If you were you were to look back at the political discourse in 1920s and 1930s Germany, you'd find extremely scathing critiques from the Nazis lobbied against the Social Democratic party. Did this mean that the two were equally bad?

While it's true that Biden's actions during his recent term were frequently called unconstitutional by the right – be it for trying to raise the minimum wage or forgiving student loan debt – it was rarely from a perspective of solidifying his executive power. In the case of the Trump v. United States, he was avowedly against how the ruling implicitly expanded his executive power.

On the flip side, Trump's openly pushing the expansion of his executive power with his firing inspectors general, overruling the senate by freezing funds and appointing his own pseudo-agencies that take control over independent agencies in the executive branch.

These are fundamentally different things, and should be treated very differently, even if people from either side complain about both.

The context of the thread was that, like modern western culture, early 20th century German culture was highly stratified, and as such, increasingly polarizing. So far I think your comments support this comparison.

Now, you can get a lot more for your money outside of San Francisco while staying in the US, but that applies to European cities as well.

Don't get me wrong – US pay still outweighs these lower costs as a young engineer without children. If you're planning on starting a family, things get a little muddier. Having a child is free in Sweden, whereas it ranges from thousands to tens of thousands in San Francisco. Childcare in Sweden is progressively prized and never goes above ~$100/month, while it ranges from thousands of dollars a month in San Francisco, to hundreds in other parts of the US. School? Yup, that one's free too – college and the works. Got elderly parents? Elderly care is also subsidized to ~$300 a month (although private alternatives do exist).

However, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and these things do need to be paid for. This is done by many different taxes. Working as a contractor, you become painfully aware of a few of these – I've contracted for an American company while based in Sweden, at American rates, and I still end up with way less than I did working in the US.

First off you have your payroll tax at ~31%. Normally this cost is quietly absorbed by the employer, so from the get-go almost a third of your salary is gone without you knowing it. After that point, you have a progressive income tax that can go as high as 60% – which is what employees see on their pay stubs.

So they're just different models. The European model largely optimizes for a high common denominator, whereas the US model seems to optimize for extremes.

Much like with healthcare, European countries (generally) tend to think that it's decent idea to spend government resources to provide value to their citizen. Having regularly commuted using trains in Europe for a decade and a half, I would argue they are a pretty great, comfortable mode of transportation – and I can feel slightly more at ease knowing I'm not contributing as much to our carbon emissions.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot4qdCs54ZE

Your criteria for evaluating food seems to put heavy emphasis on visuals (as you mention indian dishes look post-digested) and freshness of ingredients, but these criteria are not universal. As the article mentioned, one big difference is that Indian cuisine is deeply intertwined with ayurvedic medicine (like hot spices being good for you if you're lethargic,) and thus emphasizing the health benefits of said spices. And that's not even getting into how flavor itself is highly cultural.

With this in mind, attempting to apply any objective judgement is moot, because your success criteria are entirely different.

It seems to have gotten much better since – I've been in San Francisco these past two years and have had some really good Indian food. I had an amazing tasting menu at a restaurant called August 1 Five (that unfortunately seems to have closed during the pandemic) with things that I've only had in India (like panipuri.)