How well does your country provide for its citizens?
economist.com
economist.com
I'm afraid it's basically junk. Once you get past the basics like "access to safe water" and "deaths from lead exposure" you're in highly subjective territory.
"Access to justice," -- does this take into account the fact that in some countries this is available only in principle, for those who can afford to spend $100,000+ on lawyers to pursue a civil case?
"Public sector corruption" -- how is lobbying and the regulatory/corporate revolving-door handled? This can be significantly worse than old-fashioned cash-in-a-briefcase corruption. (Which sometimes has a salubrious effect: https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-uses-of-corruption)
For "how well does a country provide?" this is perhaps a more useful sorting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
You go to the nicest places in a country, some fancy rooftop in the posh neighborhood of the capital city for example, a place where a round of drinks costs more than the average wages for the people living there, you talk to the people there, in a normal country you'll discover there are a lot of smart and ambitious people who have well paid, high skill jobs requiring a lot of education and training. In a corrupt country you'll find the same smart and ambitious people but now their jobs will be things that don't appear to pay that well and not require too much like being responsible for issuing building permits or something. On your way home the police stop you and hassle you until you pay a "fine" to be paid on the spot in cash. Maybe you pay it (and be sure to get a receipt so the next cop knows you've already paid), maybe you haggle for an hour or two until they get bored and move on.
This will prevent the country from developing their most valuable industries, these countries will suffer massive brain drain both to other countries and also internally as their best and brightest end up competing for jobs that could be performed by low level staff.
Type 2 Corruption: American Style
The government allocates 3 billion dollars for an infrastructure development project. This is already twice what the project should cost compared to similar projects in other countries, but the labor unions still find ways to bloat the project more, adding all sorts of rules and stipulation that empower their members to do things like play games with overtime where people alternate weeks to be "unavailable" and introduce delays that everyone gets paid for. Various groups trigger environmental reviews and refuse to compromise unless the project is expanded to include things they want. To the surprise of no one, the final cost of the project is more than twice what was originally allocated and completed 10 years behind schedule. In addition some key features needed to be cut, leaving the final product a shadow of what was originally envisioned. When election day comes, the unions push hard for their benefactors. The city is effectively completely controlled by a single party and with less to differentiate candidates in the eyes of the average voter, this support has a decisive effect. Everything is debt financed and the burden is kicked down the road for the next generation to figure out.
This is definitely a huge drag on the economy and quality of life, but by itself does not fundamentally derail the direction of economic activity like the first kind does.
I'd rather the second kind if I had to choose, but both are horrible. In the US it seems that people can only see corruption in the opposite party that they are in, which is very much by design in my opinion. Most of the issues that animate political discussions in the US are in fact intentionally selected to draw attention away from these issues.
That PDF you linked doesn't really explain anything; as you mentioned things like "access to justice" isn't really defined well enough, but that link contains the sources it used for these figures.
For justice it used https://v-dem.net/ – I didn't really look beyond this and in to the methodology of V-Dem.
Re: life expectancy; I think that's too simple. Saudi-Arabia scores better than e.g. Latvia and a number of other eastern-European countries. Last I checked Latvia wasn't in the business of chopping up troublesome journalists in embassies or preventing women driving a car by law because their fannies can't handle it. Syria, Russia, and North Korea all score higher than Indonesia and a number of other countries which certainly have issues, but not Syria, Russia, or North-Korean style issues.
If you’re rich (as in $1m+ annual compensation)…maybe the US if you’re interested in paying lesser taxes and keeping more of your money. You’ll pay insurance and education costs out of pocket but you’ll end up with more post-tax income in your pockets than your European counterparts.
If you’re born in Nigeria like me, start weeping because your healthcare budget is $6 per person annually (no, I’m not joking)…haha
In the US you'd need an appointment, insurance paperwork or no insurance and then the actual meds might be $50-$80, if your doctor insists on prescribing the latest pharmaceuticals.
"I think this is infected"
"Looks like it. Here you go!"
Cost is 1€.
