alt Hacker News> Health care, housing, and education
In Europe its only housing, and still proportionally cheaper than what US has, often in higher quality for older homes (bricks / concrete vs cheap creaky wooden houses).
The idea of saving massive amounts for my kids potential university studies is ridiculous to me. Same for any health issue. I mean any health issue as long as I can work, and then social state takes over (that is not ideal but at point nothing is).
This is also how happiness can be defined - lack of (much shorter list of) constant worries and pressures to deliver, sustain etc.
Replies
Concrete houses suck and Europeans need to get off their high house about them. I own a concrete brick house in Europe and I’d strongly prefer a wooden American one. It’s hard to insulate, hard to alter, uglier, has a terrible embodied carbon footprint, has too much thermal mass, and alterations that would make it more livable (like having eaves) are illegal.
In the US, bricks and concrete are unsafe, not "higher quality". Much of the US has severe earthquakes which collapsed the European-style masonry buildings they used to build. There are many old photos of what happened to cities that were built with brick/concrete after major earthquakes. The main alternatives are steel and wood, same as in Japan.
My home is rated to survive earthquakes stronger than any in recorded European history without structural damage.