7 ms·

>obesity, healthcare costs per capita Yep, healthcare is garbage. >transportation infrastructure This is subjective. Most Americans care more about roads tha

>obesity, healthcare costs per capita Yep, healthcare is garbage. >transportation infrastructure This is subjective. Most Americans care more about roads than public transportation. >housing costs In all but the most expensive metros, US housing is way cheaper per sq ft than most Western European nations. This is partly due to urban sprawl due to the love affair with cars, but it is cheaper. >gap between rich and poor Richer middle class than most other countries. Just because the US is a good place for business and a bad place to be poor says very little about the average experience. >gun-related deaths Yep, that comes with gun ownership. Many people are knowingly making that trade-off. You'd want to compare murder/suicide rates with other countries for any meaningful comparisons.

aqme28 7y ago
> Yep, that comes with gun ownership. Many people are knowingly making that trade-off. You'd want to compare murder/suicide rates with other countries for any meaningful comparisons. And our murder rate is pretty bad, likely thanks to our extremely high rate of gun violence.
- Retric 7y ago
  While over 2/3 of US Murders involve guns. You can exclude gun violence only from the US numbers and the US still has a higher murder rate than the UK. So, it’s likely a major factor but hardly the root cause.
  - CapricornNoble 7y ago
    Keep in mind that private citizens in the United States possess roughly 35-40% of all small arms ON THE ENTIRE PLANET, with more than double the per capita ownership rate of the #2 country (active warzone Yemen). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns/americans-own-nearly-half-worlds-guns-in-civilian-hands-survey-idUSKBN1JE220 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns/americans-own-ne...
Retric 7y ago
US road infrastructure in in terrible shape as measured by commute times, gridlock, and even the direct state of the existing infrastructure.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- closeparen 7y ago
  The median commute time in the US is 27 minutes each way [0]. Lower in less dense and more car-oriented geographies. Our system of decentralized, sprawling, unremarkable towns and "cities" has many problems, but those things are fucking great for commute times. Residents of giant world cities with excellent public transit infrastructure spend much more of each day getting around. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longest-and-shortest-commutes.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longes...
  - Retric 7y ago
    That’s terrible by EU standards or Canadian (24 minutes each way) standards: (page 2) https://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/EN/Publications/IzR/2007/2_3StutzerFrey.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2 https://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/EN/Publications/IzR/2007/2_3St... Edit: The metric they use for that may be slightly different as they put US commutes at 48.8 minutes per day. At which point 2 EU countries have worse commutes. Hungary and Romania. If the daily average for the US was 27x2 = 54 minutes that’s worse than very EU country.
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      > Edit: The metric they use for that may be slightly different as they put US commutes at 48.8 minutes per day. At which point 2 EU countries have worse commutes. Hungary and Romania. If the daily average for the US was 27x2 = 54 minutes that’s worse than very EU country. It's the same method, the CNBC article is just using the more recent survey, so their number is 10 years newer than the one in that report. This, comparing to the non-US numbers in it is not fair. > That’s terrible by EU standards or Canadian (24 minutes each way) standards I don't agree with your definition of "terrible" in the relative sense. Daily, the US number in that report is only 2 minutes higher than the Netherlands, 6 minutes higher than Germany, and 7 minutes higher than Belgium. All three are over 40 minutes per day, so IMO if the US time is "terrible" so are theirs. Ditto the Canadian number, which is only 6 minutes per day less.
grecy 7y ago
> Most Americans care more about roads than public transportation. And the roads are garbage. I brought some friends over from Australia and driving on the US interstates they said "wow.. it's like everything is half finished". > You'd want to compare murder/suicide rates with other countries for any meaningful comparisons. And it's way, way higher than any other developed country. For what it's worth, the The US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility.
- allovernow 7y ago
  >And the roads are garbage. I brought some friends over from Australia and driving on the US interstates they said "wow.. it's like everything is half finished" Uh, the U.S. is huge, with 50 semi independently managed states and thousands of semi independently managed cities. Having lived and traveled all over, most places have roads in good shape - which is an achievement because many of these roads are quite remote. >For what it's worth, the The US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. Though unpopular, it should really be said that almost every one of these problems is isolated to one or two demographics in this country. That therefore is not indicative of a failure at large. If you remove the same couple groups of people from the various statistics, stats for the U.S. in almost every category are at or near the top for the global average.
  - grecy 7y ago
    > at or near the top for the global average Who cares. Why do you want to compare the US to the Central African Republic. At least compare pro teams to other teams on the pro ladder if you want any kind of meaningful comparisons.

