6 ms·

>> The scale of social problems in the US is on a whole other level. True. Just for some comparison, if Finland was a metropolitan in US, it would be ranked 10

>> The scale of social problems in the US is on a whole other level. True. Just for some comparison, if Finland was a metropolitan in US, it would be ranked 10th. Above Phoenix metro and Below Atlanta Metro. I understand the good intentions of people trying to show case 'Scandinavian countries' as a model. They miss many things including Scale.

redeeman 3y ago
yes, so economies of scale
Jedd 3y ago
> They miss many things including Scale. Yes, it's very easy to completely miss scale, as well as missing sensible priorities, etc, and embrace a mantra of exceptionalism as a convenience. Apropos ranking, the United States spends more on military / defense than the next 10 countries combined.
- cvwright 3y ago
  Yes, we pay to defend Europe from Russia, and we do it for free. We should stop doing that, and invest more in domestic needs.
  - piva00 3y ago
    No, you pay to continue having hegemony over multiple continents. Don't call American military spending in any sense some kind of altruism, it's done to keep the USA power and money floating around.
    - sremani 3y ago
      The early reasoning was to not repeat the mistake of the two world wars -- where American kids had to bleed in a European conflict. Of course, US got involved because so much money was lent to allies etc. There is a reason -- why Algeria is not there in "North Atlantic" treaty Organization but Estonia is. Let us not pretend here, America treats Europe differently and with in Europe, UK differently. There are cultural and institutional bonds -- of course layers of Geopolitical and strategic interests. But the boys, who are dreaming Americans picking their marbles and going home should really be careful what they wish for, because it might actually come true.
    - cvwright 3y ago
      > No, you pay to continue having hegemony over multiple continents. Sure, it's that too. It's both. Regardless, it should stop.
      - piva00 3y ago
        > Regardless, it should stop. I don't see how that could happen after the US pushed for globalism, globalism inherently requires keeping trade routes protected from interference, the moment the US pulls out from providing protection is the moment where these routes start to erode. If you are ok with all the impacts that will have in your life, go for it, I'm all in for less American interference around the globe. You just need to be aware that the life you are used to (if you live in the USA) will be vastly different after this.
  - Jedd 3y ago
    > Yes, we pay to defend Europe from Russia, and we do it for free. If 'we' is the USA, then I'd suggest the USA pays to maintain a very lucrative industry, and as far as anyone can tell, they pay way over the going rate, and have very poor book-keeping. The idea that some older equipment, rather than being retired or disposed of, is being sent to Ukraine, as somehow being exclusively a defence of a distant place, and 'for free' feels asymmetrical to reality. The USA has some serious risk / concerns coming out of this conflict - not so much petroleum products, but certainly iron ore, argon, neon, cobalt, etc. That's the practical resource based risks, and then there's the whole regional stability, opportunity to assist in the downfall of an enemy empire, etc etc. > We should stop doing that, and invest more in domestic needs. If 'we' is the USA, then I suggest you won't stop doing the former, and you won't start doing the latter. In the past twelve months the USA's sent US$30B (list price) of equipment to Ukraine. That's out of an annual budget of around 1,900B (or 845B) depending if you're looking at resources or obligations, but either way, 30 is a small component of that. For context, the most recent US DoD audit identified at least 220B worth of equipment that they simply can't determine the whereabouts of. So, yeah, I reckon the USA could look after its own interests by sending some equipment to Ukraine and address homelessness within its own borders, if it really wanted to.
    - cvwright 3y ago
      Helping an impoverished country that has been actively invaded is one thing. Providing decades of national defense as a service is quite a different thing. Especially when the beneficiaries are some of the richest nations in the world.
  - jimnotgym 3y ago
