Looking at the stats clearly the US needs a little more nanny state to generate better outcomes for the bottom half of the country. But equally europe needs more appreciation of self-reliance and entrepreneurship to enable a richer startup culture and let the EU become an economic leader instead of follower.

I think, though know this is anecdotal, US startup success is based largely on its market size of both consumers and venture capital.

Is Peter Thiel comically uninformed?

Incidentally, you probably don't want to drag body counts into a conversation that's teetering on the brink of a larger critique of capitalism. Unless, that is, you'd like to review deaths world-wide from preventable illness due to lack of access to healthcare? In the US alone it's estimated to be 45,000 deaths annually. Meanwhile Texas (in all it's staunch conservative glory) has 3rd world infant mortality rates.

Regarding collapsed leftist economies, what percentage of these are attributable to inherent failures of socialist policy vs simple economic sabotage and regime tampering by the US and it's allies? Would you like to review what the CIA has been up to since the 1950's?

Or would you rather simply review the number of times conservative legislators have run afoul of the constitution just in the last 5 years? We can start with the electoral maps of North Carolina getting chucked over illegal racist gerrymandering, and a thick stack of executive orders that have died in a judge's trash can this year.

There are definitely principled conservatives that are highly informed.

But the strategy the Republican party and media uses to win elections, includes a lot of disinformation and caters to the uninformed.

People like to believe their own tribe is the exalted one, but exploiting the uninformed isn't a partisan strategy.

[1] https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2011/04/more-than-h...

Whether comparing very large and very small populations is reasonable is a separate question mind you, but that aside, the comment stands.

I think that's slowly changing. Dutch startups are told to think big nowadays and access to venture capital is also improving.

Nordic startups that focus too much on their local market die. The whole point of startups is to SCALE. This cannot be when the country you live in has less population than greater LA.

What actually happens is that the startups here are "Global-first". They immedietly start talking about branching overseas and meeting with investors that can help them do so.

It's actually the SV startups that can huddle in their bubble for years of time, before doing an easy US wide launch, that already is a huge market.

Even international by default aka pure internet companies like Facebook start as English only and tend to stay that way for a long time.

Uber on the other hand is only useful inside specific cities.

Remember they where .edu only for 2 years even thought they had significant funding. Their core problem was if nobody in Australia signs up then it's boring for the first users in Australia. However, by starting with an EDU focus they could leverage word of mouth to grow a network by location.

The path was starting a Harvard, then other ivy's, then other US collages, then US high-schools. That's clearly designed to leverage exclusivity.

How long was Facebook English only after they got VC?

[1]http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/jan/20/...

Since I moved to San Jose, it's only rained a handful of times, and this place's harsh colds of winter have reached such dreadful temperatures as I'd witness on a mild fall day in my former country of residence.

That certainly can't help those numbers, even if I do think the absurd costs of living are quite bad, depressing the QOL for everyone outside of the engineer class here.

And of those homeless, a fraction of them create the 'bad experience' chronic homeless with drug or mental problems that make most people dislike the homeless.

In San Jose it is 7.8x.

Nationally, it is 3.8x (5.8x in NYC metro).

http://www.burbed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/SFvNational...

Nations are not isolated systems. Comparing national policies as though they didn’t interact gives wrong answers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization

Unless, of course, you're the one who's afflicted, then all of a sudden, it's a great tragedy and it wasn't your fault. In other words, we're full of shit.

We've had great mechanism to address this, namely insurance and savings. The underlying principle here is planning ahead, and sacrificing some of today's sweet instant gratification in exchange for protection tomorrow should you need it. This is a concept that people have seemed to lose sight of, so we're now seeing people want protection today even though they made no sacrifice yesterday. Those people with zero foresight have now ruined it for the people that did plan ahead.

For example, health insurers have been found to have done such things as kick cancer patients off insurance as a pre-existing condition, based on previous general practitioner visits. "Oh, we, and you, didn't know it was cancer at the time, you were just sick. But since you were sick shortly after getting insurance, you most likely already had cancer. Therefore it was a pre-existing condition, you didn't disclose it, whether or not you knew about it, and we are terminating your coverage back to the first physician visit about your illness".

Or "We are refusing to cover the costs of the ambulance/air ambulance ride that ferried you to the trauma center after your MVA, because that ride wasn't pre-approved by a call to the insurer".

Both of the above examples happened. I'm not sure what should have happened in either case, but I'm pretty sure in the latter it wasn't, "Hello, Blue Cross? This is John, I'm a paramedic working on one of your patients who was hit by a truck. We would like to fly him to the hospital due to his extensive multisystem trauma but we need your approval. His name? Hang on, let me find his wallet. No, that's Smythe, S-M-Y-T-H-E, sorry, it's a bit loud with the jaws of life in the background... Yes, I can hold for a nurse consult..."

Health insurance in the US is amortization of costs, and has little to do with risk pooling and actuarials.

Does it? Is the purpose of a nation state to compete with others based on economic metrics? Yes, I know that most countries are doing that, but in a thread where we compare individualism/selfishness with nanny/"charity" state, shouldn't this competition be questioned?

For me, I'd say that society is about taking care of everyone -- government should merely (!) play the role of the administrator in that process.

I always feel that way too many people I speak to think that 'the government' is some kind of independent force, rather than a reflection of what society wants. (Sure, in many cases, it really is a reflection of what a tiny handful of people orchestrate -- but since we're talking idealism here...)

Besides, if the will of the people is to take care of everyone through social services, then why do you need a government to do it? It should just happen naturally. What you are saying, is that a few select people that are chosen by a popularity contest should be given the authority to make people do things against their will.

The question is - cui bono?

Your alternative presumably is the current system, where a few self-selected people, kept in power exclusively by wealth, caste, and social connections - often in defiance of real wisdom or foresight - force everyone else to act in ways that benefit that self-sustaining governing class at the expense of everyone else.

If you want to pool resources collectively in a smaller scale you are just replicating this structure with different powerful people, or different structure of power, but a society will always need it, doesn't matter if resources are money, materials or labour.

Yes, but that's a direct consequence of having an ill-informed, poorly educated , credulous, angry, compliant majority. Societies where the elite are looking to retain their power base will typically channel fewer resources to public education, and more to the institutions that reinforce their own position.

Difficult to undo once it's been started, and (IMO) it's been happening for a very long time in AU, UK, US -- and presumably almost everywhere else that self-identifies as a capitalist democracy.

So, yes, the will of the people can get hairy, but of the two options -- force the agenda of the elite upon everyone else, or work towards a better society -- the preferable option very much depends which of those groups you're in right now.

Also noting that if you're in the uninformed group, you may not recognise that, or think anything needs changing.

Nobody would stop you from helping with your neighbour's hospital bill if you were filthy rich.

Beyond that, it's an insulting way to avoid having a real discussion on this issue. If the charity of the rich were enough to solve this social problem, we wouldn't be talking about it. Why are you participating in these discussions if the only solution you have to offer has been tried and failed for most of human history?

I'm sorry, I was unaware of the existing solution that has succeeded at solving all social problems in the countries in which it's implemented.

If the alternative is not flawless, then one needs to show that the disadvantages of the alternative vs the current situation are outweighed by its advantages over the current system.

So you agree we should stop massive government programs that have always resulted in centralization, bankruptcy, and systemic poverty? Venezuela, Cuba, USSR, Greece, Spain, Italy, China, ... How much more failure do you need to realize Government isnt the answer?

they would be amongst the poorest states by median household income, purchasing power parity, cost of living, and gdp per capita

First, it would seem that all those people are too ignorant to understand how much better their lives would be if they were, for example, living in Michigan. If only we could teach them how unhappy they are!

Second, the claim that the people are "poorer" is not a cogent claim that their countries are failures. Your argument reminds me of something I tell my children:

"Human beings are the most successful form of life on Earth, by all the metrics that humans choose to measure success."

The USA is still the violent prudish religious DIY Wild West compared to most areas in Europe (East-Europe excluded that is more like the USA).

what makes you think that this is reasonable for government to provide? How do you know that the era 1950-20xx is not an anomaly? If you look at the broad scope of history, governments are not very good at doing the things that you suggest they should be doing.

[disclosure: am Canadian]

Pragmatically, the fact that it works well and has reasonably good outcomes in every first world country other than the United States.

I'll let you google and find out which ones.

They seem to work just fine.

Know what's awesome? Knowing that I can break my arm and have it taken care of with virtually no out-of-pocket cost.

Tax-wise, I'm totally speculating here because I don't know the ins-and-outs of the American tax system, but here we go.

https://simpletax.ca/calculator https://www.irscalculators.com/tax-brackets-calculator.php

I'm going off of $85,000USD/$106571CAD (equivalent today according to Google), and using California.

California: total tax paid $25,252.56USD, you keep $59,747USD

Saskatchewan: total tax paid $30,465CAD ($24,308.33USD), you keep $76,106CAD ($60,702.91USD)

So on the same amount of income, we pay about the same as California residents, but all of our health care costs come out of the taxes we've paid. Seems like a pretty good deal, not having to pay any health insurance premiums on top of that.

You're also ignoring the multiple tax breaks available in the US that aren't an option in Canada: mortgage interest deduction, uncapped 401K contribution, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_locations_b... http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/f...

Median family income in California: $70,187 USD Median family income in Saskatchewan: $86,970 CAD ($69,516.86 USD)

The currency conversion seems pretty reasonable. And yes, I'm ignoring the various tax breaks available on both sides, as well as a number of other perks (e.g. 55% paid maternity/paternity leave for 35 weeks). We're in the same ballpark here though.

European politicians prognose bad times because of the demography (too many old persons, too few young persons).

IMO politicians and many experts are very bad at predicting the future. Like many other people, they feel smart when they prognose problems and anounce austerity.

