I have never understood why people assume that just because the US is bigger than other OECD countries that it can't have the same levels of happiness, or the same quality/cost of healthcare and education etc.

Why do you think the US should aim lower simply because it has more people?

Why don't you think per-capita comparisons are valid?

If anything, the US should be better than smaller OECD countries because it gets a huge benefit from scale.

It feels like you're simply giving up "because we're bigger" on even trying to just equal other OECD countries.

It's not a policy issue, just a statistical artifact.

From variance alone you'd expect the US to be middle of the pack, and smaller countries to make up the extremes on any metric you can make up. Particularly if, as in the case of the OECD, you're essentially cherry-picking high performing, smaller countries.

You can't usefully compare ratios where the denominators differ that wildly.

If you want to measure the difference between Canada, nordic countries, the US, etc., you need to cluster them into reasonably-chosen and mostly uniformly-sized chunks, collect your metric on each chunk, and compare the distribution of chunks across systems of government/countries/etc. This would actually result in a statistically valid comparison.

That's a lot more work and as far as I know nobody ever does it.

Yes. It's the "greatest country to ever have existed" but whenever it's behind in something it's impossible to fix that because it's too big, too diverse or something else.

> same levels of happiness,

Because, it's harder to be happy when you consider your money is being spent for 'those people' in Alabama, who are really nothing like you, than it is for you to be upset that your poor neighbor -- who you see everyday -- is benefiting from your taxes.

The United States is a conglomeration of sovereign entities, the states, and thus you see exactly the kind of disarray as you see in other supra-sovereign entities, such as the EU. While many member countries are certainly quite harmonious, with high standards of living, the quality among countries is quite striking, as is the general distaste whenever someone suggests wealth transfers between them.

Canada is also a federation, but, there's so few Canadians, and most of them have a common enemy -- the Quebecois.

Taking it further, does this mean we should break the country into a bunch of small ones so we can all be better off?

We wouldn't all be better off. We would just end up comparing Maryland or Massachusetts to Switzerland and Sweden.

Effective policy needs to reflect local conditions, including geographic, economic, cultural, and demographic factors, which vary enormously when the population spans 5000 kilometers as is the case in the US. As a consequence, there is a long history of national policy adversely impacting or being ineffective in some large region of the US because the "one-size-fits-all" policy was poorly suited to local conditions. The US has struggled with this its entire history. Individual States have geography and populations that are more in line with European countries, hence why most policy is decided there.

You see this even with relatively boring policy, like setting a national speed limit for driving.

This does not imply that local policy is always effective in the US, the reality is that it varies widely depending on where you live in the US and must also operate within certain practical and legal constraints. There are also many perverse interactions between national policy and state policy.

One reason is that quality of life improvements often manifest as some form of technological infrastructure (housing, medicine, goods, roads, clean pipes, etc.).

Population matters less than investment per capital per unit area (because people take up real space).

It's not that simple, really. Although for some comparisons you are probably correct, in other ways they are a very natural pairing.

For all their differences, in many other ways Canada and the USA are much more like each other than either are like any other country.

Canada and Australia are the only two countries with the population of over 20 million that are ranked higher than the USA in the OECD Better Life Index[1]. Therefore, it's safe to assume that the size of the country makes a huge difference in such rankings.

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

And location. Canada has no border with the developing world, and neither does Australia. If Canada was located next to Panama, things would probably look different.

Canada has an immense unguarded border with a country that has several million uneducated people living in extreme poverty.

The US is the target country for most migrants, they don't continue on through to Canada in large numbers. If they did, most would likely get deported, Canada's immigration is highly selective.

It's again not quite that simple. Canada's asylum acceptance rate is higher than the US. However, due to a bilateral policy change in I think 2009 asylum seekers could no longer pass overland through the US and apply in Canada. This reduced the asylum seeker rates from south/central America and Mexico a fair bit to Canada as they were forced to apply in US.

