Yes. As a European transplant to the US, my meta-observation about social issues as discussed in largely US-centric communities is that Americans tend to quickly dismiss issues related to unionization, inequality, healthcare and so on with a set of regurgitated generalizations. The discussion ends before it begins, so to say. In some cases, social problems that are glaring in the US have been eliminated decades ago elsewhere, and yet there’s a collective belief that it’s an unsolvable problem in the economic powerhouse of the world.

I can understand the political differences, but there’s something else at play here. The American ethos of “anything is possible”, which is very much alive in the private sector, stands in stark contrast with the collective civic apathy. So if not for a lack of imagination and creativity, it must be something else. Bootstrapping myths? Unawareness of how bad these issues really are? Helping the poor means less money for oneself? The poor needs to be punished for being dumb? A need to feel better about oneself relative to the poor? Fear of socialism? Lack of trust in government? Exhaustion from a perpetual two-party stalemate?

The US is a country that I love dearly but keeps harming itself in ways I can’t understand.

Oh interesting, never heard of that before. So there's a standard TV Unit representing a standard TV, with standardized dimensions from the dawn of the TV, like a horsepower. (Horses generate anywhere between .5 and 1.5 HP, depending on the horse.) How does this TVU account for the flatness of modern TVs compared to the days of yore. It's not like the depth of the device impacts everyday enjoyment, just goes.to how cumbersome it is when moving.

Yes, here's one version of the chart:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/204491639305574605/

>Yes, the old hedonic index theory that since a new TV is much bigger and sharper and has more channels than a TV from 1970, it counts as more than 1 TV.

so, poor people today don't do what my parents did, put the TV in hock for months at a time and borrow an old little one from their grandparents?