IMO technology and automation could and probably will solve any poverty problem soon enough for most Europeans. Even today, most poverty in the world is a political problem and not a natural or technical necessity.

No, nor is it a right. It's a luxury.

I suggest you revise your argument to one that's more plausible and convincing.

The reality is that the opposite is not just possible, but encouraged - right-wing governments in the US consistently use economic policy to prevent social mobility, economic freedom, and the kind of collective social investment that generates long-term social, political, and economic benefits.

It's all about concentrating economic power among an increasingly narrow sub-group, and economically disenfranchising the rest of the population.

https://www.oecd.org/eco/Decoupling-of-wages-from-productivi...

And I voted for a system like this. Just like my parents, my neighbor, the guy on the corner and my jobless neighbor.

It's not holding anyone back in any way.

Of course there are probably government spending you disapprove of (long-term prison sentences for drugs, war on drugs, "bridge to nowhere", and military/foreign wars are likely candidates)

Everyone disapproves of some government spending, but it involves compromise between differing perspectives on what government should be doing.

Whereas if healthcare was properly regulated, his neighbor could pay for it himself and actually be independent in his community.

I'd rather be independent among my peers and neighbors even if I have to rely on a supra entity to regulate my food quality and organize my warfighting than the other way around. We're all dependent at some level even if just to the past, no matter what "Atlas Shrugged" says.

You're free to donate as much of your income to people in need as you want, but you need to stop thinking you should be able to make other people do the same thing. You may not like it but we have a right to our labor and freedom to spend it how we please.

A good social support system is not detrimental at all to a rich startup culture. It is financed by taxes, and as startup you only need to pay taxes on profit, so you don't bear any additional costs.

If you are in a high-tax state, your employees will pay a lot in taxes, and the cost is passed on to you, their employer. You will need to pay them enough to pay 40% in taxes and have some money left for living expenses.

Which may make your startup (or any business, really) uncompetitive, or even infeasible compared to low-tax countries/states.

There needs to be a cautious balance between providing social support (which I am all for) and overtaxing. For me, the most important part is the amount of tax money that actually goes to benefit the people who need it, rather than the bureaucracy.

In the US, the value we get for our taxes is VERY low.

Well, you could have a "unicorn or bust" strategy, chasing primarily high margin b2b and b2c products so big salaries aren't a dealbreaker.

Of course, I just described the current SV startup scene, including why things like Juicero get funded while affordable real estate development is a comparatively unattractive investment.

The flip side is of course:

If you are in a low-tax state, your employees (or you) will pay a lot for things like health care and retirement, and the cost is passed on to you, their employer. You will need to pay them enough to pay those costs and have some money left for living expenses.

A part of this is cultural (appreciation of self-reliance) but the other half of it (the state-/support-structure-influenced side, let's say) is surely the precise opposite of your suggestion? Countless studies have shown that support structures encourage risk-taking behaviour and entrepeneurship. Even in the US, entrepeneurship will be much more common amongst those with well-educated, supportive family backgrounds - the rags-to-riches stories are certainly highlighted as inspirational examples of the American dream but are minority cases in reality.

Both of you are right. Americans are not more selfish than other nations, individually. Culturally they do tend to hoist self-reliance up on a high pedestal. In theory these traits should be unrelated, more or less.

However, it is a very unfortunate "feature" of the American political system that there are many, many demagogues who take things that are inherently good, virtues one could say, such as self-reliance, and weaponize them to serve the interests of some extremely selfish rich power brokers. Not every time, but in many cases when you hear the word "freedom" in the American political discourse, you might be close to an example of this pernicious distortion of basic notions.

TLDR: Americans, stop obsessing over by now empty slogans such as "freedom", start thinking more about building a society that works well for all its participants.

The general rule in America is that the individual gets all the credit for the great things they do, and doesn’t have to share it with any social inputs/factors—and the individual gets all the blame when society deems them worthless, and society doesn’t have to share any of that blame.

> our culture leaves very little room for appreciating, valuing, revering, looking up to, or attributing positive social accolades to anything but self-reliance.

Our societies are made up by individuals, but we are all in this together. All of us are human beings who are trying their best to succeed in life.

I believe that someone like my father made no known mistake in his life to blame him for his disease (the cause of MS is still unknown), and I have zero understanding for someone who beliefs that he, in his situation, should've ended up on the street, forcing him to be self-reliant. Like, how? He'd have died rather quickly as a blind, homeless man who cannot walk. And his example is just one of the many. I have one word for a society in the 20th/21st century who pushes people towards that path: compassion-less. And I judge a society by the way it treats its weakest links. Because that is a sign of wealth. Not United_States_Dollar-wealth, but maturity of society akin to how a parent nurtures their child. (Its not the same in this context because the child has a chance to succeed in life, but its close, and in case of temporary illnesses its accurate.)

[1] America is bigger than USA, and Europe isn't one nation either. These are caricatures of Europe and America. We're overgeneralizing, in so many ways.

When I say we expect/demand self-reliance, I mean that is the dominant cultural & historical narrative & social expectation here in the US. I do not mean I personally expect or demand that of others as a general rule--but I am expected to. A fair amount of the political division in this country often revolves around where individuals fall on the spectrum of expecting/demanding self-reliance of their fellow citizens. America doesn't care about its poor, homeless, disadvantaged, disabled, and otherwise weaker citizens. In fact, I don't think Americans typically look at such people as citizens at all--or at least not as equals. They are, instead, burdens.

Why is a richer startup culture considered something positive?

Isn't the EU the biggest economy in the world? For now at least, Brexit and all that...

There are economic advantages to a high tax welfare state as well.

Statiticians the world over are rolling over in their graves.

I could give lots of other examples. I'm not sure where this perception about religion is coming from. Maybe in Europe the church is largely dead, but that's not true in the US.

In my experience, those who are most empathetic are generous in spirit, which would include not necessarily revealing to you that they are very religious, as well as in generosity toward those in need.

Societally, not sure it matters much. OTOH, I think it's probably more fair to compare church giving relative to the tax breaks they receive, rather than simply say they give a lot. They do, but it's amplified by a tax deduction, which isn't available to emotionally supporting/empathetic people.

There is, of course, no reason someone couldn't be in both camps, but this comment is long and rambling already.

It’s pretty hard to compare. Perhaps donations isn’t the right measure. What is more accurate?

Anecdotally, the homeless people I've spent time talking to seem to appreciate the conversation (or maybe being treated as a human being?) as much or more than the dollar or two I frequently give.

Utilitarianism might suggest donations as a decent proxy. Can't say I disagree, although I'd like to know how generous churches can be if they didn't receive a tax break.

Mostly the high-profile anti-abortion campaigning (which by extension poisons all women's healthcare and sex education discussions), and homophobia. And the segregation. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/opinion/why-im-leaving-th...

> Maybe in Europe the church is largely dead

"Europe" is a huge place that's a lot more diverse than the US. Christianity is still official state religion in various places; Germany still has tithing baked into the tax system!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/113...

Ireland is in the middle of the long process of evicting its theocracy.

That's only true when you count religious giving.

Now then, yes, there are many, many valid religious charities (and by this I mean organizations, as well as that component of church giving that factors into benevolence).

But by studies performed by religious organizations themselves (who if anything are likely to skew the numbers more positively), across the board, "Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget", and an additional 5% goes to "church run programs" (be it after school care, social or group activities).

If a secular charity - and lets go back to Charity Navigator here - Top Ten Inefficient Fundraisers (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten.detail&...) we see some of the worst charities spending 15% of their donations on "program expenses" (i.e. doing what they are being given money to do).

I'm not familiar with the monitoring of 501(c)3 groups, but I suspect if charities were to regularly spend only one per cent of their givings on what they got to enjoy tax exemption to do, they'd likely have such a status revoked.

And, if you factor in this average percentage (even the six per cent combined, which is generous, as as much fun as social and youth activities are, they're not necessarily serving a critical need), and start to question 'how much money is being spent on 'spreading the word', patting themselves on the back, competitions in Texas to see who can built the world's biggest cross just down the road from where the world's previously biggest cross was built at costs of millions, there comes more and more skepticism of just how highly you can value "giving to your church" on the scale of charitable contributions.

1. PDF: http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/press-releases...

NYC went after them several years ago for exercising their right to refuse to employ openly gay clergy. They wanted to close down SA in NYC despite that SA provided a huge portion of shelters and other homelessness relief (something like 60% by some measure IIRC). And they wanted to pin the blame on SA ("We can't believe you'd force us to shut you down and let all our poor people starve!") when it was clearly their prerogative. They only changed their minds when it became apparent that they would lose the PR battle.

Around that time, someone started a "Let's hate on SA for being homophobic" thread on Reddit, but so many formerly poor people from all over the country (including many LGBT) came forward with their stories of how the SA saved their family from poverty; none of the first hand accounts corroborated the "SA is homophobic" narrative.

If you truly care about social justice, you support SA because they are clearly doing more good than any similar organization in the US; everything else is just social justice fashion.

The homosexuals still receive a disporpotionate amount of hate relative to "other sins", often by people pretending they are not hating as they parrot this phrase.

That misleadingly implies the reasonable plausibility of a coincidence, for example that it is random chance that gay marriage is a nation-wide political topic but the legal status of eating shellfish isn't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fundamentalist Christians have very strong views on certain things that you and I may disagree with, but that doesn't mean that Christianity or religion itself more broadly is a cancer.

For instance, they hate abortion because they view it as murder, which is itself a morally consistent position to take. If you believed abortion was murder I'd hope that you would hate it to.

We just happen to disagree with them on the status of a fetus.

Now their intolerance of certain groups (LGBT people most prominently) itself cannot be tolerated, but their intolerance is more a result of religion being influenced by the status quo of old world values.

