The US moves way more freight (and at lower cost) than Europe does. Humans aren't cost-efficient to move around in trains, which is why European governments have to massively subsidize the industry (it would never be afloat otherwise). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies …
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Distances in the US (LA is as far from NYC as Madrid is from Warsaw) make trail travel completely impractical. The only place where it could maybe work is...surprise, surprise....where it exists: on the Eastern Seaboard (the US's one high-speed train runs from DC to Boston).
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Add in the impact of discount airlines (started in the US following deregulation in the 70s, and only started by the slow-poke Europeans recently...because of course the trains were cheaper due to subsidies) and few Europeans take long-haul trains anymore. I sure haven't.
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Another topic of false acclaim: credit cards. The Euros gushing about their chip cards. Europeans didn't adopt them earlier because they're higher tech: it's because their money-grubbing banks were unwilling to suck up the losses due to fraud in order to win customers.
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Up until recently (when US banks started adopting them too...celebrating the great tech, natch) an American consumer who'd seen a weird charge on their card could just call the bank and get it removed. Good luck doing that with a European bank. You were basically stuck.
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The adoption of chip cards and NFC payments has been rapid in the US (far faster than credit cards were by the Europeans...you still can't pay with CC's in most non-fancy German restaurants, for example). Europeans are also still stuck on their first-generation PoS systems.
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The supposedly advanced European payment tech is some gadget that looks like a mid-90s cellphone that the waiter or cashier hands to you, and spits out a receipt from the top. I just paid for a coffee in the ass-end of rural Texas with a Square reader the size of a postage stamp.
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Healthcare is the only industry where the US could learn from Europe. But even there, the misconceptions abound. Both US fans and critics of single-payer think Europe has a monolithic, state-run health industry. Both sides cite that as evidence for or against single-payer.
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The reality is most of Europe's public systems are strained (e.g. the NHS), and most working adults use private health insurance, with a public/private hybrid being the real European healthcare system.
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Replying to @antoniogm
They dont in the UK. Less than 10% of people have private healthcare.
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Right. Varies from country to country. Safe bet: that fraction will be larger going forward, given what they're doing to the NHS. And if Europe ever had to pay its own defense bill, say good-bye to all of it.
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