My father forwarded
me this article from The Telegraph, which declares that the standard of living is better in England than America. It's followed by over two hundred responses from various interested readers.
The article itself is fairly throwaway. It's single assertion - that "the UK has been catching up steadily with living standards in the US since 2001," comes from Adrian Cooper, managing director of Oxford Economics.
I'm pretty skeptical of that theory - but the responses it triggered make for interesting reading.
"I visit the UK often," writes one American,
"but avoid buying much because I spend a pound in the UK to buy what costs a dollar in the US. Furthermore, as an engineer in the US, I get paid three times the salary I would receive in the UK. Always have!"A rather snobby Brit replied:
"I'm no linguist, but I think I understand more of what's said and written in France than when I listen to some Americans speaking "English"."Richard Pritchers ignores the issue completely, in order to make the politically charged assertion:
"Not many posters seem to have remembered the numbers of young Americans who've been caught up in and died in the wars that America has and is still fighting. I was born in 1949 and have lived luckily at peace during my whole life as a UK citizen."Ken Hall points out that:
"Korea, Suez, Aden, Cyprus, The Falklands, Bosnia, Iraq 1 and Iraq 2, plus Afghanistan," kind of interfere with Pritcher's rather blinkered view.
Reading the comments, two things are clear. Firstly, even the most confirmed libertarian would start questing a 'right to free speech' after reading some of the responses. Secondly, the most valid comments stem from people who've actually have personal experience living in the UK and US.
My Personal ExperiencesI have to admit that I moved to America with flaming ambitions that have only been tempered slightly by the weight of experience.
Living in the United Kingdom, Tina and I both had reasonable jobs and lived very modestly, in a two bed roomed rented terrace in the suburbs of Winchester.
We struggled for money every single day we were there.
Rent, bills and food made up all but £100 of our combined monthly income - and all it would take was one urgent car repair or an unexpected bill and we'd find ourselves
in the red.Living in England, in pretty much an average middle class lifestyle, saw us creep further and further into overdraft every single month.
What were the killers?Taxation, for a start. While on the face of it, income tax in America and Britain are roughly equal, that's soon obliterated by National Insurance, council tax for renters and the blanket 17.5% Value Added Tax. It seems whatever you do, the likes of Gordon Brown have their fingers in your pockets in the United Kingdom.
When we moved to the United States in June of last year, we both got low-paid temporary assignments that paid well below our equivalent income in the United Kingdom... But do you know something astonishing?
We could live within our modest budget.
Land of OpportunityEven though we were as close to New York City as we were London in the UK, our rent was 30% cheaper and we had no council tax to pay every month.
Weekly grocery costs were exactly the same figure. Except the 'figure' was dollars in the United States and pounds in the United Kingdom - and even though I was earning less equivalent to my salary in the UK, it still meant I had more dollar bills that I used to have pounds coins.
What really won me was the chance to find a 'real' job a few months later. Doing largely the same work in largely the same industry, I was paid 30% more than in the UK.
So I'm earning more, my money goes further and my bills are less. The quality of life in the United States, on the surface of it, is significantly better than in the UK.
Putting things into PerspectiveVery few people would argue with that - although one of the more concerning aspects of life in America has to be the lack of a 'safety net' to catch you should things go belly up.
For example, there's no nationalized health service like there is in the UK. Private health insurance is the only way to guarantee adequate health coverage and that costs both you and your employer money. Currently coverage for my wife and I costs $300 a month and two thirds of that is covered by my company.
There are two things to consider about this situation.
Firstly, given my salary and tax bracket, it's actually cheaper for me to live in America and buy private health insurance than it is for me to be taxed on my UK income and enjoy 'free' private health care.
Secondly - just what sort of health 'care' are we talking about?
Our local British hospital, the
Royal Hampshire Country Hospital, was recently rocked when two women both died of the same staph infection after giving birth the same day. While the NHS avidly denied any possible link, it's impossible not to be suspicious of two people in the
same ward of the
same hospital dying of the
same thing within days of each other.
My wife actually toured the wards in question and her opinion? "They were just
dirty."
By contrast, the local hospitals in New Brunswick are both brand spanking new, gleaming with polished tile, steel and wood and a powerhouse of efficient nurses and doctors scurrying about. Currently our health insurance package has provided us with top-notch service for a negligible cost and fingers crossed, long may that situation continue.
American DreamWho knows what tomorrow will bring? But currently, our life is considerably better off under the Stars and Stripes than it was beneath the Union Jack.
It's the brutal level of taxation that really cripples people like us in Britain. It's like Gordon Brown had his eye out specifically to nobble the middle class.
In fact, the 'middle class' is a demographic that's rapidly extending downward. There is no 'working class' in much of Britain and the only people I met who claimed to belong to the 'Working Class' were tiresome pub-bores who spoke in effected 'common' accents, but spent the week working as salesmen, teachers or middle managers.
Many actual working class people (who did shifts in factories or industry) actually ended up earning more than a so-called 'middle class' writer like me!
In England, if you're not rich or you're not broke, you're screwed.
American UnderclassOn the other end of the spectrum, the working class - and the downright poor - are demographics very much alive and well in the United States.
I have been fortunate never to part of their group, but honest-to-goodness
poor people exist in America on a scale unheard of in Great Britain. There are families in the backwoods of Virginia or the deep south who live not much differently to depression-era families.
But here in gorgeous New Jersey, we are blessed by good incomes, cheap produce and the ability for even those of modest means to hire/purchase a wide-screen television and RF remote which means they can
change cable channel from their garage.
But if you're poor, you can't afford health insurance. That's a fact.