As society as a whole becomes more accepting of different people over time, religion will also adopt those values just as successful religions have always done. Viewed in this light organized religion is not a cancer but simply something that must be refined a bit in the context of our changing society.

I find it also surprising that the Christian muscle in this country is immense, they could move mountains, but for over 20 years the only issues which has captivated their national attention have been sexual ones. And now there's this transgender business.

Is there no Christian political consensus to be had on the poor? Why was there national discussion on a constitutional ban for gay marriage during the presidential elections? Did the thought of stopping gay marriage rally the base?

But attitudes about marriage and sexuality are really very small and insignificant aspects of religion as a whole. Politics and culture war have inflamed certain issues in America, but those issues will resolve themselves in time.

Once they do people will have less of a reason to be mad at religion. What I'm cautioning against is conflating frustration towards religious attitudes about particular things that are slowly changing in the present with thr idea that there is something fundamentally wrong about religion itself.

If you made a mistake about something, I wouldn't automatically assume you yourself are broken. I would just help correct you then wish you the best.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-ri...

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/one-nation-u...

In terms of LGBT hate, that's largely an outgrowth of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam etc and their cultural influences. For comparison you need to look at what they replaced, and that's very much a mixed bag.

I would suggest that when you have a large number of options the bust by metric X (Morality) is unlikely to be chosen if it's Metric Y that's used. For the same reason the gold metal winning sprinter is unlikely to also be the best looking.

I don't think that's true. At some point, an abhorrent moral code is going to entail a proposition that is either factually incorrect or inconsistent with itself.

People disagree to the degree killing cows is OK. But, both sides can be consistent based around what lives matter. Classify Group X say Murders, Outlaws, Nazi's, white people, or even humans outside the tribe in the killing allowed category and everything can stay consistent.

Except it's not consistent with basic facts, like the fact that the differences between any group of humans is non-existent. There's also a Kantian argument to be made that killing period, is inherently logically inconsistent.

That's clearly a false assumption. As long as I can identify a group say people who's social security numbers end in 7 then their exists a difference between them and all other groups. Now placing any real value on having a SSN ending in 7 may seem meaningless, but the difference exists.

PS: It could even be useful as a means of load balancing.

That's not a difference, that's an arbitrary classification that has no moral implications.

A meaningful difference with moral implications would be something like one race being superior to another, as the Nazis believed, or some bloodlines being divinely selected, as the Royal family of England once believed. This enables you to argue that one class of people is bound to a different set of moral prescriptions than another.

When arguing that one group of people have different moral prescriptions, then you are implicitly asserting that there is some objective, factual difference between these groups that entails this conclusion. Such differences don't actually exist, ergo, there is no justification for treating them any differently.

Now, assigning meaning to differences is by definition part of a specific moral framework and does not generalize.

To a theoretical "hyper intelligent" 207 dimensional being we may not qualify as sentient. After-all, anything bound by something as meaningless as time is incapable of making decisions and will always respond the same to given stimuli at specific points of space-time. Such linear beings don't actually feel things they simply respond to stimuli much like plants.

AKA Same facts, different interpretation = different moral framework.

PS: Do we save women and children first, or are young warriors more important to long term survival? Same 'fact' different interpretation of that fact.

That's right. The "difference" you pointed out is not a difference of the people themselves, it's a difference in classification in a completely separate system from the people.

If you do pure random assignment then having a 7 at the end of your SSN could make a difference. EX: We rolled a 10 sided die an a 7 came up. On the other hand if you want to maximizing the number of people saved other things may be considered (Age, weight, vision etc).

I am not going to say a specific system is the only correct one in that case, but rather many of the differences you suggest are meaningless could suddenly become meaningful differentiation in a moral system. Further, those differences are not necessarily inherently important outside of that specific system and situation.

  For instance, they hate abortion because they view it as murder, which is itself a morally consistent position to take. If you believed abortion was murder I'd hope that you would hate it to.

While I'm aware that this statement is not 100% true it significantly more often than not seems to be the case.

Note that I don't intend to provoke, or get into a flame war, but I'm really curious about this utterly inconsistent view.

However for those that do support the death penalty while at the same time condemning abortion, it's important to realize that for them there is no inconsistency.

It goes like this: abortion is bad because the unborn are morally equivalent to birthed people (by virtue of their souls), and they are essentially innocent beings.

Criminals are not innocent, and therefore killing them is excusable.

Their belief is not inconsistent because of the role innocence plays. Now you may disregard the importance of innocence here, but that doesn't make their views inconsistent.

  Their belief is not inconsistent because of the role innocence plays. Now you may disregard the importance of innocence here, but that doesn't make their views inconsistent

In that view the possibility of one innocent person being killed should automatically illegitimze capitol punishment. Apparently it does not.

While I can understand the stance of the catholic church I still think that logically you cannot oppose abortion, while supporting the death penalty.

You made me understand, however, that this inconsistency is not applicable to a lot of those people. It doesn't make it logically less inconsistent in my view.

Anyway, thanks for the insight. It's at the very least, very interesting.

> While I can understand the stance of the catholic church I still think that logically you cannot oppose abortion, while supporting the death penalty

I think that the Catholic view is that murder is defined as "intentional taking of innocent human life" and that it is immoral. In this case you are not intentionally taking an innocent life. Similarly in case of abortion, the church does not oppose treatments that could save the mother's life that could cause the child's death. Here, your intention is to save the mother's life, not to hurt the child. The loss of child's life is an unintenional but unavoidable side effect : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_and_the_Catholic_Ch...

When Pope Francis addressed the United States Congress, he was chided by many for denouncing the death penalty which took 23 American lives in 2017, while staying silent on abortion, of which 652,639 took place in 2014.

There are certainly churches, typically evangelical, that are rabidly anti-abortion while promoting the death penalty, but it's less common in Catholic communities or even mainline Protestant denominations.

I believe abortion is murder. However, I also realize it can be medically necessary if the mother's life would be threatened and so it should be permitted in that instance. Now, I don't deny that abortion is economically useful for some because it obviates personal responsibility, but I think that use is murder. There is the tricky situation when rape is involved, and while I still think it's wrong I'm not adamantly against it in that scenario.

I also believe execution is murder. However, for extreme cases I think it is necessary to execute people who have committed the worst of crimes when it can be definitively proven (e.g., rape, torture, and deliberate murder).

So in my mind both are morally wrong, but there are extreme situations where they should be permitted and I think are necessary.

Because babies are innocent by default and murderers are not?

What I've observed in America of late is a lack of religions maintaining social relevance and so increasingly becoming scapegoated by the crazies that hold out. I also consider scientific method to be an unconventional "religion" insofar as it's proliferated enough to have crazies of its own telling people how to live their lives and making dogmatic claims it itself cannot even support (your god isn't real we haven't observed it yet--would sound petty and absurd were the same argument made to counter theorized atomic particles).

It's hard because religions need to take the more difficult moral and ethical stances that no (faction balancing federated democractic) government should take, and like you mention with abortion some of those end up leaking out into the legal system.

Marriage is another thing that's danced the line but I think it falls on the other side: people let it leak into laws, or more accurately it existed in laws as the status quo, when it doesn't belong there. Two gay peole who are truly e.g. Catholic can happily live together and love each other. If they believe the Catholic criteria and definition of marriage they do not seek it. Yet they are fully allowed to openly share their love in any way the church allows for any other unmarried couple. Sexual intercourse, a beautiful enjoyable act in the church's eye, remains for the purpose of procreation and is respected not as a lustful act of pleasure, but as an intensely spiritual experience under the pretext of two married humans creating a child. In practice and due to it being socially progressive and now very safe (old "status quo thought" of abstinence is a good way to prevent spread of disease), of course people have lots of extramarital sex. But those people are not to be shunned, or excluded in most Christian sects. Extramarital sex is no more grave a sin if it between two members of the same sex as were it between a happily engaged heterosexual couple. So marriage is a religious concept that should mostly remain religious. Legally as a society it's probably in our interest to subsidize couples or parties living together (sharing space and resources) and then further subsidize those parties who choose to raise children (of their own or by way of adoption). But man it kills me how many people on both sides brought religion into what was largely a social topic during the whole marriage equality push despite the fact that I agree with the outcome.

So what is the problem? Globalization exposes fundamental radicals easier? Perhaps, but I think in America it's our ingrained social willingness to yield to "prosperous" economic policy that ends up causing the economy to ehm trump human rights. IMO it's a slow trickle of those decisions that has caused us to regress. Why is healthcare expensive, because it must prove its value economically. We don't value health enough (or we value the healthcare industry too much) to make sacrifices required to legally mandate socialized care (we would kill a huge industry, and then it's just a huge expense the government incurs that didn't exist before, lose lose). It's really that simple albeit no less unfortunate, and I personally have the health care industry to thank for most of what I've been given in life. A true doctor will take care of all patients who stumble into the ER whether they get paid market rate or not, it's part of their ethical code. So in that sense we have some sort of basic level of universal healthcare. We just haven't all agreed whether we should pay for your weed and contraception and experimental procedures and more reasonably your preventative medicine (although the business model discourages prevention while selecting for continued consistent doctor visits—another problem) too. And we certainly have failed to convey to the less fortunate an attitude of openness and acceptance and assure them that they will be taken care of to a reasonable extent by our doctors and hospitals. Insurance companies with convoluted policies and systems designed to minimize their payouts certainly don't help paint that picture.

The same thing has happened to education. Both "industries are seen as businesses and expected to run like one (make money). As long as the peripheral participants in these industries (hospital/school executive staff, insurance/loan agencies, etc.) keep demanding we run things like a business, and as long as we as Americans are okay condoning said behavior directly or by proxy of hyper economic political focus, nothing will change. Call me crazy but since when is caring for the health of your neighbor or raising the next generation to be better than the current iteration about making money? Sadly in America, it is.