Outside of just asylum seekers, although successful immigration rates are much higher in the US than Canada (about 4x), per capita Canada is much higher (as there is a 10x population difference).

> Canada's asylum acceptance rate is higher than the US.

Canada decides who comes to Canada to apply though (via resettlement programs where the seekers have been referred by a third party like UNHCR), it's generally not that people just walk across the border as they do in Europe or the US. If you can choose, for example, to resettle a bunch of academics and their families from Afghanistan, you are in a very different situation vs having the average Afghan population show up at the border which includes a large amount that are functionally illiterate.

This isn't a critique of Canada's selective policy, it's just a very different situation, much like somebody who lives in a rich part of town will not have to deal with the same issues as somebody who lives in an area with high poverty even though they both go to work, buy groceries, take showers and talk to neighbors.

That's mostly true these days although more people did used to just show up at borders and ports of entries, prior to the policy changes I mentioned.

There has been an uptick in recent years also, primarily from the US (but also some sea ports).

Thats if you ignore economic, social, and historical conditions influencing nations. Theres many factors besides country size at play here.

Completely agree with this, having lived for time in both countries.

While we might be a percentage of the overall US population, we are fortunate to have access to most of the same things as the USA, just with a few extra nice things like health care.

Why? Does a larger population size automatically reduce quality of life?

Actually, in principle larger means more markets and labor supply and more clout on the world markets. Furthermore the US has more usable land, and Canada's vast distances with low populations increases their expenses vs the US.

And indeed the US does have a higher per capita GDP. But because it's concentrated in so few hands, most Canadians are better off than most Americans.

As someone else in the thread has already pointed out, which one do you think will be less stressful and noticeably easier to manage - deciding what to do for dinner for a group of 3 people vs. a group of 30 people? It is much easier to converge on a decision that will leave everyone satisfied when you have 3 people. While with 30 people, it is almost guaranteed that there will be a few people who would be left unsatisfied, a few satisfied, while the remainder will just end up being "ok" with the compromise.

The distances between are a contributing factor.

But that would apply even more to Canada then, no? Or did I misunderstand what you mean?

Not with smaller population size :). Maybe colder climate makes people happy?

Not really, as it depends on distribution as well.

They actually aren't that different (distribution-wise) in many places, although obviously Canada has a lot more parts where people are really spread out. Because most of Canada's population lives in the southern 10% or less, there are many regions where density of infrastructure & people looks kinda-sorta-the same. Obviously there are exceptions, and only one large city, etc.

Yes, in some senses it'd make more sense to compare a Nordic country like Finland to greater Silicon Valley in terms of population and GDP at least.

- Silicon Valley pop is 3-4M and Finland is 5M

- Silicon Valley GDP is $275B is higher than Finland $251B

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/30/silicon-v...

Its better to compare the US to the EU.

Why should population size be important? I know tiny sample sizes can produce curious results by luck, but I don’t buy that applying to multi-million populations. It seems to me that the difference is worth understanding.

I think the standard explanation is that a huge country like the US lacks the social cohesion necessary to pay higher tax rates in exchange for social programs that benefit everyone. Like, I believe Sweden's population is about 10 million- much easier to have the social 'glue' for 'let's all agree to pay very high tax rates, and we'll all get collective social programs with it!' Versus the US at over 300 million people, you don't feel as connected to the other folks who would presumably be benefiting, and it's tougher to get a 'we're all in this together' mentality. Think of the difference in social cohesion between a small town and a huge city.

Like, I'm an American and I've literally never even been to most red states, never been to Texas, don't really know anyone from any of those areas of the country, etc. I don't feel a lot of connection with them.

Then there's, frankly, the racial angle. Most of the Nordic countries have traditionally been pretty ethnically homogeneous, which helps the social cohesion/let's all chip in for government programs together mentality. The US is of course not, and racial fears about 'those people' getting unearned benefits is a HUGE part of the American story.

Basically, the US is the most right-wing of the developed countries, and we tend to have bell-shaped unequal systems where a small % live very well and a larger % are below European standards. Healthcare is like the best example of this.

