suck up all the oxygen[1]: for example, that young men today (probably African American) don’t care enough about getting jobs, so we see a push for the idea that “a man has a good job so he can support his family.”

[1] I mean that if we talked about structural causes for unemployment, it would take away from the opportunity to educate men who don’t understand that “a man has a good job.” Ditto for taking about the need to help women remain employed, or the need for men to take an interest in community issues.

Are we sure that the US and Europe are appropriate units for comparison?

Europe includes a current-account surplus core and a current-account deficit periphery, qith quite divergent employment experiences. The US-Asia trade system includes a current-account deficit core and a current-account deficit periphery, again with divergent employment experiences. Comparing the whole system on the one hand, to only the deficit half, on the other, is potentially misleading if we think that trade flows or “global imbalances” is part of the story of rising unemployment.

In other words, doesn’t the fact that the American model has sparked rapid industrialization in East Asia, while the European core has not — in recent decades — produced anything similar in its periphery, have to count as a point in favor of the US?

Lemuel, East Asia ships to Europe too. I don’t think it makes much sense to see it as the periphery of the US. Mexico perhaps.

Having lived in many western countries including the US, the US wins hands-down. You simply have way more choices and a higher material standard of living here, because the emphasis is much more on expression of the individual than the collective. If you like the choices made for you by the collective, in, say, France, then you’ll prefer it there. But I do think it is telling that very few Americans migrate permanently abroad compared to the number migrating permanently to the US.

John Quiggin asks for statistical backing of your claim in the last sentence. I’d like to ask about the ethical appeal in your first sentence. You implicitly claim your judgment is trustworthy because of your experience. Tell us a little more about that experience. You mention France in particular. How long did you live in France? What did you do there? Did you learn the language? How many friends did you make? Did they invite you to their homes so you might share meals, for instance? I ask this because the thread has discussed differences in cuisine. So in your opinion, does French cooking as done in French homes (rather than restaurants) reflect a collectivist or individualist outlook?

I think the relevant comparison over a span of (say) thirty years is between (a) the impact of the US (+Canada, I guess) on Mexico and the rest of the Americas on the one hand, and (b) the original EU 6 (+UK, I guess) on the rest of Europe. I’d say that’s pretty clear-cut in favor of the EU.

Over 50 or 60 years, no question, absolutely. But has there really been that much intra-European convergence since 1980?

On the Asia question, it seems you are right: Asian NICs (under various definitions) export approximately as much to the EU as to the United States. My priors were otherwise. Well, that’s a big reasons to participate in these conversations, to learn stuff. So thanks.

You simply have way more choices

Really?

and a higher material standard of living here

Really?

@Libertarian. Given your doctorates in various fields including statistics, I’m sure you can give us some stats on the massive net flow of migrants from (say) France to the US.

I am sure you’re going to tell us quiggin: exactly what percentage of the French population emigrate annually to the US versus the opposite?

Also, I’m sure that you’re aware that US income inequality means that the subjective experience of people in the top quintile of the income distribution is not a reliable guide to relative living standards for the population as a whole.

Indeed. The miserable outlook for the bottom US quintile would explain why all those Mexicans just keep on driving to the promised land of Canada once they cross that southern US border.

The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

I’d heard that muslims were worth less than regular people and I guess now I know.

“they” attaches to “skills”. Make sense now “Substance”?

The same amount. I have my joke name and you have yours.

“…The miserable outlook for the bottom US quintile would explain why all those Mexicans just keep on driving to the promised land of Canada once they cross that southern US border.”

I’m a Canadian immigration lawyer, and I can confirm that in fact that’s what they are doing, whenever they can. Last year the government reintroduced an entry visa requirement for Mexicans, which they had removed for many years previously, because the refugee system was being “overwhelmed” by Mexican claimants. Even with the visa requirement, Mexicans are still often choosing to drive all the way to Canada.

18,000 annual U.S. emigration in the 1990s. You probably can’t get 2001-2010 because the 2010 census has only just been completed (the US does not track its citizens when they leave, so calculating emigration rates is not straightforward).

Even lower than I imagined. By contrast, 327,000 Britons left the U.K in 2000. Nearly 100 times the rate of departure (per head) from the US (I don’t have numbers for France yet). Now, some of this is not directly comparable, eg people can move from the UK to another EU country relatively easily. But with the large cultural barriers, it is still a much bigger shift than a US citizen moving from one US state to another.

Whichever way you look at it, Americans — incomprehensibly to liberals — vote with their feet.

[…]
The Federal Register, the government publication that records such decisions, shows that 502 expatriates gave up their U.S. citizenship or permanent residency status in the last quarter of 2009. That is a tiny portion of the 5.2 million Americans estimated by the State Department to be living abroad.

Still, 502 was the largest quarterly figure in years, more than twice the total for all of 2008, and it looms larger, given how agonizing the decision can be. There were 235 renunciations in 2008 and 743 last year. Waiting periods to meet with consular officers to formalize renunciations have grown.
[…]More American Expatriates Give Up Citizenship

Comparing US incomes with selected European countries can be somewhat misleading, imo. It is probably true that that the median Doutchman is richer than the median American, even with less work. But you could also pick a similarly sized particularly rich part of the US, and the outcome is presumably different. This is ok if you were comparing the Netherlands with the US on purpose, because you think they are more natural candidates for comparison than “europe”. But there is a risk of cherry picking.

At Detlef: I am in no way an expert, so don’t take this as dogma: I have heard that especially short-term statistics on growth and inflation can be misleading. All countries correct their figures a few times after they were first published, and those adjust are.in some countries often upwards and in other more often downwards. So they clearly differ in the way they make the first estimates. But I couldn’t tell you which countries do what.

Wiki claims 35,000 to 120,000 illegal immigrants in Canada. Even if they are all Mexican, “often” is a little exaggeration There are about 7,000,000 illegal Mexican immigrants in the US.

Perhaps the dear immigration lawyer should elucidate on how many of the 35,000 – 120,000 are from Mexico? My anecdotal experience in all major Canadian cities has been that they tend to be mostly Asian, with a good number of people from francophone Africa and the like in Quebec.

(And, of course, many of those would be elderly people going to live in Spain and the south of France, just as many Americans from northern states retire to Florida.)

I’d be very interested in knowing the basis of that statistic

Unsurprisingly, the 327,000 figure
a) refers not to people leaving but to people entering the UK;
b) refers to 1997, not 2000; and
c) comes from the News of the World.
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/article9094.ece

I don’t think it’s even theoretically possible for someone to be wronger than that.

UK immigration/emigration figures have to be treated with caution recently, because of the immense Wave of Plumbers which landed (correctly) in Thanet after Poland’s accession to the EU, and swept across the country from right to left with Fire and Sword*, before reversing course and sweeping back to Poland again once the recession kicked in.

*or possibly Wrench and Plunger.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/mapToolClosed.do?tab=map&init=1&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tsieb010&toolbox=types#

Gdp (ppp) percentage of Eu average:
Greece 95
France 107
Italy 102
Portugal 78
Spain 104
Greece does great, Spain does even better. Theres one unfortunate reason for that, they receive far more subsidies than many other much poorer EU nations. Part of the high gdp is fake built on debt, both in Spain and Greece, but so what. -5-10% makes them still quite wealthy.

Paris muslim youth anyone?

Well, you may not have ever set foot in France, but you’ve clearly read the Economist at least once, so I guess the rest of us should just shut up and defer to your expertise.

From the Worldbank document quoted above:

If per-capita GDP is used as a measure of comparison, much of Western Europe matches up to America’s poorest states. France is slightly poorer than Arkansas; Spain and Italy barely edge out West Virginia and Mississippi, the poorest states in the Union. Washington, DC has a staggering per-capita GDP of $148,046, double that of Europe’s richest nation per-capita, Luxembourg.

Can we now lay this fun with statistics nonsense to rest please?

this aptly named “Nugget” from the Office of National Statistics says that emigration was 430,000 in 2008, largely composed of non-British nationals returning to their home countries. It seems to suggest that 175000 British people left in 2008, but 85,000 came back, giving a net outward migration of 90000 British. That’s 90,000 smart poms moving to Australia, I’ve no doubt.

So, Dr. Libertarian proves that a PhD in statistics and climate science doesn’t necessarily provide good google-fu, but he/she/it is wrong about the actual numbers.

