Website calculates how your life might be like in another country

I think the problem with comparing the United States with other countries in general- specifically Sweden/Norway or even the UK or Canada is that the United States is just so much bigger. So, the characteristics of the "average" person are hardly representative (obviously). It's hard to imagine that this site can adequately compare life in two places. A better comparison may be single metropolitan area or state. I.e I think it would be more relevant to compare NYC with London, or Massachusetts with Sweden.

To the credit of the website though, it is cleanly designed and pretty interesting to play with. Cool.

axod5• 16 years ago

Definitely be interesting, but I think many of the figures would remain the same. The lack of state provided health care exists whether you look at the US or only NY.

It'd be nice to get some user contributed/voted on facts as well on the website... for example (some of my own):

  US: You can't buy good cheese or chocolate
  GB: You can't buy good milkshakes or burgers

geedee77• 16 years ago

You've obviously never tried Gourmet Burger Kitchen in the UK!

meterplech2• 16 years ago

True about NY, but not about Massachusetts actually. If you go to page 3 of (1), you see that people under 300% of poverty level are provided care through "Commonwealth Care." This actually adds to my point, because of the US's federal system, different states, regions, and cities have not only different demographics, but different laws as well.

I like the idea of adding the "what is good where" point as well. For example, they don't discuss things like access to beach, or frequency of bone chilling blizzards.

(1): Somewhat large PDF... https://www.mahealthconnector.org/portal/binary/com.epicentr...

arethuza2• 16 years ago

The taste of American chocolate has always puzzled me - apparently it is down to butyric acid:

http://www.rps.psu.edu/0009/chocolate.html

anamax4• 16 years ago

> The lack of state provided health care

There is no "lack of state provided health care" in the US.

Walk into a hospital - they're obligated to treat you. If you're poor, you can ignore the bills. (Or you can go to a public hospital and they likely won't bother if you fill out some forms first.)

Of course, better treatment costs money, but that's true everywhere.

erikstarck2• 16 years ago

If Sweden would have been a US state, it would have been the poorest of them all.

At least that was true a few years ago.

EDIT: I only had links in Swedish to sources, but here's one in English: http://www.shsweb.fi/forum/1/28783/28785/ Another: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/11/sweden-mississippi-if-sw...

But do note that Sweden has seen a very strong growth the last year while the US has slowed somewhat.

EDIT 2: for those downvoting, see my response below.

m_eiman• 16 years ago

Source?

david9278• 16 years ago

List of richest countries (IMF):

#7 : Sweden

#9 : United States

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nom...

I hate to reduce this to numbers, especially GDP per capita which is even more of a joke, but in any sensible form of measurement, Sweden has been richer than the US for a long time.

benfrederickson• 16 years ago

Not to be pedantic, but the United States isn't bigger than Canada (its just more populous).

gte910h• 16 years ago

It is about 60,000 km^2 bigger, while we have our pedantic hats on. Approximately the US state of Vermont is the difference in size.

copper• 16 years ago

http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/IN/CA

I /think/ that the way likelihood of HIV/AIDS is calculated needs to take population into account in a better way. Fun comparison, though!

ck22• 16 years ago

I'm curious if the expression "grass is greener on the other side of the fence" is universal or just something we say in the states?

Would have been a good domain name (IsTheGrassGreener .com) but that's not to criticize on the content or presentation, very well done (and seems to be dealing with quite a load this morning).

unwind• 16 years ago

One data point: Swedish has a very closely worded idiom: "Gräset är inte alltid grönare på andra sidan", which translates back as "The grass is not always greener on the other side".

rufus_t• 16 years ago

No. Like in English, it's "Gräset är alltid grönare på andra sidan"/"the grass is always greener on the other side". You should interpret it as "the grass on the other side always looks greener than it actually is". Your version is sometimes used as an after-the-fact statement that something didn't work out as planned, but it's not the traditional form.

isani• 16 years ago

The front page colors change based on where you're from. A nice idea, but many of the color combinations are unreadable. Finland has dark grey on dark blue, for example.

