Comments by "Classical LP Vault" (@classicallpvault8251) on "American Reacts to an "American That Found Better Life In Europe"" video.

  1. I am Dutch and that statement is bullshit and I am the living proof. Her expenses are almost identical to mine and I live in a 65m2 3-bedroom council flat in Steyl, near Venlo. And then I include my gym membership of 45/month and a phone plan I could do without due to almost always having wifi access and calling via Whatsapp) and I actually pay the full amount of health insurance rather than getting some premium off in exchange for a higher deductable - which I could easily do because I have 3k in savings. My expenses could be lower if I'd stay fit using my own body weight at home and jogging, and cancelled my phone plan. I could also save significantly on utilities by going for a rolling flexible plan rather than fixed prices but don't due to hedging against energy market problems. Also note that I work from home and have an electricity-guzzling workstation PC and buy my meat and fish in bulk so have a large freezer. That are potential savings. I could also save 75 euros a month extra if I quit buying wine and beer and probably another 20 if I didn't buy protein powders but only eggs instead. Unlike what your bogus statement suggests, it is possible to live that cheaply and comfortably here. And there are people who live more cheaply than I do. Some older tenants in social housing might spend only 2/3rds of what I pay for a similar flat. I know this for a fact because that's the situation some people in this block of flats are in. If you have been renting for 30 years from the council your rent will be much lower than that of tenants who arrived later.
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  2. I guarantee you that life in rural Appalachia or Mississippi is MUCH cheaper than in Piedmont or Lombardy.
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  3. Leaving Atlanta for rural West Virginia or Kentucky would be just as much of a cost save. And while there is population shrinking due to internal emigration there's not an ongoing demographic death like in southern Italy with its astronomically low fertility rates, and people in Appalachia are very friendly and community-oriented and despite the poverty crime rates are extremely low.
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  4.  @albertlugosi I can assure you it's not. Plenty of places, including major cities like London, have tap water that's safe to drink but tastes awful. Same goes for parts of Portugal, France, Spain, Italy etc. This is either due to chlorination or due to the high mineral content of the soil. Even some nicely tasting water can be high in certain minerals and compel some people to buy bottled water, if you live in an area where you need to decalcify your washing machine you probably want to buy bottled water if you have gout or recurring issues with kidney stones, even though high calcium content doesn't make the water taste foul.
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  5. Keep fooling yourself by thinking that all there's 'more to life than money' isn't directly tied to monetary expenses. Because it is! Health? Eating whole foods rather than junk carbs and frozen minced meat or veggies from a tin can can be pricey depending onm where you live. Building a decent home gym or paying for a gym membership either costs substantial money or requires DIY skills (which cost money to develop unless you learned them during an apprenticeship) + much lower, but non-insignificant expenditures. Family? Finding a psychologically stable, faithful, and competent husband or wife requires having decent socio-economic status. So does finding a home in a child-friendly neighbourhood. Faith? Not so much tied to money directly because Bibles can be found free of charge quite easily and prayer doesn't cost anything, but in a religious community you'll be expected to donate for the charity work they do or do volunteer work which directly goes at the expense of time you could have done paid work. Unless you're poor, as churches engage in charity work which might very well be a net financial benefit for poor but pro-social people in their community. But even then - their benefitting from community social programs relies on their financial status as poor people and the moment they become economically self-sufficient they will be expected to chip in themselves (which of course is entirely justified). The fine arts? All require money. Music lessons (or creative writing, painting, whatever) cost >50 euros or dollars an hour. Musical instruments or materials for visual arts or writing all cost money although it's a massive difference between a grand piano or a nice set of pencils, crayons, watercolour ink and paper, but it's all tied to money. Even a mundane hobby like playing video games or watching films costs money. Screw that. Everything which is economically scarce or tied to something which is economically scarce has a monetary component to it. The only things which are free are rainwater and oxygen.
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  6. No you ignoramus. That money doesn't go to lobbyists, it goes to the near-monopolistic pharmaceutical companies because the drug market in the US is heavily regulated at the economic side of things. These regulations create artificial scarcity because it's not possible to, as a business, buy pharmaceuticals abroad dirt-cheap and make a profit by selling them with a 30-40% markup, like in most other countries. People can, and do, legally import FDA-approved drugs for personal use but very few people are savvy enough for that and not be ripped off by Chinese scammers selling you placebos (or worse, adulterated drugs). It's also mostly illegal to do in-house manufacture of pharmaceuticals with expired patents thanks to FDA regulations so the cheap grey label meds that dominate the offerings of chemists in European countries largely don't exist in the US. Therefore the pharmaceutical market in the US is an oligopoly of a few massive multinational firms and their retail channels. These same pharmaceutical companies also are some of the greatest donor to the Democratic Party. Just like the major banks and credit card companies by the way. What should be done is to scrap all these monopolistic legislations, abolish the FDA, and make some changes to medical tort law so pharmaceutical companies or chemists knowingly selling bad products can be sued out of existence.
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  7. No, that's just wrong. It's not 'another 8%'. It's +/- minus 20% and 6 or 8% on top of the gross price. Prices in the US are significantly lower for many consumer goods because of this, for instance electronics. Also there can me massive differences between states. Communist-run shit holes like California and NY are very expensive, as are communist-run major urban centres in otherwise centre-right states like Georgia or Missouri, while the countryside in Appalachia is as cheap to live as Sicily except that it doesn't have a dying elderly population thanks to a much higher birth rate, which is a massive advantage.
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