Also, Dr. L, is it perhaps remotely slightly faintly possible that those Mexicans don’t drive to Canada because the US is in the way? Perhaps a better test would be if the two countries shared a border with Mexico?

No, I’m saying that by claiming that libertarian couldn’t be more wrong, you’re going to inspire Worstall to top it by being more wrong. He has a certain well-won reputation for wrongness around these parts.

I don’t think it’s even theoretically possible for someone to be wronger than that.

Not only theoretically possible ajay, but you’re the proof:

Annual migration statistics
(UK office for national statistics). Click on the pdf report. The numbers you want are on page 32.

I admit that I was wrong. Clearly, it is theoretically possible to be wronger than saying that a figure from the News of the World for immigrants in one year is a good source for the number of emigrants in another year. You can link to an entirely reliable source which a) contains data for the wrong year that b) doesn’t back up what you say or even c) provide the figures you say it provides and d) say that it does.

Oops, my mistake. 46 is your second comment. You made one at 19 as well. Indeed, this is central to my point.

in that document, 156000 Britons left the UK in 2008 – as I said previously, 85000 returned. The top country of destination for Britons was Australia (56000). The USA was number 3 in 2007 – 19000 Britons went there. It didn’t register in the top 5 in 2008.

The main message from all of that is that Britons are much more mobile than Americans – there’s another page where they talk about the average length of time away being 4 years. Yes, Libertarian, the Brits who didn’t go to Australia actually went back to the UK. Hard though that is for you to comprehend.

Incidentally, which other Western countries did you live in?

Regarding commute time and productivity — the method of commuting also matters.

Consider driving versus rail for long trips — books on tape is as good as it gets in car, on a train, you can actually pay attention to a book, or work on a laptop, and in either case also listen to music.

For shorter trips, there’s walking and biking. It’s pretty clear that we underconsune exercise here in the US, so the first few hours spent usefully commuting by foot or bike each week, is not wasted time. It’s a big deal — driving your car to work (on average) results in a 39% higher mortality rate. (Time spent exercising is paid back, in expected longevity terms, at least one-for-one — the advantage of biking to work, is that after you get your exercise, you arrive at work instantly.)

However, biking to work is clearly “bad for the GDP”, or at least some parts of it. 2500 miles/year (50 miles/week, not that much) is a good fraction of yearly auto mileage, at a fraction of the cost. Increased exercise means no need to go to the gym, increased exercise means reduced need for chronic-condition meds. And interestingly, the Netherlands has a relatively high bicycle commuting ride share (they are mentioned a couple of times above, see comment #56 for example).

Also add to the mix — 1/3 of us in the US live as densely as the Dutch do, and 2/3 do not. It was my understanding that federal tax transfers from the dense (urban and near-urban) 1/3 subsidize non-dense 2/3. This seems like another likely factor in any inter-country comparisons of productivity.

Induction suggests that Dr L’s estimate of the number of countries he’s lived in and the time he lived in them will be off by at least 50%!

However, it doesn’t support Libertarian’s original claim, which was that “327,000 Britons left the U.K.” (my emphasis). The figure is for all emigrants, both British and non-British.

My claim was that Americans vote with their feet (to stay put). As I originally pointed out, the UK figure is not appropriate for a direct apples-to-apples comparison with the 18,000 census figure for U.S emigrants. However, it is nearly 2 orders of magnitude higher than the U.S figure (as an emigration rate per head of population), so even if you can find a reason to reduce it by an order of magnitude (which I doubt – you maybe have 2X or 3X), Americans still appear far happier with their supposedly miserable lot.

Dr. L: nearly 2 orders of magnitude higher than the U.S figure

Wikipedia: “If two numbers differ by one order of magnitude, one is about ten times larger than the other. If they differ by two orders of magnitude, they differ by a factor of about 100”

Did you mean “100 times higher”?

Grain of salt and so forth, but

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/imm_net_mig_percap-immigration-net-migration-per-capita

Certainly, only Dr L could conclude that large flows between, say, Britain and France proves that both Britain and France are unattractive places to live.

And only quiggin could deliberately ignore the caveat in my original comment: “Now, some of this is not directly comparable, eg people can move from the UK to another EU country relatively easily.”

But I can’t see how 18,000 U.S departures per year is anything but a vote of confidence by its citizens. However, let me help you out here: just play a variant of the usual “liberal-with-superiority-complex” card and claim this only proves ignorance is bliss.

The question is whether the US is a particularly attractive destination for emigrants from developed countries, and my impression is that it isn’t. Brits, for example, have historically been more likely to come to Australia, and I think this is still true.

I bet you are right (for Brits at least), but primarily because it is both administratively and culturally considerably easier for Brits to emigrate to Australia than to the U.S. After all, they do have the same head of state. And you shouldn’t discount the Kylie Minogue factor either.

geo @102: Yes. (321,000 / 59,000,000) / (18,000 / 285,000,000) = 86. Nearly two orders of magnitude.

Lemuel,
Since there is no chance of changing all the things about the US that make it different from Europe, isn’t this just bloviating about Eurotopia? There are lots of problems that don’t even get addressed–some of them involving differences from Europe, though maybe not the obvious ones–like the dysfunctional way government functions are divided among municipal, county, and state administrations in many states (and in some cases NGOs with a hostile attitude toward all three of those). Or is all this only about the fact that Bill Clinton “ended welfare as we kn[e]w it”?

Libertarian, thanks for your reply. I’m glad to see you have lived in France. Leaving aside your degree of insertion in French society (number of friends, type of interaction, level of language skill), let’s just say that if we restrict ourselves to the area of food, coffee, and wine, are you really saying that in the US we have “way more choices and a higher material standard of living” than in France?

Voting with feet requires [a] owning a pair of really high-quality shoes, [b] a body that hasn’t given out, and [c] having somewhere to go.

When someone doesn’t vote with their feet, it means either [a] they’re happy where they are or [b] they’re not capable of walking marathon distances or [c] their shoes are embedded in concrete.

Or perhaps [d] there seems to be nothing but vicious knee-deep mud for miles and what’s beyond the property boundary is not well-known and conceivably even more hostile, so, attempting to evade suffering by fleeing seems like a bad idea according to a very sensible high-risk-uncertain-reward principle.

Libertarian, are you claiming only 18000 Americans leave their country yearly? the Netherlands alone record around.3000 immigrants born in the US each year, pretty much the same as the number of dutch-born emigrants to the US. The big problem with these numbers is that the number of return migrants in both directions.is nearly.equal, because the flow is mostly expats. So net migration numbers are completely different from gross migration numbers.

Lib, sg’s already pointed out what was wrong with your statistics. I’d only add that comparing gross departures of all nationalities with net departures of citizens only isn’t really very meaningful. Add that to your already-existing caveat that it’s a lot easier for a Brit to work abroad (in the EU) than it is for an American, and your statement really doesn’t seem to prove much at all.
Small wonder, then, you’d rather argue about coffee.

Also note that a high immigration rate doesn’t prove much about the attractiveness of a country – witness the UAE in first place for net migration at the top of the table cited in 104. All it proves is that it’s easy for people to get into your country from even more wretched countries.

Lemuel,
I couldn’t say what your problem is. Maybe you could explain what you mean by “the European model” and in what way it is different from, and superior to, the American one. Do you really only mean things like (a) better support for the poor and the unemployed, (b) support for unions comparable to, say, Germany, (c) more and better enforced regulations? (As opposed to class structure, the position of the universities, churches, and other institutions, land ownership, culture, etc.?)

if we restrict ourselves to the area of French food, French coffee, and French wine then yes, the French have us beat hands-down.

No, I am not saying that at all. I’d say the variety of choices available in central Paris is equal to that in a comparable slice of New York, as would be the variety of choices in smaller cities in France comparable to smaller cities in the USA. Did you miss all the couscous joints, the West African places, the South American places, the Italian, and Chinese places (and all the subsets therein), the tapas places, the Irish pubs, the Tex-Mex (and real Mexican) places? Just on the rue de la Fontaine au roi (a decent enough but not nearly chic little street in the 11th, one I happen to know something about), you’ll find Moroccan, Senegalese [okay, that’s defunct, but it was there for a number of years], Cuban, and Eastern European places, not to mention the Vietnamese, Cambodian, Italian, and Chinese places all within a few blocks. To be concrete about it, where do you live in the States, and where did you live in France? That would give us a better shot at checking your claim. If you live in a big city in the States and lived in a small town in France, that might account for it, but that would be apples and oranges, no?

