https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-life-expectancy-in-t...

A white person living in well-of state has about the same life expectancy as those living in the highest rated European countries.

I suspect what's driving down life expectancy is me OD'ing on fentanyl at 30 or getting killed in a shoot out at 20 or dying in a car crash at 10.

Short version of what I think is going on - young people dying lowers life expectancy a lot more then old people dying a bit earlier then they might have.

You are saying that you would rather live a shorter time in good health than a longer time being unhealthy at the end.

I am saying that the day will come when you start to deteriorate, get aches, getting slower, maybe even critically ill. During all that you will most likely still not want to die.

People suffer in every age group most of them don't want to die. Why do you think you would?

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v2.full

The USA also has a higher percentage of young people and more of them are dying from drugs. That skews a metric line that. Do it by cohort and it’s different.

There’s a reason millions more people from the EU live in the USA than the other way. Or why there’s a line 100s of millions long to come to the USA.

Nowhere is perfect but as a world traveler I’d say the USA is pretty great. What I have found most interesting over the last 20 years is that the conversation has moved from USA/EU to USA/Asia. Europe has become lodged somewhere between that and Africa/South America but Euros haven’t noticed it yet. Business has.

That the EU has 100million more inhabitants, a history of relocating to the US or american culture and language being extremely present all over western society?

>Nowhere is perfect but as a world traveler I’d say the USA is pretty great.

"Nothing is like home" - news at 11.

Well these just reinforce his point

The culture/language being widespread doesn't say anything about the USA being better. How does that reinforce his point?

If you’re skilled/smart then the USA will offer a much higher quality of life. This is why these types of people move to the USA and Europe suffers from brain drain. (Hint - high taxes chase people away to better places!)

There are exceptions though! More Americans move to Norway than the other way. It’s a richer country so that makes sense.

But check out this article from today:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europeans-poorer-inflation-econ...

Its more of a matter of whether its popular to do culturally, there is also freedom of movement and trade between all the EU/EEA/EFTA nations. If your home country makes it hard to start a limited liability company, you can form one in the country+state that makes it easy, and transact and bank in your home country. Just like in the US.

and you should talk with different people in your travels. People comfortable in their developed nation are not trying to come to US and would be confused at the suggestion as they only focus on news about marginalized groups in the US, no different than an American would be confused about someone assuming they have a fondness for China before that American rattles off about a dozen civil rights things that wouldn't actually affect privileged people in their equivalent socioeconomic bracket there, as if it defines the whole country or a day to day experience.

its pretty easy to see through this conditioning: American exceptionalism relies upon being compared to the most mismanaged and authoritarian places in the world, it ignores the existence of developed nations with balanced budgets, social safety nets, with similar taxes.

This matters because when you look at these crude aggregate stats, people naively assume that it means that everything is a bit worse but the actual American story is usually more like broad prosperity with some truly awful outcomes for anyone who falls through the (very wide) cracks.

So like... nyeh

by what metric?

The US as a whole might be more diverse than a single EU country, but it will depend a lot on your metric for diversity.

The difference between states is big but you go on to say that it's as big as the difference between two European countries. Your comparison only points out Europe is as least as diverse as the US and still has a significantly higher life expectancy.

Are you seriously to claim that the EU is a single country? Or that there are no differences between EU countries? That link actually has a table of all EU countries, and it ranges from 72 to 83. This is actually a LARGER difference than in the US: where it ranges from 74 to 82.

You need to read what's actually being said before climbing up the walls.

This post is about GDP growth. What has life expectancy got to do with it, and how are you contributing to any discussion? Has anybody here said that "GDP is the most important indicator"?

Personally I think average Americans have a hard time imaging a world where there is more to life than money.

Ultimately whenever I see these "murica" centric posts, I remember them flying in emergency medical supplies from China and everybody being upset about how the worlds greatest super power didn't have enough supplies for their own medical staff.

Stay humble.

Europeans miss the point that you still need money to fund all those generous social benefits we have. Without money and a stagnating economy there will be less welfare to go around.

I've lost track of how many financially illiterate people told me "I don't care about the economy, as long as we still have great quality of life" who miss the part where that great quality of life is funded by the economy they don't care about.

Not entirely, of course you need money but you need people who believe in the cause to work towards it and make sacrifices. I work for a NFP, I took a paycut to do it. I'm happier for it.

I think a lot of America goes wrong because most people want their cake and to eat it too. Free healthcare? It will require sacrifices in the form of higher taxes.

Canadians pay higher taxes than Americans and their social services aren't that much better now that the US's. Why isn't it working for them if higher taxes and not a stronger economy is the solution?

Whenever the state says "give me more of your tax money so I can take care of you", check your pockets.

To be fair, I'd also agree with more taxes, provided those in power would be held accountable and punished severely for mismanaging it and that they would try to address growing inequality, but as long as they're unaccountable and spend my taxes like drunken sailors giving it to their golf buddies in the private sector while pushing for austerity for the plebs while the rich get richer, I'll do everything I can to pay less taxes to the state so I can defund it of the capability of improper spending, and use that extra money to take care of myself and my loved ones.

You see, that is already happening, just through other means. The political situation isn't really favoring Joe Sixpack, or even software engineers, it's benefiting the very few ultra wealthy.

You know how nowhere near enough is being done about climate change? That's because no one in government really cares about the impacts on you or your family. Because the energy companies are happy.

Google and Meta stealing your private information without your consent? Nothing will be done about that either because corporations own America.

IMO the fact we pay lower tax and are all just thinking it means we're better off by default is the joke. It is the pacifier.

I 100% agree with you though, higher tax does not mean things get better, absolutely not. What people have to do is grow brains and participate in democracy and not via Twitter on Instagram but actually doing some work.