aqme28 7y ago

> Yep, that comes with gun ownership. Many people are knowingly making that trade-off. You'd want to compare murder/suicide rates with other countries for any meaningful comparisons. And our murder rate is pretty bad, likely thanks to our extremely high rate of gun violence.

Retric 7y ago
While over 2/3 of US Murders involve guns. You can exclude gun violence only from the US numbers and the US still has a higher murder rate than the UK. So, it’s likely a major factor but hardly the root cause.
- CapricornNoble 7y ago
  Keep in mind that private citizens in the United States possess roughly 35-40% of all small arms ON THE ENTIRE PLANET, with more than double the per capita ownership rate of the #2 country (active warzone Yemen). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns/americans-own-nearly-half-worlds-guns-in-civilian-hands-survey-idUSKBN1JE220 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns/americans-own-ne...

Retric 7y ago

US road infrastructure in in terrible shape as measured by commute times, gridlock, and even the direct state of the existing infrastructure.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
closeparen 7y ago
The median commute time in the US is 27 minutes each way [0]. Lower in less dense and more car-oriented geographies. Our system of decentralized, sprawling, unremarkable towns and "cities" has many problems, but those things are fucking great for commute times. Residents of giant world cities with excellent public transit infrastructure spend much more of each day getting around. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longest-and-shortest-commutes.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longes...
- Retric 7y ago
  That’s terrible by EU standards or Canadian (24 minutes each way) standards: (page 2) https://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/EN/Publications/IzR/2007/2_3StutzerFrey.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2 https://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/EN/Publications/IzR/2007/2_3St... Edit: The metric they use for that may be slightly different as they put US commutes at 48.8 minutes per day. At which point 2 EU countries have worse commutes. Hungary and Romania. If the daily average for the US was 27x2 = 54 minutes that’s worse than very EU country.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    > Edit: The metric they use for that may be slightly different as they put US commutes at 48.8 minutes per day. At which point 2 EU countries have worse commutes. Hungary and Romania. If the daily average for the US was 27x2 = 54 minutes that’s worse than very EU country. It's the same method, the CNBC article is just using the more recent survey, so their number is 10 years newer than the one in that report. This, comparing to the non-US numbers in it is not fair. > That’s terrible by EU standards or Canadian (24 minutes each way) standards I don't agree with your definition of "terrible" in the relative sense. Daily, the US number in that report is only 2 minutes higher than the Netherlands, 6 minutes higher than Germany, and 7 minutes higher than Belgium. All three are over 40 minutes per day, so IMO if the US time is "terrible" so are theirs. Ditto the Canadian number, which is only 6 minutes per day less.

grecy 7y ago

> Most Americans care more about roads than public transportation. And the roads are garbage. I brought some friends over from Australia and driving on the US interstates they said "wow.. it's like everything is half finished". > You'd want to compare murder/suicide rates with other countries for any meaningful comparisons. And it's way, way higher than any other developed country. For what it's worth, the The US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility.

allovernow 7y ago
>And the roads are garbage. I brought some friends over from Australia and driving on the US interstates they said "wow.. it's like everything is half finished" Uh, the U.S. is huge, with 50 semi independently managed states and thousands of semi independently managed cities. Having lived and traveled all over, most places have roads in good shape - which is an achievement because many of these roads are quite remote. >For what it's worth, the The US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. Though unpopular, it should really be said that almost every one of these problems is isolated to one or two demographics in this country. That therefore is not indicative of a failure at large. If you remove the same couple groups of people from the various statistics, stats for the U.S. in almost every category are at or near the top for the global average.
- grecy 7y ago
  > at or near the top for the global average Who cares. Why do you want to compare the US to the Central African Republic. At least compare pro teams to other teams on the pro ladder if you want any kind of meaningful comparisons.