NZ_Matt• 16 years ago

oh well, I guess I'll settle for less money if it also means less AIDS.

http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/NZ/AU

redthrowaway• 16 years ago

Wow. It's like I put a tag cloud on my website, then when I wasn't looking it went and had sex with every tag cloud in town. When I turned around oh my god tag clouds everywhere. It's like the Tribbles of web features.

I'm sure that could have been implemented better. Cool idea, though.

fastviper• 16 years ago

Know how to count? Count on yourself, not averages. Every free capitalist democratic country gives great opportunities to be rich and have a lot of free time.

Especially for hackers.

PS: the site states that the less income inequalities, the better. Quite contrary is actually much better option for any country.

fakelvis• 16 years ago

Very interesting and nicely executed, even if the methodology does have its limitations (I won't repeat what meterplech has said).

It would be interesting if you could enter some of your demographic data and get a more specific comparison (e.g. gender, sexual preference, age, race, education level).

That might bring up some more drastic and surprising comparisons.

qasar• 16 years ago

http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/US/PK Its good to be an immigrant, though the class divide number is surprising.

Also, the "more information sections" are written well - anyone know the source?

david9278• 16 years ago

This is like comparing whether you would like Diane Krall or Bob Marley based on beats-per-minute. Why do people have such a struggle separating qualitative from quantitative?

I'm American but I've lived in six countries: the richest was easily Switzerland, the most frustrating was easily France, but for me, the best was easily the Czech Republic. Hands down; no competition. But that's me. And the only way you can ever know which one you'll like best is to live there and go native. If you listen to Diane Krall waiting for it to start turning into the Arctic Monkeys, you won't like it. Most tourists and expats keep expecting the new country to be their old country with a different language. It's simply a different beast, and until you can lose yourself, lose your expectations, you won't know.

sebilasse• 16 years ago

which also heavily depends on how old you/what period of life you are. Switzerland is less appealing in your 20ies but much more when you're 40 with wife and kids. You just can't have an exciting, always changing, but still well-organised and super-stable country.

maayank3• 16 years ago

may you please elaborate more on why the Czech Republic wins hands down?

mapleoin• 16 years ago

I'm also interested in this, since I moved to Czech Republic a few months ago. I was planning on also moving to Germany some time in the future.

david9278• 16 years ago

The first time I went to Prague, I was so blown away that I canceled the next stops on my itinerary so I could stay. Later, after I moved there, I realized it was the whole country that just hit me in the right spot. There are no reasons; it just happened. Like with my wife, it was just love at first site. Love doesn't have enumerable reasons; it just is.

pardo• 16 years ago

I may be able to answer to that too. I've been living in Prague 4 of the last 6 years. I've lived also in Madrid, Frankfurt and Barcelona for extended periods of time.

Things that are great in Prague for a foreigner (expat):

* Most people speak English, specially young people and specially in Prague. They will tell you that they don't speak English, but they do.

* There are a surprisingly big number of IT jobs for English speakers available. Even at startups (like the one I work at, 360cities.net).

* If you want to be a freelance, the tax treatment is very very favorable. Adding all the payments that you have to make to the government (including personal income tax, compulsory health insurance, and unemployment insurance), you'll end up paying less than 15% of your gross income at the end of the year to the state, in one form of another. That compares with the ~ 50% that gets deducted from employees for the same concepts.

* Life is affordable. Having a good life, I mean, not just surviving. Even on a local salary, you can get a decent apartment not too far from the center, eat out every day for lunch, have dinner out a couple times a week, go to the movies/theater/clubs on the weekends, and still have money left to save a little. Of course, those savings will not amount to much out of the Czech Republic, but as long as you are living here, they'll provide a comfortable cushion. If you get an English speaking job, you'll probably make significantly more than a local salary. You will not live like a king, but you'll life very very comfortably.