Whether they are prescribed correctly is another story (France used to be very into prescribing antibiotics for everything, this changed in the last 20 years)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8315858/
>These analyses included several types of prescribing decisions, finding that physicians who received industry payments were more likely to prescribe drugs made by the companies that had paid them over alternatives, had higher prescribing costs, and prescribed relatively more brand-name products over generic alternatives. The positive results of these studies spanned a broad range of physician specialties and drug classes.
The pharmaceutics have to provide a generic if it exists, even if the prescription is for another drug (except if the MD explicitly states that the specific drug must be used, with an explanation and they have to report this)
Great if you're established or the economy is flourishing where you want it. Not so great if important sectors are dwindling and you have yet to establish yourself.
One, why do you think startups are so good to the avarage person?
Two, Spotify, Ericsson, SAAB, Skype, Thepiratebay, our military in general (we are country of 10mil and we build 3 jet plane models, our subs, and cruisers are renowned) and ofc IKEA. :))
They were all startup mentality once.
Plus how many people really start their own companies. More importantly, WHEN they fail, and they WILL, how will you survive in the usa without massive private savings as there is no safteynet?
I worked my way up to (maybe upper-)middle class and wanted to accomplish things. Not only would this not have been possible in the U.S.A, what I wanted to accomplish wouldn't even have been termed an accomplishment there (it was happiness and contentment).
> It’s not a coincidence that pretty much all the successful ambitious startups are in the US, and not in Europe
It certainly isn't, but that likely means something else to me than you. So far, those "successful ambitious startups" have messed up quality of life, and maybe even global politics.
It's not a co-incidence that that I see "FUCK OFF GOOGLE" stickers everywhere I walk here.
We have different goals in Europe.
Better education and health care for my neighbors brings my quality of life up as well. But then again, maybe I live in a naive bubble.
TLDR: Love Norway and think they're doing it right. But also think that these rankings are broken.
With regards to the weather: "Winter depression" is a real thing for many (including me), and the health care system is still far better with physical issues then with mental issues.
But there is a safety net in place. When I broke my shoulder in 2017 I did not loose any of my income, and it didn't cost me anything in the hospital (with some exceptions). Still, I would prefer not to break the shoulder again. :D
I've been in a bottom place myself and I wish everyone to get the help they need without further obstacles
Now I just have an uneasy feeling of being half-enslaved: I have to pay 60-70% of all the value I create into this system, and if I do fall seriously ill I could very well die on a park bench.
Sadly my conclusion is that I have to get out of here. I don’t think I could take another iteration of this without succumbing to bitterness.
Before you judge me think about the Fundamental Attribution Error: yes, I’m not exactly like you as a person, but more importantly I have information you probably don’t have (i.e. what it’s like to be at the bottom of this kind of society).
This is everywhere. Paying out of pocket does not fix this.
And any country has a connected system. If not taxes then its gonna be insurance.
By law, yes. In practice, no.
I think this is what may be hard to understand if you haven’t experienced it: if you fall far enough in Swedish society you are essentially dehumanized.
As a fellow Swede, elaborate?
If what I am going to healthcare for is REAL they take very good care of you. They know when it's serious or not. If you waste their time, gtfo.
What I mean is of course you will have it better in a third world cheap country if you come in with a western salary or even western tools already bought in from elsewhere.
What I can't fathom though, is what what goes on in England. They pay just as high taxes, and it looks like a dump. Broken roads, rubbish strewn everywhere, take-your-life-in-your-hands "healthcare system", soul crushing training camps posturing as schools, I could go on, but it's essentially every aspect of life. This has nothing to do with Brexit either, as it's been like this since I can remember, going back 30 years.
> For tax years 1944 through 1951, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals was 91%, increasing to 92% for 1952 and 1953, and reverting to 91% 1954 through 1963.[39] For the 1964 tax year, the top marginal tax rate for individuals was lowered to 77%, and then to 70% for tax years 1965 through 1981.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_Uni...
Historical Income Tax Rates and brackets https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Historic...