By the way, the insistence that only 18,000 Americans per annum leave to live elsewhere sits rather ill with the numbers of them who are actually living in those other countries. How did they get there?

http://aaro.org/

Or do you mean that you became aware in the light of people pointing it out to you? In which case, an admission that you were badly wrong might be in order rather than a blowhard insistence that you are right anyway.

I was vaguely aware at the time but my point was the gap is nearly two orders of magnitude, and I conceded at the time that there are many factors that would narrow that gap, but not enough to override the general conclusion that Americans are unusual in the extent to which they don’t emigrate.

Address the substantive point Bertram, else it is just you who appears to be the blowhard.

And they have us beat for cafe culture too: hard to compare sipping a latte on the Left Bank with free wifi in Starbucks. Even if it is a sh*tty latte, hey, you’re sipping it on the Left Bank!

Or, you could go to any one of several Starbucks in Paris and be spared the horror of shitty French coffee.

Better trolls, please.

Hell no. This guy rocks.

I thought you were claiming the available food choices in France are significantly superior to those in comparable cities in the US. If the food choices are on a par, yet I have many more and cheaper choices in other areas in the US (eg housing, cars, consumer goods), then doesn’t that make my point?

No, *you* were claiming that in the US we had “way more choices and a higher material standard of living.” I tested that claim w/r/t to food, and you concede it’s not the case. Now with regard to the other things you mention, we again have to consider income level and geographical area. Are you saying a comparable slice of New York provides “more and cheaper choices” than a comparable slice of Paris w/r/t “housing, cars, consumer goods”? Have you priced an apartment in Manhattan lately? Considering cheap and varied consumer goods, have you been to the BHV? Let’s leave cars out of this Paris / NYC thing, since having a car in either city is quite possibly irrational. As for smaller cities in the US, the *need* for a car due to poor quality of public transport (which in my town, Baton Rouge, is closely tied to racial residential patterns) might help drive some economic stats, but I can’t see how anyone would argue my purchase of a car in Baton Rouge denotes “choice,” let alone helps quality of life.

I tested that claim w/r/t to food, and you concede it’s not the case.

Outside of large, international cities, I don’t concede that – see 129.

Have you priced an apartment in Manhattan lately?

Again, international cities do not make good points of comparison. Central London is horrendously expensive. As is central Paris, central Sydney, etc. That’s because a lot of rich people from all over the world want to live there. It doesn’t tell you much about the country as-a-whole.

I paid a relative pittance for a house in a nice development that is so large it wouldn’t even be approved in the UK, France or Australia, unless I was a multi-millionaire and could afford 20 acres hidden out-of-sight of the collectivist elites. I pay less for my car than I would in Australia (about 30% less on the purchase price and far less on payments – 0% financing over 72 months). I pay less for all my electronic consumer goods than I have seen anywhere else with the possible exception of Hong Kong. I pay less for food and groceries than France, UK, or Britain. The local wal-mart carries far more general grocery items in-stock and at cheaper prices than the corresponding store in Australia (Big W). Clothes are cheaper and much higher quality. Gas is far cheaper. Energy is far cheaper (about 5c/KWhr vs 20c/KWhr). It just goes on-and-on. There really is very little comparison.

Public transport is bad, I agree. Although only outside the larger cities. That said, my county provides a minimal bus service for people who really can’t get around, and that is out to rural areas. But the roads are amazing. Where I live, they plan for growth like nowhere else I have seen: dual carriageways and 2 lanes each way into all large new developments. It is much cheaper to own a car in my state than in the UK or Australia – initial outlay is low, taxes are low, gas is cheap and maintenance is very efficient and cheap – either at wal-mart or jiffy lube.

Cars are expensive in Australia because it’s a tiny market a jillion miles from anywhere that also expects (and to some extent requires) extensive local specialisation in its cars. GM sells much the same saloon across the world, but only in Australia is it called a Holden, manufactured in Fisherman’s Bend, and delivered with a choice of a 3.8 litre V6 or 5 litre V8. Ford doesn’t sell, let alone manufacture, sports pickups anywhere else in the world. This is a silly argument.

I would very much like to see some evidence that there is less “choice” of car in western Europe. Within two streets of my front door in London, N19, I’m aware of a Chevy Suburban (God knows why), an Aston Martin, and a Citroen DS estate. Obviously this implies the presence of three eccentric petrolheads in a fairly restricted territory. But there you go.

You haven’t even asserted more “choice” – just cheaper land. BTW, do you actually believe Australians chafe under land hunger? I have actually been to Australia, and stern planning restrictions and urban density were not in fact characteristic of my impressions.

I have actually been to Australia, and stern planning restrictions and urban density were not in fact characteristic of my impressions.

Google “Urban Growth Boundary Adelaide”. It’s horrible. Almost no road infrastructure improvements in 50 years. If you are a professional couple who’ve put off procreation until it is almost too late you can afford a 50, 60 or 70 year-old house similar to the one your working-class parents owned when they were nearly half your age. But at least you’ll be close enough to the city amenities. Otherwise, the government central-planners force you into far-flung suburbs with no amenities at all, or into a shoebox apartment.

tolerant of newcomers and outsiders

You should develop this point, and drop the rest. Here you are on solid ground.

we even have more sex on average. Plus land is usually even more abundant and even less expensive.

But if you take Moose and frozen tundra out of that equation, Canada does less well, you’ll have to admit. (Kidding! Kidding! Except the “plentiful land” bit- land is plentiful in Russia, too, but there’s a reason almost no one lives in most of it in both places.)

140:
“But if you take Moose and frozen tundra out of that equation, Canada does less well, you’ll have to admit”

Zing!

Actually you would be surprised at how much available good land there is in Canada. People tend to exaggerate the “snowy tundra” thing. I live comfortably in Northern Alberta for 24 years.

Again, international cities do not make good points of comparison.

I’m not sure what makes some cities “international” and others not (clearly not location on a national border, if Manhattan qualifies), but since cities pretty much by definition are places where lots of people live, it seems rather odd to rule them out of the comparison as an aberration.

You clearly enjoy living in a sprawling suburb where you are no doubt several miles from the nearest 7-11, but aren’t you aware that this is hardly a universal impulse? In fact, its existence in its present US form is highly dependent on government policy and subsidies (including, inter alia, that cheap gas you’re such a big fan of, as well as large-lot zoning and copious parking requirements that force businesses away from each other and from housing until nobody wants to walk from one to the other).

Comparing different countries on the basis of the ability to live the Veblen Acres lifestyle where you never see your “neighbors” except through a car window is nearly as dishonest as comparing them on the basis of access to specifically French cuisine, IMO. People in other countries don’t do that because they mostly don’t want to do that, not because of some kind of “collectivist elite” (isn’t that an oxymoron anyway?).

Bertram @147: see my comment @ 117:

If we restrict comparison to that which country X does best, then X dominates Y for all countries Y not equal to X

I would add British pubs to your list. Yet still they leave in droves (by comparison to the US). Whereas for all their Europhilia, U.S liberals stay put.

@146: not me.

chris @148:

I’m not sure what makes some cities “international”

A good working definition I use is cities where a lot of rich people from all over the world have houses.

In fact, its existence in its present US form is highly dependent on government policy and subsidies (including, inter alia, that cheap gas you’re such a big fan of, as well as large-lot zoning and copious parking requirements that force businesses away from each other and from housing until nobody wants to walk from one to the other).

The government doesn’t subsidize gas here. They just don’t tax it out the wazoo like they do in Europe and to a lesser extent Australia.

As for being dependent on “government policy” – that’s where my point about democratic responsiveness to the citizenry comes from. Government policy reflects the wishes of the population, at least in part because those policies are made at a very local government level, and there are strong legal protections for private property (and hence private development of property in response to private demand) which means the local governments are less prone to capture by special interest groups which stifle or restrict growth to reflect their own narrow preferences. (none of this applies to California which is an honorary Eurostate).

Comparing different countries on the basis of the ability to live the Veblen Acres lifestyle where you never see your “neighbors” except through a car window.