The difference is that god is supposed to be observable, and isn't. You can look at religious texts and teachings and say "doing this should show that effect", and see that it doesn't.

For theorized particles, they come with "this is how to observe it, we just aren't able to do the experiment yet". And then when research technology reaches the point where we can, someone goes and does the experiment. And at that point, a lack of results absolutely is taken as evidence that whatever particle doesn't actually exist as predicted.

I found about a Unitarian Universalist church in my area and now am considering joining.

In contrast to other religions I've seen, the UU church welcomes everyone no matter their background or who they love. The church I attend has a reproductive task force that helps pregnant women and new moms no matter what they have decided to do with the pregnancy. There is a group that goes to Planned Parenthood in my city to protect women from the protesters. They by diapers for mothers with no money to buy them. They will give rides to doctor appointments for those that need them but can't afford them. They strongly believe we need more sex education and free birth control and that if we have those the need for abortion will be greatly reduced.

So please don't cast your net so widely.

The big distinction for me isn’t whether you believe but whether the focus is internal or external: some people use their religion for self improvement, pushing themselves to be better and help others more; other religions seem to use it as a justification for trying to coerce other people to share their beliefs and to ennoble the hateful things they were going to do anyway. I have far fewer problems with the first group, whereas the latter is completely toxic and increasingly dangerous since they started getting politically active in the 1970s in the backlash to desegregation (abortion wasn’t even an issue until they needed something new to dehumanize the opposition with).

Why should it take 10s of thousands of dollars to get 20 mins of general anesthesia (like it costed me, billed to my insurance)? And what does that cost have to do with "empathy" or "ego" of Americans?

If you make $50,000 per year in the US, which is the median full-time wage, your healthcare is almost entirely paid for by your job. The top 1/3 earns far more than that, they have extremely good coverage and extremely fast access to healthcare - along with easy access to the world's best medical technology and drugs - that is superior to comparable systems in Canada and the UK. The top 1/3 in the US do not suffer from rationed care, as other systems do. That top 1/3 has access to elite doctors, and elite hospitals. That top 1/3 is the wealthiest large group of people on earth, in basically every regard.

That top 1/3 has absolutely no interest in changing the status quo until it no longer works for them.

The elderly in the US also do not want the system changed. In France, Canada, the UK, and many other similar nations old people have highly rationed care access. Whereas in the US, old people drain an immense share of healthcare resources, far out of proportion to comparable nations. Old people in the US are a large voting block, and a rather powerful influence group (AARP etc) in terms of lobbying to keep what they have.

The bottom 1/5 gets free healthcare, and it's OK. In the US, it's primarily the next 20% above the bottom 20%, that suffers when it comes to the existing system (they make enough money from time to time to fall on and off free healthcare, they're trapped in healthcare hell frequently, and they make up a large percentage of the people that declare medical bankruptcies every year).

That's household wage, not full time wage.

I'm confused about the top 1/3 references. You're not comparing like with like at all.

Are you under the impression private insurance is inaccessible to the top 1/3 of Canada?

That can be expanded on with another point, the American dream. If the millionaires tell an American dreamer that something isn't a good idea the dreamer will consider it a roadblock to their own riches.

> What's stopping them accept this is the overlap of media, politicians, rich people (and maybe more, not my area of expertise) telling you that isn't true. The better way is to ignore them, to let money speak not money holders.

Or perhaps this is just not true. See adventured's comment.

And also, why should all Americans prepay in taxes to subsidize 10s of thousands of dollars for one 20 min anesthesia session? Why should they continue encourage these insane health care costs by pre paying for them? How is the country better off this way?

Its a brilliant idea to sell to your citizens as a nation or industrial tycoon... that "we are the greatest because of hard work, hard work implies success, and success implies hard work", and then watch your citizens/employees define themselves by work so that the nation/corporation gets wealthier and more powerful. All the while common sense (or statistics) will tell you that money begets money & power begets power, the rich get richer and the poor usually stay poor. Unfortunately the American Dream idea is not always good for the workers themselves but the people selling the idea were not too concerned about that :) They simply sell just enough mental health care to keep you productive but docile on the side!

I was raised Protestant and am now Catholic. The mainline Protestant churches, the majority of the Catholic church, and every Jewish and Muslim organization I've encountered-- all very much focus on social justice. The USCCB (Catholic bishops) were big proponents of Obama Care before they realized it would contain some clauses that ran afoul of magisterial Catholic teaching. In general, I'd say that religion here has a heavy focus on empathy.

[EDIT: spelling]

Nowadays it seems that a lot of that has died out in most places though...except for like, Utah...

>> Conservative media does a very good job at keeping at least 50% of the country comically uninformed...

goes both ways depending on your "camp". it's funny though how this contradicts your point about US being "divided" since clearly this statement is as partisan as it gets.

>> The "American Dream" gives people the impression that working hard solves everything and that their country is the best in the world period

what's wrong with that exactly?

>what's wrong with that exactly?

I think I can answer this.

The Puritan work ethic is great. Working hard actually does solve many, many problems.

So, why is there an issue? When it is assumed that working hard fixes all problems, then it is also assumed that if there are problems then the reason must be that someone didn't work hard enough to solve that problem. This causes people to dismiss problems as if they know the root cause when they really don't. This is a huge problem.

As for the 'best in the world, period' issue? Well, when you're convinced you are already the best, why work to improve? If there are problems showing, then it must be a fundamental characteristic of life or the situation we find ourselves in (the 'we have a very heterogeneous society so other nation's solutions couldn't possibly work here' argument comes to mind), not that we could possibly need to improve. We're already the best!

Resting on one's laurals. Never a good thing.

In the last 100 years the US has moved much more towards consolidated federal policy. Federal level policy comes with a lot of issues.

First, combining politics with trial and error doesn't work in a 2 party system. 1 party will point out its flaws, while the other party will pretend they don't exist or be defensive about those flaws. The country will be left with people who feel the pain of that problem and those who do not. The ones who feel the pain will vote to end the pain, regardless of anything else. The ones who don't feel the pain won't see the big deal and will focus on other issues...and those other issues will be seen as issues that the other party was voting "against".

The other issue is that with federal policy, the entire country suffers from the consequences of issues. Once the legislation is in place, it's nearly impossible to change or remove so if you think there MIGHT be an issue you're better off voting staunchly against it.

State level policy doesn't suffer from this issue. With 50 states and a national idea that all policy should be state level, we'd have 50 experiments. If one state tried something and it worked, other states would research what they did and follow suit. If it didn't work, they'd stay away. Or try something new. County/City level is even better.

That's why when people were selling the ACA as "what Romney did in his state" were missing the point. The point was that was state level...so other states could follow if they wanted. It didn't mean that should be the policy at a federal level. The entire point was that it was a state level policy.

At the federal level and in the election, Hillary wouldn't even acknowledge there were problems with the ACA and IMO that is what cost her the election, because new premium letters started coming out just before election and there was a lot of pain to go around.

When it comes to cost-sharing schemes the bigger the pool the better -- costs are more predictable the more people are in the pool.

I agree with the general idea that laboratory democracy is a good idea but health care costs, 'insurance' etc. are well understood and best handled at the largest level possible.

Hillary acknowledged problems with the ACA but believed that it needed to be patched, not re-written from scratch.

I agree. A few patches that would have a big impact:

A national public option to force competition (along with cross-state selling of insurance -- but not one without the other or at least that cross-state selling of insurance must be done across all states if offered that way) would go a long way to pushing competition and reducing perverse incentives that the ACA created with the 'profits based on percentage spent on care' scheme.

Redefining full-time employees as full-time equivalents for defining thresholds within the law. This was a flat-out mistake that pushed some employers to do some very silly things.

Create incentives for patients to shop around for the best cost of care.

Require some level of transparency in pricing even if it is only common treatments and tests.

The mandate would have to stay. The choice is, have a mandate and force people to buy insurance they need or don't have a mandate and force people who buy insurance to pay for the health risk of those who mistakenly believe they shouldn't have to pay for their own.

When a lot of people don't want the policy at all it becomes a cost forcing scheme though...and that's the crux of the problem.

If this was California legislation and it had problems, local politicians in California would be campaigning to make the changes right now. The question of how long we're going to be stuck with the current issues is where the federal flaw lies. It removes the ability of people to adapt and react to problems. The larger pool is a negative when the pool size expands the scope of issues.

Before the ACA those that paid for insurance were forced to shoulder the cost of those that didn't. Now, those who think they don't want to pay for health insurance are forced to pay one way or another (though I think the penalty is too small).

I find it hard to feel bad for people that don't want to pay for their own health risk or who think they don't have any.

I still believe a more open market would be a "better" solution, with a tight safety net to maintain standards across economic levels, but as that is unlikely, fixing the glaring issues with the ACA seems like a good starting point.

There is no reason we can't pursue both simultaneously. Nothing in the ACA prevents posting of price lists or incentivizing patients with cash payouts for finding cheaper than average care.

That is what has driven me crazy about politics -- it is more about making noise about the other side than actually doing something that might push things forward. Republicans could have pushed open market reforms the moment ACA was passed. If they did it on a state by state level they could even point to data of success vs pure ACA states to bolster their agenda.

Not anymore. The new tax law removed the individual mandate.

Trump seems to think it will lead to the ACA falling apart. He might be right but only as part of the entire current insurance system falling apart around it. I really don't know what the intention was, there. As simple as fulfilling a campaign promise no matter the cost?

This sounds like you think that political pointscoring drives up health care costs, but the UK & AU both have strong, long histories of two-party politics & have much lower health care costs.

Other countries like the UK and AU will typically have the ruling party in control of a majority. The US seems to almost always be running some sort of minority government due to loss of one of either the senate or house.

