5 ms·

The US is a great example of why GDP is a largely meaningless metric. Yes, the States' GDP is ginormous, and yet it's basically a third-world country masquerad

• wat10000 2mo ago
  Which metrics are those? Things don’t look great for the poorest Americans, but the average American isn’t living a life that’s even remotely third world.
  • rwmj 2mo ago
    Not facing the choice of dying or going bankrupt?
    • wat10000 2mo ago
      What’s the metric for that? The average American has decent health insurance. Our system can be painful and I'm not advocate for it, but the average American is not going bankrupt due to medical issues.
      • spockz 2mo ago
        I know this is anecdotal from what I read here and the few engineers I’ve spoken personally. Having a good job is the only way to get good/decent health care. Even then, there are many surprises in terms of what you have to pay yourself and how expensive certain things are. Basically any chronic disease will be very expensive. And don’t lose your job either because then you can kiss the insurance goodbye as well, kicking you even further down. Potentially deep into debt.
        • anon291 2mo ago
          Not really. I was laid off and my daughter literally cut her finger off requiring expensive surgery and orthopedic stuff and my state covered all of it (over 100k in nominal cost) and our overall tax burden is less than most European countries. To be totally honest a lot of people in America don't apply for public benefits for whatever reason. Plenty of my colleagues decided to pay for cobra instead of using free Medicaid which has a zero copay in my state. In another situation, my brother's high school friends dad was preparing to die from prostate cancer because he could afford treatment. My mom made him sign up for public benefits and they covered everything
          • _DeadFred_ 2mo ago
            The big beautiful bill just cut off 4 million people's insurance assistance including mine. But nice, blame the uninsured people for not having insurance because of... checks notes.. the unrelated programs they don't qualify for that almost all states have for coverage for children. Not a very honest 'to be totally honest' no-example example. You friend's dad will most likely be required to give up his home and assets if he survives the treatment. Many US seniors are now divorcing in order to protect their homes and assets from medical expenses.
        • wat10000 2mo ago
          Being poor enough to qualify for Medicaid is another way to get decent care, but it's mostly true if we take "having a good job" to include being part of a family with someone who has one. The thing is, most Americans do have good jobs (or are in families with one), and do have decent health care. Should people with shit jobs have shit health care? No, and it's very unfortunate that this is how things work. But that doesn't mean we all face bankruptcy for major medical issues. The number of people who do face that should be zero and it isn't, but it's also not the norm.
          • _DeadFred_ 2mo ago
            Actually medical debt is the norm for why people face bankruptcy in the USA. 65% of US bankruptcies are due to medical debt. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-bankruptcies-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b...
            • wat10000 2mo ago
              "Most bankruptcies are medical debt" and "most people do not go bankrupt from medical issues" are completely compatible statements.
          • troupo 2mo ago
            > Should people with shit jobs have shit health care? No, and it's very unfortunate that this is how things work. Coming back to my original comment.
        • deleted 2mo ago
          [deleted]
      • _DeadFred_ 2mo ago
        100,000,000 American owe $220 billion in medical debt. https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute/blog/healthcare-insights/healthcare-insights-how-medical-debt-crushing-100-million-americans https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute/blog/healthc... In the US medical bills are half of all debts sent to collections. 41% of US adults have health care debt, 14 million had medical debts over $1,000 and 3 million had debts over $10,000. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medical-debt-in-the-united-states/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medi... 65% of US bankruptcies are due to medical debt https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-bankruptcies-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b... 530,000 American families file for bankruptcy due to medical bills every year https://balancingeverything.com/medical-bankruptcies-statistics/ https://balancingeverything.com/medical-bankruptcies-statist... Debt burden is strongly associated with increased likelihood of suicide attempt https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33989465/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33989465/ I lost my medical insurance due to the big beautiful bill. It's an interesting change in patriotism when your country says 'you know what, just fucking die because you are rebuilding your life. We don't believe in second chances in the USA'. For millions and millions this country is a ghoulish nightmare.
        • wat10000 2mo ago
          100 million Americans owing $220 billion in medical debt is an average of $2,200 per person. That's too much, but that's not bankruptcy levels of debt. 100 million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in auto loan debt. 530,000 medical bankruptcies per year, in a country of 350 million. That number is too high, but the average American does not go through this. Please understand the difference between saying "everything is great" and "it's not great, but it's not as bad as you say it is." I'm saying the latter, in response to comments incorrectly stating that the average American experience is that major medical issues result in bankruptcy.
