5 ms·
The OP is about wealth, not life expectancy.
by JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
The OP is about wealth, not life expectancy.
- tossandthrow 4mo agoIf you move health care out of the US economy (as it largely is in the EU), you are at quite similar gdp.
- JCTheDenthog 4mo agoNope, even adjusting for health care costs the average American is still roughly 20-40% richer than the average European. This may come as a shock to you, but roughly 20% of Americans are on Medicaid, our state-sponsored healthcare insurance. America does actually provide healthcare for its poorest citizens.
- tossandthrow 4mo agoSource? When I run the calculations and take vacation, health, education for the median person they are close to similar. But these calculations does not take into consideration: less noisy cities, walkable neighborhoods, longer life expectancy, higher quality food, better workers protections, education, etc. An honest study would need to include the value of the commons. > roughly 20-40% richer This is likely wrong. Americans have better purchasing power, but are not necessarily richer.
- hnav 4mo agoThe standard of life you get is one you can afford. GDP PPI does a better job of capturing this than GDP, but better yet look at how long people live. The best raw GDP is gotten when you drive your working class until they collapse and die and thus is a shitty metric for measuring quality of life unless that means the ability to acquire globally manufactured trinkets to you.
- JCTheDenthog 4mo agoAmericans have homes roughly twice as big as European homes, and a far higher percentage of Americans are homeowners than Europeans. Home ownership rates are within a few percent of each other too.
- hnav 4mo agoPart of the reason we're fat as fuck is that giant parcels of land make driving everywhere mandatory.
- JCTheDenthog 4mo agoBetter then living in a crowded city where they let rabid hobos attack you on the bus with effectively no consequences.
- mplanchard 4mo agoNobody ever gets assaulted or murdered in the country, eh?
- JCTheDenthog 4mo agoAt far, far, far lower rates than in the city, so I really don't know what argument you thought you just made. I live in the countryside. In 2018 our small neighboring town of about 13k residents had their first murder since 1965, and none since. That works out to about 0.12 homicides per 100,000 residents annually. By comparison, Baltimore has 22 per 100,000 annually.
- hnav 4mo agoBaltimore is also like top 10 nationwide for murder, you might as well have cherry-picked some Southern city like Birmingham to really drive the point home. The odds of you being murdered in NYC are 1/10th of dying in your car in Mississippi.
- 4mo ago
- Epa095 4mo agoI guess this is the difference between people existing for the betterment of the economy vs the economy existing for the betterment of people.
- JCTheDenthog 4mo agoAnd which do you think is which? Whatever the "intent" of either the US or EU economies, the US has produced far greater wealth and material prosperity for its citizens than Europe has for its citizens.
- hnav 4mo agoMaterial prosperity. Euros don't have the newest iPhones, 3 row SUVs or a gas dryer that gets your load of laundry crispy in 30 minutes flat. They have third spaces, public transit that actually covers cities/intra-city transport and in southern countries actual food (for now).
- Epa095 4mo agoAnd infant mortality rates 2/3 of the USA.