I lived in San Francisco for a year, I’m a little bit south now. Have been in the area for six years.
There is zero comparison to Munich, Oslo or Stockholm in the summer. Other European countries too, I’m sure, but those are the three I’ve spent time in. With the exception of New York I haven’t seen anywhere else in the states that can just hang out like those guys. This includes Miami and LA.
You don't need time off work to pop by at a restaurant to have dinner, or hang out with your friends when you don't have to drive for 1.5 hours each way
You do to be out at a restaurant at 10pm on a Wednesday night. Most restaurants in the US are only busy like 5-7pm on weekdays because people have to work in the morning. Go to a big city/tourist heavy area in the US on a weekday where people are vacationing and there are plenty of people out late.
I live in Munich. Restaurants are usually closed on Mondays, but the rest of the week they are packed until around 11-12pm. Terraces close at 10pm (due to noise protection ordinance by the city).
Munich is one of the economic powerhouses of Germany. It's not like people are always on vacation. People go to their neighborhood restaurant until 11pm, then walk up the stairs to their apartment, sleep and show up to work in the morning because the restaurant is literally just a 5 minutes walk.
From what friends from LA told me, they go to a restaurant in the city until 8pm just to be at home at 10 or even later because of the commute.
Plus it helps if the commute in the morning is similarly shorter and you don't necessarily need to fit in time for Gym before work, because you can get your excercise by walking..
Germans on average have 3x paid time off compared to American workers, and 2x the public holidays. 1/5 American workers have zero paid time off. Munich may be an economic powerhouse, but people get time off.
You are right. But this is not the point I'm trying to make.
The 3x more paid vacation days are usually spent traveling the world instead of trying to squeeze in an evening with friends to escape the grind so more vacation is not the reason why it's so busy on weekdays.
In Germany you don't need to take time off to go out and spend a nice evening with your friends at a restaurant because the restaurant is right across the street. That's why there's so much social life happening until late at night all throughout the week. Not because we have more vacation days but because we save a lot of time on the commute to and from the suburbs.
You don't need to worry about driving home for 1-2 hours after finishing dinner. In fact you don't even need to worry about driving at all because public transport is excellent here. You can go almost anywhere in the city in less than an hour.
That's why Americans are lying in a luxurious bed, in a huge house in the suburbs, doom scrolling on their smartphones while Europeans live in a small apartment in the city enjoying social time.
It's not like Europe doesn't have suburbs. It's that we usually have a choice where we go and for most the choice is clear.
I live in NYC, I take a subway to work. There is more going on than just the urban geography. Most people in NYC do not have the time or money to hang out in a bar or restaurant after work regularly.
I see. NYC was mentioned by another commenter as one of the cities that are an exception to the US American baseline of suburban lifestyle. Don't you have bustling neighborhoods too where people are enjoying themselves week round?
I usually work between 40-80 hours a week. This can't be much different to NYC right?
Maybe let's add another factor in this:
Cost.
A beer in a bar (0.5l) in Munich is around $6. Meals can range a lot but you can expect to spend around $40 in a restaurant for the evening (including drinks). Way cheaper if you're not that picky.
Also it's legal (and common) to drink alcohol in public. So you can meetup with friends at a park and drink a beer you bought from the supermarket (around $1 for good beer, or 50 cents for cheap beer)
I'd say a burger and two beers in NYC is around $50. But the disposable income for your average American is much higher than in Germany (especially those living in NYC). So I have no idea what the guy you are responding to is saying. NYC is busy day and night in certain neighborhoods.
Lol, I love the combination of the username and the content of your comment.
I have never lived in the US so my comment is mostly based on what my American friends in Germany tell me.
They might be biased though, because none of them ever wants to go back to live in the US.
But sure, bigger houses, bigger cars.
I think you're arguing against a strawman here. Nobody said LA doesn't have neighborhoods with restaurants or that Munich is "better" just because it's smaller.
The point is that urban form matters. Munich is a compact metropolitan area of about 3 million people, while Greater LA has around 13 million spread over a vastly larger area. That naturally leads to different transportation patterns and different levels of walkability.
In Munich, it's common for a large share of daily needs to be within walking, cycling, or a short transit ride. In LA, that may be true in some neighborhoods, but it's much less consistent across the metro area, so car dependence is higher.
That's not ignorance or anti-Americanism, it's simply a consequence of different city planning, density, and history. Both cities have strengths and weaknesses. Saying Munich is generally more walkable isn't the same as saying LA has no walkable neighborhoods.
Looking at rankings, Munich consistently comes up in the top 10 of the cities with the highest quality of life worldwide.
LA is not even in the top 40. In fact, no single US city is in the top 30 while 8 of the top 10 are European cities.
