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The USA was defined by how superior it was to the rest of the world, how their companies were the best and standard of living the highest. I still remember an e

The USA was defined by how superior it was to the rest of the world, how their companies were the best and standard of living the highest. I still remember an episode of the Simpsons laughing at how few dollars you get in exchange of a bunch of foreign coins and bills. That reality does not exist anymore. Reaganomics, discussed in the book, and low taxes in the USA created a lack of investment for the past three decades. Meanwhile Europe has become the place in the world with the higher standards of living, and China the fastest-growing economy. Both thanks to investing in infrastructure, education and health care. How to solve it? It is hard. I am from Spain, a former empire, and there is still people that does not want to accept that Spain relevancy in the world is pretty low (even that it lost its colonies more than 100 years ago). Can the USA catch up with the new reality fast and recover? Or does it needs to sink lower before taking action?

doggodaddo78 5y ago
American Exceptionalism After about 1970, cognitive dissonance carried it further than could be delivered as excellence in all things declined. Self-deception is about all that remains when many things are honestly comparable to a third-world country. The only way to "solve" it is if the "patient" wants to admit to it and then wants to solve it. There's too much false pride (future hubris) preventing self-reflection.
- ElViajero 5y ago
  > if the "patient" wants to admit You are being down-voted. So, I guess that the answer is "no, we do not want to admin any problem" , at this moment, here in Hacker News.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    I've been noticing similar downvoting recently for calling out too America-centric topics recently so I'm inclined to agree
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    I downvoted. I did so because of this line: > many things are honestly comparable to a third-world country. I do not believe that to be an accurate assessment of the situation. It feels accurate, to some people, but it's a distorted view of reality. Which lets you classify me as "no we don't want to admit any problem", and write me off. I'd encourage you not to do that, for two reasons. First, I've been seeing a pattern here on HN rather frequently lately: Someone states fringe view X as being obviously correct, and states that everyone is willfully blind to not acknowledge it. This gets downvoted. The author then points to the downvotes as proof that people are willfully blind (and therefore that X is in fact correct). But this ignores that X can be downvoted because it is obviously incorrect, or just because the author is being a jerk. You cannot use downvotes to confirm anything other than the fact that you were downvoted. Second, assuming that everyone who disagrees is a fool or acting in bad faith is how you trap yourself in a filter bubble. But the question remains: Are you actually right, or actually wrong? Trapping yourself in a filter bubble means that, if you're ever wrong, you'll never find out.
- akie 5y ago
  I've seen that referred to as "Post-imperial delusion", and I believe it explains Brexit as well as Russia's belligerent behavior. Britain lost its super power status less than a century ago, Russia only in the 1990s. There are apparently quite a few people in these countries that have yet to accept that they are not as relevant as they once were, and who long for any kind of action to restore their country's status to what they think it should be. Very dangerous.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  > After about 1970 Yes, the moon landings were peak-USA. Never mind that we were mired in "world-building" in Southeast Asia as well.
redis_mlc 5y ago
> Both thanks to investing in infrastructure, education and health care. Reality about China: - does not have health care unless you're CCP or you can pay cash - residential infrastructure (7% of economy) is "tofu buildings" that won't last 5 years - 340,000 Chinese university students are in US. Not a good look to me.
jl2718 5y ago
> lack of investment What? You’re grasping. If you want to see the problem, compare government budgets and look where all the money goes.
- tr_user 5y ago
  They probably mean non-military investment?
  - asah 5y ago
    IMHO it's complicated: US military spend includes tons of R&D, including stuff far from direct weaponry. Sure, it's a small % of the budget, but still vastly more R&D spending than most countries.
  - CyberRabbi 5y ago
    >55% of the federal budget goes toward social services and welfare. <11% goes to military spending. There is no lack of investment, just obscene mismanagement, at best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2020_US_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2020_US_Federal_Budget_In...
    - mountainb 5y ago
      Entitlements are an 'investment' into loyalty to the federal government and the system it presides over. The military is cheap by historic standards. The entitlement system is so expensive that it stymies any significant federal policy ambition that requires resources. Our political leaders generally gave up on trying to reform entitlements in the 2000s (when it was last a TV dinner issue), so instead most just try to distract from the issue with trivia. Thinkers these days tend to be frightened about trying to come up with alternative, more cost-effective ways to secure the loyalty of the population. The default position is to just not bother shifting away from the inevitable path to failure, because letting it fail might be an easier way towards creating consensus for a solution than trying to avert the failure. If the system fails because of collective inaction, no faction can be directly blamed for the failure (so the thinking goes).
bontaq 5y ago
I think the split happened before Reagan. About the closest we got to raising the standard of US society even higher was Roosevelt's second bill of rights speech in 1944: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights#Roosevelt's_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights#Roosevel... Now we fight over some fraction of a part of one of his ideas, like lowering medicare eligibility to 60. It's mildly depressing to consider where we could be.
- taurath 5y ago
  The great society programs by LBJ should not be ignored. It created Medicare and Medicaid. They declared a war on poverty. They stopped people from littering literally everywhere.
nivenkos 5y ago
> Meanwhile Europe has become the place in the world with the higher standards of living Umm what? Have you seen the salaries and house prices in the EU. Their average salary is about $150k for software engineers, in the EU it's about 50k. None of the taxes or any other differences make up for that. Americans have got it easy.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  You do realize there are other people than software engineers?
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  Yeah OP is just factually incorrect here. On paper many countries are poorer, and on the ground you can see standard of living is either worse or slightly worse. Sure there is less corruption in EU healthcare, but outside of that sector Americans get better homes, cars, and disposable income.
  - mebassett 5y ago
    OP is correct, actually. I am not sure how you define or measure "standard of living" but common measurements include human development index [1] and quality of life index [2]. by both measurements the US lags behind many european countries. life expectancy in the US has been declining [3]. and the corruption in US healthcare is massive [4], especially considering that it can be three times more expensive for worse outcomes, and because it takes up such a large portion of the economy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... [2] https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j... [3] https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6753 https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6753 [4] https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html PS Am a US citizen who lives in the UK and travels (or did precovid) to the east coast and west coast of the US and to EU capitals regularly.
  - smhost 5y ago
    > besides for healthcare Ignoring people's actual health in exchange for more expensive things seems like a backwards metric.
AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
LOL. Lower class Americans have as much disposable income as middle class Europeans. Our poorest states are as rich as or richer than your average European nation.
amadeuspagel 5y ago
> Reaganomics, discussed in the book, and low taxes in the USA created a lack of investment for the past three decades. In the last three decades, three trillion dollar companies - Amazon, Google and Facebook - were founded in the US. > and China the fastest-growing economy. It's a lot easier to grow fast if you just have to catch up.