That's not my understanding or experience, and I'm a voter for both. The number of governments where the ruling party controlled both chambers is fairly rare. AU elects the upper chamber on a different schedule to the lower, so often a new government (in the House of Reps) will face an opposition-controlled Senate. I think this is the same as the US system.

The UK has it worse with the House of Lords, which aren't elected and thus won't ever change hands directly from a General Election result.

Also note that the voting tradition in AU is that if Labour gains control of the Federal government, then the Liberal/National Coalition generally gains control of the state legistlatures (and vice versa).

Perhaps you mean that a UK or AU lower chamber facing a hostile upper chamber is still functional and productive compared to the equivalent in the US. I think the threat of blocking supply or a vote of no confidence (or in the AU, a double dissolution) helps these governments be more willing to compromise with their opponents & pass legistlation, in the absence of a majority.

> some sort of minority government

A minority government is a rather specific term, and can be easily misunderstood when used to refer to an opposition-controlled upper house (which doesn't ever really exist in the UK). Could you please be more specific?

But the US politcal climate is sick right now. Partisanship has become very extreme.

But ... AU / UK doesn't have quite the 'two party politics' that I think parent was referring to. In your follow-up you even acknowledged that there are two parties in coalition in AU now. Traditionally they've been aligned, but they're separate parties. Parties outside the three most popular have substantial followings, and are definitely not fringe, like they appear to be in the US. Actual independent representatives are also not uncommon.

In the US, each federal election consistently comes down to the choice between two people.

In AU, ostensibly the house of representatives will select the leader from amongst themselves, once they themselves have been voted in. Normally this has a predictable outcome, but I think we're slowly moving away from that -- in the most recent federal election around 25% of voters did not vote for one of the two major groups.

This ratio is growing, and my (perhaps naive) hope is that we're slowly heading towards something closer to actual democracy here in AU. Either way it's kilometres ahead of the US political scene, even if it's currently populated by personalities aspiring to similarly cynical behaviour.

I also note that you say you vote in both countries, but twice misspelled the Australian Labor Party as Labour.

The state-level parties of the Liberals and Labor are also separate parties to the federal counterparts, but there's no point specifying that, as they too traditionally align with each other to form a unified whole. There's also Country Liberal parties, and so on.

To the vast majority of the electorate, there is no difference between the Liberal party & the coalition. It's not 'tradition', it's a political agreement reached long ago in the best interests of the supporters of those parties to avoid complete dominance of Labor at all state and federal levels. The agreement is re-affirmed at every election.

> * Parties outside the three most popular have substantial followings, and are definitely not fringe, like they appear to be in the US*

The Greens, the Hunting and Shooting party, Family First (fundamentalist Christian), One Nation (racist)? Most voters would consider them fringe; their share of the vote reaffirms that. Only the Democrats had the wide support and prestige to be considered a legitimate choice, and they're defunct. Third-parties & independents don't stop AU from being a two-party system. No one would claim that the Conservative-lead coalitions in the last two General Elections means that the UK is not a two-party system.

> This ratio is growing, and my (perhaps naive) hope is that we're slowly heading towards something closer to actual democracy here in AU.

I would say it is extremely naïve to expect a Westminster-derived government to move to the consensus-style coalition governments of Europe without fundamental change. The majority requirements for legislation means only block-voting is feasible. Simply counting the number of parties and ignoring the mechanisms which allow factions to push legislation in the face of opposition is a poor rule-of-thumb for classifying if a system is two-party or not.

> I also note that you say you vote in both countries, but twice misspelled the Australian Labor Party as Labour.

How on earth does my terrible spelling relate to my point? Or does the political topic of my comment make an ad hominim a valid response? What pomposity!

GP was also suggesting there were several factors at play in terms of resolving their health care problem, this being only one of them.

Indeed, the divisiveness that manifests from the US system was the key point there.

I may be naive, but my facts stand - 25% of Australians in the last federal election did not vote for either of the two major parties (or party + coalition if you prefer).[1] This number is trending upwards, and current party politics failing here and abroad are unlikely to turn that around any time soon.

Compare the USA, where 92% of voters were evidently happy to pick from one of two people. [2]

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-03/election-results-histo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

I exercise regularly, eat healthy, keep the amount of sugar/glucose I consume to a minimum, keep alcohol and drug use in check and I don't smoke. Those are MY life choices. Nobody forced me to do any of the above. I choose to live this way because I want to remain healthy and hopefully life a long, healthy life.

So why do I ask the question of "Why should I pay for your health care"?

If an individual smokes regularly, eats McDonalds weekly or more, does not exercise or even attempt too, does not get adequate sleep, is morbidly obese for a large portion of their life (due to their decisions above), and regularly partakes in a large amount of alcohol and drug use, it is almost CERTAIN that their cost of health care, especially later in life, will be magnitudes higher. Those are decisions THEY made. Not me, not the government, themselves.

So no, I will not pay for your healthcare when you make the decision to live a life like that. Take responsibility on yourself. Want to ignore your body? Fine, but don't make me pay for it.

Unfortunately, a larger percent of our population is obese, which is one of the largest causes of other complications that end up costing our healthcare system a considerable amount. If we could focus that money into solving health issues that are not the cause of an individuals' actions, we would have cancer solved by now. But no, we spend it on the guy who is 55 and weighs 450 lbs because he ate fast food every fucking day for the last 25 years. No. Just No.

1) Your example ignores accidents that happen: people get sick even when they've got healthy lifestyles, people are hurt in accidents, etc. Sometimes you have a baby prematurely born that has to stay in the NICU for months, already running up a $1 mil bill before they've even come home. Childhood cancers.

2) A lot of what gets people unhealthy is also things that they aren't aware of. We've only in the past 5-10 years had more awareness of just how much sugar is in EVERYTHING. Same goes for chemicals, pesticides. These are all choices that consumers haven't actively made, but were made for them by money'd interests.

3) Would you say the same about your parents? About your loved ones? About your children that ate too much candy, or drove too fast in their teenage years? Probably not.

My opinion is that American society (of which I'm a part of) has gone too far in the direction of individuality and "I've got mine, screw you" – and we're all suffering for it. We no longer think as a collective, but instead just look at everything through the lens of ourselves. Healthy people included. You just don't know it yet.

So taking that into account now, is it still a bad example? Should I pay for somebody's lung cancer treatment after they have smoked a pack or more a day for the last 30 years? We have been well aware of the risks with smoking and we can almost for certain say the lung cancer has a high correlation to the 30 year smoking history. So yes, that person knowingly made that decision, why do I have to pay for it?

I'm sorry, but there has to be consequences for peoples decisions. We can't all grow up eating fast food, smoking, drinking, watching Netflix and getting fat knowing that our long term healthcare costs per individual that chooses that lifestyle will be astronomical. Society can't afford that.

Also, we are learning more and more about just how much being obese affects the rest of your health. Along with more correlations in the causes of cancer. Yes, there are many things we do not know, and I do not fault anyone for that. But a large percent of health issues and the costs associated with those in America are VERY well known and VERY much preventable. Period.

I would never want the government to step in and say, no you can't eat that twinkie because your BMI is over a certain level. I will always advocate for an individuals right to make a decision for themselves. However, if they know the risks and consequences associated with those decisions and still choose to make them, why in hell would that burden fall on the rest of the society?

I think you need to go read, or re-read, Adam Smith's book, The Wealth of Nations, or the principles of enlighten self interest. You have the wrong mindset that taking personal responsibility for your own actions is a "I've got mine - screw you" thing. Suffering? The freedom for individuals to make their own decisions and why we are a prosperous nation in the first place. It's why people came here. What do you propose as far as going in the right direction of individuality? Limiting consequences of known actions? Forced government redistribution? Maybe I just live in a very nice state (Texas), but down here, we do take care of our neighbor. We do help one another when in need. I would even say we do so more today than ever before. However when you knowingly do something on your own accord that is risky, you will pay for the consequences, not your neighbor. Maybe we should just take the approach of, hey, I know you smoked for 30 years knowing it will kill you eventually and will cost a ton in medical bills... and we told you that every single time you took a cigarette out of the pack, but we'll cover that cost for you! Hey, we know you were fully aware that when you robbed that store that the risks of getting caught were high and the consequence is going to jail, but you know what? We'll pay that for you too and you're free to go. You can't remove consequence from the decision making process, it's human nature.

As a society, we decided we are (generally) ok to pay for a road even if someone speeds or drives drunk on it, or we are fine to pay for good public education even if many kids drop out of school, because on the whole, these things are a net benefit to society when more of the population can take advantage of it.

Why isn't healthcare one of those things? I used to date a woman who grew up in Canada, and she talked about how strong dental care was there, where all the kids were taught the right habits for dental care automatically. IT didn't matter what money you had, you all had access to not only good dental care, but also information about what makes your teeth go bad, etc.

Similarly, in the US maybe we would actually have less obesity with a combination of preventative care and more education about some of these things. I'm not saying we'd eradicate it of course. But we'd most definitely have less.

I can't imagine someone would be even more irresponsible with their health if medical care was free. Only because the opposite isn't true (people aren't less reckless just because medical care is so expensive)

The problem is government (as I will attempt to explain), so the solution can not be more government.

Healthcare started to go very wrong in this country when the government stepped in [1].

Because of tax laws, it became more economical for employers to provide healthcare insurance. This has all sorts of consequences.

1) I don’t pay the premiums, so it doesn’t matter how often I go to the doctor. It is essentially free to me.

2) I’m not price sensitive about the service the insurance pays for and I’m not price sensitive for the premiums paid by my employer.

3) Having customers who are not price sensitive reduces incentives to lower prices.

Then there are the government regulations that limit the supply of healthcare services[2].