          • troupo 2mo ago
            Now add in all the Americans that don't go to doctors to get treated because their insurance doesn't cover it or it's too expensive, and you're again arguing my original comment for me
      • deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
  • sscaryterry 2mo ago
    Dying in the third-world from cancer means you die. Dying in the US from cancer means you probably will bankrupt your family first, and ultimately die faster due to the financial burden/stress.
    • wat10000 2mo ago
      Apparently HN commenters have difficulty with the concept of "metrics." What are the numbers? The US system sucks in a lot of ways, but it works OK for most Americans. If you're very poor, you'll have Medicaid and it'll cost you nothing. If you're an average middle class person, you'll have decent health insurance and your costs will be affordable. There's a slice of people in the middle who don't qualify for medicaid but don't have decent health insurance, and they're going to have serious financial trouble. But most Americans aren't in that situation. There's a tendency to look at the worst situations and assume it applies to everyone. How we treat the least fortunate is extremely important and I won't defend the US here, but there's a pretty big gulf between a significant minority who can face massive financial burdens from medical care, and "it's basically a third-world country...."
      • toasty228 2mo ago
        It doesn't work OK at all, you spend twice as much per capita for worse services on average
      • fridek 2mo ago
        The health care system is the most expensive in the world, while not producing the best life expectancy. It is in fact very much in line with Poland, except if you have $20k/yr in Poland for medical expenses you can expect concierge level treatment. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...
        • nradov 2mo ago
          That's a non sequitur. The healthcare system has very little impact on life expectancy.
  • toasty228 2mo ago
    Childbirth mortality, lifespan-healthspan, murder rate, paid vacation, worked hours per year, job security, etc.
    • wat10000 2mo ago
      Maternal/infant mortality, lifespan, and murder rate are all in a realm I'd call not-great-not-terrible, where we're toward the tail of wealthy countries, but not close to the average of the third world. Those also tend to correlate poorly with what we'd generally consider "first/third world." For example, #1 in maternal mortality is Belarus, not generally a country to be envied or emulated. Indonesia has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. Jordan is ahead of many first-world countries. I can't find any info about paid vacation by country. Everyone wants to talk about legislated minimums, which doesn't tell the whole story. The US legal minimum is zero, but the average is definitely not zero. The top country by that metric is Iran, and some other countries near the top of the list include Cambodia, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Overall it appears to correlate very poorly with first-worldness. Worked hours per year, the US is at around the same level as countries such as Italy, Australia, and Ireland, and substantially lower than places like Greece, Poland, and Taiwan. Job security also appears to be on the same level as peers. According to https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/oecd-countries-by-job-security.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/oecd-countries-by-job-se..., the US is a bit worse than Denmark and New Zealand, and a bit better than Ireland and Finland. I'm not seeing it.
      • _DeadFred_ 2mo ago
        Yeah, us American's don't even want lower Childbirth mortality, longer lifespan-healthspan, lower murder rates, paid vacations, lower worked hours per year, job security, etc. Those things are just for crappy countries. You sure defended the heck out of our big, beautiful, great again, rapidly declining shit sandwich. Not sure the euros will buy it (it's a shit sandwich after all) but we can feel less bad about our declining numbers/values/social contract. All we need is this lamp. And that's it. And this deck of cards. But that's all we need. We don't need those other things. And this, this paddle game. This lamp, and this deck of card, and this paddle game. That's all we need. None of those other things listed. We don't need none of that. What do you think we Americans are, some kind of jerk or something? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VbI5zcB8Ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VbI5zcB8Ac
  • cherryteastain 2mo ago
    Looking at more holistic metrics, the lowest HDI US state (Mississippi) has a HDI of 0.868 [1], around the level of Argentina/Uruguay/Oman [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...
    • kcb 2mo ago
      Holistic...chooses one single state.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_regions_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_regions_by_Huma... Guess France is a third world country too.
    • wat10000 2mo ago
      This somewhat counters the idea that Mississippi is comparable to the middle of the EU pack based on per-capita GDP. But the comment I replied to said that the entire US is "basically a third-world country masquerading as a first-world one." The HDI of the US according to your links is #17 in the world, tied with New Zealand, and just above notable third-world hellholes like South Korea, Austria, and Japan.