    You do it for...free? OMG, you can't actually believe that? I live in the UK. We have an independent nuclear deterrent that we buy off the US for billions. We have plastic fighter jets we buy from the US at over $100m a pop. We have every credit card payment taxed by Visa and Mastercard. We allow US companies to operate here tax free, destroying local business. When I was a teenager in the 1990s we finally managed to pay the US for selling us WW2. The US took our gold and the rights built military bases on a bunch of strategic islands. They left us as a vassal state. The US base their front line in the UK against Russia so we get wiped out first. We are a buffer zone for the US defence of itself against Russia. The US protects Europe 'for free' in the same way that the UK 'protected' India 'for free'. Your (rather common) attitude will be the eventual downfall of the US empire. Every time the US acts as the world's arsehole (like by electing a protectionist moron as president) it loses legitimaticy. You also find Europe starts buying gas from Russia and turning a blind eye to its military adventures. When it starts looking bad for the US they turn up like 'Team America', blow up our gas connections to Russia and magically find cheap gas to sell us instead.
    - hasseldahoff 3y ago
      > When I was a teenager in the 1990s we finally managed to pay the US for selling us WW2. The US took our gold and the rights built military bases on a bunch of strategic islands. They left us as a vassal state. I find this attitude ironic. If you didn’t engage in this trade there is high likelihood you would not have survived the air battle waged by the German Air Force. Also the debt wasn’t repaid until 2006. And the implied threat that you’ll buy Russian gas (and become dependent on it) because we elected a shit-talker? Lol. Salty tears all around, except without a valid reason.
  - RalfWausE 3y ago
    Yeah, you (as in the US) should do that, and please take every US soldier in europe with you. We (as in central europe) either have nuclear weapons (France, Britain) or could easily build them (Germany)
    - jimmydddd 3y ago
      I hope we do. But there is a powerful military-industrial complex fighting against this outcome.
piva00 3y ago
Scale... Isn't the USA supposedly federalised states? So each state has a small enough scale to solve its issues, with an added benefit that countries in the EU don't have as easily: a federal government that can work to provide funding, coordination and national-level programs to solve the issues. The closest to that coordination is at the EU level itself which is much more complex and less powerful than the federal government of the USA. I really dislike when American exceptionalism gets to the point of brushing away any kind of role model that could be used as an inspiration to be adapted to American needs as "it won't work because we are different". Guess what, every nation and society is different. Learn from others what worked, adapt to your local needs, that's how progress works. The USA has the largest economy in the world, there's plenty of money that other countries lack for solving social issues. The main issue is allocation, American society does not think that solving social issues is worthy enough so you don't invest in it. After experiencing all the side-effects of such negligence them comes the exceptionalism excuse, that the scale is different, that X, Y or Z are hard because of A, B, C, so on and so forth. It's just an excuse, a lame one at that. Yeah, Nordic countries don't have a large population, as a whole there's around 28 million people across the Nordics (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland), with around US$ 1.8T of GDP. Texas in the USA has 29 million people with US$1.8T GDP in a much smaller area than all the Nordics combined, with better weather, why the fuck can't Texas be like the Nordics then?
- yunohn 3y ago
  I’m not supporting the idea of USA exceptionalism, but scale /absolutely/ does matter. I’ve lived on most continents, and currently in the EU, I can see when even small increases in load on services leads to total breakdown. There’s a reason they are unable to sustain amidst immigration.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Of course it matters, that's why I brought up the point that each state in the USA is supposedly small enough to have local governance, that they have enough state-level freedoms to solve localised problems and exactly why I compare the scale of Texas to all of the Nordics as they are very similar in GDP and population.
scotty79 3y ago
Do you mean that Phoenix Metro and every other place smaller should have fixed their homelessness as well as Finland or better already?
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  Not the op, but yes why not?
- sremani 3y ago
  That is not the point. But I will assume good faith here, Alaska is the one state that has similarities with Scandinavia. In terms of both weather and resource extraction. Is Alaska doing worse than Scandinavia when dealing homeless?