Then there’s out out of control sue-happy society who are encouraged to sue everyone if they don’t like their outcome[3]. We need tort reform.

The problem with Europe is that you guys don’t seem to understand the difference in scale, culture, and demographics between our situations.

You guys have small nations with homogeneous cultures. So, you’ll have to excuse us for not taking your advice.

The closest you’ve come to rivaling the US government is the EU and look how well that’s going. It’s a hard problem and we’re actually doing pretty good.

1- http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/09/understandin...

2- https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...

3- https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2010/09/07/the-true-c...

Elasticity of demand goes both ways.

States like mine (Texas) have instituted tort reform. What happened? Insurance prices stayed the same and the insurance companies pocketed the difference. Also, hospitals had far less incentive to self-police their employees so we ended up with a lot of bad doctors and surgeons blithely continuing their malpractice.

As for scale: cost-sharing scales phenomenally well. Larger scale is an argument for national healthcare in the US.

I've never understood the perceived mechanism between the 'culture and demographics' argument.

To be clear, I’m talking about the cost/benefit. If the cost is $0, then that equation is out of balance. There are literally people going to the ER for a stomach ache. I’m only going off of personal experience here.

You made a few interesting assertions about TX without references. Could you please site statistics for the increase of malpractice since tort reform went in place?

Looking for myself, I only found articles refuting your assertion about insurance premiums [1].

1- https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southcentral/2013/09/0...

"...find no evidence of reduced spending in Texas post-reform, and some evidence that physician spending rose in Texas relative to control states. In sum, we find no evidence that Texas’s tort reforms bent the cost curve downward."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5701901/

"...our conclusion is that reforming the malpractice environment has largely insignificant economic implications for health insurance markets."

So, I mispoke. Claims went down 75%. Malpractice premiums went down 50%. Yet, overall, medical costs to insurance companies and consumers rose at the same rate as everyone else.

http://www.wfaa.com/news/prescription-for-disaster-is-the-sy...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/texas-legal-do...

And, finally, here are the numbers of cases referred to the Texas Medical Board for investigation.

http://www.tmb.state.tx.us/dl/63D5291E-982C-D14C-B266-8983C5...

  medical costs to insurance companies and consumers rose 

But the point, that much lauded tort reform doesn't do much, if anything, to help consumers (and, in fact, could hurt them) in the healthcare space, stands.

If you step back from pedantry and consider ideas rather than pick apart the flaws in the imperfect words used to express ideas, you might find that the world becomes a more interesting place.

  Insurance prices stayed the same

What I meant is that the billionaires maybe doesn't need to uphold the status quo?

I wouldn't say 'many'. The 'top' countries are places like Iceland, Guernsey, Monaco and Cypress which are skewed due to their tiny populations. The only country which can realistically 'compete' in this metric are Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

That being said, if we're talking "The American Dream" then simply measuring the number of billionaires isn't a useful metric. We should really focus on self made billionaires rather than people who became billionaires due to inheritance. On that metric I believe the US still leads the pack.

Healthcare is a price-inelastic good. Not having some form of pricing controls is a licence to rip the heart out of a population.

[0] https://howmuch.net/articles/billionaires-map

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_econ...

Tax havens. The billionaires themselves are usually "citizens of the world" who live in hotels or a series of holiday homes. Countries don't "have" billionaires in any kind of possessive sense any more. Instead they compete in the hope that billionaires will pass through and trickle down some wealth.

Ok, but comparing billionaires isn't then even a useful metric. Let's compare the number of self-made people who are financially independent. I.e. people who doesn't need to work if they wish not to.

I have no if there exists such data, but I would be a bit surprised if the US were leading on that. But perhaps the US is, I have no idea.

Not really clanking down on the US at all btw, I just think most european countries has a better view on work-life balance, social systems like healthcare and school etc. What I wish for the EU would be to put more focus on starting new companies the way the US does. The US is clearly the leader when it comes to that IMO.

As much as the mental overhead of expecting a sales tax on checkout annoys me, I'll suffer through it so that everyone has a constant reminder that the government is taking its cut.

Knowing what the take is for what you buy in person is such a tiny portion of the bigger picture. And with the county/state/federal variations how closely do you keep track of who is ripping you off and who is using the money well?

A friend of mine has a print of a painting showing soldiers around a large container holding goods and money that citizens were being forced to pay in tribute. The central figure in the painting is a man--I think his family is with him. I don't remember whether the painter shows him actually putting something in the container or not, but he's looking daggers at those guarding the tribute and enforcing its collection. That look reflects how people should think of paying taxes, and things like VAT and tax withholding that lull the host into not realizing just how much he or she is being taken for need to go away.

Apparently the anti-tax element of the Republicans are responsible for taxes in the US being much harder to file than in other countries, because they follow your principle that paying taxes should also inconvenience people in an attempt to make them angry about the whole thing.

Presumably they're not supposed to find out who was responsible for making them angry and wasting their time with pointless busywork.

https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

Taxes are never about what YOU want to pay; no one is stopping you from "buying civilization" with your own money, if that is what you want. Rather, taxes are all about what you can make OTHER people pay for your "civilization".

All the things that taxes pay for can be purchased by private individuals and organizations working together of their own free will, and not because they are forced to do so. That is true civilization: civilized people cooperating to build a society where civilized, voluntary interaction, not force, is the norm.

Human beings purchasing things from each other with no legal system? With no property rights? Is this system global, and if not then how do you interact with other nations with their own systems. None of this can exist without someone with a big stick to keep people in line.

That's part of it, but you also need to consider whether these are things the taxpayers would have chosen to purchase on their own, at that price. If that were true, however, then there would be no point in making it mandatory; people would purchase these things on their own. Ergo, taxes, if they have any point at all, must only exist to purchase things taxpayers would not choose on their own, at least not at the prices they are forced to pay.

Depriving others of their property is "criminal behavior" even if the thief provides something the thief considers valuable in return. The key point is not whether you received something in exchange, but rather whether you gave your consent.

> The US is philosophically much more egotistic than other developed countries

A weakness and a strength, see below.

> Politically the US is the most divided western country with its two party system

Political gridlock and fighting is largely irrelevant because the commercial sphere is the real motive force of the country. This point seems especially difficult to comprehend for Europeans accustomed to pervasive state participation in daily life. The vibrancy and diversity of the capitalist economy here is unparalleled.

> Money in politics means it's one of the most corrupt

The corruption flows from America's egotism; money is a red-herring. Political fund-raising is about relative success, not absolute (you just need to outspend your opponent), so the vast amounts in play are simply a function of a zero-sum arms race: American society deploying its ever-growing wealth to buy a fixed quantity of political influence. $1M creates no more obligation than $1000 if the latter is sufficient to win.

> Conservative media does a very good job at keeping at least 50% of the country comically uninformed

This is just silly. Fox News is 95% of "conservative media," and viewership on any given night is 2.6 million people, ~0.8% of the population. Multiply by whatever fudge factor you want to get to total viewership. You've got a ways to go to get to half the country.

> The billionare .0001% will probably do their utmost to keep the status quo

Paranoid, conspiracy-minded nonsense.

> The "American Dream" gives people the impression that working hard solves everything and that their country is the best in the world period.

This is very true, conditional on you being capable. The USA has an immensely deep bench of talent and does an excellent job assimilating talent from around the world. All of these talented people are immensely incentivized to deliver, and they deliver in spades! Their contributions pull the rest of the world up with them, despite all the inequality belly-aching from collectivist types. If you are a person of intelligence and ambition, there is no better place than the US to maximize your gifts.

> The US is doing very good in a lot of areas

You're damn right it is! Most curiously to me, many Europeans bemoan the state of our lower and middle classes, despite those same people doing _better_ than their European counterparts on almost every material measure at almost every decile! [try to play with e.g. EDHI by DECILE at http://www.lisdatacenter.org/data-access/

> but I think collective egotism is preventing it from reaching its true potential.

Perhaps. It certainly makes it more difficult to solve certain collective action problems, but it also encourages citizens to tackle problems others find trivial. I doubt, for example, that Twitter could have been built outside the US: the a priori use is to selfishly broadcast thoughts about me, me, me; the vast social utility is an emergent property.

> The US is philosophically much more egotistical than other developed countries.

It isn't a criticism that I had heard before.

A bit of an oversimplification. More like it keeps about 25-30% convinced they'll someday be a CEO of a corporation, so to vote in the interest of businesses. There's another 5-10% that have zero issues taking advantage of that naiveté for their own end goals.

But, on the other side, you have a highly apathetic and disillusioned crowd who hardly show up to vote. And, who can blame them? The system seems built against their own interests. But it's a self-destructive thought process.

My perspective on American media is that even though everyone has access to (mostly) unbiased, factual sources, quality investigative journalism, uncensored internet etc, for some reason a very large cross-section of the population willingly chooses to believe the partisan crap and plain and simple bullshit peddled by outlets like Fox News and (to a somewhat lesser degree) MSNBC. I regularly visit the US, and frankly I'm appalled by the downright evil crap that seems to be on 90% of the time on televisions everywhere in public. I would be thoroughly embarrassed if the situation at home would be even remotely comparable. And now you have a POTUS that actively promotes to make the situation even worse by labeling anything he dislikes as 'fake news', while at the same time spreading easily falsifiable information as truth.

I really have no idea how the US got to this place. The problem is not that the US does not have free press, but there seems to be a level of partisanship that feeds this vicious cycle of misinformation, always putting the blame at the other side, and a total disregard for simple facts that things could be so much better for everyone if the two sides would actually try to work together and find compromises for once.

The health care system is just an example of this. Even though there are countless examples of developed countries that have a much better system with significantly lower costs because of things like single-payer insurance, maximum tariffs, etc, somehow the american people don't want it 'because socialism' or whatever nonsensical argument based on the in-grained illusion of the 'American Dream' of a merit-based society where everyone decides their own fortune. Meanwhile social mobility in the US is among the lowest of all developed nations. The level of cognitive dissonance really is mind-blowing.

