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nirp. Btw how does SF have a high quality of life? No one can afford to buy a SFH.
This is backwards logic. If you bought into San Francisco years ago. You now have a high quality of life. Low property taxes based on the valuation when you bought it years ago. The mortgage is tiny compared to the value of your home. Otherwise, you're a rich person who used something that wasn't W-2 income to buy your way in. Inheritance. Your Google stock. You also enjoy a high quality of life.
Vancouver is the same way. My sister lives in a house that is worth $1.5 million as a teardown. That's the value of 33' x 150' of dirt there. The house gets scraped off the lot. You need to be a Chinese rich person or an extremely high income Canadian to buy yourself into that real estate market. Vancouver also makes the list. If you handed me $5 million, I'd love to live there.
Most of the places on the list are places where everyone shares the same race, language, culture, and values. It's pretty easy to be socialist when the person you're propping up is pretty much exactly like you. If you're being asked to prop up a permanent underclass with 70% single mothers and another group that lives in a parallel track culture where they don't speak your language or share your values, probably not. Look at what's happening now in Europe with the refugee crisis. The nordic countries are saying GTFO. Germany is in a political crisis where Angela Merkel is going to get booted out of office if she also doesn't have Germany saying GTFO. France has been in an uproar over it for a few decades. Britian has that moat called the English Channel they use to keep them out.
They're reasonable. But the host country's degree of socialism doesn't seem to lead to inclusion on the list. Cleanliness, safety, affordability (relatively speaking) I can see. Vienna pulls its weight and more for culture but the others are about as mundane as it gets. Architecture, scenery, I guess are fine but not in Paris's league.
Relative degree of socialism no more qualifies these cities for this list than does their cuisine, which lags almost any city south of them or anywhere else for that matter.
Yes I agree. The title of the thread and OP are confused. Switzerland is not 'socialist' in any way, it is almost to the right of the USA. Neither are the other countries on the list, really. The are market economies, with strong social welfare programs. It's just that the USA is so oriented to business interests over the good of the people, and Americans are so poorly educated, that any country that provides reasonable welfare programs for all its citizens is labeled 'socialist' by Americans. Most don't even know what they are talking about. I'm not sure Bernie Sanders even knows.
Location: "Silicon Valley" (part of San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Perma Bear
nirp. Btw how does SF have a high quality of life? No one can afford to buy a SFH.
The mentality is different in a big city.
If you want to own a building and the land underneath it, you're going to have to go live in Kansas or north Texas or something where the prices are lower but so is your income.
In a big city, land is expensive; a lot of people already live there. You can only only build X number of SFH in a given area of land. You can't give six hundred thousand people a SFH and have all those homes fit in 15 square miles. Most of them are going to live in denser housing.
The mentality of a big city is that your dwelling space is for you to sleep, shower and use the bathroom. Everything else you do is shared with others. Community pools, community exercise equipment, etc. That's why people in larger cities tend to be farther to the left; by definition, life in a city requires you to share resources. Those on the right in a big city are usually libertarian as opposed to being far to the right like Donald Trump.
So my point is that those of us who like big cities and like to live in them don't want a SFH. We'll take a condo inside of a building that contains other condos. If you want a SFH go live in the countryside. You'll have a big house, but then you won't be able to do anything that is not inside your house without driving for many miles. That's not the life I want, nor what most who live in a big city would want. To me, that would be a very low quality of life.
Location: "Silicon Valley" (part of San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA)
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In fact personally I would feel happy, perhaps even happier, in a rented room in a shared apartment. That's how I lived for a year when I lived in downtown San Jose. It was great. I can't wait to move back to downtown San Jose. People who don't want roommates, well, go earn a high income, or move to the countryside.
I like living in densely populated areas but having my own apartment and dang it I made it work! I have my own studio in downtown Manhattan. Debating getting a 1bd so my DnD group has somewhere to play, but rent stabilization feels so nice~
Kinda got tired of roommates after I graduated from college, an irony since I loved roommates while in college.
“Socialism” the total state or collective ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.
“The means of production” means: the whole shebang, the resources, the factories, the distribution, the infrastructural backbone, the stores, etc.
You bought the computer or smart phone from the gov, and the sales person and the Geek Squad guy who spied on your pron at the store all work for the government,
And you drove home from the store in the car you bought from the gov, to look at your neat new phone that isn’t exactly “yours” in your government-owned house, you live in a socialist country.
Socialists reject the idea that the government serves the people and embrace the idea that the government rules the people.
Bernie is the latest in a long line of liberals who believe that the people lack the ability to decide for themselves how they are to live. People like Bernie believe that the enlightened few, such as him, have a responsibility to save the people from themselves. Politicians, like Bernie, and bureaucrats who think they can spend other peoples money better than the people who earned the money can.
And this is what you young kids want? wow. Many couldn't wait to get out of your parents house because they told you what to do and you want to hand it all over to some politicians and elitist? wow.
OK I see many people are agreeing with me. The post is like saying Look how well the Rich are living. And telling poor people to live like the rich and they will have better lives. That is bull. The rich are living well because they have a lot of money and can pay for all their needs.
Americans just don't have the right mentality to be a country of one and bring everyone up together.
Lots of other countries, like Switzerland, Germany etc.. do.
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You'll have a big house, but then you won't be able to do anything that is not inside your house without driving for many miles. That's not the life I want, nor what most who live in a big city would want. 
