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I promise I'm not downvoting you despite our disagreements -- I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. I'm not disputing that other countries are more egalita

I promise I'm not downvoting you despite our disagreements -- I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. I'm not disputing that other countries are more egalitarian than the US, and it's more comfortable to be poor in countries like Norway or New Zealand (ranked higher on the IHDI) than the US. But I'm willing to bet that almost all, if not all, of the countries higher than the US on IHDI are net immigrants to the US. This data is surprisingly hard to find, but the couple that I did manage find (Ireland, France) supported my viewpoint. If anyone has a table of net migration by country pair, it would be marvellous. So clearly something is still drawing people to the US, even from countries that are more egalitarian than the US. This "planetary pressure-adjusted HDI" thing sounds completely made up ;-) but by your same logic, if the US is doing poorly by virtue of it being ranked around Ukraine, then apparently Luxembourg is truly awful, ranked 153rd around the likes of Afghanistan and DR Congo. And I'm sure only very few people would choose to live in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, or Saudi Arabia over the US, given the same relative impact on the planet; in fact, when it comes to people's own lives, practically everyone chooses (metaphorically) "drill, baby, drill!".

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Well, they could choose to live in a country that score high on all of the indices, like Germany. The northern EU immigrants to the USA are generally a small amount of highly educated workers. And it's unlikely they're moving to Missisippi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_net_migration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
- prottog 4y ago
  To Germany's credit, they are the second biggest receiver of international immigrants, only behind the US which take in almost a full fifth of all. But between Germans and Americans, the net gainer was the US for the past 30 years[0], though with the gap narrowing in recent years. Granted, those are small absolute numbers and may not indicate much, but still, if Germany is that much better than the US, why are consistently more Germans choosing to live in the US than the other way around? [0]: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2020/10/PE20_N068_12411.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2020/10/PE20_N068_12411.htm...
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    If I had to chose one factor I'd say lack of language skills. It doesn't really change the fact that America is squandering its many advantages and seems unaware of how poorly it's doing compared with what it could be doing. You could make a reasonable case today for wanting to be born in China rather than the US. That should embarrass the US but instead they've recently latched on to a very convenient belief that China will implode in the next five years. And they've been saying that for decades because it's been obvious for that long how embarrassing it is to be caught up so fast and need an excuse that isn't just them at fault for their own problems. "Oh China only did so well because we gave them all this stuff and they cheated and copied us, not at all like how we ripped of IP from Europe in our own history". No instead were celebrating well known, tragic failure Mississippi because it has a number higher than another number if you carefully avoid all context.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Well, they could choose to live in a country that score high on all of the indices, like Germany. The northern EU immigrants to the USA are generally a small amount of highly educated workers. And it's unlikely they're moving to Missisippi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_net_migration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

prottog 4y ago
To Germany's credit, they are the second biggest receiver of international immigrants, only behind the US which take in almost a full fifth of all. But between Germans and Americans, the net gainer was the US for the past 30 years[0], though with the gap narrowing in recent years. Granted, those are small absolute numbers and may not indicate much, but still, if Germany is that much better than the US, why are consistently more Germans choosing to live in the US than the other way around? [0]: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2020/10/PE20_N068_12411.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2020/10/PE20_N068_12411.htm...
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  If I had to chose one factor I'd say lack of language skills. It doesn't really change the fact that America is squandering its many advantages and seems unaware of how poorly it's doing compared with what it could be doing. You could make a reasonable case today for wanting to be born in China rather than the US. That should embarrass the US but instead they've recently latched on to a very convenient belief that China will implode in the next five years. And they've been saying that for decades because it's been obvious for that long how embarrassing it is to be caught up so fast and need an excuse that isn't just them at fault for their own problems. "Oh China only did so well because we gave them all this stuff and they cheated and copied us, not at all like how we ripped of IP from Europe in our own history". No instead were celebrating well known, tragic failure Mississippi because it has a number higher than another number if you carefully avoid all context.