According to the WHO [1] the US health care system scores first on exactly one metric, which is cost...

It boggles the mind that someone could rationalize a healthcare system that leaves millions of people uninsured, bankrupts and destroys people unfortunate enough to attract even minor health problems, and results in higher costs than anywhere in the world as ‘better’ than ‘average European care’, because it is ‘bimodal’. What does that even mean, practically speaking? What does the US health care system offer the more fortunate citizens that you won’t have in, say, Japan, or Sweden, Malaysia, the Netherlands?

Question: do you think people live longer in the US, compared to other countries? Die less of common illnesses? Can get treatments for covering the 99% most common health care needs that are available exclusively in the US? I don’t think so...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ra...

What I'm saying is that you can have a system that is great for probably close to 95% of all health care needs, at lower cost and for all of your population. This is what the WHO data shows. For the remaining health care needs there may be differences between countries, but I don't see any evidence the US is leading in all forms of advanced treatments (obviously they are in some, but not all). For example, survival rates for the most common forms of cancer are not all that different between US and Europe or Asia, and not highest in the US for all of them [1].

What I don't understand is what you mean by 'half the people do great' in the US system, and in which way it is 'better' than other countries? Do you assume they fix a broken leg better in the US than in say Canada? That better medicines for common illness are only available in the US? Is the hospital staff more friendly, or do the ambulances drive faster because you paid more for your insurance? I'm not trolling, I'm sincerely curious what you mean.

Whether it is rational to prefer a system where you pay (a lot) more for probably all the health care you will ever need in your whole life, under the premise that there is a very small chance you would attract a condition that requires treatment that may not be 'best in the world' in your country and health care system, that's a different question. It does not seem rational to me, for lack of evidence the quality of care would go down if the system were built on solidarity instead of egoism. Anyway, I don't think it actually matters when comparing health care systems. In the end only survival rates and available treatments are relevant, and I don't see any signs the rest of the developed world is severely trailing the US in that regard.

By the way, I cannot speak for other countries, but e.g. in the Dutch health care system you are also insured for treatments that are only available overseas. For example rare forms of cancer or genetic diseases. So even under the assumption such treatments are always exclusively available in the US, this does not mean you are left hung to dry if you are unfortunate enough to suffer from them.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/concord-2....

I think it's equally plausible to say that over the last 30 years, family/general/primary care practice has deteriorated, significantly, where priorities have shifted to billing from patient care, witness less times spent on visits, more of a rush to prescribe at times often unneeded medications, a swarm of at times invasive imaging to prevent not just deterioration, but litigation. I think it's hard to argue that the above is automatically a "higher standard of care" than received by the "average European".

I mean we KNOW that the US is a sinking ship and that in order for our continued economic success a pivot to China/Asia is necessary. But American TV shows are just too good.

Quantifying "social division" is tricky, but I feel that multi-party systems offer much more scope for saying "we agree on A and B but disagree on C". While small differences can also be very divisive because humans are like that (big problem for the Left) it means you get less negative voting.

"Against X" and "For X" are not symmetrical positions, because there are usually lots of different alternatives to X. Only in a 2-party system do they produce the same answer.

The UK is mostly, but not totally, a 2-party system, and it's really noticeable how the regional parliaments do politics in a completely different way, with different party groupings. This is at least partly to do with the voting systems (AMS for Wales and Scotland, STV for the defunct NI assembly).

Multiple parties mean that more views can be heard. You can have a party with extreme views, but people can choose something different. Hopefully, there is a bigger range. The other thing multiple parties seem to encourage is working together and compromise. If you've 5 or 6 parties, it is harder for one party to hold up the government.

It isn't to say that a two-party system can't be what you describe, but it certainly isn't what is happening in the US right now.

In the last elections for example I heard multiple times from friends and family (that identify more with the democrats) that they would have considered voting for someone like Kasich (2016) or Jon Huntsman Jr (2012), but are robbed of that choice because they are blocked from voting in the republican primary.

To be the 'best' at something, you need to define how you're measuring that. Healthiest? Happiest? Longest life span? Because when you look at actual metrics for these types of things, across multiple countries, the US does not rate at the top.

Have you seen this clip of Jeff Daniels in "The Newsroom"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjMqda19wk ("America is not the greatest country in the world anymore")

You can't compare it to Holland or Denmark or even Germany. These solutions won't work here.

America IS the land of opportunity and I would challenge you to find any other country which provides better opportunity and still protect your rights as well.

Edit: The land of opportunity doesn't mean the land of equality and the expression was never intended to be that.

America is not egoistic it's just a very hardcore country because it's built on top of people who with their lives at stake started exploring and setting up local societies.

So the country is build on tough women and men. They aren't more selfish or egoistic than any other person, their reality is just different than a little country like holland or my own (Denmark).

That's pretty easy. The measure you are looking for is social mobility. Most of Europe is more socially mobile than the US. In layman terms, it's easier to climb from the poorest quintile to the richest quintile. It's the result of the free education and social safety net that Europe is famous for. If you really want a country, ironically in Denmark social mobility is double the score of the US' [https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-americ...]

The top quintile in the US is much higher than the EU. As a result someone in the EU moving from 10,000 EUR to 80,000 EUR might be going from the bottom to the top quintile.

Someone moving from $10,000 to $125,000 in the US might be going from the bottom to the 3rd quintile. Less income mobility, but higher overall incomes.

I'd prefer the US scenario.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States

It's a very American way of thinking, in which we fixate on being incredibly wealthy, instead of just moderately wealthy. Why else do Powerball sales skyrocket when the jackpot is hundreds of millions, instead of just millions? Statistically, your chances of winning were much better when it were in the mere millions, and now you have a much smaller chance, though to be very elite instead of just elite.

I assume you mean above and that's a very strong claim that I've found personally to be quite false.

Obviously this is referring to people in general and not you personally.

Couple huge notes here:

1. Overall life assessments improves; that is a part of happiness.

2. These numbers are 2009.. during the recession. They are way higher now almost certainly.

3. Needs to be COLA adjusted (linked article does that)

4. Is this pre-tax or post-tax?

5. I can't find the study itself, but I can't see how household composition wouldn't affect this number.

$130k single person in SF Bay Area might have well peaked on day-to-day happiness - you are generally making enough to not stress about breaking a budget.

At $130k living in the SF Bay Area with 2 young children, you are still going to need to budget, leading to heavy marital arguments about money that hurt day-to-day happiness. I would venture that $350k (pre-tax) is about the level where such a couple would peak by eliminating budget pressure.

With regards to Denmark. When you look a little deeper in the numbers it's not actually true.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-ame...

> the movement of individuals, families, households, or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to one's current social location within a given society.

Which would be exactly what people would call opportunities. Social mobility is not at all aimed at fixed equality. It's about being provided equal opportunities, for example by having good, free, public education.

In the US, if your parents can't pay for your university degree, you need to either get lucky and get some kind of scholarship or go a couple 100k into debt. This leads to low social mobility, since the rich have a better chance at getting a degree than the poor do.

The average student loan debt is something like $40K, not $200K, and there are quite a few scholarships. I got one for going into STEM--it paid something like $2K/year and I got my degree with only $7K of debt, but I set up my schedule so I could work while I wasn't in class and I didn't lead the lavish lifestyle that my peers did. Of course, the US education system is still unnecessarily expensive--but this falls out from the government's attempt to make it affordable--the government subsidized education by giving students loans and universities responded by competing on things students care most about: manicured campuses and lavish amenities. There are other things as well--additional administrators ("diversity officers" and "bias response teams"), but it mostly falls out from student loan money. Even still, there are lots of great schools that still compete on education and great services to help you find them, so doing better than the average $40K in debt is definitely feasible if not easy even without a scholarship.

You are correct, I picked the most extreme cases to make a point. Here in the Netherlands €40k is about the maximum you'd get and that is after taking your time and having a lavish lifestyle. The schools themselves are only €2k a year, currently.

You don't come to the US because of social mobility, you come here to improve your current situation and relatively, the US provides in spades compared to going to many European countries where you are stuck in some social welfare system and will never actually be able to move out of it.

The European welfare system is great for equality but it doesn't do much for the opportunity.

The ability to break out of your social heritage isn't better in Denmark in any meaningful way. It's a common misconception but was debunked by ex. the Rockwool Foundation who found that Despite free education people were still ending up doing the same as their parents no matter the US or Denmark.

- Does welfare help opportunity?

- Is social mobility the same as opportunity?

The bottom one is the one we're discussing and the answer is yes, because that's what it is. Social mobility also isn't equality, because in a truly equal state, social mobility would be virtually non-existent, since everybody would be equal.

Also, like you previously mentioned yourself, there is no 'European welfare system'. There are lots of different countries with lots of different systems and they all work out differently. The common denominator is that most of them work out better than the US does.

I would recommend reading the wikipedia page on social mobility for some more info. It also explains why equality is in fact important for opportunity, unlike what you wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

We are talking about a very specific idea of opportunity (the american dream) which was what I responded to.

When it comes to social mobility again Denmark isn't doing much better than the US. I would recommend you read the Rockwool Foundation report on this matter. I am well aware of social mobility and wha tit means.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28649168

  The European welfare system is great for equality but it doesn't do much for opportunity.

"The "American Dream" gives people the impression that working hard solves everything and that their country is the best in the world period"

Which is both wrong and missing what the American Dream is all about. It's very far from any European idea of equality, I say that as an European myself and grew up in one of the most equal countries (Denmark).

But once you get to live in the US you quickly realize why Scandinavia style healthcare can never work in the US. It's simply not structured both geographically, culturally, immigration wise and politically to ever work.