On the contrary, one thing that is particularly striking about at least the neighborhoods I have lived in in the US is how friendly and cohesive they are. We all have 0.5 – 2 acre lots yet there’s a neighborhood email list and regular neighborhood activities. I know the names of probably 50 other couples in the neighborhood. Many people take evening walks and we all chat to each other when we see one another. At least in my part of the US they don’t do fences the way Australians do (people only put up fences if they have a dog or a pool). All the kids run freely through everyone’s backyards.

Yes indeedy!

Government policy reflects the wishes of the population, at least in part because those policies are made at a very local government level

Indeed it does. From your description of the neighborhood where you live, I infer that its population is made up of people with who can afford half-acre lots, who have established a government policy (zoning) which reflects your wish not to have anybody who cn’t afford such a lot live anywhere near you.

and there are strong legal protections for private property (and hence private development of property in response to private demand)

Except of course that (as I infer) no property owner has a right to, e.g., build multi-family housing in your neighborhood, because of government coercion.

which means the local governments are less prone to capture by special interest groups which stifle or restrict growth to reflect their own narrow preferences.

So when local zoning laws permit only large-lot single-family housing in a community, thereby preventing the population growth that would result from smaller single-family lots and multifamily housing, that is somehow not “restricting growth”? And the upper-income homeowners who impose such a restriction are not a “special interest group”?

I infer that its population is made up of people with who can afford half-acre lots

Yes indeed roac. Including (in no particular order): a teacher; a retired couple, he a former marine and she a former homemaker; a policeman and his policewoman wife; a pilot and his stay-at-home-wife; a small businessman; another (even smaller) businessman; an insurance broker, a refinery worker, etc. Some of them are even (god forbid)……. african american. Finished houses in this development have sold from $310,000 to $780,000. With interest rates at 5% for 30 year fixed mortgages, you do not need to be high income to afford the lower end of this neighborhood. How so cheap for such large lots? LACK OF ARBITRARY RESTRICTIONS ON PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT. Let the free market do its work and even teachers and refinery workers are better off. No government intervention required. Horrifying isn’t it?

Except of course that (as I infer) no property owner has a right to, e.g., build multi-family housing in your neighborhood, because of government coercion.

You infer wrong. The next phase of development is indeed multi-family housing. Currently delayed due to this *ahem* slight housing crunch we’re in right now. And do you know what? They’ll be sharing our neighborhood pool. OMG, we’ll all be swimming in the same water as the great unwashed from the apartments down the road. I don’t know how I will cope. I’ve been in therapy for months in preparation.

Perhaps relevant: Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life, by Thomas Geoghegan.

libertard (may I anagrammaticize your name too?), can we apply your logic to Burma?

e.g. Myanmar must be the best place on earth – Myanmarese are voting with their feet, there were only 3 emigrants last year.

Myanmar must be orders of magnitude better than the USA.

Came here via Yglesias whose conclusion I second. PPP figures are used extensively and yet, when some years ago I tried to get a better understanding of how they were constructed, I did not find any detailed explanation. It would be great if you could tell us more at some point. When I looked for some literature, I remember that your name popped up several times!

As to EU vs. US, one thing is convergence. But one has also to ask where does the growth come from. E.g., who is contributing more to technological innovation, EU or US? I would be tempted to bet hands down on US (pc, Google etc.) but I have to say I haven’t looked at any serious study of this. To put it another way, how much would have EU grown in the last, say, 30 years (you can make it 60) without the technological spillover from US and/or the demand for goods arising from a growing market such as US? Of course, spillovers go in both directions (german engineers in munich, students from the Grand Ecole who get their phd in US). And so do demand factors. But I would bet that in the net US has been more important than EU in the last 60 years (which is different from claiming that US has a higher standard of living than EU). However this is just speculation on my part.

Let the free market do its work and even teachers and refinery workers are better off. No government intervention required. Horrifying isn’t it?

Let the free market do its work and most teachers would be unemployed. The few parents that could afford non-government-subsidized education wouldn’t provide jobs for 1/3 of them.

TBH, the first thing I thought when I heard that parade of occupations (about half of them government workers, and probably none below the median income) living in a neighborhood like that was “GI Bill” — which, as you probably know, was a government program. But maybe they’re younger than that.

I wonder if that refinery worker is in a union?

P.S. Where the small businessmen and the insurance broker would be without government support for corporations and enforcement of contracts, to take just two examples, is left as an exercise for the reader. But I’m sure government had nothing to do with their accomplishments — just ask them!

“Except that they aren’t. By no reasonable measure are average Americans better off than average Germans, Dutch, or Danes.”

Let me briefly expand on that. Just one example. I live in a city of 75,000, not a rich enclave but a fairly well-off city by American standards, until recently economically growing and expanding although hard hit by the recession like most fast growing communities. Temperature has been and still is in the 90s. There is not a single public swimming pool currently serving the city, not even as much as a play fountain. The only pool has closed a week ago, it is open 10 weeks a year with very restricted opening times.

One cannot even imagine a Central European city of comparable size that is not served by an affordable public pool during a hot summer (of course normally there will be amenities year round). Just not imaginable. Defenders of American superiority will be quick to point out that Americans have more private swimming pools per capita than Europeans. Probably true but doesn’t change the fact that the majority certainly do not have private swimming pools (unless you count 4 foot inflatable basins) and even those who do mostly have small pools without amenities that are not much fun really and in fact are rarely used and many pool owners realize how inefficient and expensive to maintain their pools really are and wish they could get rid of it. Anyway so if you measure well-being by the range of choices that an average person has, rather than by the amount of money a minority is able to spend on wasteful status symbols, with respect to access to swimming pool fun, Europe wins hands-down.

As a comparison, this is what medium-sized German or Swiss cities offer their population at very reasonable rates.

http://www.bodensee-therme-konstanz.de/
http://www.thermentrio.de/
http://www.meersburg-therme.de/
http://www.kurhessen-therme.de/bildergalerie.html
http://www.therme-erding.de/
http://franken-therme.net/
http://www.therme-vals.ch/
http://www.badi-info.ch/alpentherme.html

These are some of my favorites (the Swiss ones are a bit more pricey) but almost every city has something comparable to offer. Amenities like this are definitely associated with upper class in the US, and in the part of the country where I am are simply not available.

out of interest piglet does the same thing apply to libraries?

(none of this applies to California which is an honorary Eurostate).

This is laughable.

Try buying the ingredients for a cheese and tomato sandwich almost anywhere in the USA.

Yes, a pet-peeve of mine PaulB. I hate that all the supermarket bread has sugar. But is has gotten a lot better in recent years – most supermarkets around here now have their own bakeries that produce pretty decent bread, and a gourmet cheese section (including wal-mart). Try Costco for tomatoes.

Let the free market do its work and most teachers would be unemployed. The few parents that could afford non-government-subsidized education wouldn’t provide jobs for 1/3 of them.

Ah yes, because it is a central tenet of every libertarian and conservative to abolish public subsidies for eduction. [/sarc]

In fact, quite the opposite. Most on my side of the political spectrum advocate vouchers and a competitive market for education, something fought tooth-and-nail by liberals and education unions who’d prefer to maintain mediocrity in education for all.

If the US middle class is so rich, why are they shopping at Wal-Mart?

Wal-Mart, both of itself and for what it represents, is why the US middle class is so rich.

Some comments:

1) I’m a little bit surprised if Europeans do more housework than Americans. After all, isn’t Europe full of godless feminists, while the USA prefers, to exaggerate, Children, Church and Kitchen? There’s at least far fewer conservative Christians talking about “family values” in Europe. I have gotten the impression that affordable child care like kindergartens are less available in the USA than in Norway at least. Judging from American popular culture it is also more common that elderly parents live with and are taken care of by their children, so perhaps care for the elderly, both in their homes and at nursery homes, are more often done as housework and not as social services in the USA?

2)Some have argued out that comparing the USA to individual (“cherry-picked”) European countries is pointless, and that you should only compare USA and EU. That is ridiculous. USA is one single country, while Europe consists of almost fifty independent countries, of which nearly half are not even members of the European Union. In fact comparing the USA and Europe doesn’t really make sense. It would perhaps make more sense to compare America and Europe, keeping in mind that America is two continents, not a country. So at least throw in Canada, Mexico and the rest of North America with the USA, and perhaps South America as well. I doubt that for instance Iceland has more in common with Moldova or Albania than the USA has with Paraguay, and certainly not with Mexico.

