13 ms·

And then you realize that the population of Canada is 10% of US. Canada should be compared to the Nordic countries vs. US in terms of quality of life etc.

• acchow 7y ago
  Can you explain your logic?
• vgoh1 7y ago
  I don't understand this argument. What does the population of the country have to do with anything? Shouldn't a country with a larger population have more power to make competitive advantages, and larger economies of scale, and therefore have an easier time?
  • bazooka_penguin 7y ago
    More people to manage, more local governments with more layers of hierarchies and more bureaucracy overall and I've never heard of bureaucracies scaling well
    • DubiousPusher 7y ago
      If this were the case, Switzerland should be tremendously bad off. They have a ton of bureaucracy and are even more federalist than the U.S.
      • vinay427 7y ago
        First of all, their point doesn't depend on Switzerland being in bad shape or not. They're not saying a country's situation solely depends on this, but that it's a factor. There are lots of other factors at play in Switzerland and most any other country. Second, there usually is another layer in most of the US (and Canada, for that matter) which doesn't exist in Switzerland: the county. I think that's more likely to cause inefficiencies than federalism alone. Also, I'm not actually sure Switzerland has more bureaucracy. It mostly seems comparable in my experience having lived in both countries. Are there any metrics on this?
        • DubiousPusher 7y ago
          Metrics? I thought we were all reasoning in sweeping generalizations here.
    • mthoms 7y ago
      The Canadian tiers of government are very similar to the US. The one difference (AFAIK) is there is no "county" government or equivalent. Anyways, this is actually the first time I've ever heard someone claim that Canada has less bureaucracy than the United States.
  • dx87 7y ago
    If everyone agrees with each other, then yeah, a large population is better. But when you've got a ton of people it's harder to find a solution that everyone likes. It's like the difference between two people trying to decide where to get lunch, and 30 people trying to decide. It also doesn't help that the West and East coast are culturally different, even among people of the same political party.
    • mthoms 7y ago
      Isn't it more like 30 people vs 300 people? The proportions of differing opinions are are still the same in that case. Your East vs West coast comment also confused me. I'd argue Canada has the same (or more) regional differences in politics. There's the East Region (Ontario + Maritimes), Quebec (featuring a different language, heritage, culture and legal system), The Central region, and the West Coast. Oh, and of course First Nations throughout (which of course the US has as well).
• ska 7y ago
  It's not that simple, really. Although for some comparisons you are probably correct, in other ways they are a very natural pairing. For all their differences, in many other ways Canada and the USA are much more like each other than either are like any other country.
  • lostgame 7y ago
    Completely agree with this, having lived for time in both countries. While we might be a percentage of the overall US population, we are fortunate to have access to most of the same things as the USA, just with a few extra nice things like health care.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • krn 7y ago
    Canada and Australia are the only two countries with the population of over 20 million that are ranked higher than the USA in the OECD Better Life Index[1]. Therefore, it's safe to assume that the size of the country makes a huge difference in such rankings. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OECD_Better_Life_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OECD_Better_Life_Index
    • luckylion 7y ago
      And location. Canada has no border with the developing world, and neither does Australia. If Canada was located next to Panama, things would probably look different.
      • guyzero 7y ago
        Canada has an immense unguarded border with a country that has several million uneducated people living in extreme poverty.
        • 7y ago
• Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Why? Does a larger population size automatically reduce quality of life?
  • xattt 7y ago
    The distances between are a contributing factor.
    • ska 7y ago
      But that would apply even more to Canada then, no? Or did I misunderstand what you mean?
      • Ididntdothis 7y ago
        Not with smaller population size :). Maybe colder climate makes people happy?
        • ska 7y ago
          Not really, as it depends on distribution as well. They actually aren't that different (distribution-wise) in many places, although obviously Canada has a lot more parts where people are really spread out. Because most of Canada's population lives in the southern 10% or less, there are many regions where density of infrastructure & people looks kinda-sorta-the same. Obviously there are exceptions, and only one large city, etc.
  • TomMckenny 7y ago
    Actually, in principle larger means more markets and labor supply and more clout on the world markets. Furthermore the US has more usable land, and Canada's vast distances with low populations increases their expenses vs the US. And indeed the US does have a higher per capita GDP. But because it's concentrated in so few hands, most Canadians are better off than most Americans.
