America’s paradise of wealth

Every time I travel abroad, I’m reminded of how the American lifestyle is perceived by those who live outside of it. When I tell locals I’m traveling from the US, they exclaim with slight amazement. They then proceed to say that it must be really nice to live there. They bring up examples of how one time, they couldn’t order a specific novelty product because you needed a US shipping address to receive it. Or how tech products usually launch first in the US, so it’s easier to get one there. Other times, they’re simply impressed by the conveniences offered by Amazon’s 2-day shipping or all the streaming services and entertainment options available to you. We take all these things for granted when living in the US, and it takes leaving this paradise to appreciate it sometimes.

I vividly remember the first time I stepped foot into a Walmart. My family had just moved from India to New Jersey in 2006, and I was shocked to see an entire aisle dedicated to cereal. Another entire aisle dedicated to candy. My first thought was that this country must be extremely wealthy (I was 14). I had just come from a country where at every traffic light, it was commonplace for random teenagers to come up to your car and start washing your windows in hopes that you’d give them some loose change. Poverty, homelessness, and despair were around every corner. You just sort of got used to it after a while. We had superstores in India too, of course, but they were very utilitarian and sold functional products at bargain rates. Not like Walmart, which had an excess supply of almost everything you could imagine under one roof (for the record, my fascination with Walmart has dramatically decreased since 2006).

But it’s not like this everywhere in the US. If you happen to be making a high salary in a full-time job, are relatively healthy, and live in a progressive city, yeah life is pretty great. You can buy your way out of most problems, enjoy all the latest tech gadgets, and not break a sweat when you suddenly have a $400 unexpected expense for a car repair. But if you happen to be working a part-time job living paycheck-to-paycheck while supporting your parents or dependents (or as a single parent in general), live in a rural part of Alabama and have chronic health conditions, then your day to day life is a miserable mess. There’s never enough money for anything, debts keep piling up, hospital bills keep showing up in the thousands, and you feel like you’ll never actually be able to make a decent wage ever. The backwards laws of the area make it impossible to fight your way out of poverty and you’re stuck there forever. This is especially tough on Black people and women in particular, since they’re additionally fighting centuries of systemic racism and patriarchal laws. The difference between these two extremes of wealth could not be more drastic, and it’d be hard to believe that it’s in the same country.

These extremes exist in the other countries too, of course. The rural/urban divide causes many to be left behind while others prosper, but you’d expect a basic level of public welfare structure in a country where you can afford to have two entire aisles of cereal for people to choose from. This is the thing that took me a while to realize about the US in general: its private infrastructure in the form of corporations and businesses is actually quite good. There’s laws protecting you against bankruptcy, making it easier for more people to take risks with their ideas and start a business. You get to write off business expenses and reinvest money back into the business, there’s favorable tax rates and exemptions, and you basically just charge whatever rate you want for your products or services. This works great, but there’s some things that simply should not be privatized.

Healthcare is an obvious example that just doesn’t work under capitalism, it should be a government-provided service. Private companies will prioritize profit no matter what and charge ludicrous rates for something like insulin after monopolizing the industry just because they can. Public transportation is another one. If the government doesn’t prioritize it, private companies will do the least possible to provide a passable service that people are willing to accept and is profitable. Consequently, the auto industry will keep putting more cars on the road and never easing the problems of fossil fuel dependence, pollution, or traffic congestion. PTO at work is another great example, where the US is the only developed nation with absolutely no mandate for employers to offer a minimum number of days off per year. Worse, there’s no federally mandated policy for parental leave either, forcing new parents to continue working or take care of a newborn without a wage.

Europe has really good public welfare infrastructure. The healthcare is mostly free in almost all the countries. It also has really great public transportation options. So if you’re the equivalent of that poorer extreme in Europe, it’s not as hard for you to get by since most of the essential services are provided by the government. A sudden illness or injury won’t wipe out your savings. You don’t need to be shelling out hundreds of dollars every month in car payments just to get to work and back if there’s a reliable and speedy train network that runs between the suburbs. You don’t need to worry about your employer not letting you take time off when you have a kid. On the other hand, if you’re on the richer extreme of the American equivalent in Europe, you still have a pretty good life. You get all the basic benefits of the government on top of your cushy salary, giving you a lot of additional disposable income and all the added benefits/perks that come with your job.

I was in Portugal recently, and my Uber driver asked me where I was coming from. I said San Francisco. He said he had recently dropped someone off at the airport who was from Philadelphia, and another from Chicago. He then started counting how many Americans he had in his car in the past week compared to everyone else, and it was significantly higher. He remarked that Americans must like to travel a lot. I, of course, saw the statistical flaw in his conclusion there but didn’t point it out and went with it. That Uber driver is only seeing that richer extreme of America spend their disposable income on international trips and making the sweeping generalization that all Americans must be that way. He’ll never get to see the poorer end of America that’s slaving away working three part-time jobs making minimum wage just to barely cover the cost of their kid’s daycare.

Furthermore, the purchasing power of the US dollar is so strong compared to almost any other country right now that it’s incredibly easy for any middle-class American to book a flight to Europe and lavishly splurge on many luxuries, falsely providing the impression that they’re made of wealth back home. Middle-class Americans in general have a more lavish lifestyle than what would be considered upper-class elsewhere. I was shocked to learn that “middle class” Americans casually have private pools in their backyard. Like, that is the pinnacle of luxury in any other country for the majority of its populous. And yet here you have an entire subculture that has evolved around pool parties and pool toys that’s all catered around literally the private pool in your backyard. Absolutely wild.

I’m always slightly uncomfortable when Target or IKEA has those “outdoor entertainment” setups in the store room, trying to appeal to people who have giant lawns and patios and pools to spend even more on ways to relax and lounge there. It’s lifestyle creep to the maximum. Having grown up in India, the most densely populated country in the world, the simple fact of having space was a luxury. I always shared a room growing up and there wasn’t much privacy anywhere. Not at home, not at school, not in restaurants, nowhere. As an introvert, it was pretty rough. So when I moved to suburban New Jersey and saw fields and fields of endless expanse with little to no humans in sight, I actually liked it. It wasn’t as dense and cramped as Bangalore. I could breathe fresh air and have room to move around in public spaces freely. That to me was luxury enough. To sum it up, I think all Americans who haven’t left America much should try to look in the cereal aisle one day to see an immigrant kid’s jaw drop when they see the amount of cereal options available to them. Even if you somehow manage to afford the priciest luxury mansion in Hollywood Hills, I guarantee you that your perception of luxury will not match what the kid is experiencing in that moment.