3)Once upon a time there was a lot of immigration from many European countries to America, including Norway, the last major wave being ending with the Great Depression around 1930. But even after the Second World War there were quite a lot of emigration at least from the less industrialized regions of the country, but even this tail end of the emigration from ended almost five decades ago. But, given that people usually migrate from poorer to richer countries, and that immigration laws in the USA were actually liberalized in the sixties, I find it likely that people stopped emigrating at about the time that the Norwegian living standard had caught up to the American. The end of mass immigration from Europe to America (or the other way) should indicate that the economic differences are relatively insignificant.

4)Has not median real wages been stagnant in the USA for about the last decade or so, or perhaps even longer? I don’t have the impression that this is the case in most European countries. This should mean that common people are worse of in the USA, although the capitalists might be better off. But the upper (middle) class is probably better off even in many third world countries with large inequalities, since goods and especially services are dirt cheap. It’s a class issue.

Libertarian @ 156: That’s all very nice and touching. But please answer the question: Are you for zoning, or against it? If you are for it, how do you justify your position given that zoning is inherently an “arbitrary restriction on private development”?

‘The same goes for choices of pubs … in general (and in the cities especially) you get Waterstones, Waterstones and Waterstones…’

If I was trying to buy a pint in bookshop I probably wouldn’t be impressed with the choice of beer either.

And I imagine that London has much less diversity than any mid-size US city.

What, like Omaha or Kansas City (those two I know)? You gotta be kidding – you can get anything in London and not necessarily for a high price, if you know where to look. And while your average UK city center is incredibly generic indeed, you will find farmer’s markets, boutiques and small shops galore in prosperous areas, catering to the middle class and upwards.

Anyway, libertarian’s argument was that people are “rich” because they can buy cheap stuff from Wal-Mart – or H&M, Next and Zara for that matter. Fashion is actually a good example: if you were “rich” you wouldn’t shop there, would you?

The UK is an absolute shitstain for interesting shopping unless you’re filthy rich. Everyone else has to shop at the same 4 chain stores (H&M, Zara, Topshop, FCUK)

…or Uniqlo, Marks & Spencer (you forgot Marks & Spencer! Suppliers of reliable underpants to the entire British population for fifty years!), Austin Reed, TM Lewin, Muji, John Lewis, Gap, any number of second hand shops (the legendary King’s Road Shelter shop has all sorts of barely worn designer stuff discarded by the Chelsea classes), odd little clothes shops in Camden and west London and Clapham…

And it’s just complete nonsense to suggest that most British cities have nothing but Wetherspoons pubs. There are only 731 Wetherspoons pubs in the country. There are about 7000 pubs in London alone. You say you actually lived in London and you think there’s nothing there but Wetherspoons? How is that even possible? For any Wetherspoons pub in London, there is a decent, non-Wetherspoons pub within three hundred yards. Probably there are ten or twelve.

have you ever worn Muji clothes, ajay? they fall apart very fast. Uniqlo is okay, but massively overpriced (to the point of being an insult, when you compare to their Japanese prices). I actually tried shopping in Austin Reed, TM Lewin and another business clothing shop in London, and I couldn’t get white shirts with French cuffs.

That’s right, in three different chain stores in London I couldn’t get a white shirt with French cuffs, let alone a slim fit white shirt. The price you have to pay in London to buy a nicely-fitting white shirt is exorbitant. So yeah, Austin Reed is good provided that you’re fat and you like checks. As for Camden – those “odd little clothes shops” are fine provided you are a woman, or like t-shirts with stupid slogans. They don’t constitute choice. Most market stalls in London are, incidentally, the same in every market. Even the markets are chains! Though that market near the Barbican YMCA does some nice food.

And yeah, there are non-wetherspoons pubs, though there are other non-wetherspoons chains, and some of them are good. But I really don’t think you can make much headway claiming that Britain (or even London) has a wide range of choices compared to other cities, especially for food and men’s clothes.

1) I’m a little bit surprised if Europeans do more housework than Americans. After all, isn’t Europe full of godless feminists, while the USA prefers, to exaggerate, Children, Church and Kitchen? There’s at least far fewer conservative Christians talking about “family values” in Europe. I have gotten the impression that affordable child care like kindergartens are less available in the USA than in Norway at least. Judging from American popular culture it is also more common that elderly parents live with and are taken care of by their children, so perhaps care for the elderly, both in their homes and at nursery homes, are more often done as housework and not as social services in the USA?

2) Some have argued out that comparing the USA to individual (“cherry-picked”) European countries is pointless, and that you should only compare USA and EU. That is ridiculous. USA is one single country, while Europe consists of almost fifty independent countries, of which nearly half are not even members of the European Union. In fact comparing the USA and Europe doesn’t really make sense. It would perhaps make more sense to compare America and Europe, keeping in mind that America is two continents, not a country. So at least throw in Canada, Mexico and the rest of North America with the USA, and perhaps South America as well. I doubt that for instance Iceland has more in common with Moldova or Albania than the USA has with Paraguay, and certainly not with Mexico.

3) Once upon a time there was a lot of immigration from many European countries to America, including Norway, the last major wave being ending with the Great Depression around 1930. But even after the Second World War there were quite a lot of emigration at least from the less industrialized regions of the country, but even this tail end of the emigration from ended almost five decades ago. But, given that people usually migrate from poorer to richer countries, and that immigration laws in the USA were actually liberalized in the sixties, I find it likely that people stopped emigrating at about the time that the Norwegian living standard had caught up to the American. The end of mass immigration from Europe to America (or the other way) should indicate that the economic differences are relatively insignificant.

4) Has not median real wages been stagnant in the USA for about the last decade or so, or perhaps even longer? I don’t have the impression that this is the case in most European countries. This should mean that common people are worse of in the USA, although the capitalists might be better off. But the upper (middle) class is probably better off even in many third world countries with large inequalities, since goods and especially services are dirt cheap. It’s a class issue.

sg, you were unable to find a white shirt in TM Lewin and you were unable to find a decent pub in central London. Forgive me for suspecting that, were you in Saudi Arabia, you would be unable to find sand.

http://www.timeout.com/london/

Hope that helps :)

http://www.tmlewin.co.uk/product.aspx/MenFormalShirts/MenShirtsWhite!19931

A white, slim fit, french collar shirt from TM Lewin, for 34 quid. They have the same model in a different white too. In general, their shirts tend to have over-the-top coloured stripes, not a style I like either, but the basics are at least available.

roac @195: The county may well have such restrictions. They certainly have environmental restrictions (eg, I am not permitted to cut down any trees on my lot whose trunk diameter is greater than 5 inches – but neither can my neighbors and we all knew that when purchasing, which for most people was one of the reasons for purchasing here).

But there is no way the county is forcing developers to build housing at lower density than the market requires. In fact, before it would grant approval, the county required the developer to commit to building a minimum percentage of “affordable” housing: multi-family at $200,000 or less and single-family at $250,000 or less (those numbers are from memory). They also required land to be set aside for future construction of a school, greenspaces, construction of community amenities (eg the pool and clubhouse), etc etc.

I actually tried shopping in Austin Reed, TM Lewin and another business clothing shop in London, and I couldn’t get white shirts with French cuffs.

Custom order from Hong Kong tailors? British tailoring left quite a mark. About $60 per shirt. A bit more expensive if you order from the best Hong Kong tailor, WW Chan.

libertarian @198: This is not a rhetorical question. Would you explain (again, if you already have) why the fact that “the county required” anything doesn’t automatically call forth a full-throated protest from you? When is it legitimate for a government body to restrict any nonviolent capitalist transaction between consenting adults?

PaulB 169:

Try buying the ingredients for a cheese and tomato sandwich almost anywhere in the USA. You’ll find that the bread is horribly sweet, the cheese tastes of nothing much, and the tomato has been bred for size not flavour.

Sweetened bread is my favorite example of capitalism destroying consumer choice. I’m glad even libertarian agrees on that one. I have done the experiment and can positively confirm that in the bread section of the typical US grocery store, there may be hundreds of different brands of what they call bread but not a single one of them that doesn’t contain sugar (in some form). Yes nowadays there may be one or two brands of unsweetened bread but they are in the organic or specialty section and more expensive. Similarly, every single one out of hundreds of brands of cereal contains added sugar. Not to mention pickled cucumbers and almost every other food product in the store where sugar usually has no business being an ingredient, everything contains sugar (for the pickles, the trick is to chose a kosher brand).

