it would be nice if they declared War against global climate change.

They did declare war against climate change and decided to continue polluting. This is the only moral calculus the elites of America have always cared about: will it make me more money?

From slavery to oil to silicon, exploitation is what America has always been good at.

They are participating in the war, on the side of climate change.

Climate change is too soft of a term. Maybe that's why it doesn't interest people who like to declare war on things.

The targeted term must be something that is clearly human made, something that sounds undeniably bad and something that is easily understood by everyone at first glance:

_War on Pollution_

Nature is good, pollution is bad. People who pollute are _obviously bad_ and they do bad things. Pollution is wasteful and ugly. Yuck!

Also it's more general than climate change. Ocean plastic is also bad. Chemical, electronic and light pollution etc.

The people who think of chemtrails and 5g waves. They really hate pollution so much, they see it everywhere. Give them a war that they can join in.

Normally I'm inclined to agree regarding the mindless chest-beating in this country, but I don't think that makes sense here.

AI genuinely is that big of a deal. If any economic sector deserves this sensationalism, it's this.

The US needs to start imagining something else. It's hard to think of the last war that the US won.

On a technicality, America has won every war it has declared to be a war.

Vietnam war?

The US hasn't formally declared war since World War II.

Like the war on drugs.

Yes, The fear with the war on drugs was that a large majority of the population would become addicted to hard drugs. The fear was the the US population would become like China in the 1800s and the communist aligned countries where drugs were produced would have massive trade and power imbalances over the US population. China had as much as 25% of the population addicted to British opium in the 1800s. The US war on drugs has been very successful in keeping the percentage of Americans abusing highly addictive drugs very low.

Imagine the strength of the cartels with 10-20x the customer base and far more frequent usage among them.

If you look at figure 1 on this CDC page (which looks at deaths rather than overall usage), I’d suggest the numbers are trending the exact opposite to what “winning” the war on drugs would look like.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db474.htm

Because we stopped fighting it like 20 years ago.

I think you are still vastly misunderstanding what the war on drugs concerns. This level of overdose deaths is a problem, but not really what the struggle is really about.

At the time the war on drugs looked unwinnable. Which is why the joke about the war on drugs was that it was always a losing war. And then at some point in 2000s we ended the war on drugs.

In hindsight, I would definitely declare today that we WERE winning it when we were fighting it. Now that we don't, we're getting massacred.

>In hindsight, I would definitely declare today that we WERE winning it when we were fighting it. Now that we don't, we're getting massacred.

LOL, no, we've never even been in a winning position. Were we winning when the CIA used cocaine to finance weapons for Iran? I guess we were winning when we put a lot of black people in jail for decades for possessing crack while white wall street folks were getting slaps on the wrist for getting caught with the same amount of coke? Our country having the highest percentage of people in prison sounds like we were winning too. Lots of winning.

Do they need to win though? Losing wars seems to have worked out well so far, at least for the people who benefit from it

And yet they rule the world. Whether or not US won any specific war seems academic when (up until recently) they were clearly winning the game.

One of my coworkers points out to me every sports reference that pops up in our internal company communications (e.g. "WINNING", "Going to put together a winning team," etc). It seems like everything in the US is couched in competitive language.

Yeah, its no accident that the U.S. is the number one economy, it comes from that kind of thinking across the populace. Complacency gets you conquered.

Number one economy if you ignore the comical debt. The US is borrowing from the future. Those chickens are going to come home to roost.

We could do with a little less of it IMO. But I have heard plenty from European expats about the entrenched complacency over there. I'm told people looking to improve some system or product run right into a wall of "Why bother?".

The flipside of that is that Europeans generally get way more vacation and free time, and as a consequence, can enjoy life more.

On average yes they seem to be better off. I have been lucky and have certainly beat the European average quality of life.

> its no accident that the U.S. is the number one economy

Sure, it's the largest by GDP, but how much of that GDP is filtering down to the regular people? Are Americans, on average happier and have better life outcomes than other developed nations?

