15
‘Choose drugs?’ 30 years after he wrote Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh says life is tougher now
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
15 points (74.2% liked)
Europe
3904 readers
6 users here now
Europa
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Reality is that Scottish unemployment is a heck of a lot lower now though
The reality is that the chart is meaningless without knowing the quality of the jobs. US has pretty low unemployment too right now, but around 37% of adults have two full time jobs now.
Median wage is pretty good though
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage
lol median wage is pretty terrible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage#European_countries_by_monthly_median_wage
Which is precisely why the standard of living is the way the article in the submission describes.
Yeah life is terrible in one of the richest countries in the world lol.
Have you actually been to a poor country?
It's incredible that you don't understand that wealth in UK is not evenly distributed. I have been to poor countries, and I've also seen what poverty in places like US and UK looks like with people living in tents and eating out of trash. You are a smug because you won the birth lottery and never had to deal with real hardship, but all that cold change very quickly under the capitalist system you champion. One day it could be you sleeping under a bridge and scavenging for rotten food in the garbage, not gonna be so smug then.
I didn't say wealth was evenly distributed. But poor countries don't have the welfare state that G7 countries do.
I'm not smug, you're deluded enough to think you know what living under a communist system is like while living in a liberal democracy and ignoring all the economic data that disagrees with you.
Quite frankly, I've seen enough of your badgering of people with shite sources to realise you're just an idiot tankie or troll.
Here's some data that you'll ignore
There are tent cities all over G7 countries right now. People literally go bankrupt in US when they get sick. Children in UK can't get full nutrition. Meanwhile, I grew up in USSR, so I think I know what it's like to live under a communist system a lot better than some ignoramus from UK.
Source? I call bullshit.
What world are you living in that you don't know this and can I be invited? Haha
The only exception is, maybe, Japan because I can imagine them being heavy-handed but I've never visited so I don't know their homeless situation.
Western Europe. You wont find many, if any homeless person on the street here. There are good support systems in place and people happily take advantage of it.
Plenty of expats working here as well, shouldnt be to hard to get a working visa.
Well, even with support systems, there are still plenty of homeless people in Western Europe. Maybe you are taking tent "city" too literally, it's not so much a city as sometimes a small encampment but they exist.
And if it was affordable for me to move to Western Europe, I would have done it years ago already. It takes a lot of money or support to just go be a working class person in another country on another continent.
Not really. In western europe they have emergency housing available for free to homeless people. The document you linked will agree with that. In most western european countries you can use those resources as long as you need to, and get a social worker so you can work towards social housing.
Again, you wont find homeless in our cities. There are beggars but those arent homeless. You should visit sometime if you dont believe me. Most americans are surprised to see the lack of homeless people in western european countries.
Living in western europe isnt expensive, with around 3K in income you can live comfortably and enjoy all luxuries. Food is generally cheap, same for utilities. Taxes are heavy on upper middle class.
There are a lot of expats that do IT and live very comfortable with a normal wage.
I personally spend around 600 Euro on my mortgage and around 300 total on utilities + health insurance.
If I can give a couple good spots of how good life can be I recommend visiting luxembourg, belgium or the netherlands.
Is google blocked at the troll farm you're working from?
Some guy below posted the links to official statistics and it shows you are overdramatizing the situation.
Whatever helps you cope I suppose. Working at a troll farm must be pretty demoralizing.
Everytime we have a conversation about the matter at hand and you start losing the argument you resort to these kind of replies. Getting predictable.
But it shows how much you actually know, and what you blindly copypasta from other commies. Thats nice.
Whenever you sealion into a thread, I provide you with sources and references and then you ignore those and continue trolling. The fact that you spend this much time following me around is kind of hilarious though. I love living rent free in your head. 😂
That data was really interesting and does seem to show that wealth is being progressively transferred upwards after WW2.
I read somewhere recently that since 1945 $50 trillion had been earned by top 1% while wages have remained relatively flat for working people.
Well said.