Don’t anybody try telling me that this has anything to do with consumer choice. That’s ridiculous. The smallest European bakery offers more product variety, more choice in terms of color, taste, and ingredients (and yes some of them sweetened, some not), than the bakery section of a Wal-Mart super-center. I dare anybody dispute that fact.

Wal-Mart, both of itself and for what it represents, is why the US middle class is so rich.

This is one of the most interesting statements so far. Surprising, again, from a libertarian since market dominance by a single company is expected to reduce consumer choice if the most basic economic theory is to be believed. I would point out that Germany’s Aldi is actually cheaper (because of better efficiency) than Wal-Mart. I would also point out that the range of retail choices available in Germany is far greater. You have Aldi and a number of other discount chains, but you also have small independent bakeries and butcheries, more upscale supermarkets, more different store sizes, and ultimately more competition. Of course concentration has happened in the German market too and small operations have gone out of business.

Why has concentration been so much more intense and competition so much more restricted in the US? Whether you like Wal-Mart or not, clearly this is an outcome that free marketeers shouldn’t be comfortable with. After all, competition is supposedly the life blood of capitalism. I would venture that deurbanization has played a major role. You need urban density to support a variety of retail outlets. Wal-Mart has built its base in the countryside and suburbs where low density and car dependency have favored the big box model and allowed Wal-Mart to exploit efficiencies of scale and capture market share, to a point where nobody can compete any more.

The smallest European bakery offers more product variety, more choice in terms of color, taste, and ingredients (and yes some of them sweetened, some not), than the bakery section of a Wal-Mart super-center. I dare anybody dispute that fact.

I dispute it. It was probably true up until a few years ago, but most walmarts now have large and varied bakery sections with plenty of unsweetened bread (and other things).

I have a theory about what happened here. Originally, walmart made the low-end grocery-chain business very difficult for anyone without the purchasing power and distribution scale of walmart (ie, pretty much anyone other than walmart). At around the same time the US started getting more “yuppified” with middle and upper-middle educated consumers looking for more European-style fare, and with the money to pay for it. So there arose a variety of “upmarket” grocery chains (on the east-coast you have Wegmans, Martins, Harris-Teeters) that stock the basic groceries but make their money off more gourmet food: good wine, cheese, baked goods (in-house) and freshly prepared processed food. Some other lower-end grocery chains also re-invented themselves as more upmarket destinations.

Walmart has tried to make inroads into that market as well, but I think it is more difficult since they are seen as the cheapest option, not the most sophisticated option. I tend to shop at walmart for all the “basics”, and the more upmarket grocery stores for the rest.

I have done the experiment and can positively confirm that in the bread section of the typical US grocery store, there may be hundreds of different brands of what they call bread but not a single one of them that doesn’t contain sugar (in some form). . . .

Don’t anybody try telling me that this has anything to do with consumer choice. That’s ridiculous.

I think it has to do with market research: the bread companies baked some sweetened and some unsweetened bread, tested them on consumers, and more people bought the sweetened bread, so that’s mostly what they sell.

Simply because *your* choices are a minority taste doesn’t mean the product lineup doesn’t reflect the tastes of the majority of consumers.

No walmart doesn’t match that. There’s almost no demand. But I seriously doubt you are linking to “the smallest European Bakery”.

I pay $1.50 for a 1 pound French loaf at walmart.

Following up my 196, here is a concrete example of zoning in action, from a recent court decision: A developer owned land in Yuma, Arizona. Under the zoning ordinance, it couldn’t build on a lot smaller than 8000 square feet.

“In 2008, the Hall Companies determined that development of the subject property with R-1-8 zoning was not feasible because there was no demand for large lot expensive homes in Yuma due to existing inventory and the housing market decline. Consequently, the Hall Companies designed a housing project with moderately priced homes on 6,000-square-foot lots for low-to-moderate-income families, and submitted an application to the City of Yuma to rezone the subject property . . . to R-1-6 (minimum 6,000-square-foot lots).”

“[T]he Planning and Zoning Commission held a public hearing on the Hall Companies’ rezoning application. Several homeowners from the [neighboring subdivision] objected to the rezoning, claiming that “when purchasing a home . . . they expected to be surrounded for two-square miles by large lot expensive homes.” The homeowners further claimed that the Hall Companies “catered” to low-to-moderate income families and that people living in “the Hall neighborhoods” have large households, own numerous vehicles which they park in streets and yards, have no pride of ownership and do not maintain their residences, allow unattended juveniles to roam the streets, and use their single-family homes for multi-family dwellings.”

The planning commission voted to approve the rezoning, but the city council reversed their decision.

(Sorry, I can’t figure out how the blockquote tag works.)

It does seem rather implausible that there is a strong consumer demand for “whole wheat bread” that is actually white bread with added molasses and food coloring.

But many smaller bakeries will still beat Wal-Mart.

No doubt piglet, but your claim was considerably stronger than that:

The smallest European bakery offers more product variety, more choice in terms of color, taste, and ingredients (and yes some of them sweetened, some not), than the bakery section of a Wal-Mart super-center. I dare anybody dispute that fact.

Norwegian Guy @213: that’s part of the answer, but the other part is the US is also a more competitive and less regulated market.

Also, with high minimum wages you have a much larger pool of permanently unemployable and unemployed. One thing that struck me on first arrival to the US was how so many more categories of people are employed here compared to, eg Australia (but also the UK). You get intellectually and physically disabled people serving you. Much older retirees. You’ll see armies of these people doing menial jobs in theme parks, or at grocery stores, etc. The classic example is “wal-mart greeter”. Where else do you see that job? Someone who’s only task is to say hello as you enter and leave the store and possibly help you get a shopping cart.

None of these people are employable in Australia because they would not be productive enough for their high minimum wage. So they are forced onto unemployment benefits which pays less and is far less dignified.

218: Gosh libertarian caught me. Truth be told I do not really know what “The smallest European bakery” offers so I will refrain from making that specific claim.

libertarian, haven’t you made somewhat stronger statements yourself earlier in the thread?

“Having lived in many western countries including the US, the US wins hands-down. You simply have way more choices and a higher material standard of living here, because the emphasis is much more on expression of the individual than the collective.”

Where are your examples of the “way more choices” Americans enjoy? Food? Housing? Transportation? Education? Nope. All these choices are way more restricted where I live now than in most European places that I know of.

Would someone who has the technical chops (plus a grain of moral imagination) please address libertarian’s confident pronouncements in 220 and elsewhere about the evils of the minimum wage? Some CT readers may be bored to hear the refutation all over again, so if you’d prefer to link …

There’s also the question whether it is really plausible that a majority of US consumers prefers sweetened bread.

Because it’s implausible that a majority of US consumers could have tastes different from yours? Have you conducted a taste test or are you just projecting your own personal tastes onto 300 million people (including millions of children)?

I am neither a libertarian nor defending the status quo, but the idea that it’s some cabal of sugar companies (and what, diabetes treatment companies? The sugar companies alone couldn’t possibly give away the sweeteners cheap enough to make 100% of the bread manufacturers include them *and* collect enough to profit from it) conspiring to force sweetened bread on consumers who secretly share your preference for unsweetened (but buy the sweet stuff by the millions of loaves anyway) is ridiculous, which is why I’m ridiculing it.

Most companies that remain in business for substantial periods of time sell what their customers want to buy. They go to great lengths to find out what their customers want to buy so that they can sell it to them. There’s a whole industry devoted to that. Any bread-company manager with more brains than a loaf of their own bread is going to commission some market research and shape their product line based on the results, and the fact that so many product lines include sweetening is considerable evidence that that’s what their market research led them to. The fact that unsweetened bread isn’t even available at Wal-Mart as a niche market product (if true; I haven’t confirmed it myself) implies that there aren’t enough Wal-Mart shoppers who prefer it to even sustain a niche producer or a specialty product apart from Big Bread’s regular production lines.

But if you want to conduct your own taste tests and post the results here, feel free.