doggodaddo78 5y ago

American Exceptionalism After about 1970, cognitive dissonance carried it further than could be delivered as excellence in all things declined. Self-deception is about all that remains when many things are honestly comparable to a third-world country. The only way to "solve" it is if the "patient" wants to admit to it and then wants to solve it. There's too much false pride (future hubris) preventing self-reflection.

ElViajero 5y ago
> if the "patient" wants to admit You are being down-voted. So, I guess that the answer is "no, we do not want to admin any problem" , at this moment, here in Hacker News.
- rob_c 5y ago
  I've been noticing similar downvoting recently for calling out too America-centric topics recently so I'm inclined to agree
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  I downvoted. I did so because of this line: > many things are honestly comparable to a third-world country. I do not believe that to be an accurate assessment of the situation. It feels accurate, to some people, but it's a distorted view of reality. Which lets you classify me as "no we don't want to admit any problem", and write me off. I'd encourage you not to do that, for two reasons. First, I've been seeing a pattern here on HN rather frequently lately: Someone states fringe view X as being obviously correct, and states that everyone is willfully blind to not acknowledge it. This gets downvoted. The author then points to the downvotes as proof that people are willfully blind (and therefore that X is in fact correct). But this ignores that X can be downvoted because it is obviously incorrect, or just because the author is being a jerk. You cannot use downvotes to confirm anything other than the fact that you were downvoted. Second, assuming that everyone who disagrees is a fool or acting in bad faith is how you trap yourself in a filter bubble. But the question remains: Are you actually right, or actually wrong? Trapping yourself in a filter bubble means that, if you're ever wrong, you'll never find out.
akie 5y ago
I've seen that referred to as "Post-imperial delusion", and I believe it explains Brexit as well as Russia's belligerent behavior. Britain lost its super power status less than a century ago, Russia only in the 1990s. There are apparently quite a few people in these countries that have yet to accept that they are not as relevant as they once were, and who long for any kind of action to restore their country's status to what they think it should be. Very dangerous.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
> After about 1970 Yes, the moon landings were peak-USA. Never mind that we were mired in "world-building" in Southeast Asia as well.

