Re:China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets r...
by rayiner on Monday February 03, 2020 @12:51AM
(#22221744)
How much stuff they can buy and how big their house is is a big part of what the average person on the street considers to be relevant metrics of prosperity. I wouldn’t trade an extra 6 months of life expectancy like in the UK for a house half the size like in the UK, and I suspect most other Americans wouldn’t either.
As to your other indicators, are you really talking about the “average person” or the poorest people? Because there is a big difference, and in the US we have deliberately chosen to optimize for lower taxes on the middle class at the expense of weaker safety nets for the lowest class. Take, for example, income mobility. For the top 80% it’s similar between the US and Denmark: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012.... Someone born in the second to lowest quantile, for example, has a similar shot at rising to the top quantile in the US and Denmark.
As to health indicators it’s similar, although also complicated by demographic and diet differences. Asian Americans have the longest life expectancy of pretty much anyone in the world, including people in Hong Kong, Singapore, or Japan. It’s not because there is an alternate, Asian only health system. It’s because Asian Americans are largely outside the bottom quantile, and a lot of the things that drag down the US in the overall average are a function of very bad results in the bottom quantile.
As to your other indicators, are you really talking about the “average person” or the poorest people? Because there is a big difference, and in the US we have deliberately chosen to optimize for lower taxes on the middle class at the expense of weaker safety nets for the lowest class. Take, for example, income mobility. For the top 80% it’s similar between the US and Denmark: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012.... Someone born in the second to lowest quantile, for example, has a similar shot at rising to the top quantile in the US and Denmark.
As to health indicators it’s similar, although also complicated by demographic and diet differences. Asian Americans have the longest life expectancy of pretty much anyone in the world, including people in Hong Kong, Singapore, or Japan. It’s not because there is an alternate, Asian only health system. It’s because Asian Americans are largely outside the bottom quantile, and a lot of the things that drag down the US in the overall average are a function of very bad results in the bottom quantile.