  • filoleg 7y ago
    As someone else in the thread has already pointed out, which one do you think will be less stressful and noticeably easier to manage - deciding what to do for dinner for a group of 3 people vs. a group of 30 people? It is much easier to converge on a decision that will leave everyone satisfied when you have 3 people. While with 30 people, it is almost guaranteed that there will be a few people who would be left unsatisfied, a few satisfied, while the remainder will just end up being "ok" with the compromise.
• ben_w 7y ago
  Why should population size be important? I know tiny sample sizes can produce curious results by luck, but I don’t buy that applying to multi-million populations. It seems to me that the difference is worth understanding.
  • hash872 7y ago
    I think the standard explanation is that a huge country like the US lacks the social cohesion necessary to pay higher tax rates in exchange for social programs that benefit everyone. Like, I believe Sweden's population is about 10 million- much easier to have the social 'glue' for 'let's all agree to pay very high tax rates, and we'll all get collective social programs with it!' Versus the US at over 300 million people, you don't feel as connected to the other folks who would presumably be benefiting, and it's tougher to get a 'we're all in this together' mentality. Think of the difference in social cohesion between a small town and a huge city. Like, I'm an American and I've literally never even been to most red states, never been to Texas, don't really know anyone from any of those areas of the country, etc. I don't feel a lot of connection with them. Then there's, frankly, the racial angle. Most of the Nordic countries have traditionally been pretty ethnically homogeneous, which helps the social cohesion/let's all chip in for government programs together mentality. The US is of course not, and racial fears about 'those people' getting unearned benefits is a HUGE part of the American story. Basically, the US is the most right-wing of the developed countries, and we tend to have bell-shaped unequal systems where a small % live very well and a larger % are below European standards. Healthcare is like the best example of this. I've also heard a little talk that our political system is more amenable to lobbying by corporations than a parliamentary system, but I don't know enough about that argument to really advance it
    • ben_w 7y ago
      > Like, I believe Sweden's population is about 10 million- much easier to have the social 'glue' This specifically is what I am not understanding. Why is 10 million supposed to be easier? 10 million is about double the size of the metropolitan area I’m currently in, and roughly a hundred times the size of the last city I worked in. In both cases the population is much too large to be a single community.
• grecy 7y ago
  I have never understood why people assume that just because the US is bigger than other OECD countries that it can't have the same levels of happiness, or the same quality/cost of healthcare and education etc. Why do you think the US should aim lower simply because it has more people? Why don't you think per-capita comparisons are valid? If anything, the US should be better than smaller OECD countries because it gets a huge benefit from scale. It feels like you're simply giving up "because we're bigger" on even trying to just equal other OECD countries.
  • Ididntdothis 7y ago
    Yes. It's the "greatest country to ever have existed" but whenever it's behind in something it's impossible to fix that because it's too big, too diverse or something else.
  • mikeash 7y ago
    Taking it further, does this mean we should break the country into a bunch of small ones so we can all be better off?
    • rayiner 7y ago
      We wouldn't all be better off. We would just end up comparing Maryland or Massachusetts to Switzerland and Sweden.
  • bcoates 7y ago
    It's not a policy issue, just a statistical artifact. From variance alone you'd expect the US to be middle of the pack, and smaller countries to make up the extremes on any metric you can make up. Particularly if, as in the case of the OECD, you're essentially cherry-picking high performing, smaller countries. You can't usefully compare ratios where the denominators differ that wildly. If you want to measure the difference between Canada, nordic countries, the US, etc., you need to cluster them into reasonably-chosen and mostly uniformly-sized chunks, collect your metric on each chunk, and compare the distribution of chunks across systems of government/countries/etc. This would actually result in a statistically valid comparison. That's a lot more work and as far as I know nobody ever does it.
• somethoughts 7y ago
  Yes, in some senses it'd make more sense to compare a Nordic country like Finland to greater Silicon Valley in terms of population and GDP at least. - Silicon Valley pop is 3-4M and Finland is 5M - Silicon Valley GDP is $275B is higher than Finland $251B https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/30/silicon-valley-wealth-second-richest-country-world-earth https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/30/silicon-v... Its better to compare the US to the EU.