/ Swedish Dissident :P
What is interesting to me is that much of what the Nordics do is widely known and freely available to copy for other countries. But they rarely seem to want to, even when they can afford it. Some of what the Nordics do, like free healthcare for all, is expensive and requires strong governments with little corruption. But much of it is - like education the Nordic way - is not necessarily more expensive than the way they do education in Southern and Eastern Europe.
For the vast majority of Americans, turning the US more into a Scandinavian style social democracy would mean an improvement of life. But they don't seem to want it.
For most Southern and Eastern Europeans, taking hints from Scandinavian education with less focus on root learning and grades, and more acceptance - even encouragement of making errors - would increase their kids' chances. But they still spend significant time having kids memorize old poems or historic facts, and they still punish errors and grade even little kids. And most parents seem to want it that way.
I base this on what I read in US media, and what I gathered from having lived in the US, in a Nordic country, in a Mediterranean country and in an Eastern European country.
There is no connection with free versus paid healthcare and cost.
OECD 2021 Health expenditure per capita https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/154e8143-en/index.html?i...
We made our countries like this :)
You could also say we got lucky with our climate, no major disasters and fewer corrupt politicians.
We do many things well in Europe that means many countries here have a high quality of life. You are free to look at that and make those changes in the U.S.A. if you would like the same benefits.
If I come across things that I think the U.S.A. does better, I don't think "oh, those show-off Americans", I wonder why we don't do it as well here.
I don’t know what’s the income level that divides better/worse but there are fewer innovative companies and slightly higher taxes so net salaries are relatively lower in tech and other STEM fields.
I still think it’s a good trade off since the society is better off as a whole since its quite common for humans to fall into hard times due to external factors beyond their control.
In fact almost everyone improved. I could only see Venezuela with a slight drop.
For example Nordic countries rank among the happiest in the world. Yet, anyone who has lived through a cold dark nordic winter will tell you a different story. Similarly, you visit a poor African village and you see people who are somehow genuinely happy and content.
Something about these rankings seems very broken.
Anecdotal, but if you're taking Vitamin D, skiing in the forests, enjoying hot chocolate, and alternating between working hard and playing (video games?) hard, the winter can actually be very enjoyable.
I remember before I felt this way, but I think a lot of winter complaints come from people who aren’t adjusted/aware of the rhythm of the year and its associated opportunities.
I've just lived through my 39th such winter, and I really don't know what you're talking about.
Also some food or drinks somehow never taste quite the same in hot temperatures. Red wine is a good example.
I'm not saying that summers are bad, I'm saying that winters are fine. Sure, there's SAD which affects some portion of the population, and some things do wind down and we live in different ways at different times of the year. Personally I don't like scorching heat, but I do enjoy the long nights - a definite benefit of being up north!
But you were implying somehow that we're lying on these rankings or what? That winter is so bad it somehow cancels out the fact that we are, a lot of us, largely in freedom from fear and want, to quote your Roosevelt, in a way that is fairly unique in this world? I promise you that it is real.
I’m convinced the latter being a time of brooding is just an urban legend. I’ve met a small handful of people who look at winter this way, and every single of one of them switched their mindset if you addressed the actual issue (loneliness itself)
When I do encounter that sentiment. It often seems that person: 1.) lives in a fractured and isolating suburban community, doesn’t know their neighbors, doesn’t leave their house much 2.) grew up in a sunny tropical climate, and is still adjusting to winters
A huge amount of folks in group 2 eventually grow out of it
Folks in group 1 are often unhappy in most places. It feels to me the problem there is moreso their location and lack of community vs the winter. Because they cheer right up when they find a community to enjoy winter with
Growing up in the suburbs of the US South. Huge swathes of people I knew were unhappy with not a single cold breeze flowing by. Have a strong suspicion their unhappiness was the lack of community in their life and not the season
I love bing in the dark, reading, watching something or playing games. :)
When it’s a gloomy rainy day, ya I might feel a bit down. But my wife loves those days. She feels cozy. So it’s really subjective.
But long term the baseline changes quickly and I don’t care if it’s winter or summer. I feel equally happy in both conditions.