← Back to context

Comment by khriss

12 hours ago

> its no accident that the U.S. is the number one economy

Sure, it's the largest by GDP, but how much of that GDP is filtering down to the regular people? Are Americans, on average happier and have better life outcomes than other developed nations?

9 comments

khriss

Reply
tick_tock_tick  11 hours ago

> but how much of that GDP is filtering down to the regular people?

An absolutely insane amount. It's ridiculous just how wealthy and the quality of life the average American has compared to the world.

> Are Americans, on average happier and have better life outcomes than other developed nations?

Yeah for the most part they are in the same ballpark.

  • krige  9 hours ago

    > An absolutely insane amount. It's ridiculous just how wealthy and the quality of life the average American has compared to the world.

    I've been there last year. This is absolutely not true compared to Europe, including post-soviet states. Might have been true a few decades back maybe. Of course, we can argue that the US citizens have it made compared to someone in Kenya (do they?) but that's not the spirit of the question, is it?

    • randysalami  4 hours ago

      Depends where in Europe. Lots of Europeans suffer so other Europeans can prosper. Add to the fact that Europe still benefits from imperialism and that Europe is facing an existential crisis, I would take be the average American long-term.

    • carlgreene  4 hours ago

      I mean it is pretty clear if you look at the data around purchasing power of the median earner (~$44K/yr in US) the US is significantly higher than most EU countries.

yamillove  9 hours ago

So much that millions of people risk their lives or leave their families to come to this country. By this objective metric, it's literally the best country in the world's history.

Is there another country that comes close?

  • khriss  5 hours ago

    If you read my comment, I asked if Americans are happier than people in developed countries. How many million Europeans, Canadians or Australians are risking their lives to come to the US?

    Sure, if you're from say, Haiti, even the US will look very attractive, but the bar is pretty low there, wouldn't you say?

  • ndr42  7 hours ago

    The reason someone has to risk his life to get to the US could be because the US is the greatest country, at the same time you could also consider the influence that the US in its history has had on other countries so that the life of the people are miserable there.

    (e.g. backing and installing dictatorships[1], contributing massively to climate change, ...)

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship_of_Chile

  • hvb2  9 hours ago

    Migration isn't a US problem. Europe has it too. So as a country probably not, but that's also because the US is big and has a large land border to the south.