• tswerts@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 years ago

      Thanks for the effort you put in this response. Is it a good summary when I say that Belgium in population and area can be compared with a metropolitan area of any major city in the USA? And best should be compared as such?

      I’m very much surprised with the migration figures being as high as you mention. Europe is surrounded with countries in war in Eastern-Europe, Middle-East and Africa. And many of our migrants are refugees.

      All the migration towards USA is mainly from south of the USA, correct? There’s no war going on over there, so do these migrants also poor living conditions and are mostly fortune seekers? Or are their lives in danger from the government in these countries?

        • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
          2·
          2 years ago

          People love to bring up our vast expanses of land in these infrastructure comparisons, but that wasn’t an insurmountable problem when we wanted transcontinental railroad, telegraph, telephone, etc…

          • rchive@lemm.ee
            1·
            2 years ago

            wasn’t an insurmountable problem when we wanted transcontinental railroad, telegraph, telephone

            It’s worth noting that those were all massive handouts to private corporations. Some of the beneficiaries of those handouts are still on top of their industries today.

    • uis@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      Belgium has a population of 11 million, the US has a population of 331 million.

      USSR population was 293M in 1991(right before collapse), USA population was 253M in 1991.

      Belgium has an area of 30,000 km^2, the State of Virginia alone has an area of 110,000 km^2. The metropolitan service area (basically the city and surrounding bedroom communities) of Washington DC is 14,000 km^2 or nearly half the size of all of Belgium.

      Every time I hear something like “but Netherlands is about the size of Ryazanskaya Oblast” I reply “then why the fuck Ryazanskaya Oblast is not better than Netherlands? And 26 other regions that smaller than it are not”.

        • uis@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 years ago

          What I think you’re trying to say is that the USSR was the same size of the US in 1991

          I was trying to say that being big country does not prevent one from having universal healthcare, decent social security and a lot of other social benefits.

          So in summary, the size is about the same as the Netherlands, but has 5.7% of the population of the Netherlands and the people in the Netherlands make ~23x more money at their jobs even when considering the highest salaries Ryazan Oblast had in the last 5 years and the highest exchange rate the RUB had in the last 5 years.

          Probably real median 1/50 of one in Netherlands. Anyway, this was from an argument about size.

          If you want Netherlands compared to something with similar polulation, density and budget, Moscow(which as saying goes is not Russia) is a good choice. Aaaand it’s still shit compared to Netherlands. Or Netherlands can be compared to city that was built by dutch long time ago - Saint Petersburg. Shit too. Small polulation? SPb+LenOblast is even worse.

          To be fair most of cities excluding ones with insane budgets(Moscow and SPb) have worse public transport that they had 40 years ago. Probably public transport in Ryazan of 1980-1990 was comparable to public transport in Amsterdam of 1980-1990.