zlacker

>>vmoore+(OP)
I'm strongly in favor of expanding the US social safety net, but I don't want to neglect other obvious factors here. Dutch children are able to walk or bike outside unsupervised. In the US they'd risk either being killed by a driver, or stopped by an overzealous neighbor or police officer. I think this kind of freedom of movement has a big effect on happiness, it certainly did for me.

ETA relevant links: https://youtube.com/@NotJustBikes https://letgrow.org/

ETA again: I glibly mentioned "being killed by a driver" but of course navigating the typical US built environment if you're under 16 or otherwise unable to drive is a miserable experience in a number of ways even if you survive it. Highways make pedestrian paths unnecessarily roundabout. Parking lots make everything further from everything else. Crossing major roads requires getting drivers to notice and stop for you (harder when you're short!), or waiting through interminable signal cycles, etc.

>>MBlume+yj
> In the US they'd risk either being killed by a driver, or stopped by an overzealous neighbor or police officer.

It may depends on where in the US you're talking about, but in my area none of this is actually true. Although lots of people believe it is.

>>JohnFe+Kl
Overzealous neighbors in the US will have someone's house sold out from under them when the grass is too high and they don't pay the fines to the HOA for mowing it. The idea that they'll be ok with children wandering around unsupervised is preposterous on its face. The cops might not care either way, but only until the busybodies start nagging. Especially the sort of busybodies that live in the places where any sane parent might consider letting their kids wander. Kids would probably go unmolested by aging Karens in the bad parts of Baltimore or Gary IN, but then they have other problems.

I agree with you that the risk of being killed by a car is somewhat low though.

>>NoMore+bn
The US is a country with hundreds of millions of people in tens of thousands of municipalities in dozens of states. The idea that because outliers exist, they describe the typical experience everywhere in the nation is preposterous on its face.

>>thfura+Qs
One place I'd have hoped would be able to understand such a simple concept is HN. Especially with all the Europeans who frequent this site.

330 million people with about the same land area as Europe. Yet people simultaneously think there can be a pretty big difference between, say, UK and Poland, but think that every newsworthy event that happens anywhere in the US is representative of all of the US.

It would be hilarious if it were not sad.