I'm responding to a (one of the many) cases of people being strangely upset and irrational about a simple fact about the US doing better in this one metric recently. There is no "opposite" about it, I never said it does not happen the other way around, I'm questioning why it is happening this way around in this thread. And again that is making people upset and bringing up other unrelated things, which is quite ironic really.

> Personally I think average Americans have a hard time imaging a world where there is more to life than money.

Personally I think it's sad that so many "educated and enlightened" people are okay with making vile accusations and generalizations about others they know nothing about.

I know a bunch of Americans and almost all are warm, friendly, generous. Some very driven, very few who struck me as being all about money. I feel sad that many have been to feel ashamed of themselves by this kind of casual bullying.

> Ultimately whenever I see these "murica" centric posts, I remember them flying in emergency medical supplies from China and everybody being upset about how the worlds greatest super power didn't have enough supplies for their own medical staff.

I don't quite understand what you're getting at. You're upset by the fact that the US economy measured by GDP grew much faster than the EU recently, but you take comfort from the fact that China manufactures a lot of things that other countries buy such as medical equipment and there were shortages of various goods during Covid. I don't know what to make of that but I'm sure there's some interesting psychology behind it.

If it happens both ways then it doesn't matter why, it's a kind of passive aggressive question then? You know that many people don't like America and it's way of operating, which IMO is about maximizing profits and throwing people under the bus to do so. No great national doesn't offer world class free healthcare, sorry. But that is the challenge of our time and we in the USA have failed. We have also failed, very ,very hard leading the world through climate change, so we're just a bunch of rich people with no leadership strength now.

Personally I think it's sad that so many "educated and enlightened" people are okay with making vile accusations and generalizations about others they know nothing about.

Regardless of any of your accusations, being that I'm some kind of generalizing monster, there is no place on earth that worships money like the USA. Sorry but that is just how it is. I've never experienced anything quite like it. Money is the religion. That's why we're having a GDP party.

I know a bunch of Americans and almost all are warm, friendly, generous. Some very driven, very few who struck me as being all about money. I feel sad that many have been to feel ashamed of themselves by this kind of casual bullying.

So do I, but I guess you're also generalizing that most Americans are lovely, because I know many that aren't. Saying this, Americans aren't any nicer per-capita than anywhere else in the world. There are nice people everywhere and there are dicks everywhere.

The problem with America is it's politics and the access lobbyists have to politicians. I think Americans are probably too nice and too gullible to see the situation improved.

Lobbying is a fairly unique problem in the US which causes things like mass shootings at schools to happen. The NRA makes sure everyone has guns (for example).

I don't quite understand what you're getting at. You're upset by the fact that the US economy measured by GDP grew much faster than the EU recently, but you take comfort from the fact that China manufactures a lot of things that other countries buy such as medical equipment and there were shortages of various goods during Covid. I don't know what to make of that but I'm sure there's some interesting psychology behind it.

Again, you're making accusations now. I don't take comfort in it, but I am saying it's important to be humble. I think boasting is a major character floor and again, had China decided not to send supplies, America would've been quite screwed. So yeah, let's be humble no matter how big our GDP cock is.

Wrong.

[snip bitterness]

While we're dispensing with unsolicited advice about what is and is not important in how we think, you can just choose to not be upset by this stuff. The fact is here that lots of people are getting irrationally upset by the this GDP story. You can make peace with that and just move on without having to start bashing America or Americans. Ranting about how you think the average American has a hard time imagining more to life than money and things like that is just deeply weird. Fascinating though, so feel free not to take my advice and continue with it.

I more often get the impression that it’s the other way around. As if the fact that there is more to life than money somehow justifies the fact that much of Western Europe is now economically permanently stuck in ~2008 due to some very misguided policies..

It's definitely both ways. Things Americans are snarky about: - Europe starting world wars, America getting pulled in and 'winning' them (taking an outsized view of America's role) - "Everything is so small here"

Things Europeans are snarky about: - Not knowing geography or anything about the world outside the U.S. - Tipping - Atrocious public transit - High healthcare costs for poor outcomes

My point is to suggest that maybe top line numbers don’t tell the whole story. Maybe in a society where wealth is hyper-concentrated, the heuristic coupling of GDP growth and social progress breaks down.

Flip the US and EU, it makes no difference to me. My point is that GDP is a poor metric for most things we should care about, and maybe we should get off the paperclip maximization train and onto the well-being maximization train.

I can't seem to read the twitter comments but I don't really see that here, at least in top level comments it seems to be all people who are quick to jump from that to making excuses or trying to rationalize why these numbers are "bad".

I don't know what would be the problem with talking about economic stagnation though, significant differences in GDP growth between ~comparably advanced economies doesn't seem like a bad starting point for that, does it? I notice you didn't actually reply to such a comment, but even so I don't know why you would bring life expectancy into GDP stagnation either. There's certainly a fairly strong correlation and almost certainly causal relationship, but nobody seems to be confusing GDP with the sole driver of life expectancy or believe that GDP tells "the whole story". So it seems like a weird thing to bring up, you could also bring up wheat production and point out that it isn't fixed to GDP, because it also doesn't tell you that story.

However, the US dodged the austerity fad bullet in the 2010s. A lot of the EU really fell for it hard.

Austerity is a fantastic way to inhibit growth.

The UK for example made deep cuts to healthcare and education, cost a lot of people jobs right at the worst possible time (on the heels of the Great Recession). Many smaller worse off countries did even worse.

The austerity in Europe was far, far worse than anything that was happening in the US. The US government finance establishment for whatever reason was not infected by that particular bug. The US passed a large stimulus bill and in general was in a stimulus mindset.

Europe on the other hand thought it could cut its way out of a crisis.