I've also heard a little talk that our political system is more amenable to lobbying by corporations than a parliamentary system, but I don't know enough about that argument to really advance it

> Like, I believe Sweden's population is about 10 million- much easier to have the social 'glue'

This specifically is what I am not understanding. Why is 10 million supposed to be easier?

10 million is about double the size of the metropolitan area I’m currently in, and roughly a hundred times the size of the last city I worked in. In both cases the population is much too large to be a single community.

> 10 million is about double the size of the metropolitan area

But you can agree that you understand and feel connected to the issues of people in your metropolitan area more than those of people in another state? Or in a rural town?

Assembling funds to build a bridge/tunnel/rail in your metro feels more tangible than livestock subsidies in another state?

> Assembling funds to build a bridge/tunnel/rail in your metro feels more tangible than livestock subsidies in another state?

It only feels more tangible if I personally will use it. In the case of things such as “should Berlin build a new tunnel?” (something I suspect I will never use), the trouble is the more effort I put into understanding such a possibility, the less it matters to me where it is. If I don’t use it, it doesn’t matter unless I make myself think about it, and if I make myself think about it it doesn’t matter if it’s Berlin or Beijing.

Of course, I might be unusual. I did move country after visiting several to decide which was a good choice, which implies a certain range of attitudes about the world. I regard governments the way most people regard smartphone brands.

I think you are unusual.

Even if you don't personally use it, a tunnel in your city will affect the lives of the people you know. It will affect the traffic patterns of you and your friends and family and coworkers. The tunnel as an idea will enter the discourse of your circles. Farm subsidies are far more abstract. The real effects of those are barely felt by urbanites, let alone the people in your specific city.

> The tunnel as an idea will enter the discourse of your circles. Farm subsidies are far more abstract.

My friends are mostly the other way around. Local road infrastructure has never been discussed, while Brexit, Bolsonaro, and the Hong Kong riots all are. It is fair to say that we don’t discuss farm subsidies (but then, they are also a very small fraction of our total taxation).

I don't understand this argument. What does the population of the country have to do with anything? Shouldn't a country with a larger population have more power to make competitive advantages, and larger economies of scale, and therefore have an easier time?

More people to manage, more local governments with more layers of hierarchies and more bureaucracy overall and I've never heard of bureaucracies scaling well

If this were the case, Switzerland should be tremendously bad off. They have a ton of bureaucracy and are even more federalist than the U.S.

First of all, their point doesn't depend on Switzerland being in bad shape or not. They're not saying a country's situation solely depends on this, but that it's a factor. There are lots of other factors at play in Switzerland and most any other country.

Second, there usually is another layer in most of the US (and Canada, for that matter) which doesn't exist in Switzerland: the county. I think that's more likely to cause inefficiencies than federalism alone.

Also, I'm not actually sure Switzerland has more bureaucracy. It mostly seems comparable in my experience having lived in both countries. Are there any metrics on this?

Metrics? I thought we were all reasoning in sweeping generalizations here.

The Canadian tiers of government are very similar to the US. The one difference (AFAIK) is there is no "county" government or equivalent.

Anyways, this is actually the first time I've ever heard someone claim that Canada has less bureaucracy than the United States.

If everyone agrees with each other, then yeah, a large population is better. But when you've got a ton of people it's harder to find a solution that everyone likes. It's like the difference between two people trying to decide where to get lunch, and 30 people trying to decide. It also doesn't help that the West and East coast are culturally different, even among people of the same political party.

Isn't it more like 30 people vs 300 people? The proportions of differing opinions are are still the same in that case.

Your East vs West coast comment also confused me. I'd argue Canada has the same (or more) regional differences in politics.

There's the East Region (Ontario + Maritimes), Quebec (featuring a different language, heritage, culture and legal system), The Central region, and the West Coast.

Oh, and of course First Nations throughout (which of course the US has as well).

Can you explain your logic?