redeeman 3y ago

yes, so economies of scale

Jedd 3y ago

> They miss many things including Scale. Yes, it's very easy to completely miss scale, as well as missing sensible priorities, etc, and embrace a mantra of exceptionalism as a convenience. Apropos ranking, the United States spends more on military / defense than the next 10 countries combined.

cvwright 3y ago
Yes, we pay to defend Europe from Russia, and we do it for free. We should stop doing that, and invest more in domestic needs.
- piva00 3y ago
  No, you pay to continue having hegemony over multiple continents. Don't call American military spending in any sense some kind of altruism, it's done to keep the USA power and money floating around.
  - sremani 3y ago
    The early reasoning was to not repeat the mistake of the two world wars -- where American kids had to bleed in a European conflict. Of course, US got involved because so much money was lent to allies etc. There is a reason -- why Algeria is not there in "North Atlantic" treaty Organization but Estonia is. Let us not pretend here, America treats Europe differently and with in Europe, UK differently. There are cultural and institutional bonds -- of course layers of Geopolitical and strategic interests. But the boys, who are dreaming Americans picking their marbles and going home should really be careful what they wish for, because it might actually come true.
  - cvwright 3y ago
    > No, you pay to continue having hegemony over multiple continents. Sure, it's that too. It's both. Regardless, it should stop.
    - piva00 3y ago
      > Regardless, it should stop. I don't see how that could happen after the US pushed for globalism, globalism inherently requires keeping trade routes protected from interference, the moment the US pulls out from providing protection is the moment where these routes start to erode. If you are ok with all the impacts that will have in your life, go for it, I'm all in for less American interference around the globe. You just need to be aware that the life you are used to (if you live in the USA) will be vastly different after this.
- Jedd 3y ago
  > Yes, we pay to defend Europe from Russia, and we do it for free. If 'we' is the USA, then I'd suggest the USA pays to maintain a very lucrative industry, and as far as anyone can tell, they pay way over the going rate, and have very poor book-keeping. The idea that some older equipment, rather than being retired or disposed of, is being sent to Ukraine, as somehow being exclusively a defence of a distant place, and 'for free' feels asymmetrical to reality. The USA has some serious risk / concerns coming out of this conflict - not so much petroleum products, but certainly iron ore, argon, neon, cobalt, etc. That's the practical resource based risks, and then there's the whole regional stability, opportunity to assist in the downfall of an enemy empire, etc etc. > We should stop doing that, and invest more in domestic needs. If 'we' is the USA, then I suggest you won't stop doing the former, and you won't start doing the latter. In the past twelve months the USA's sent US$30B (list price) of equipment to Ukraine. That's out of an annual budget of around 1,900B (or 845B) depending if you're looking at resources or obligations, but either way, 30 is a small component of that. For context, the most recent US DoD audit identified at least 220B worth of equipment that they simply can't determine the whereabouts of. So, yeah, I reckon the USA could look after its own interests by sending some equipment to Ukraine and address homelessness within its own borders, if it really wanted to.
  - cvwright 3y ago
    Helping an impoverished country that has been actively invaded is one thing. Providing decades of national defense as a service is quite a different thing. Especially when the beneficiaries are some of the richest nations in the world.
- jimnotgym 3y ago
  You do it for...free? OMG, you can't actually believe that? I live in the UK. We have an independent nuclear deterrent that we buy off the US for billions. We have plastic fighter jets we buy from the US at over $100m a pop. We have every credit card payment taxed by Visa and Mastercard. We allow US companies to operate here tax free, destroying local business. When I was a teenager in the 1990s we finally managed to pay the US for selling us WW2. The US took our gold and the rights built military bases on a bunch of strategic islands. They left us as a vassal state. The US base their front line in the UK against Russia so we get wiped out first. We are a buffer zone for the US defence of itself against Russia. The US protects Europe 'for free' in the same way that the UK 'protected' India 'for free'. Your (rather common) attitude will be the eventual downfall of the US empire. Every time the US acts as the world's arsehole (like by electing a protectionist moron as president) it loses legitimaticy. You also find Europe starts buying gas from Russia and turning a blind eye to its military adventures. When it starts looking bad for the US they turn up like 'Team America', blow up our gas connections to Russia and magically find cheap gas to sell us instead.
  - hasseldahoff 3y ago
    > When I was a teenager in the 1990s we finally managed to pay the US for selling us WW2. The US took our gold and the rights built military bases on a bunch of strategic islands. They left us as a vassal state. I find this attitude ironic. If you didn’t engage in this trade there is high likelihood you would not have survived the air battle waged by the German Air Force. Also the debt wasn’t repaid until 2006. And the implied threat that you’ll buy Russian gas (and become dependent on it) because we elected a shit-talker? Lol. Salty tears all around, except without a valid reason.
- RalfWausE 3y ago
  Yeah, you (as in the US) should do that, and please take every US soldier in europe with you. We (as in central europe) either have nuclear weapons (France, Britain) or could easily build them (Germany)
  - jimmydddd 3y ago
    I hope we do. But there is a powerful military-industrial complex fighting against this outcome.

piva00 3y ago

Scale... Isn't the USA supposedly federalised states? So each state has a small enough scale to solve its issues, with an added benefit that countries in the EU don't have as easily: a federal government that can work to provide funding, coordination and national-level programs to solve the issues. The closest to that coordination is at the EU level itself which is much more complex and less powerful than the federal government of the USA. I really dislike when American exceptionalism gets to the point of brushing away any kind of role model that could be used as an inspiration to be adapted to American needs as "it won't work because we are different". Guess what, every nation and society is different. Learn from others what worked, adapt to your local needs, that's how progress works. The USA has the largest economy in the world, there's plenty of money that other countries lack for solving social issues. The main issue is allocation, American society does not think that solving social issues is worthy enough so you don't invest in it. After experiencing all the side-effects of such negligence them comes the exceptionalism excuse, that the scale is different, that X, Y or Z are hard because of A, B, C, so on and so forth. It's just an excuse, a lame one at that. Yeah, Nordic countries don't have a large population, as a whole there's around 28 million people across the Nordics (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland), with around US$ 1.8T of GDP. Texas in the USA has 29 million people with US$1.8T GDP in a much smaller area than all the Nordics combined, with better weather, why the fuck can't Texas be like the Nordics then?

yunohn 3y ago
I’m not supporting the idea of USA exceptionalism, but scale /absolutely/ does matter. I’ve lived on most continents, and currently in the EU, I can see when even small increases in load on services leads to total breakdown. There’s a reason they are unable to sustain amidst immigration.
- piva00 3y ago
  Of course it matters, that's why I brought up the point that each state in the USA is supposedly small enough to have local governance, that they have enough state-level freedoms to solve localised problems and exactly why I compare the scale of Texas to all of the Nordics as they are very similar in GDP and population.

scotty79 3y ago

Do you mean that Phoenix Metro and every other place smaller should have fixed their homelessness as well as Finland or better already?

kwhitefoot 3y ago
Not the op, but yes why not?
sremani 3y ago
That is not the point. But I will assume good faith here, Alaska is the one state that has similarities with Scandinavia. In terms of both weather and resource extraction. Is Alaska doing worse than Scandinavia when dealing homeless?