Ah, we're back to this convo #1519566, #1521908, #1522410
Making such comparisons is difficult. There is no doubt, for example, that the US has long been in another league when it comes to advanced digital technologies and, today in particular, to artificial intelligence
Not everywhere: obviously the DMV is worse off than the digital wonderkind Estonia.
Tho the healthcare-obsessed commentariat and intellectuals go entirely wrong here: it is the standard objection to American healthcare, and wholly misses the mark.
Also consider: consumer demand, quality consumption, baseline state of health.
It could, for instance, be that the American population is significantly more unhealthy than the European — anecdotally, very believable — and its superior health care brings Le to just a few years behind the European/G7 top scorers. You can't determine the quality and value of American health care from just looking at post-fact life expectancy outcomes.
This is more appropriate
The US homicide rate was 5.9 per 100,000 in 2023, against 1.3 in France and 0.9 in Germany. Its prison population was 542 per 100,000 in 2023, against 130 in France and 69 in Germany.
Then again, I recall seeing that if you remove Chicago, Baltimore. LA and DC, the four worst cities from the gun (or homicide?) stats, America is an average European country. (Which is apparently incorrect: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/feb/27/instagram-posts/is-the-us-third-in-gun-violence-because-of-five-ci/)
It was always the economy, stupidIt was always the economy, stupid
It turns out that if one compares the US with the Eurozone on growth since 2000, its performance is hugely superior. But if one compares relative GDP per head, this is not true: Eurozone GDP per head has risen relative to the US’s
Very misleading, because the level is way higher: even if the relative growth puts Europe ahead, that's reassuring for us Europooreans but not that helpful when we recall that we're actually, you know, poor! #1519566
When you real-GDP it, the difference is staggering. SO what gives?
The extraordinarily rapid reported productivity growth in US tech depends on making “hedonic” adjustments in the prices of products. This involves working out the value of increased processing power to consumers.
That's a familiar one: turns out this problem comes up everywhere — assessing generational outcomes, standards of living, and indeed whether Europooreans are as poor as we suspect
"The conclusion is that Europe does not suffer any disadvantage in relative welfare vis-à-vis the US.""The conclusion is that Europe does not suffer any disadvantage in relative welfare vis-à-vis the US."
Eeeh, no don't think so.
It's incredibly difficult to measure welfare, and while it is strongly correlated with GDP, there are some important exceptions. If you asked a European to work 30% more, make 50% more, but spend 2h of their day commuting in a $80,000 pickup truck listening to fitness podcasts, they'd decline in disgust.
Americans are wealthier, but the price to participate in society is also so much higher. You need a car to get groceries, an Uber to get home from the bar, and your vacation costs triple because it's short and you need to take it when everyone else is taking it. There are thousands of little examples like this.
yup, 100%.
And the flipside, too:
USA cannot control global shipping anymore.
Hormuz is the Suez crisis of empire USA.
End of the petrodollar.
End of US empire.
So if Egypt is Iran, and the US is Britain, who's the US? Where is the young rising power who will pressure us to stop? Isn't that supposed to be you? But you're doing nothing, sooooooo.....
When Great Britain faced the Suez crisis with Egypt in the 1950s the USA had already emerged from WW2 as the dominant global manufacturer, buyer of commodities and holder of gold reserves.
But bankers still predominantly used the British Pound to settle international trade payments.
However when Britain asked the US for help to deal with the Suez standoff, the US said No.
The Brits inability to control shipping routes ended the global monetary dominance of the British Pound Sterling by exposing Britains lack of effective power projection.
It was the last nail in the coffin of The British Empire.
Settlement of trade payments in the rising powers currency lags its mercantile rise- but it almost inevitably follows gaining dominance in trade.
China won the trade war.
USA cannot control Hormuz.
The end of the USD-Petrodollar is imminent.
We did more than just say No. The Republican President started selling off British bonds and it became physically impossible to continue the war, not just politically unappealing. You don't have that kind of leverage.
Maybe China will accelerate their selling off of USTs...
Who even buys USTs these days?
Must be crazy.
End of US empire...
Dang.
https://www.wsj.com/world/israel-is-rationing-its-best-interceptorsand-irans-missiles-are-getting-through-130cf14d
Israel Is Rationing Its Best Interceptors—and Iran’s Missiles Are Getting ThroughIsrael Is Rationing Its Best Interceptors—and Iran’s Missiles Are Getting Through
https://archive.ph/7RmgL#selection-515.0-515.81
They're stupid. If a country is at war with you don't buy their bonds. The US is serious. They're trying to permanently discredit communism as an ideology by any means necessary. Your inaction and blind faith in the legacy communist order is what drives both the military and narrative victories.
While I believe that the US is doing better in some broad "economic" sense (easy to believe that there is more opportunity in the US, that it's easier to start a business here or try out your new idea), the Euros have way better food. Also cafe culture is pretty nice. This may seem like apples to oranges, and indeed it may be the case, but gosh, I can't get a piece of well baked bread in Texas to save my life.
agreed, but you're rich enough and you have enough diversity of grocery stores and Whole Foods that you could recreate it.
not true. whole foods is shit. I bought a baguette there a week ago and it was gross. Perhaps in the mega cities like NY, LA, Houston, but if you don't live in such places, American food quality universally worse than European (there are some places where farmer's markets are good during the summer, but it is exceptional, not common).
Yea but in europe you're so poor a baguette and a potato are pretty much your groceries for the week
Get one of these for $30 and your bread problems are over
Ah yes, the eternal human need to compare ourselves with each other using made up metrics
ah yes, it's the real-life show where everything's made up and the points don't matter
it's true
Nothing special but these are reglementations
Maybe what I've seen is also wrong, but it's not removing entire huge high-crime cities that evens things out. It's that if you remove something like the worst 1% of neighborhoods from both the US and Europe, most of America's seeming pathologies disappear. That doesn't mean they aren't real but it does mean they aren't particularly representative of life in America.
Also, no one (other than the medical-industrial complex) is defending the American "healthcare" system. What many of us do believe is that the problem isn't that there's too little government meddling.
I know, I know. THat's what makes this comparison so stupid... it's not a flat, clean "private insurance capitalist" vs "central planning gov universal coverage." So everyone can fling mud at the others, claim the moral/effective high ground.
Having seen the worthlessness of (some of) the European ones, I'm partial to the green American grass
https://twiiit.com/joakimbook/status/2076619344142799225