So much that millions of people risk their lives or leave their families to come to this country. By this objective metric, it's literally the best country in the world's history.

Is there another country that comes close?

Migration isn't a US problem. Europe has it too. So as a country probably not, but that's also because the US is big and has a large land border to the south.

Immigration in Europe is different. Your immigration influx is not really the kind of force that will help push countries up. If anything, it is a drag. Of course I am generalizing highly, but for the most part you are bringing a new civilization that does not want to become European or help contribute to your growth. Some of your immigrants want to make you change your religion!

In fairness the same has happened in the US recently.

The reason someone has to risk his life to get to the US could be because the US is the greatest country, at the same time you could also consider the influence that the US in its history has had on other countries so that the life of the people are miserable there.

(e.g. backing and installing dictatorships[1], contributing massively to climate change, ...)

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

If you read my comment, I asked if Americans are happier than people in developed countries. How many million Europeans, Canadians or Australians are risking their lives to come to the US?

Sure, if you're from say, Haiti, even the US will look very attractive, but the bar is pretty low there, wouldn't you say?

People drown in the Mediterranean every day, to live in Germany or the UK.

If those people had a choice of a free plane ticket to Germany, UK, or US, which proportion do you think each country would get?

Millions of people risk their lives to move to Europe and Australia.

> but how much of that GDP is filtering down to the regular people?

An absolutely insane amount. It's ridiculous just how wealthy and the quality of life the average American has compared to the world.

> Are Americans, on average happier and have better life outcomes than other developed nations?

Yeah for the most part they are in the same ballpark.

> An absolutely insane amount. It's ridiculous just how wealthy and the quality of life the average American has compared to the world.

I've been there last year. This is absolutely not true compared to Europe, including post-soviet states. Might have been true a few decades back maybe. Of course, we can argue that the US citizens have it made compared to someone in Kenya (do they?) but that's not the spirit of the question, is it?

Depends where in Europe. Lots of Europeans suffer so other Europeans can prosper. Add to the fact that Europe still benefits from imperialism and that Europe is facing an existential crisis, I would take be the average American long-term.

I mean it is pretty clear if you look at the data around purchasing power of the median earner (~$44K/yr in US) the US is significantly higher than most EU countries.

I mean I know lot of Europe is quite poor but huge swath of it isn't really that far behind. Where were you visiting? I find if you stick to a lot of the Scandinavian countries or the major cities in the poorer regions it's quite nice.

it kind of is an accident that ww2 didn't effect the united states but did effect europe and asia rather a lot.

As a non-American I agree with this. There is a whole different energy to Americans in terms of mindset compared to Europeans (not just in business). I think Europe have outstanding talent, and when it comes together it can be exceptionally good and often in a more sustainable way than the American equivalent, but it's a somewhat sad fact that many of the most successful European companies have been successful by emulating (parts of) the American culture.

You made sickness and dying contribute to GDP, of course you are number one. Keep it.

Number one economy yes, but other measures lag: education, health care outcomes, overall happiness, life expectancy...

I suspect that when you bring a competitive attitude into every aspect of life it limits how much you're willing to invest in systems that don't seem to give you an individual advantage. Americans are much more against single payer healthcare, or investing in public transit, or other forms of social support than their peer (or "near-peer", to use the government's preferred term) nations.

It almost feels like a comedic extrapolation of the classic sports-team movie arc: Sure, it's possible to create a team that prizes winning above all else, but is winning all that's worthwhile at the end of the day?

And of course it is because competitive mentality and not geography and industrial base that allowed it to not only ride WW1 and WW2 unscathed, but also leap over old European colonial powers that were busy trying to fucking kill each other.

Hairless fire ape must win over other hairless fire ape at all costs!

Unfortunately I believe that that is how the world works - even historically has for centuries - you are either "fighting in the war" or you're left behind.