> The plain fact is that if you look at the richest countries in the world, with the best standards of living, they have huge governments that provide their citizens with a host of services without profit, such as healthcare.
You seem to be trying to imply a cause and effect relationship here, without actually saying that. I'm sure we can find examples of rich countries with small governments, and poor countries with large governments.
Also, for rich countries with large governments, which came first? Did they become rich, then grow large governments, or did they get a large government, and then become rich? I would guess that the former is more typical than the latter.
> I would say there's a correlation between less government and worse living conditions on average
I think this is true, but I don't think the correlation is causal. Rich countries throughout history have tended to grow their governments after becoming rich by adopting social programs and trying to flex their muscle internationally. Most of Europe followed this model, as did the US.
> It fascinates me that so many countries on the planet do things like liberal welfare and 'free' healthcare, yet the richest country in the world by a very wide margin calls it shenanigans.
Have you ever considered that it would contribute to why it is the richest country in the world?
> European countries are doing very well on the list of riches countries in the world as measured in GDP per capita. That would be quite surprising if their large public sector really were so horribly inefficient.
What do GDP and government efficiency have to do with each other?
> people don't have the means to keep themselves healthy.
Isn't that true only for US. Is employment also dysfunctionally tied to health insurance as it is in US?
> What is the end result of growth that makes societies "better"?
It depends who you ask. If you ask owners of large corporations they will look as GDP for a metric of how great a country is going. Doesn't matter if life expectancy is terrible, infant mortality, crime and corruption are high, no middle class, people living in shanty towns as long as GDP is booming the country is considered a success.
If you ask people what is makes a country good, they wouldn't care much about GDP, they would point to healthcare, crime, lack of corruption.
Unfortunately the news and the reports you get in the traditional media don't talk about that. All those analysts,"experts" and economists only care about the metric that large corporation care about. How many time have you seen on the news about "the average rate of depression in Argentina has gone up?". Not much right. But you might hear about how GDP is suffering.
> This blame-the-government thing is uniquely American. In other parts of the world there are big governments that really help their populations thrive and live safely and comfortably (e.g. I live in Sweden).
You are in top 10% of European countries. You are comparing your filthy rich country to the entire United States. If you want to make a fair comparison, compare Sweden to Washington State.
Also: ask Eastern European countries, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, African countries, Greece, Cambodia, Myanmar... how much they trust their government. You have no idea how much of a prosperity bubble you are in, in Sweden.
You also seem to be unaware that the United States has more Big Government economic regulations than in Sweden.
Not really? There are other countries than the US which have had a significantly larger government (as well as higher taxes), or so called mixed-economies, that did just fine or even great?
It seems rather bad faith to omit such glaring examples when trying to prove a point.
As a side point, there's a discussion to be had regarding economic growth and GDP. Those measurements don't measure the well-being of a society, just economic activity. So we have countries with much lower GDP per capita but much also happier.
> Comparing governments based on taxes they levy is like comparing modes of transportation based on the amount of fuel they consume.
I don't think this is a very good analogy. We compare modes of transportation based on the amount of fuel they consume all the time. Unless I'm missing your point? And not everyone likes the Scandinavian countries. They are blessed by very homogeneous populations, in a region unscathed by war the past 70 years, with abundant natural resources, and stable governments. I wouldn't exactly consider them a good model for the rest of the world and I'm not sure what there is to like about them beyond these natural advantages and the fact that most of their people are very nice... Lucky would be more like it.
For example, Norway, the richest per capita of them derives "Export revenues from oil and gas have risen to almost 50% of total exports and constitute more than 20% of the GDP."[0] not exactly something the rest of the world can model.
> It's hilarious when Americans use that as an excuse for things being sub-par in their country. I see it all the time for health care, roads, schools etc.
I am simply providing an explanation that statistics indicates that there will be an absolute greater # of issues.