redis_mlc 5y ago

> Both thanks to investing in infrastructure, education and health care. Reality about China: - does not have health care unless you're CCP or you can pay cash - residential infrastructure (7% of economy) is "tofu buildings" that won't last 5 years - 340,000 Chinese university students are in US. Not a good look to me.

jl2718 5y ago

> lack of investment What? You’re grasping. If you want to see the problem, compare government budgets and look where all the money goes.

tr_user 5y ago
They probably mean non-military investment?
- asah 5y ago
  IMHO it's complicated: US military spend includes tons of R&D, including stuff far from direct weaponry. Sure, it's a small % of the budget, but still vastly more R&D spending than most countries.
- CyberRabbi 5y ago
  >55% of the federal budget goes toward social services and welfare. <11% goes to military spending. There is no lack of investment, just obscene mismanagement, at best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2020_US_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2020_US_Federal_Budget_In...
  - mountainb 5y ago
    Entitlements are an 'investment' into loyalty to the federal government and the system it presides over. The military is cheap by historic standards. The entitlement system is so expensive that it stymies any significant federal policy ambition that requires resources. Our political leaders generally gave up on trying to reform entitlements in the 2000s (when it was last a TV dinner issue), so instead most just try to distract from the issue with trivia. Thinkers these days tend to be frightened about trying to come up with alternative, more cost-effective ways to secure the loyalty of the population. The default position is to just not bother shifting away from the inevitable path to failure, because letting it fail might be an easier way towards creating consensus for a solution than trying to avert the failure. If the system fails because of collective inaction, no faction can be directly blamed for the failure (so the thinking goes).

bontaq 5y ago

I think the split happened before Reagan. About the closest we got to raising the standard of US society even higher was Roosevelt's second bill of rights speech in 1944: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights#Roosevelt's_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights#Roosevel... Now we fight over some fraction of a part of one of his ideas, like lowering medicare eligibility to 60. It's mildly depressing to consider where we could be.

taurath 5y ago
The great society programs by LBJ should not be ignored. It created Medicare and Medicaid. They declared a war on poverty. They stopped people from littering literally everywhere.

nivenkos 5y ago

> Meanwhile Europe has become the place in the world with the higher standards of living Umm what? Have you seen the salaries and house prices in the EU. Their average salary is about $150k for software engineers, in the EU it's about 50k. None of the taxes or any other differences make up for that. Americans have got it easy.

dmitriid 5y ago
You do realize there are other people than software engineers?
deregulateMed 5y ago
Yeah OP is just factually incorrect here. On paper many countries are poorer, and on the ground you can see standard of living is either worse or slightly worse. Sure there is less corruption in EU healthcare, but outside of that sector Americans get better homes, cars, and disposable income.
- mebassett 5y ago
  OP is correct, actually. I am not sure how you define or measure "standard of living" but common measurements include human development index [1] and quality of life index [2]. by both measurements the US lags behind many european countries. life expectancy in the US has been declining [3]. and the corruption in US healthcare is massive [4], especially considering that it can be three times more expensive for worse outcomes, and because it takes up such a large portion of the economy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev... [2] https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j... [3] https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6753 https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6753 [4] https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html PS Am a US citizen who lives in the UK and travels (or did precovid) to the east coast and west coast of the US and to EU capitals regularly.
- smhost 5y ago
  > besides for healthcare Ignoring people's actual health in exchange for more expensive things seems like a backwards metric.

AlgorithmicTime 5y ago

LOL. Lower class Americans have as much disposable income as middle class Europeans. Our poorest states are as rich as or richer than your average European nation.

amadeuspagel 5y ago

> Reaganomics, discussed in the book, and low taxes in the USA created a lack of investment for the past three decades. In the last three decades, three trillion dollar companies - Amazon, Google and Facebook - were founded in the US. > and China the fastest-growing economy. It's a lot easier to grow fast if you just have to catch up.