[mkw5053]

While I agree that believing the US is "uniquely great, superior to other nations, destined for a special role in the world" is silly, this article feels just as cherry-picked, on the other extreme. The US is an outlier in plenty of negative ways, yes. But it's also an outlier in GDP per capita, venture capital investment, Nobel Prizes, university quality, immigrant demand, medical innovation, and cultural export. Any honest look at the data shows a country that is simultaneously world-leading and world-lagging depending on which metrics you choose. Picking only one side of that ledger isn't analysis.

[OutOfHere]

None of those things help the random citizen with their life. Not one. Not even medical innovation if it increasingly can't be accessed.

[mkw5053]

We agree that lived outcomes matter. But if OECD data are valid for health and incarceration, they’re also valid for household income and housing space, where the US performs very well. You can criticize the tradeoffs without denying the gains.

[AnimalMuppet]

GDP per capita helps the average citizen. That GDP isn't all rich people's yachts. The average person gets a fair amount of it.

Not the bottom 5%, 10%, maybe even 20% (and that is very much a problem). But the average does.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

If you just look at how things work in most societies now and throughout history and use the model of 'the purpose of a system is what it does', then you could surmise that the the purpose of society/nation is to make sure the top 0.01% of people have amazing lives. Everything else is just an consumable input to achieve that goal.