* The health system is good, efficient and cheap. So it is the public transportation (one of the best systems I've tried, and I've used a few in my life).

* The fact that even local salaries afford for a decent live means that you won't find extreme poverty in Prague. That also means that there's no dangerous areas that you should avoid (of course, in the touristic spots there are pickpockets, but I mean that there's no wrong neighborhoods that you have to avoid, like there are in Madrid or, as is said, in US cities, for example).

* Cultural life is rich and varied. There's a lot of clubs with life music, concerts, theaters, operas, … Of course, there's also thousands of pubs (almost one in every corner) that serve what I would argue is the best beer in the world. And very cheap (less than 1.5 euros per half liter).

* The city is gorgeous.

* The girls are even more gorgeous.

* You are in the middle of Europe, which means that there's a lot of places to visit within 4 hours (train or plain).

* The attitude of Czech people is very relaxed. Live and let live. Consumption of sof drugs, for example marijuana, although not strictly legal is not prosecuted by the police.

* Personally, I think another advantage is that the Czech Republic is the most atheist country in the world. 70% of Czechs declare themselves atheists when asked. That means that the interference of religion in the lawmaking or social attitudes is minimal.

There are also some disadvantages, of course:

* The hard long winters.

* Service in restaurants and pubs, although improving slowly, is still not comparable with more western countries. Unhelpful or plain rude waiters and shops assistants are very common.

* The food lacks variety, and specially vegetables, fruits and seafood (like most Central European kitchen).

* Some rules in the administration are plain stupid. And civil servants will be, generally, unhelpful. A lot of the old socialist mentality can still be found in the government's employees.

* The language is very difficult to learn. Most people speak at least some English, but really fitting in is difficult without speaking Czech.

* When you want to travel abroad, everything is suddenly very expensive.

LiveTheDream2• 16 years ago

Good, very inexpensive beer.

lanolin• 16 years ago

> And the only way you can ever know which one you'll like best is to live there and go native.

Would be nice if we could learn from others' experiences to help us make a better decision right off the bat, rather than moving all over the world to try and experience everything first hand.

mdaniel• 16 years ago

Having been a "professional expat" for the past several years, I can assure you that it's not that simple. Yes, hearing their stories can bias your decision up or down by a few points. But, just like choosing a Linux distro: you can only know if it's for you if you live in it. There are no ways (that I know of) to successfully quantify what one seeks in a situation, otherwise eharmony.com would have taken over the world.

yread• 16 years ago

Strangely enough, the czech people have very low self esteem (or patriotism) - they mostly believe that the life is better basically everywhere and that the expats in cz are bothered by a lot of issues.

Anyway, great to hear you like it there.

david9278• 16 years ago

First, patriotism is for idiots. (I'm sorry but my team is not better than your team.)

Second, I wouldn't call it low self-esteem but rather a cultural meme that abhors acting snobbish. It stems from Communism. When I first got there, and someone would ask, "Jak se mas?" (How are you?), I would answer "Great!" But that was the wrong answer. That's not their culture, because no one was great under Communism. So the right answer is something self-deprecating and slightly embarrassing like, "Just ok. I walked around town all morning with my fly undone." They're very sweet, down-to-earth people and these are their steps to keep it like that.

About expats, they're like that everywhere, for the reason I mentioned. Many come and go after a year or two and are just long-term tourists who never take off the goggles of where they come from. I know a huge number of expats there and almost all of them love it.

patrickaljord• 16 years ago

may you please elaborate more on why France was the most frustrating?

david9278• 16 years ago

It's where I live now (I live in Nice and work four days per week in London). In many ways, it's paradise: the food, the weather, the people -- amazing. But the bureaucracy is killing me.

