Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD

>"Consumption" figures are also misleading.

I don't see why they would be, generally speaking.

"it’s very difficult to look at a country where the typical person lives in a larger house, is more likely to own a car, eats more meat, and uses more electricity than people in other rich countries, and to conclude that this is “a poor society”." https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/no-the-us-is-not-a-poor-societ...

>In monetary terms, Americans consume more health services than anyone else, yet have fallen behind in life expectancy

US life expectancy has little to do with our healthcare system. See https://xcancel.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1641799742228144130#...

>The prosperity of the average worker did not begin to stagnate when NATO was formed, but indeed decades later

My claim is simply that NATO is not key to our prosperity. Post-NATO stagnation, insofar as it exists, is quite compatible with that claim.

>Switzerland is entirely surrounded by the EU, and its economic prosperity depends on access to the European Common Market.

None of the objections in this paragraph would apply to a more geopolitically neutral US. The US economy is large and relatively self-sufficient. Imports and exports are a relatively small fraction of our GDP.

>nuclear missiles Russians tried to set up on Cuba

...after we set up missiles in Turkey...

The Cuban missile crisis demonstrates the danger of American belligerence, and the importance of us being more peaceful, less paranoid, and more neutral.