As a country with opportunities, nothing really beat the US when all things are considered. That doesn't mean everyone is making it that's not the goal either.

I happen to think that opportunities are bigger in the US because of less regulation, a bigger market with no language barriers and more venture capital and that the US could do even better if people didn't have to worry about hospital bills. There's a lot more potential.

The US is actually not doing well on a lot of individual parameters but if you look at everything as a whole it just ends up being a country with more opportunity than any other country and I would challenge you to find any country that's better than the US in those terms.

When it comes to healthcare geography and immigration is related because of the way a single payer social healthcare system works.

The US have to deal with immigration both legal and illegal. You can't just give 11mio illegal immigrants access to to healthcare just as people who immigrate much later haven't been paying to the system their whole lives.

Furthermore because of the distance if you want to provide equal treatment it's going to be very expensive or you have to spend a lot of money on transportation.

These are just some of the issues which normally gets completetly ignored but are actually crucial to understanding why the US can't be the same as European countries.

Social equality and social mobility are almost opposite ideas. Mobility measures how likely (easy) it is to climb up the ladder, if you're good and/or lucky. Equality measures how steep/long is the ladder - in a totally equal society, there wouldn't be a ladder at all, so there would be zero social mobility.

Again I refer to the OP who started talking about a selfish US .

There are few western countries that are as bad at protecting rights as the US. See:

- Guantanamo Bay, where people are held indefinitely without trial

- Abuse of civil forfeiture

- Mass surveilance

- Cops not being sentenced after needless shootings

- Gerrymandering messing with the will of the people

- Private companies often being more important than the public interest

I could keep going, because there's plenty where that came from. It all depends on which rights you mean though, because the right to bear arms has indeed been well protected in the US (which isn't really considered a right anywhere else in the western world though).

You go to England and tell me they don't have mass surveillance, the EU has plenty of regulations that benefit companies not consumers,

The US is far from perfect but again I would challenge you to find a country with better opportunity as an immigrant.

I was talking about protected rights in the context of material rights and the opportunities this land provides.

The reason why Scandinavian style healthcare (unfortunately) won't work here is that it's not like Scandinavia and it can never be like Scandinavia.

Even Obamacare which I as a person with two melanomas under my belt is very happy with isn't really working.

Only technology will help in the long run. The US healthcare system can't be solved realistically through political means.

It's virtually impossible to immigrate to the US without any financial backing, like a stack of cash or an employer wanting to hire you. So yes, the odds of an immigrant succeeding in the US are pretty good, I wouldn't call this an opportunity for people who aren't already well off though.

And you still haven't shown a country that provides as much opportunity as the US when it comes to "The American Dream"

So glad you finally got that part.

It's a fundamental difference in how these things are percieved.

How so? Here are the options to immigrate to the US for an IT professional:

- be hired by some rich company, try H1B, most likely fail in the lottery and wait for another year;

- be hired by some rich megacorp with presence in multiple countries, move to one of the countries, wait for a year, get L1 and move to the US. Too bad if you have a partner, he/she won't be able to work for a few years

In both cases your position is really precarious until you get your green card, so oftentimes you can't really afford to change employers. How on Earth is it "liberal"?

But don't take my word for it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/business/international/fo...

Also please elaborate on the "ways than aren't possible in Europe" if you don't mind.

"Children have the rights to:

- Protection (e.g., from abuse, exploitation and harmful substances) - Provision (e.g., for education, health care and an adequate standard of living) - Participation (e.g., listening to children’s views and respecting their evolving capacities) - Specific protections and provisions for vulnerable populations such as Aboriginal children and children with disabilities"

The policies of Holland, Denmark or Germany could definately work in the US, if only the people developed a different stance on criminal behavior, healthcare, guns and taxes,

America is the land of opportunity for some people. There are a lot of other countries with a lot of opportunities and freedom. More than 2 million people are incarcerated in the US right now. Where's the freedom in that?

America is very egoistic and hard country, built on the lives poor people who were left behind by their fellow countrymen.

With their stance on criminal behavior, healthcare, guns and taxes, the people in the US are definately more egoistic than people in more social democracies.

It's not equal and it's not trying to be equal either.

EU isn't big geographically compared to the US and it's not as sparsely populated as the US is. That's what I mean with big.

Yes, America is the land of opportunity for some. I don't think we were debating obvious truths here.

The point is that America does, in fact, provide much more opportunities. That doesn't mean everyone is going to make it.

That's never been the point about that expression anyway.

The US isn't more selfish if we actually look at how many volunteer in the US that alone would show that it's not that simple.

You keep repeating this throughout the thread without giving any actual arguments why. "Because we're not Scandinavia" is not a reason.

   They broke laws, and they were found guilty by a jury of their peers even upon the presumption of innocence. 

The fact that you are arguing that the US' system is unrivaled only shows your prejudice and arrogance.

In Norway, fewer than 4,000 of the country's 5 million people were behind bars as of August 2014.

That makes Norway's incarceration rate just 75 per 100,000 people, compared to 707 people for every 100,000 people in the US.

On top of that, when criminals in Norway leave prison, they stay out. It has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%. The US has one of the highest: 76.6% of prisoners are re-arrested within five years.

Norway also has a relatively low level of crime compared to the US, according to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. The majority of crimes reported to police there are theft-related incidents, and violent crime is mostly confined to areas with drug trafficking and gang problems.

Based on that information, it's safe to assume Norway's criminal justice system is doing something right. Few citizens there go to prison, and those who do usually go only once. So how does Norway accomplish this feat? The country relies on a concept called "restorative justice," which aims to repair the harm caused by crime rather than punish people. This system focuses on rehabilitating prisoners.

Bangladesh has an even lower incarceration rate, but its prisons are apparently horrifying places of routine human right abuse. Should that be the guide? Perhaps that can scale - half of the bottom 15 countries in terms of incarceration rate have histories of extreme human rights abuse but according to the crime information, their criminal justice system is doing something right - few citizens go to prison and most only go once.

You do that yourself

"I prefer a justice system that takes their background into account and takes steps to improve the lives of these people."

This statement is factually incorrect for the vast majority of those incarcerated in the US

And yet not even the biggest country in North America, an entire continent of immigration; the only difference between the people in what is now the USA and what is now Canada was the degree of loyalism to the British.

> America IS the land of opportunity and I would challenge you to find any other country which provides better opportunity and still protect your rights as well.

For that not to be just an empty slogan you'd have to explain what you mean by "opportunity" and "rights", to which races and genders those opportunities and rights have historically applied to in actuality, and how you think every other country suppresses or represses those rights or opportunities.

> So the country is build on tough women and men.

The USA was "built" (leaving aside how) by, among others, Danes, Dutch and Germans. I don't understand how they suddenly became tougher, just by stepping on a boat.

Edit: and there goes the autodownvote bot, within not even enough time to read this post.

Stepping on that boat was risk taking. I think they'd teach their children those same values.

But I think the bigger difference in US v. European culture is that inside America there was no landed gentry. The Northeast had some "society," but for long streches of American history anyone could go buy land for cheap and farm.

Without an intrenched gentry and an intrenched lower class, American class has always been more mobile. There were certainly rich and poor, but poor enterprising people could get land much cheaper by moving west.

Industrialization changed that, but by that time American culture was already distinct. Plus, America was richer than than Europe during the 20th century. Our middle class had it pretty good.

Canada is more like American culture than British.

I was responding to the "American Dream" by the OP. You find any other country where immigrants are running many of the countries most successful companies and where you have so much opportunity to establish a company in a great market. I am not talking about how fast you can set up an LLC or a C-Corp I am talking about how big your opportunity to create something in the US is no matter who you are and where you are from compared to other places.

The US is far ahead.

The tough people were the ones who endured what it meant to live in the US in the beginning. There weren't tough when they went on a boat but they soon became just as their children and their children.

What does this even mean?

Please give a specific, concrete explanation of how and why it's easier for someone to "create something" (create what?) in the USA than in the EU or Canada.

> Canada actually has a very strict immigration politics compared to the US then sure.

And yet apparently accepts around three times as many new immigrants per year than the USA, as a percentage of population.

> The tough people were the ones who endured what it meant to live in the US in the beginning. There weren't tough when they went on a boat but they soon became just as their children and their children.

So is the USA the land of opportunity or the land of greater hardship and toughness?

People don't typically leave the country they know and love for another land, unless enduring hardship already. OTOH, while they may believe (at least in part due to propaganda[1]) another land will provide greater opportunity, that doesn't mean it does.

[1] The UK government notoriously considered an ad campaign a few years back about how bad life was in the UK, to deter immigration.

In the US almost half of all Fortune 500 companies are founded by foreigners. Let me know where that happens in Europe.

And yet apparently accepts around three times as many new immigrants per year than the USA, as a percentage of population.

But a fraction of what the US have of illegal immigrants (approx 100K vs. 11mio). Furthermore the IRS and Immigration actually doesn't communicate about illegal immigrants because of the US Privacy Act which means you can actually pay taxes even though you are here illegally.

The US is many times more flexible for anyone who wants to stay here.

But don't take my word for it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/business/international/fo...

Even the fact that Dreamers are even discussed shows how different the US is form Europe.

So is the USA the land of opportunity or the land of greater hardship and toughness?

What part is it you don't understand?

The US is the land of opportunity, the US sentiment isn't like the european where equality is a goal in itself because of the US history and how it was founded.

With regards to your [1] Denmark did that, it helped but what does that have to do with anything?

11mio illegal immigrants in the US plus all the legal immigration and add to that the last 200 years and it's pretty obvious that the US is based on very very different principles than EU.

I don't understand the OP's point, but "selection bias" is why many immigrant populations out-perform their counterparts back home. The folks who are willing to strike out are necessarily more intrepid.