The paperwork and incommunicado government officials are like something out of a Kafka novel. My wife applied for her entreprenuer license six months ago. (We thought it would take two weeks.) Nothing has happened. It took two months to get internet connectivity after six or seven scheduled meetings where they just didn't show up. Open a company? Forget it. There's a lot more I won't go into. At first we put it down to that we are not native French speakers but after talking to some others, it seems that's not the case. So, in a word: frustrating.

That's just my personal experience; YMMV.

Gormo• 16 years ago

In addition to the qualitative/quantitative issue, this site also conflates the general with the specific.

There are plenty of quantitative metrics that might be relevant to an individual's lifestyle, or more general metrics that could at least be correlated to individuals' preferences and choices. But this site is only comparing aggregate metrics of one country to those of another.

The site asks the question "if you were not born in the country you were, what would your life be like?", but the answers it provides have little to do with my life.

I expected to fill out a questionnaire about my lifestyle and see results that estimated how the details I provided would play out in a foreign country.

madsr• 16 years ago

I find it interesting that by following the green/red color code, apparently, the less you spend on health care the better. Is health care a bad thing?

davidmat• 16 years ago

Probably the site's author sees it from the PoV that it's just too expensive in the US. Other systems offer the same level of health care, at a far lower cost to the patient.

jackolas• 16 years ago

Quality and price aren't related when the price and quality are controlled. Most countries control prices or quality (running the services) unlike the US.

tzury• 16 years ago

http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/IL/US

If The United States were your home instead of Israel you would...

  - spend 2.3 times more money on health care
  - use 97.95% more electricity
  - consume 96.7% more oil
  + make 63.38% more money
  - be 5 times more likely to have HIV/AIDS
  - have a 47.24% greater chance of dying in infancy
  - have 29.11% fewer babies
  - have a 25.68% greater chance of being unemployed
  - experience 14.8% more of a class divide
  - die 2.62 years sooner

Q) Would you rather live in The United States?

A) No. I would simply try to find a way to "make 63.38% more money" where I live now, as the rest of list seems like US is not a better place to live.

But US is not San Francisco or New York right?

So perhaps, the comparison should not be made country-wide.

As I would definitely rather live in the bay area than in Tel Aviv where I live right now.

oscardelben• 16 years ago

I'm surprised that longevity in the US is lower than many other countries (the same is true for Italy as well). I wonder if the food industry and the obesity problem contributed to this problem.

patrickgzill2• 16 years ago

Once you adjust for poor blacks and Mexican illegal immigrants, the US is fine. The poor health care, nutrition choices, and young people being shot skews the statistics.

If you are a "white" person the stats are as good or better.

This post is not racist; other countries have relatively homogeneous populations, the US does not.

maayank3• 16 years ago

"So perhaps, the comparison should not be made country-wide." I think this is key. Even when talking about small countries like Israel there is much inconsistency regarding the expected quality of living (compare Tel Aviv/Ha'sharon with most places in the Negev, even Be'er Sheva).

By the way, I know I'm being a little cynic here, but "experience 14.8% more of a class divide" is not necessarily a bad thing for an individual. I would argue that if you're on the better end of this divide and won't experience its implosion (i.e. people revolting) in your lifetime that it may be a plus.

fookyong• 16 years ago

HIV rate in Japan is 0.1%

HIV rate in Singapore is 0.2%

The app tells me I am 100% more likely to get HIV in Singapore... which I guess is technically right but it certainly doesn't sound very inviting...

torme• 16 years ago

Yeah, the percentage statistics are worded kind of oddly. I tried spain, which has about 18% unemployment rate vs the US's 9%. It tells me I have a 94% greater chance of being unemployed in spain. It took me a couple seconds to get my head around the meaning of that.

It seems like a better wording might be something along the lines of "You're 2x more likely to be unemployed", or something to that extent.

Gizzle• 16 years ago

While the site itself is nice designed and I enjoy playing with various countries, I see that the main purpose for designing this site are the amazon links below the comparison. Am I right?

known• 16 years ago

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility also plays an important role.

