Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

Re:Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except... by whatever_dude on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @05:04PM (#19732852)

The USA's ethos in based in the motto of doing it their own way. Sometimes that's good: when everybody is doing the same, it breaks from the status quo and can become a leader in an industry, or just generally break ground in scientific and civil progress. That has happened many times in the past.

The flipside is that there are many things are a consensus worldwide because they _are actually better_ but that the US still refuses to adopt, generally because it would mean following others' lead, or because there are special interests in keeping the current status quo.

To me nothing is more emblematic of this problem than the country's refusal to adopt the metric system: the alternative is objectively worse, but the country is pretty much the last developed country on earth to refuse to use it.

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Re:Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except... by mjevans on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @05:13PM (#19732926)

It's more short-term pain avoidance based.

The reason we aborted the conversion to the metric system is because a generation of idiots couldn't stand the pain of switching, and the longer we delay the more painful it will be.

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