So maybe there is no conflict, but it is hardly functional.
-Suicide rates are roughly the same.
-Fertility rate was actually lower for a time - currently slightly higher.
-People work considerably more hours per annum.
-Average apartment sizes are lower.
I take such statistics with a grain of salt.
I think that currently they aren't significantly different in this regard than the rest of the developed world.
My anecdata from southern and eastern Europe says that things like stable employment and housing are hard to come by among the Ys and Zs and these are both major hurdles towards starting a family.
The US, though, is vastly more heterogeneous. There are aspects that are far worse and aspects that are far better. And you can choose. There are infamous high-crime neighborhoods with gang problems; you don't have to live in them. Meanwhile want a job making very good money and with flexible hours and a boss that treats you like an equal? non-existent in Japan.
Just because STEM graduates in the US can aspire to live in a comfort bubble due to their access to a cushy job, that does not make it an example of a well-functioning society by no means.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...
The US is 5th in the ranking of median income adjusted to PPP.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
> Americans do not live the lives of grinding poverty you imagine.
Some people in the US might live well-off, but more than 10% of its population struggles below the official poverty rate.
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27...
Over 40% of the US population isn't even capable of supporting an emergency 400$ expense.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-em...
I suggest you try to take a look outside your bubble to learn how a high percentage of the US population struggles with poverty on a good day.
Would the average person rather live in, say, Belarus or Nebraska?
Not OP, but I would guess the simplest formula is to total up (Heath care - gun violence). i.e. the more likely you are to have health care for whatever happens to you, and the less likely you are to get shot, the better.
I agree with William Gibson: "People who feel safer with a gun than with guaranteed medical insurance don't yet have a fully adult concept of scary." - https://twitter.com/greatdismal/status/385249887891111936
It's a case of what exactly you view as "Freedom". Are medical bankruptcies freedom?
YMMV, you are welcome to choose otherwise. But I put it to you that this costs vs. benefits is a valid, consistent and informed point of view. If you're asking "Why would you?", then that's why.
What in the world does that formula have to do with freedom? If anything, you are trying to maximize for security with it, which is generally in opposition to freedom.
As for bankruptcy, it depends on whether you are talking about chapter 7 or chapter 13. Just kidding, that question was nonsense too. I think you're just trying to shoehorn zingers into the response.
So you're saying that employees who don't dare leave the corporate job because they really depend on the company's healthcare plan are more free. Cool.
> medical bankruptcy ... was nonsense too. I think you're just trying to shoehorn zingers
Great zinger yourself, bro.
You're welcome to equate a growing precariat who are vulnerable to exploitation as "Freedom", but don't expect that opinion to be universal.
So if I read between the lines it seems your ideal is some kind of "freedom from want" ...but only when it comes to want of healthcare. You're still cool with needing a corporate job for food, clothing and shelter? And you left out the other factor in your equation, which was gun-related stats. I'm still not seeing a coherent definition of freedom there. Still sounds like you want security to me.
Heathcare is a good example, but it's hardly the only want. It's worth raising when comparing countries, because it's a notable difference: different flavours of state run or state mandated healthcare is common in the developed world, USA being notable exception, and universal coverage gives people more ... "independence" if you like a different word to freedom.
I think you're assuming an entirely false dichotomy between "security" and "freedom". Along these lines https://www.adammcfarland.com/2017/10/18/would-universal-hea... https://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/why-medicare-for-a... Not to mention the entire notion of "precariat" - e.g. zero-hours contracts are means of control, yet they arise from lack of job security. So lack of security leads to lack of freedom, and presence of security (of healthcare, of income, of whatever) leads to freer choices in these cases.
The original question was "Why would you give up on freedom" not "define freedom!" and I'm not going to focus on a debate on parsing the definition of "freedom", or drawn back into the assumption that there is a single definition, which I rejected above. As far as I am concerned, that is a nonsense-making, derailing tactic.
But losing or gaining healthcare will be a consideration when I decide where to live. Regardless of a "coherent definition of freedom", that is a big Quality of life factor that I will look at. As I mentioned here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26660947
I honestly don't know where this "freely spend the wealth of other people" thing came from. If it's about heathcare, then it's a particular extreme political framing, to which I strongly disagree, but that seems to be missing the point.
> rest of the safety net is obviously more important to that agenda than the difference between voluntarily buying health insurance versus being forced to pay for it.
If you're saying that healthcare access isn't an important issue in the developed world today - in the midst of a pandemic and given the disparities - then again, hard disagree; to the extent that IDK, maybe something is very wrong with your thinking. Maybe it isn't important for you and you can't extend your view past that?
> no one in a undeveloped country or primitive lifestyle is ever free, apparently
My first issue with that is the binary framing, "free or not", no shades or grey or qualifiers, no degrees or kinds.
Then, I have the ability to contemplate changing jobs, changing locations, taking holidays in faraway places, so if you're asking "is this more free than a person in undeveloped country who doesn't have those choices?" It's self-evidently: yes of course.
Access to healthcare is not that different really. Nor is access to education. Or if (true story) you're relatively well off, in a third-world country, and you're going to live with private security, electrified fences, alarm systems etc. You're getting security, but you're less free to come and go. You feel it, constantly. You'd be freer if the crime rate was lower, and the crime rate would be lower if there was less abject poverty. Join the dots.
I am not going to move to Japan for a number of reasons (language and ethnicity for a start) and sure that society isn't either objectively perfect without corruption or prejudice, or perfect for me. So I don't feel the need to defend Japan here (I hope to visit Japan some day!)
However I have seriously considered moving to places in the USA, and I assure you that the question "what is the gun violence to healthcare ratio of that state?" was one of the first questions in my mind. It seems relevant, even though you did not raise it. Both guns and healthcare are representative of a group of related features of the society, of which they are only the most noticeable examples.
You do realize this is a pretty condescending and closed-minded statement to make no?
It's been said that any developing country going through accelerated economic improvement will have their birth rates reduced by quite a bit. That doesn't make it their society any less functional than say the NRA vs mass shootings, or political gridlocks between parties.
And last I heard Japan was opening up to foreign sources of labour. They are slowly changing their minds and adapting.
US politics is other extreme, there is no communication, because society loves conflict! It will get started whenever and wherever possible.