Which fading empire is more fucked, USA or UK

really great point

The US and UK immiserated large portions of the rest of the globe as a branding exercise?

the us is a wonderful place to live if you have some capital and you're a capitalist. if those things aren't true, not so much.

it is almost as if whether or not any country is a good place for you is completely dependent on your class and ethnicity.

nothing is more smooth-brained than western exceptionalism / nationalism.

Immigrants seeking better standards of living are smooth brained now. Gotcha.

there are 5 countries with a higher median income (measure of income that is not affected by inequality) than the usa: luxembourg denmark norway australia sweden. combined population about 47 million, about 0.6% of the world population. there are 53 countries with a higher gini index than the unites states. five large ones brazil turkey mexico philipinnes and south africa have a combined population of around 600 million, about 8.5% percent of the world population

don't live in either but the uk seems more fucked, it's maybe starting from a slightly better place but things seem to be so much bleaker there with absolutely no chance at anything improving ever, even in comparison to the usa

if i had to choose one of the two to live in i'd absolutely choose the usa at this point but being trans certainly makes the decision much easier there

Immigrants go to the US and UK because those two countries reap the rewards for fucking up most of the globe, this isn't difficult guys.

But as others have stated this trickles down to the average citizen less than you'd think and most of Europe has better overall quality of life than either imo.

(and yes most of those European countries are also reaping the aforementioned rewards but the anglos are MVPs on this)

Is there a measure of general happiness that isnt gini or median income

I dont see too many happy US or UK ppl tbh so i don't think they work as measures

The happy ones don't post here

There’s the quality of life index & the happiness report xp

there are 18 countries with a 2021 world happiness index above the united states. in descending order finland denmark switzerland iceland netherlands norway sweden luxembourg new zealand austria australia israel germany canada ireland costa rica uk and czech republic. combined population around 310 million, about 4% of the world population. the number of people in the world who live in countries with higher happiness indexes than the us is smaller by about 20m than the population of the us itself. the other 92% of the population of the world live in countries with lower happiness index than the us

there are 14 countries with higher 2021 quality of life index than the usa. switzerland denmark netherlands finland austria australia iceland germany new zealand norway estonia oman sweden and slovenia. combined population 183 million, 2.4% of the world population

there are 53 countries with a higher gini index than the unites states. five large ones brazil turkey mexico philipinnes and south africa have a combined population of around 600 million, about 8.5% percent of the world population

― flopson, Sunday, June 27, 2021 2:24 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

if you update these numbers: about 1.5 billion people (around 20% of the population of the world) live in countries with a higher gini index than the usa

all the countries with higher gini than the us also had lower median income. so to the extent that there is a trade off between living in a less unequal country and living in a richer one (i.e., it's better to live in a poorer country if it is more equal) for 1/5th of the world, they are both poorer and more unequal than the us

ty 4 yr service itt flopson

all the countries with higher gini than the us also had lower median income. so to the extent that there is a trade off between living in a less unequal country and living in a richer one (i.e., it's better to live in a poorer country if it is more equal) for 1/5th of the world, they are both poorer and more unequal than the us

― flopson, Sunday, June 27, 2021 3:18 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's possible to go a little bit further than this with the numbers i gave

0% of the world is richer and more unequal than the us

0.6% of the world is both more equal and has a higher median income than the us

79.4% of the world is less unequal and has a lower median income than the us

https://i.ibb.co/g4BTLjx/Screen-Shot-2021-06-27-at-12-47-49-PM.png

this chart has mean not median income so it's more sensitive to inequality, but basically this is saying that if you drew a vertical and horizontal line at the us, there are 0 countries in the top right quadrant, 0.6% percent of the world live in the bottom right quadrant, 80% of the world live in the bottom left quadrant, and 20% live in the top left.

Is real GDP per capita a passable way for a median or above income USAmerican to estimate the standard of living for someone in say Poland or Japan who makes less money than they do?

Optimism index now pls

thank you, flopson. wikipedia has something called "Gini after taxes". Is that a worse metric? It seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure.

Sometimes a nation can be truly fucked up and yet contain many happy people who have not yet realized how bad their lives are.

The fools

Is real GDP per capita a passable way for a median or above income USAmerican to estimate the standard of living for someone in say Poland or Japan who makes less money than they do?

― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Sunday, June 27, 2021 4:16 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

imho it's good for broad comparisons

for all its faults, gdp per capita is highly positively correlated with its alternatives (happiness, quality of life, life satisfaction)

it's easy to calculate since it only relies on 2 numbers: an estimate of output and an estimate of population. compared to something like median household income, which requires a survey, and where it can be hard to get comparable estimates.

the happiness surveys are actually quite good in terms of comparability since they have been doing them consistently everywhere for years. one problem there is more interpretability, since the data is inherently non-quantitative, so different transformations of the same ordering can give different results

thank you, flopson. wikipedia has something called "Gini after taxes". Is that a worse metric? It seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure.

― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Sunday, June 27, 2021 4:36 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm not a huge fan of gini index (one issue is it's not very good at capturing the tails of inequality--the extremely rich or extreme poor--since it puts the most weight on the middle of the income distribution) but if you're going to use it it makes sense to use post-taxes data. gini is convenient because people have calculated it for lots of countries in the world. most new inequality research is focused on things like 90-10 percentile ratio, top 1% share, top 0.1% share. but it's still a work in progress to get those for many countries

Lived in both. It’s the US and it’s not even close.

Why’d you have kids here then

a little difficult to have kids that live in a different country than u

nah I'd say growing a weebo takes less time and effort

No pull-out-game shaming.

well this is charming

Will anyone admit they believe their kids will have nice lives

they will be fine. Just like that thread.

Sometimes a nation can be truly fucked up and yet contain many happy people who have not yet realized how bad their lives are.

― What's It All About, Althea? (Aimless), Sunday, June 27, 2021 4:37 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The opposite is more common, in my experience.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

35 otm

Sometimes a nation can be truly fucked up and yet contain many happy people who have not yet realized how bad their lives are.

― What's It All About, Althea? (Aimless), Sunday, June 27, 2021 4:37 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The opposite is more common, in my experience.

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, June 27, 2021 11:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

smarminess though can be found just about anywhere

same goes for pettiness

Tom Pettiness

smarminess though can be found just about anywhere

― Linda and Jodie Rocco (map), Sunday, June 27, 2021 8:19 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh the absolute misery of living in the United States of all possible places and dealing with smarmy people. Someone send help.

The UK's universal healthcare may be rickety, but it's still there. I'm always amazed at the amount people have to pay for health insurance in the US, and the fact that two thirds of bankruptcies there involve health issues. Throw in guns, and that's enough for me not to want to live in the US

man


they are probably both fucked in their own way
I don't know

I'm from the USA and the UK has it worse

lol tell me more

Shoodawopbop

With the analyses above can we do a quick check on which of the countries involved are fading anglo empires

It's entirely possible the UK might not exist in 10 years, which I don't believe is true of the USA, fwiw.

that’s a good point

The US will be 20 nation states

Neandz - that wasn’t a joke from Tom D!

Oh I know. My absurdist quip was meant to suggest that democracy is in peril in the US and although it's unlikely for us to outright stop existing, who knows what we'll look like in ten years.