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How do you figure? I've been to both Iraq and Oklahoma, and I can tell you the quality of life in Oklahoma is a hell of a lot better than Iraq, pre- or post-war

• curiousgal 8y ago
  Well I've been to Scandinavia and despite the countries having less GDPs, the quality of life, for the average citizen, is way higher.
  • rukittenme 8y ago
    But that wasn't your point: > America is mighty but that doesn't translate into the life quality of its citizens at all. Countries can vary in development and quality of life but your original statement is demonstrably false.
  • pluto9 8y ago
    I haven't been to Scandinavia, but I have been to some of the "wealthy" European countries, including Ireland. I now live in its GDP counterpart, Colorado. I would say their quality of life is comparable. It would be helpful for you to explain how life in, say, Sweden is vastly better than life in Georgia. Before you cite poor uneducated Georgian hillbillies, keep in mind that Georgia is home to Georgia Tech, not to mention Atlanta, which was quite prosperous last time I checked. And if you're going to cite Sweden's "free" universities, you might as well go ahead and throw in a side-by-side comparison of Georgian/U.S. Federal and Swedish tax rates as well.
    • lexs 8y ago
      oh no contributing to society with taxes oh noooooo
      • pluto9 8y ago
        Utterly pointless and idiotic comment. I made no judgement as to whether those higher taxes or the things they pay for are good or bad. I am merely saying that these things are trade-offs, and if you're going to count the benefits, you must also count the costs.
      • lolsal 8y ago
        Are you intending to add anything to the discussion or was your comment accidentally not contributing anything?
    • maxerickson 8y ago
      It comes down to how you measure. People doing well have a high quality of life in pretty much the entire United States. People at the bottom, less so. The US does have an awful lot of support for people, but our society is also hostile to poor people and we have awful workplace regulation for low quality jobs.
      • pluto9 8y ago
        Yeah, life sucks when you're poor. More so in many of these countries than in the U.S, and less so in a few. You've said nothing. Every country has economic strata. Pointing it out only in the case of the U.S. is specious.
        • maxerickson 8y ago
          Well no, pointing out that the US strata are unusually and unnecessarily capricious isn't specious. The US is a rich country and the lack of resources for people at the bottom is more likely to be arbitrary than it is to be contributing to that wealth.
          • pluto9 8y ago
            It is when you conveniently fail to mention the vast list of countries, many of which are on this map, whose stratification is far worse than that of the U.S.
            • kungtotte 8y ago
              Comparing specifically to Sweden, there is no similarity at all between the US and Sweden when it comes to economic classes and their differences. We have our upper class and working class too, but even those who are working poor here manage with one job and they still enjoy benefits like day care and health care. How many people are hustling two or more jobs to make ends meet in the US? How many of them afford day care? What happens if they break a leg and can't work for a month?
  • alehul 8y ago
    As a Swede living in the United States, I can agree that the average person has a higher quality of life in Scandinavia! I don't think it's possible to have that in the States, though; the country doesn't seem meant for it. The Scandinavian model relies on many incompatible tenets that could be mentioned, including but not limited to immigration. The Swedish system is already practically collapsing from its first major influx of immigrants ever. If we want a country in which everyone is welcome, it can't be a country in which we offer a fantastic quality of life automatically through living there. I mean, not until we have some post-scarcity economy, at least. Another issue is that maybe part of the States' success is related to having more income to yourself, to spend at your discretion after taxes, rather than it being spent for you by the government. It inspires a lot of immigration from people with big ideas, and that could easily change if the U.S. surpasses other countries in taxes. I think there are models the U.S. should adopt from Scandinavia, however they're smaller in scope and address efficiency with tax money. One example is that all your income tax goes to the local government up until a certain point (~65,000 USD?), and it's redistributed at that level, rather than being siphoned through so many levels of bureaucracy like in the States. It's funny, while being the polar opposite of the U.S. and its conservative values, Sweden still manages a smaller federal government!