Most companies that remain in business for substantial periods of time sell what their customers want to buy. They go to great lengths to find out what their customers want to buy so that they can sell it to them.

There is no need to go to great lengths. The customers want to buy beluga caviar, for a dime a pound.

Everyone please note that libertarian, @ 221, has acknowledged that it is appropriate for governments to enact Intrusive Regulations to protect middle-class homeowners from having to live anywhere near people who have less money (and browner skin, and a propensity to eat food with lots of chile in it, which of course is what the Yuma case was about).

Libertarian inconsistency demonstrated. Mission accomplished. Now comes Miller Time.

roac@230: Seriously? I guess that’s your lame face-saving attempt after all your implicit liberal prejudices were debunked @156. Whatever.

I would like it if libertarian would address piglet’s point in 201. He’s been answering a lot of things as they come up, but 201 seems to me to be more important than the question of sweetened bread.

Libertarian, sorry to refer to you in the 3rd person in 234. Reformulating: I’d like it if you would respond to piglet at 201. I realize you’ve been taking on all comers here and that’s a lot of work as the discussion advances. But I think he has a good and important point in 201 and I’d like your take on it.

re: libertarian and minimum wages. In Japan every department store has a “greeter,” but they are a 社員, a company member, with overtime rates, social insurance, and all the perks of company membership that Japanese life provides. They are paid above the minimum wage, get an annual bonus (in good times) and have something resembling a job for life. They also have career prospects.

The decision to offer these low-paid jobs at casual wages doesn’t represent an effect of the minimum wage; it represents social and cultural choices.

The decision to offer these low-paid jobs at casual wages doesn’t represent an effect of the minimum wage; it represents social and cultural choices.

Walmart greeters are not “casual” sg. They’re walmart employees, with all the associated benefits, career path, etc that you speak of. The US doesn’t tend to do the big causal/permanent distinction that you see in eg Australia, because it doesn’t have the same stupid laws restricting hiring and firing decisions.

@220 (and requests for a response) on the supposed success of the US labor market in employing a larger proportion of the population. Try the OP, which (as with reality in general), Dr L has managed to ignore.

I didn’t ignore it, but the refutation seemed too trivial to bother with: that the US in its darkest hour since the Great Depression has been brought as low as Europe is not exactly a ringing endorsement of EU labor market policies.

if so libertarian, what relationship does their existence have to the minimum wage?

I think piglet’s right. Your PhD in tourism hasn’t served you well here.

Sg you’re losing me now. I live in the North East (one of the poorer regions of England) and don’t recognise the limits on choice that you are describing. In the cities nearest to me Durham, Sunderland and Newcastle there are a range of pubs including Wetherspoons, traditional pubs, modern bars, and clubs. Okay lots of pubs in surrounding areas have closed in the last couple of years because they can’t compete on price and there’s a recession. The city centre ones still remaining can compete more on price because they have higher turnover and probably have no mortgage to pay.

I have a farm shop nearby where the meat is a bit more expensive than supermarkets but much better quality. In the cities there are Grocers and butchers which can compete with supermarkets on price and beat them for choice and quality, though bakers do tend to be chains or expensive. The main reason I use supermarkets is that they are open when I finish work but I try to do my shopping in town on a weekend.

There are plenty of independent cafes and restraunts, in fact chain restraunts tend to be more expensive and aimed at people visiting so that they know what quality they will get.

How many people below the top 10% in income does even care about those things discussed here beyond some nostalgic”oh the good old times 40 years ago without chains and small stores everywhere” talk of some above 60 ? I certainly dont miss expensive food or cloth stores and dont get the impression anyone else does. Zara and H&M are fine with me, KIK is aswell . And those who are not rarely really care about the quality of the cloth. The biggest eating out constraint isnt the aviability of ethnical restaurants either , its the price. Lets talk about healthcare, housing quality or travel instead?

Chris and Phillip, you do realise don’t you that the UK is famous around the world for how shit its food is? You’re trying to tell an Australian (or, well, anyone else really) that you have a wide range of good and cheap food choices?

Please.

Chris, I judge pubs not just on whether or not they stock a reasonably priced beer that won’t make me sick, but also on my risk of being assaulted, the stench of the toilets pervading the drinking area, and whether they serve food at all.

I was once in a bar in Covent Garden with 2 Japanese friends when some chap tried to pick a fight with the Japanese girl … a tourist. Please spare me from claims that there is a wide variety of cheap and nice “pubs and bars” in the UK. There is a wide variety of places where you risk being assaulted, and/or harrassed by the black man selling perfume in the toilet. There is a small number of actually nice venues.

libertarian @ 252: You “debunked” my claim that libertarians are hypocritical about zoning how. By saying that it doesn’t bother you that some black people can afford $375,000 houses in your neighborhood? Please.

My point is presumably clear to a reasonably intelligent twelve-year-old, if such were reading this blog. But let me recapitulate it in very simple terms:

Libertarians believe, or claim to, that all economic activity should be governed by market forces, without artificial constraints imposed by the state.

As applied to land development, the libertarian view should thus be: If you own a piece of land, you can build whatever you want on it. Period.

In fact, almost everywhere in the US. the state imposes zoning restrictions which severely limit what can be built where. You would think libertarians would be an a constant state of arousal about this limitation on Freedom.. Yet you rarely or never hear a peep form them on the subject. Why?

It seems to me that you tipped off the explanation way back at your 152, where you contrasted governmental restrictions imposed “at the local level in accordance with the wishes of the population” with governmental restrictions imposed by the wishes of “special interests.” In other words, you are quite happy to have the state impose severe restrictions on economic activity, as long as you are confident that the machinery of the state is safely in the hands of people whose economic interests are aligned with yours. In other words, money trumps principle (as it so often does, and not only among libertarians).

Wal-Mart doesn’t exists to “serve the market”, it exists to make profit.

@254: yes, but it is very difficult to make a profit without serving the market.

There is a wide variety of places where you risk being assaulted, and/or harrassed by the black man selling perfume in the toilet.

OK, I am officially baffled here. sg somehow managed to spend a day looking for a white shirt in central London without success, but he can’t go into a pub without being pestered by mysterious Chanel-peddling Nubians every time he goes for a pee. The guy’s clearly inhabiting some weird Mieville-ish parallel city.

Chris and Phillip, you do realise don’t you that the UK is famous around the world for how shit its food is? You’re trying to tell an Australian (or, well, anyone else really) that you have a wide range of good and cheap food choices?

In other words, “don’t you try to tell me you know what your country is like just because you live there. People in other countries know far better than you.”

are you guys seriously trying to tell me you’ve never experienced the toilet-based perfume seller? You go in, there’s a chap standing by the sink who has lined up his perfumes along the sink and hands you a towel as you leave, it’s a pound a shot for whatever fragrance you think will help you pull, and various other grooming devices too. In my experience the chap in question is always a black African, and usually it’s in a night club or in a bar after a certain time (about 10pm).

You guys don’t get out much do you?

And ajay, I lived in the UK as a child and an adult, my parents are British. I know exactly how shit British food is and what the rest of the world say about their visits – “the food was shit.” Trying to claim you have a wide range of cheap, good food choices is really beggaring belief – though I have noticed that British residents often have a skewed concept of “cheap” and “good.” Do you think the Tube is clean, too?

libertarian 245:

1) mortgage subsidies : They apply to everyone so at worst they distort the balance between renters and owners, not between people who prefer high density over low density, unless there is some endogenous reason for renters to prefer high density.

Distorting the balance between owners and renters is significant since there are more renters in densely populated areas. But there is more to it. The mortgage subsidy is open-ended. The bigger your mortgage and the higher your taxable income, the higher the subsidy. It is well known that rich borrowers can make tens of thousands of dollars off that, way more than any welfare recipient in this country has ever received. Among the many consequences of that massive distortion: areas with a higher share of rich people get an extra boost from the federal treasury, and many home buyers have an incentive to chose a bigger, more expensive home. There is way more mortgage subsidy going into suburbs than into cities, but even within the suburbs there is also subsidy going into McMansions than into townhouses.

I think I have proven my point and will leave it at that. It is surprising to hear a self-described libertarian pretend that heavy-handed government subsidies don’t matter but hey, not all subsidies are created equal I guess.

I’d say that the UK has experienced something of a gastronomic revolution since the 1970s

A nice Paul Krugman article about this:

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/mushy.html

a much more representative democracy that is less prone to capture by narrow special interests

You are talking about the US?