I would also suggest that governing at scale is hard and doesn't seem to scale linearly; much worse, as far as I can guess, based upon my news reading. Things like population density, diversity of industry, diversity of cultures start to play out in a very loud and complicated way. The only person I've met (who I talked about this with) who appreciated the scale of the US immediately was from Russia, which has similar scale issues.
> - The evidence seems to be that the bigger the government, the wider the gap between the rich and the poor. This might sound counter-intuitive, but that's the date we have.
It sounds counterintuitive because it's absolutely unabashedly false. Nordic countries, whose governments are bigger than any, have greater equality than 3rd world African countries, where government is non existent.
This is just more libercrazian BS; the data that you have is completely whack, which is probably why you didn't bother to cite it.
> Obviously how rich a country is plays a part in this?
Of course it does. But not necessarily only in the direction you're hinting! At the end of the day it's not the number of hours worked, but the value created, that determines how wealthy a country gets. Having sufficient vacation and generally taking into account that employees are human beings might have an effect on how happy and productive they are.
I don't know if there are studies lending support to this, but to my mind it seems a pretty plausible thesis. I regard spending some of my tax money on my neighbour staying home with his kids as an investment. Social security is fundamental to human health, crime, education, and ultimately productivity.
To me, that is not all though. GDP growth isn't a goal or an end in itself - it is merely a (very important) means to worthy ends. It would be completely meaningless to have GPD growth if it did nothing to promote "the pursuit of happiness".
> There are already many countries with generous welfare states where one does not have to work and could theoretically live off the government, yet they manage just fine.
I didn’t know there were any countries like this? Would you please link to a few?
> poor people in America are part of the same body politic as myself, while poor people in China are not.
...and you don't see that as the problem worth fixing?
I live in Canada, where we get copies of all the social-policy laws from the US forced upon us as treaties [to ensure Americans don't just drive up here for their marijuanas or what-have-you] with no ability to actually vote in the US elections that control these laws. This is just a mild case of a power imbalance that's much more pronounced in countries that rely on the US for much of their GDP (usually based entirely around exports.)
There's only one world economy, and it affects all of us, but only some of us are living in countries that get to affect it with each swing of local political sentiment. It would probably be beneficial to all of us--even you all in the US--for that to change.
Au contraire. The US went from a nation of scores of millions with nothing but a suitcase to the wealthiest nation in the world with the tallest, best fed, and healthiest people. All from inequality.
(Of course, since WW2, the US has increasingly turned away from the free market towards socialism, and things have done correspondingly less well.)
> You are comparing the USA, a developed country, purely to developing countries. I mean, ya, the USA does better than much poorer countries, but can’t compare to any other developed ones.
Almost every country in the world is much poorer than the USA. Most European countries have a smaller per-capita GDP than Mississippi, the poorest US state.
> However, its a fundamental mistake to assume that a Government can provide effective social services without having a strong economy. Strong economies require successful businesses.
Umm... I would say the social services in european countries are pretty successful.
> It makes absolutely no sense to claim that a country has a well-functioning society if it happens to have a hand full of ultra-rich billionaires while the whole population suffers to barely make ends meet, let alone have a shot at a decent life.
The US is much, much richer than any remotely comparable entity. Americans do not live the lives of grinding poverty you imagine. The only country or region that consumes more per household is Hong Kong[1]. A comfortable life in the US is available to much, much more of the population than STEM graduates as well.
Is it though? I know USA borrows heavily and spends a lot of its money on luxury items like a fearsome army and the most expensive health care (per capita) in the world.
Also the way USA is making that money is by heavily taxing its value creating people who are highly motivated to do their best work by a lack of safety net and other niceties. Now I wonder if you provide them all shelter, food, healthcare, entertainment and transport, who would be motivated to work anymore?!
You seem to be trying to imply a cause and effect relationship here, without actually saying that. I'm sure we can find examples of rich countries with small governments, and poor countries with large governments.
Also, for rich countries with large governments, which came first? Did they become rich, then grow large governments, or did they get a large government, and then become rich? I would guess that the former is more typical than the latter.
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