Yes. It's the "greatest country to ever have existed" but whenever it's behind in something it's impossible to fix that because it's too big, too diverse or something else.

Taking it further, does this mean we should break the country into a bunch of small ones so we can all be better off?

It's not a policy issue, just a statistical artifact.

From variance alone you'd expect the US to be middle of the pack, and smaller countries to make up the extremes on any metric you can make up. Particularly if, as in the case of the OECD, you're essentially cherry-picking high performing, smaller countries.

You can't usefully compare ratios where the denominators differ that wildly.

If you want to measure the difference between Canada, nordic countries, the US, etc., you need to cluster them into reasonably-chosen and mostly uniformly-sized chunks, collect your metric on each chunk, and compare the distribution of chunks across systems of government/countries/etc. This would actually result in a statistically valid comparison.

That's a lot more work and as far as I know nobody ever does it.

Effective policy needs to reflect local conditions, including geographic, economic, cultural, and demographic factors, which vary enormously when the population spans 5000 kilometers as is the case in the US. As a consequence, there is a long history of national policy adversely impacting or being ineffective in some large region of the US because the "one-size-fits-all" policy was poorly suited to local conditions. The US has struggled with this its entire history. Individual States have geography and populations that are more in line with European countries, hence why most policy is decided there.

You see this even with relatively boring policy, like setting a national speed limit for driving.

This does not imply that local policy is always effective in the US, the reality is that it varies widely depending on where you live in the US and must also operate within certain practical and legal constraints. There are also many perverse interactions between national policy and state policy.

> same levels of happiness,

Because, it's harder to be happy when you consider your money is being spent for 'those people' in Alabama, who are really nothing like you, than it is for you to be upset that your poor neighbor -- who you see everyday -- is benefiting from your taxes.

The United States is a conglomeration of sovereign entities, the states, and thus you see exactly the kind of disarray as you see in other supra-sovereign entities, such as the EU. While many member countries are certainly quite harmonious, with high standards of living, the quality among countries is quite striking, as is the general distaste whenever someone suggests wealth transfers between them.

Canada is also a federation, but, there's so few Canadians, and most of them have a common enemy -- the Quebecois.

One reason is that quality of life improvements often manifest as some form of technological infrastructure (housing, medicine, goods, roads, clean pipes, etc.).

Population matters less than investment per capital per unit area (because people take up real space).

Completely agree with this, having lived for time in both countries.

While we might be a percentage of the overall US population, we are fortunate to have access to most of the same things as the USA, just with a few extra nice things like health care.

Canada and Australia are the only two countries with the population of over 20 million that are ranked higher than the USA in the OECD Better Life Index[1]. Therefore, it's safe to assume that the size of the country makes a huge difference in such rankings.

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

The distances between are a contributing factor.

Actually, in principle larger means more markets and labor supply and more clout on the world markets. Furthermore the US has more usable land, and Canada's vast distances with low populations increases their expenses vs the US.

And indeed the US does have a higher per capita GDP. But because it's concentrated in so few hands, most Canadians are better off than most Americans.

As someone else in the thread has already pointed out, which one do you think will be less stressful and noticeably easier to manage - deciding what to do for dinner for a group of 3 people vs. a group of 30 people? It is much easier to converge on a decision that will leave everyone satisfied when you have 3 people. While with 30 people, it is almost guaranteed that there will be a few people who would be left unsatisfied, a few satisfied, while the remainder will just end up being "ok" with the compromise.

I think the standard explanation is that a huge country like the US lacks the social cohesion necessary to pay higher tax rates in exchange for social programs that benefit everyone. Like, I believe Sweden's population is about 10 million- much easier to have the social 'glue' for 'let's all agree to pay very high tax rates, and we'll all get collective social programs with it!' Versus the US at over 300 million people, you don't feel as connected to the other folks who would presumably be benefiting, and it's tougher to get a 'we're all in this together' mentality. Think of the difference in social cohesion between a small town and a huge city.

Like, I'm an American and I've literally never even been to most red states, never been to Texas, don't really know anyone from any of those areas of the country, etc. I don't feel a lot of connection with them.

Then there's, frankly, the racial angle. Most of the Nordic countries have traditionally been pretty ethnically homogeneous, which helps the social cohesion/let's all chip in for government programs together mentality. The US is of course not, and racial fears about 'those people' getting unearned benefits is a HUGE part of the American story.

Basically, the US is the most right-wing of the developed countries, and we tend to have bell-shaped unequal systems where a small % live very well and a larger % are below European standards. Healthcare is like the best example of this.

I've also heard a little talk that our political system is more amenable to lobbying by corporations than a parliamentary system, but I don't know enough about that argument to really advance it

More people to manage, more local governments with more layers of hierarchies and more bureaucracy overall and I've never heard of bureaucracies scaling well

If everyone agrees with each other, then yeah, a large population is better. But when you've got a ton of people it's harder to find a solution that everyone likes. It's like the difference between two people trying to decide where to get lunch, and 30 people trying to decide. It also doesn't help that the West and East coast are culturally different, even among people of the same political party.