That the poor pay less taxes than the rich is a “distortion”, and $50,000 in federal subsidy is a “tiny” amount. Welcome to libertarian fantasy world.

Sg I have never been harassed or assaulted by the people selling aftershave in pubs, I’ve never been assaulted in a pub for that matter. I wouldn’t judge a pub on whether it does food as that that is no their main purpose, I would judge it on the quality of any food it does provide.

You seem to be judging the quality of food that most British people eat on what’s provided in chains. I agree that they serve overpriced mediocre/crap food but there are better alternatives. I have lived and worked in Italy and Poland. In Italy the quality was better, you have to gout of your way to find bad food, in Poland it was no worse, but in the UK there was more choice.

piglet 1:

it is an unlimited subsidy.

Wrong.

piglet 2:

oh, ok, it is a $50,000 subsidy

Wrong again. Assuming 5% on a $1,000,000 mortgage with no AMT issues (we may be talking about an empty set of taxpayers here, but just for the sake of argument), you get a deduction of $50,000.

Now, I know Obama and the Democrats are keen to push marginal rates to 100% for anyone earning more than the federally-mandated maximum income of $250,000 (public servants, presidents, congressman and anyone else who works inside the beltway exempted of course), but right now the top federal marginal rate is still 35%, which means the most you can reduce your tax burden by is 35% of $50,000 or $17,500.

The minimum income you have to earn to get that deduction is $423,650 (top marginal threshold of $373,650 + $50,000). Federal tax paid on $423,650 is $118,586, assuming no other deductions. So someone receiving the maximum possible mortgage interest deduction gets to reduce their federal tax bill by a whopping 14% (=$17,500 / $118,586), and still pays more than $100,000 in federal income tax. What a crime against humanity.

libertarian:
I love it! Most libertarians argue that the fact that the US is a “republic and not a democracy” makes it “the freest country in the world”. You are arguing the exact opposite. I would also question you statement that the US has a less corrupt political culture than other developed countries.

I would also question you statement that the US has a less corrupt political culture than other developed countries.

MPAV, the further from the people you get the more corrupt it gets. So the feds are by-and-large the most corrupt (and corruptable) of all, and just as corrupt (if not more so) than their counterparts in other developed countries. They just have less power because states and counties do more of the heavy lifting. Eg, an Australia – US comparison:

Healthcare: US: private. Australia: federal.
Law enforcement: US: county. Australia: state
Elementary/Secondary education: US: county. Australia: state
Water: US: county. Australia state.
Tertiary education: US: private/state. Australia: federal.
Zoning: US: county. Australia: state.
Garbage Collection: US: HOA. Australia: county.

(I love that last one – almost the only thing councils (Australian equivalent of counties) do in Australia is collect garbage).

These are not watertight categorizations – there’s leakage between the levels. But by-and-large things are handled one level closer to the people in the US. Obama and the Democrats are doing what they can to change that (dumb, bigoted bitter-clingers cannot be trusted to make their own decisions), but they’re meeting a lot of resistance.

piglet 1:

it [the mortgage deduction] is a crime against poor people because it is an unlimited subsidy to the rich.

Wrong.

piglet 2:

oh, ok. How about: it is a crime against poor people because it is a $50,000 subsidy to the rich?

Wrong again.

piglet 3:

oh, ok. Will you accept it as a crime against libertarian principles because it is a potential a $17,500 distortion of the housing market?

Alright, if you insist. The feds should abolish the mortgage interest tax deduction and give everyone a flat $17,500 deduction instead.

…Healthcare: US: private…
…one level closer to the people…

Yeah, those raving populists at Aetna and UnitedHealth. Just in it to serve the people.

RE 280: you can’t get much closer to the people than a private purchase decision.

You mean, you can’t get much closer to the people than a 30 year old corporate munchkin telling a doctor how to do her job. A position that is schmibertarianism in a nutshell.

Do you actually consume healthcare services? It is true that the US healthcare system is a lot more expensive than it should be, but I have never had a problem with an insurance employee telling my family’s doctors what to do. That’s yet another lame liberal shibboleth used to try and justify government takeover of healthcare.

Believe me, if you don’t like the idea of a 30yo corporate munchkin making decisions for you, you’d really hate having a 30yo government bureaucrat ruling out vast swathes of treatments because they cost more than your life is worth.

@285: You’ve obviously never had to calculate your AMT.

the claim that state government is automatically more “democratic” is sheer nonsense

Well, good thing I never made that claim Kvetch. Is there some kind of liberal retard school where they teach you how to create a strawman out of every argument? Obviously, local government is not “automatically” more democratic. But by-and-large, the more local, the more democratic.

‘give everyone [sic] a flat $17 500 deduction instead’

Or better yet give _everyone_ the cash equivalent.

“I believe I faithfully represented your sentiment piglet.”

There is no need for you to “represent” my sentiment. 201 and 262 were explicitly about how market distortions have shaped suburbia. I don’t even want to discuss justice issues with you because I know that is pointless but at least I wanted you “libertarian” to concede these distortions, which you finally, halfheartedly did in 278. You can try all you want to have the last word, and you’ll probably succeed with that, but the record is clear that I was right all the time and you were playing games instead of just conceding the facts (and upholding libertarian principle).

chris B, you can rest assured I have no difficulty finding decent-priced well-fitting shirts in Germany, Japan and Australia. Also, as an Australian I think I understand the basic definition of good food, and I can assure you that British food is poor quality and overpriced, and it meets the stereotype of British food still. I note as well that choice of food depends a lot on how much money you’ve got and this is a major concern for people interested in inequality in health- who present some fairly objective support for my claim that food choice is very limited amongst the poor in the UK.

It’s certainly true that a revolution in food has occurred, but all it has done is brought the UK closer to the standards taken for granted in Australia and Japan.

For example, when I’m in Tokyo or Osaka it’s a trivial task for me to get a 3 course lunch, with coffee, for between 7 and 10 pounds. This lunch will come with perfect service, and it’ll be in a restaurant with nice decor. I have a choice of literally thousands of restaurants where I can do this. If I go into the Parco in Ikebukuro – just one department store – there are 3 floors of such choices. Where is the London version of Parco? There are several of these places in central Fukuoka, a city of a million people. The chikagai in Fukuoka contains more stores than the central section of London’s Oxford Street (though I’ll grant you it doesn’t have a muji or a Uniqlo), and none of them are major chain stores; it links to 3 other shopping centres, all more than 5 floors high, and they in turn link to other department stores and shopping centres. Tokyo department stores have separate buildings devoted to men’s clothing.

Which is why I say, London may offer a nice range of choice to the wealthy, but I don’t think that the UK stacks up against international definitions of “choice” and “reasonable price.”

Chris B, you also haven’t experienced the toilet-based perfume seller since 1996. Should I assume, then that you haven’t been to a night club since 1996? Because they’re quite ubiquitous in London clubs. Which, of course, are all you can go to after midnight because in the UK, “choice” means all the pubs close at midnight and you’re chucked out onto the streets with a bunch of drunk strangers to go find a nightclub. There is no town of more than 100,000 people in Japan where you would ever face such a “choice,” and it’s another example of the huge gulf in experience between happy academics in their elite enclaves and the rest of the country, when it comes to choice.

it’s still utter nonsense.

You’re right Kvetch. I mean 6 meetings in a single month to discuss my local school curriculum and zoning with Arne Duncan and yet not once have I spoken to the county superintendent. Arne should be awarded the Leninist medal for central planning the way he manages to find time in his busy schedule for all 3,140 US counties .

go on arguing that tens of thousands of dollars in transfers for individual rich home-owners are too insignificant for a true libertarian to worry about.

I agreed the mortgage tax credit should be replaced with a uniform tax deduction. I just don’t agree that it has the distortionary power to create vast tracts of low-density suburbia where there would otherwise be bunny rabbits and Bambis.

Norwegian Guy, if you track the running exchange between libertarian and me on this thread (not easy to do as it is spread out), it will be clear that he has no problem with democracy as long as it is exercised only at the scale of the upper-middle-class suburb, where the economic interests of the upper middle class can be relied on to prevail. Democracy at scales where poor people (“special interest groups” in libertarian’s parlance) can outvote him, not so much.