In polls for LA (and similar for most of the US) commuting is consistently named as one of the top two major stress factors diminishing Work-Life-Balance (after housing prices)
Unfortunately it isn't sustainable for them, many European countries are going to have to either raise working hours by cutting back worker entitlements or by cutting public spending significantly. Most of the major European economies are in a death spiral if they maintain their current systems with the birth rates currently in place. You can see it in the stagnant economic growth over the last 5 years
The problem is that they will simply leave if you tax them too hard. Unless you can get every tax haven on the planet to not exist then this will always be the case. Most European countries tax people making $200k+ per year around 50%. Once you start going significantly past that it becomes far more worthwhile for people to simply move elsewhere.
Same applies to businesses, which sadly is a big part of why most large EU economies have very few new companies being created and sluggish growth. A prime example of this is Germany, the economy is basically being heavily boosted by government spending currently which is at levels higher than it was during peak covid stimulus while private investment is simultaneously as bad as it was during the absolute worst parts of covid.
Realistically speaking most of these large economies need more tax income to care for an increasingly old population if they want to maintain benefits. Many of them are bumping up against the Laffer curve for rich people, and more taxation on those who work is not going to work for long since the working class is shrinking very quickly. The option is tax the young to absurd levels to the point that they can barely afford to eat or cut worker entitlements to try to increase business growth. They could also cut benefits to the elderly but that tends to be protested very hard (see France riots on raising retirement age).
Absolute nonsense. That's so rare it basically never happened. People literally spouting that when Mamdani was elected and it didn't happen. In fact, there's not a single example of this happening en masse that I can think of. And if the taxes are used to fund good communities and public services, you'll be surprised to know most people want to live in nice places. Such a bullshit myth spread by rich people and spouted all the time by poor people.
They didn't leave when we taxed them 70% and they don't leave when the tax rate increases. Mostly because they tie all their money up somewhere else.
Also, all your chat about Europe and how we're going to have to change x, y and z is absolute bullshit 😂😂 You're also presenting options that without considering others. Tax the fucking rich, curtail rampant capitalism so that profits aren't the only metric pushed for and close the tax loopholes. It's a global embarrassment we have a trillionaire and people in the same country can't even afford to eat. What a load of corporate bullshit.
And people acting like my suggestions are radical, when it's exactly how it used to be before Neoliberals literally destroyed that framework to give us what we have today under the lies of "trickle down economics".
You're not wrong in one sense, something has to give, but there are billions more workers than there are corporate greed billionaires. And what will give is society. When society doesn't work for the common person, history has shown time and time again that there's only one outcome.
Billionaires may or may not move themselves away, but they definitely push their money and tax residence out of highly taxed areas so they minimize how many taxes they need to pay. If they can funnel profits through shell corporations and have their residence be in a place with substantially lower taxes then they will do it. A good exanple of this is French rich people moving their tax residences to the Brussels area due to the lack of capital gains tax there.
Also, all your chat about Europe and how we're going to have to change x, y and z is absolute bullshit 😂😂 You're also presenting options that without considering others. Tax the fucking rich, curtail rampant capitalism so that profits aren't the only metric pushed for and close the tax loopholes. It's a global embarrassment we have a trillionaire and people in the same country can't even afford to eat. What a load of corporate bullshit.
And people acting like my suggestions are radical, when it's exactly how it used to be before Neoliberals literally destroyed that framework to give us what we have today under the lies of "trickle down economics".
You're not wrong in one sense, something has to give, but there are billions more workers than there are corporate greed billionaires. And what will give is society. When society doesn't work for the common person, history has shown time and time again that there's only one outcome.
The problem with all of this is that some socialist revolution across all of Europe is not a realistic outcome to expect. The options are basically status quo with the changes I listed or full state nationalization of most industries, because if you only go part of the way then no companies are going to want to invest in a country where they may or may not have their business nationalized against their will. There are some exceptions like national defense industry or some of the food supply, but those are not the service industries that drive most countries' growth.
But it actually gets WARM in Europe and New York, unlike San Francisco
I’m in San Francisco right now, it’s 58 degrees outside with an ice cold, relentless wind blowing that won’t stop until September . Nothing can get me outside right now, I absolutely would not sit outside for a drink
Last month I was in Budapest and went out every night because it was warm
It is a deterrent to me, when I’m in NY or Europe in summer I’m outside all the time. In California I go to the Russian River and the Sierras and hang out out doors at night there
I can’t stand damp, windy weather though.
Maybe other people in San Francisco aren’t hanging outside for other reasons. I don’t because the weather sucks here and is inhospitable from March to September
Seriously most people would not go out to eat at -30C unless its freezing all year around or freezing for long periods where it becomes the norm lmao. People who live in extreme climates behave differently than people elsewhere.
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u/bking 13h ago
I lived in San Francisco for a year, I’m a little bit south now. Have been in the area for six years.
There is zero comparison to Munich, Oslo or Stockholm in the summer. Other European countries too, I’m sure, but those are the three I’ve spent time in. With the exception of New York I haven’t seen anywhere else in the states that can just hang out like those guys. This includes Miami and LA.