> "I'm not buying the argument that a regular person in the most powerful economy on the planet is having a harder time than the ones in the tiny countries ...

> "I'm not buying the argument that a regular person in the most powerful economy on the planet is having a harder time than the ones in the tiny countries ... because of a 1% drag" ... that's OK, since I never made that argument. What I'm arguing is simply that statistics that don't correct for population/immigration trends aren't going to give you a complete picture. You're not comparing directly comparable situations. > "Americans have forgone universal health care, a strong social safety net, free or cheap higher education, all in the pursuit of a better economy and higher personal incomes." Americans have foregone those things, opting for crappier, more expensive, and less universal variants of those things, mostly in the name of refusing to compromise while actually compromising in entirely moronic ways. There is no sense in which the government has done a good job of crafting programs to be efficient and therefore to improve the economy or personal incomes. (Personally, I'm a fan of the "basic income" as the foundation for a strong safety net, as well as more efficient systems of education overall. It's in one sense more extreme and in another sense less extreme than what's common in Europe. But we'll never get it because everyone would rather play political football and end up with compromise solutions that are the worst of both worlds.) [EDIT: going out of town for a week. You may have the last word if you so desire.]