    You can move from one *class* to another in USA(e.g Obama could become President)
    You must not move from one *caste* to another in your life time in India(e.g. Ambedkar could not become Prime Minister)

resdirector• 16 years ago

Hilarious the green/red colouring scheme which I presume means good/bad. Take for example Australia vs Democratic Republic of the Congo:

http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/AU/CD

Democratic Republic of the Congo spends 99.39% less on health care = good...?

yummyfajitas4• 16 years ago

The app is probably tuned to developed countries.

Within developed countries, the marginal utility of extra health care is close to zero. Spending more on health care is as likely to harm you as it is to help you. Since the benefit of extra spending is nil, it makes sense to focus on the cost.

As you note, once you get into the regime where marginal utility of extra health care is positive, this method of comparison makes little sense.

kaerast• 16 years ago

The site's slow loading and keeps segfaulting Google Chrome on Ubuntu 10.10 for me. I like the idea though.

alinajaf• 16 years ago

The website doesn't say anything about how much you would like living in a particular country, which is entirely subjective. It just compares stats.

adaml_6232• 16 years ago

Fail. This website doesn't calculate it just presents stats and it doesn't ask me about my life so it's not even a valid comparison.

More importantly it mutilates statistics. The unemployment rate for western countries is very different to the unemployment rate for 3rd world countries. Can't really compare them.

adaml_6232• 16 years ago

I suspect that this website doesn't do caching on its comparison pages.

beowulfe• 16 years ago

I made this site. I do cache the comparison pages, but I actually started hitting the bitrate cap on my slice. I moved a bunch of the images and other static content to S3 this morning to help out.

jawns• 16 years ago

This is kind of similar to a little app I created a couple of years ago called the Homeland Re-Assigner:

http://pressbin.com/homeland

From the app description:

"We're born into our native countries by the luck of the draw. The Homeland Re-Assigner uses world population data to simulate this process. It produces statistically accurate representations of where else you might have ended up. Countries are weighted according to their current populations. So, for example, you're more likely to end up in a country with a large population, e.g. China, India, or the United States, than a country with a smaller population."

Obviously, though, IfItWereMyHome.com is a lot more robust and much prettier.

vic_nyc• 16 years ago

I found it interesting that in Germany you are expected to make 25% less than in the U.S., but you have 25% more free time! :)

eapen• 16 years ago

www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/US/IN

Says there is 18.22% less of a class divide in India - but IMO, India has a way higher class divide than in the US. I dont buy a lot of these stats.

vixen99• 16 years ago

Maybe some will like this but for me it's pointless regurgitation of easily available irrelevant data. (that does not apply to me because I wasn't born and bred in that country)

What would be interesting would be, given my present wealth and general status, how would life be for <me> in that country if I moved. In Romania for instance, I live (taking into account all the factors whioh matter to me) a much higher quality of life than I did in the UK.

ry0ohki• 16 years ago

Health care would cost me 99% less in Malawi, because there is none? I'd use 99% less electricity too, so green!

protomyth• 16 years ago

I think the coarse grain comparison of this site makes it pretty poor. Comparing the whole of one country to another is naive. Different areas of each country can have totally different living conditions. Also, your social class has a lot to do with your position in a country.

beoba• 16 years ago

Oh god a link cloud, I wish people would stop using those.

Also, http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/US/FI recommends Tom of Finland books to learn more about Finland.

oceanician• 16 years ago

Great site. Be cool if it included average weather - sun vs rain or something like that?

beefman3• 16 years ago

You're doing it wrong http://i.min.us/ibZWRM.png

xiaoma• 16 years ago

>If Canada were your home instead of The United States you would...

experience 28.67% less of a class divide

use 27.2% more electricity

have 25.67% more fewer babies

...

25.67% more fewer babies? Awesome! But whoever let that phrase through wasn't exactly the quickest zergling in the control group... if you catch my meaning.

Website calculates how your life might be like in another country

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