Hacker News Reader

Comment by kmlx | Hacker News Reader

i think geographic location, population size and population density have a lot to do with socio-economic differences between finland and the us:

finland: 5.5 million

usa: 327.1 million

View on HN

Still, the USA has a much higher GDP per capita:

USA: $60k Finland: $45k

So there's no reason Americans shouldn't have the same level of comfort.

However there's substantially more income inequality in the U.S., so GDP per capita won't capture the distribution of that wealth particularly well.

GDP per capita is pretty much useless nowadays.

It's useful in as much as it provides a basis for comparison between differences in the base standard of living between equivalent gdp/capita societies, like Finland and the US, which is what the parent was doing.

It's not, however, useful as the sole metric for evaluating the economic condition of a society.

This is the standard right wing excuses why social programms like they are assumed elsewhere, can't be implemented in the US. But I haven't seen a good explanation how one thing prevents the other yet.

When conservatives say that they think the US is too "diverse" for such policies to work, take them at their word. They think that social democracy is fine as long as the benefits don't go to black or brown people. In fact, this was the essence the "grand bargain" that FDR struck to get the New Deal passed with reluctant support from southern Democrats - FDR was allowed to create redistributive programs so long minorities were systematically excluded from them (see Richard Rothstein's "The Color of Law" for examples on how this was achieved through federal housing policy). It's also the reason why the woman Reagan chose as the canonical example of the "welfare queen" (who herself is a fascinating character, see https://pictorial.jezebel.com/the-long-shadow-of-the-welfare...) was black.

I figure when the USA is capable of providing proper health care and social programs to the tribes it has treaties with, then it can be trusted to provide those same service to its other citizens.

i had no idea about this being a "right wing excuse".

for me it's just a fact that in a high population, high wage, highly regulated society it's much harder to overhaul things radically than in a similar tiny nation. without some sort of a disaster (think WW2), it would be very hard to force everyone to switch from an entrenched system to a different one.

Economies of scale from the larger population and higher wages should make it easier. It is absolutely a right wing excuse.

I don't think that's true at all. Larger projects often fail in ways that smaller ones don't. This is true in technology as in society.

> Economies of scale from the larger population and higher wages should make it easier.

how would it be easier to force 300 million people vs 5 million?

Nah, it's because 1/2 of the political system thinks the government doing anything is bad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com