upvote

points

by pjerem1 days ago |
comments
upvoteby WarmWash1 days ago|
next
[-]
>Actually, I'm baffled at how US performs poorly for their people given they have abundant energy.

You feel that way because the media (and the internet) is hyper focused on the bottom 50% of Americans. The households with 2 people earning <$40k per year each.

If you look at the higher brackets (you have to look because "Americans in the 75th percentile live great" is not a clickable story) America is a better place to live if you work a job that pays well.

The plots for "comfortable living vs income" in the US and Europe are different, and that difference is endlessly arbitraged and any boring news day to pump out another "Life in Europe is better" story.

reply
upvoteby pjerem1 days ago|
parent|
next
[-]
Sorry but I don't share your view. A society where the bottom 50% can't live a decent life is just dysfunctional. I don't care which country is best for the riches (and actually, Europe is good for the riches), I care that the economy is there to allow everyone to live a decent and meaningful life.
reply
upvoteby WarmWash1 days ago|
parent|
next
[-]
The issue is that "decent life" is a benchmark that (besides being subjective) is set relatively rather than absolutely.

So being in the bottom 50% in the US sucks when you look around your country, but is actually pretty "decent" when you look around your planet.

reply
upvoteby 0xDEAFBEAD1 days ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
This perspective implies that you should be vigilant to keep out poor or unskilled immigrants who might struggle to afford the quality of life you require for citizens.
reply
upvoteby 0xDEAFBEAD1 days ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
>You feel that way because the media (and the internet) is hyper focused on the bottom 50% of Americans. The households with 2 people earning <$40k per year each.

Poverty in the US is similar to poverty in Sweden, according to this dataset:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/poverty-share-on-less-tha...

But the median American earns far higher wages than the median Swede:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income

I think there is just a lot of misinformation out there. Americans love to complain, and other countries love to criticize the US. These effects create systematic misconceptions which no one bothers to fact-check.

reply
upvoteby WarmWash1 days ago|
parent|
[-]
I mean the real unspeakeable secret is how the American mid-high-middle-class/upper-class has so effectively turned financially transparent despite being the wealthiest group in the country. The 65% to 99% are just an absolute hulking bag of cash.

The battle in the US is between the mid-low-middle-class/lower-class and the 1%. Which is just so incredibly effective at diverting attention from where all the actual money is. When you can pull your head out of the swamp of social media and fountains of clickbait/class ragebait, there is this huge elephant sitting in the room with it's finger over it's mouth doing the "shhh, be quiet" motion.

reply
upvoteby 0xDEAFBEAD1 days ago|
prev|
next
[-]
>Actually, I'm baffled at how US performs poorly for their people given they have abundant energy. Norway and Iceland also have abundant energy and their people are seeing the benefits.

Norway produces oil at Saudi Arabia levels per capita:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-prod-per-capita?count...

The US has about 70x the population of Norway, hence far lower per-capita production.

reply
upvoteby gedy1 days ago|
prev|
[-]
> I'm baffled at how US performs poorly for their people given they have abundant energy. Norway and Iceland also have abundant energy and their people are seeing the benefits.

It's just a totally different scale of comparison that does not work - those Nordic countries are smaller than many counties in US states. It's like comparing Iceland to Santa Barbara, etc.

reply