4 ms·

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
  - wat10000 2mo ago
    I'm looking at facts. If someone tells me that the US qualifies as a third-world country based on metrics, and those metrics don't support the claim, I'm going to point that out. I'm sorry if this upsets you. (Not really.) Should we do better? Absolutely. Are we a third-world country based on the listed metrics? No. There are plenty of things that are actually wrong with this place without making up stuff like Americans working more and having worse job security than first-world countries.

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
- wat10000 2mo ago
  I'm looking at facts. If someone tells me that the US qualifies as a third-world country based on metrics, and those metrics don't support the claim, I'm going to point that out. I'm sorry if this upsets you. (Not really.) Should we do better? Absolutely. Are we a third-world country based on the listed metrics? No. There are plenty of things that are actually wrong with this place without making up stuff like Americans working more and having worse job security than first-world countries.