    • joejerryronnie 8y ago
      The population of Sweden is 10 million vs 325 million for the US. The issues faced by each country are vastly different in scale and policies which work at one scale will not necessarily work at the other. In this context we should be comparing the policies of Sweden to the policies of New York (but even that doesn't really work because of the vastly more diverse population of NY).
      • kungtotte 8y ago
        I totally accept the argument that it's not the same thing to run a country of 10 milion versus 325 million, but why does demographics matter so much? A lot of the differences between Sweden and the US comes down to things like whether health care should be a human right etc. Do you think people are less inclined to want "free" health care if they live in a community that's ethnically mixed? I don't buy it.
• verelo 8y ago
  And I've been to Ukraine and Detroit. Statements like this need larger samples to be useful.
  • pluto9 8y ago
    Detroit is a mess, but the gap between it and Ukraine is not remotely comparable to that between Iraq and Oklahoma. And obviously single examples are not representative of the whole, but they're far more useful than GP's blanket assertion which is based on nothing other than, I suspect, the fact that it's currently edgy/fashionable to whinge about all the "free" things Europeans get that Americans don't.
• danharaj 8y ago
  Which war? Iraq was quite a nice place to live before the Iran-Iraq War, First Gulf War, embargo, and Second Gulf War.
  • pluto9 8y ago
    I was talking about the one that's been going on since 2003, but take your pick. I don't need to have been to Iraq before that to know that a very large fraction of Iraqis live in mud houses with no air conditioning, running water, or sewer systems, and always have. The reason those things are missing is not because American troops stole your air conditioners. It's because the average Iraqi doesn't have a standard of living adequate to afford them.
    • posterboy 8y ago
      > the average Iraqi doesn't have a standard of living adequate to afford [such a standard of living] Impecable logic, technically not even wrong, but ... you are saying the wars didn't cause colataral damage to a significant degree because ... you cannot live without air conditioning?
      • pluto9 8y ago
        Your remark about air conditioning makes no sense at all, but I'll reply to the rest of your comment by clarifying what I mean. GP was implying that Iraq would be nice if it weren't for American interventions. You appear to be making the same point, given your reference to collateral damage. I'm saying that's highly unlikely considering that Iraq has always been quite poor compared to the U.S., even before any of these wars. I see this whiny argument repeated over and over ad nauseam--"Iraq would be an oasis of civilization if only it weren't for those mean imperialist Americans coming in and breaking our toys". Utter nonsense. Iraq was a mess long before the Americans showed up. But that's all beside the point anyway. This discussion is about relative GDPs of various countries and U.S. states, not an analysis of whose fault it is that the ones at the bottom are at the bottom.
        • 8y ago
• usrusr 8y ago
  When looking at quality of life, GDP per capita is your number, not absolute GDP. There are quite a few more Iraqis than Oklahomans.
  • pluto9 8y ago
    You're absolutely right. Not taking population size into account makes this entire comparison of QOL pointless, not just that between Iraq and Oklahoma. Considering GP is the one that initially made the comparison, I'm curious why you're making this reply to my comment and not hers.
    • usrusr 8y ago
      GP wasn't specific about absolute vs relative GDP (American performance in QOL per GDPPC may not be terrible, but certainly not beyond all doubt), the Oklahoma/Iraq comparison was.
      • pluto9 8y ago
        Yeah, no it wasn't. My comment compared quality of life while failing to account for per-capita GDP. So did GP. How is mine more specific about it?
        • usrusr 8y ago
          GP post is open to a benevolent interpretation wherein a cooperative reader fills in the missing "per capita" from the context of talking about quality of life. Calling Iraq and Oklahoma similar closes that door, because those two are not similar at all per capita.
          • pluto9 8y ago
            It cannot reasonably be interpreted that way. GP made a blanket statement about how in spite of our GDP being higher than many other countries, our quality of life is not. That is obviously false. I choose to interpret GP's comment to mean what it actually says. You may choose to put words in GP's mouth so that their argument says what you wish it to say, but for me that's a waste of time. If they wish to clarify and restate their argument, they are welcome to do so. But then they will have to provide some evidence that per-capita GDP "goes farther" in other countries than in the U.S. So far nobody has done that.