Free Healthcare?This doesn't mean you can't get health care. If you don't have insurance, but you lop your arm off with a chainsaw, you can still journey to the local Emergency Room and they'll patch you up. They're legally required to - and writing off the 'cost' of that treatment will eventually find it's way onto their tax write-offs for the year.
But that's very different to having the level of health care most people consider 'adequate.'
Nevertheless, I like to think I have some experience living 'poor' in the United States. Way back in 2001, I visited America for an extended period as I tried to get a work permit. That never panned out - and during my months living in the states, I lived cash-in-hand on a very insubstantial income.
Poor in Money, but not in Hope. But broke.I learned two things from this.
Firstly, that money goes a lot further in America than in does in Britain. A lot, lot further.
£5 is worth about $10 and for ten bucks a day, you can live like a king in America. That's a six-pack of domestic beer and three days worth of hot dogs, bread, eggs and milk from the local dollar store. The sad thing is, even $5 buys your more than £5! You could still pick up that six pack of beer and six hot dogs and buns.
I didn't say living was 'living' as such, but there's an enormous sense of opportunity when you've got your hands full of American money. Living 'broke' in America taught me how to live within my means - but it also taught me the true value of money.
Secondly, it illustrated to me how things have changed in America in the years since I was last here - dramatically, as it happens.
Los Rollandos IllegosJust for the record, I have never been an illegal immigrant to the United States.
However, during my extended visit to the States in 2001, I kind of lived like one. I was renting an apartment for a few months and, as the holder of a tourist visa, did not have the ability to get a US driver's licence or bank account.
Back then, that was quite a problem. It meant I had to cash cheques at unscrupulous 'cash checking' places (who took 11%) and in order to get insured on my British driver's licence, I needed to pay a whopping $5,000 a year (I now pay one fifth of that.)
I discovered first hand that people really take advantage of the poor. Everything costs more when you're poor. It seems the fewer dollars you have, the more of them it takes to get anything accomplished.
But that was then and this is now.
Returning to America five years later, I have been astonished at the transformation. There's one single driving force behind the changes and that is illegal immigration.
BCIS! Driving down the cost of your Illegal Immigration!There are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in America and if their arrival has done anything, it's brought the free market to the black market.
More and more illegal immigrants are driving, for example. Throughout the United States, it's impossible to get a driver's licence without a resident's permit, so most illegal immigrants simply don't. They drive uninsured, unlicensed cars without valid inspections. The roads in New Jersey are littered with exhaust pipes, drive wheels and lugnuts.
I've contributed a couple myself.I was stupidly law abiding in 2001 - and had to search far and wide for an insurance company that would accept my British licence as proof of competency (it is legally valid.) I ended up going with the same Long Island company that insures British diplomats. I paid the cost for it, too!
But now that there's a market for those law-abiding few who want to insure their cars, the 'big boys' have jumped on board and now legitimate insurance companies like
Progressive offer affordable insurance for foreign licence holders.
Likewise, I couldn't get a bank account as an American tourist. Now,
places like Bank of America offer not just bank account, but loans, mortgages and credit cards to undocumented aliens - without anything to guarantee they won't steal the money back across the border (and we wonder why there's a crisis on Wall Street!)
Basically, the free market has arrived to offer more and more affordable services to illegal aliens. And what's this done? Just encouraged more and more of them to come running to America.
And the moral of this story?Well, I've digressed once or twice, but I think my opinion on the matter is perfectly clear. While you might miss out on the history and majesty of Great Britain - or just the Marmite and yorkshire puds - the cost of living has always been and will continue to be less in the United States of America.
Whether the idea of a free market left running amok fills you with pleasure or dread, it always eventually does what it does best. America really is the land of opportunity. If you're lucky enough to get the chance to move there - and you're willing to grasp the opportunities when they're presented to you - the quality of life in the United States will always be the best in the world.
Why? Because unlike the nanny states of England or Europe, you're in charge of your own destiny in America - and despite obstacles and advantages, the ultimate ability to succeed or fail lies in your own hands and nobody else's.
Roland Hulme and Editorial Bear are recent legal immigrants to the United States.The jury is still out on whether they've succeeded or failed (and whether they can take credit for it or not.)
In Stephen King's Dark Tower septology, gunslinger Roland is on a quest to find the mysterious "dark tower" at the center of his crumbling world. In many ways, I think the reason the 7-book series always resonated so much with me was because I was trying to find a "dark tower" of my own.
Getting on and off these ferries seemed to resemble the experience new arrivals to the Americas must have had a century ago. Hundreds of people cram onto these little boats and surge on and off rickety gangplanks when you arrive.
Ellis Island used to be a tiny little bluff called Oyster Island, before it was bought by the federal government and expanded to about four times it's original size with landfill (ironically, into New Jersey - making most of Ellis Island technically part of the Garden State.)
The first experience you have upon arrival probably mirrors that of the immigrants as well. While first and second class passengers were examined on board ship, most steerage and third class passengers were ferried from their ocean liners to Ellis Island on ferries similar to the ones that took us. They'd then wait for hours to filter in through the doors of Ellis Island's examination hall to await 'processing.'
The hall itself, restored to look much as it would have done during the 1920s, would be where immigration staff would give each new arrival a cursory check. Those who looked suspicious or sick would have their clothes marked with chalk, being hauled off for later examination. The rest would filter through to pass intelligence tests and give evidence of immigration status, before being allowed to stay, or threatened with deportation (although unlike today, only 2% of new arrivals ended up being sent back to their port of origin.)
The actual experience swallowed up the best part of a day. We started queuing in Battery Park at around eleven and finally got back to Penn Station at about six. I certainly don't recommend the impatient, infirm or those with small children attempt a visit!
