As argued in the article I linked (and elsewhere), the U.S. in particular appears to be a statistical outlier, which suggests that we might be able to identify what is different in our policies, and make some improvements.
I now see where you are coming from and based on your definition, it makes sense that US is a global outlier. However, the dimension of developed status of a country was not at all apparent in the original context which was only about WFH, commute and public transport.
> In contrast to other large Western industrialized societies, the United States had the highest crime rate, the longest working hours, the highest divorce rate, the highest rate of volunteerism, the highest percentage of citizens with a post-secondary education, the highest productivity rate, the highest GDP, the highest poverty rate, and the highest income-inequality rate; and Americans were the least supportive of various governmental interventions
Perhaps part of the reason the USA is a statistical outlier among WIERD societies is simply its size. It has by fa the biggest population of any WIERD country. This means that most of its cultural influences come from within the country, whereas for a smaller country, a larger proportion of its cultural influences come from outside it -- meaning that smaller countries are less likely to be outliers.
not sure what you mean by anomaly, US looks a lot like Sweden, a country that looks like will be faring the best
counter-intuitive as it may sound today, US might just end up the country that did really well. Most large countries are simply not measuring/admitting the real number of cases.
American exceptionalism at its worst. “World beating”, “One of the top countries (apart from the ones ahead of it)”. The US is doing well, very well, but it’s certainly not world beating by any metric.
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