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Comment by asah | Hacker News Reader

The American revolution was opposed by a majority, and man what a screwup, we could've been eating crumpets instead of building a (checks Google) $20 trillion dollar economy. /s

https://www.google.com/search?q=was+the+American+revolution+...

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Canada's likely a pretty good model of what would have happened if we had not left England, and their GDP per capital is within spitting distance of the USA despite having a less favorable geography.

A pretty good 1:10 scale model in population, maybe. If the US were still in the Commonwealth, it'd be the second-largest nation in population by 110 million and the largest in GDP by about $20 trillion. Parent comment's GDP rounding error for the US is the entirety of the UK's 2019 GDP ($3.1T).

The British administration of Canada was surely informed by the experiences of the 1770s. And Canada had its own rebellions, just not successful ones.

> The British administration of Canada was surely informed by the experiences of the 1770s.

The British administration of Canada was different to begin with because Britain acquired Canada from conquering New France and so had a completely separate culture. And the way France ran then-New France / now-Canada was completely different to how the British 'ran' the colonies ('ran' is used loosely, as there was minimal oversight since they were each basically commercial ventures).

For some interesting research on how the administration differences resulted in the cultural differences (even though the countries are right next to each other), see the book The origins of Canadian and American political differences:

* https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674031364

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3286270-the-origins-of-c...

Doubtful. The US was the first government of its kind and it triggered the French Revolution and every anti-monarchist revolution since then. Canada and every other commonwealth state was influenced by that. The snowballing GDP under republics begin to have its own gravity until a huge portion of the world got pulled into our orbit.

History is not a linear journey from point a to point b. Capitalist republics are not inevitable and liberalism is not assured. We could indeed all be bowing to Charles right now.

Well not Charles. If America didn't become a model Republic, Edward VIII quite likely would not have abdicated to marry American Wallis Simpson, and so George VI would likely have never taken the throne.

I think the abdication was more about her having been married before

While I agree on the first part I think it’s hard to separate the economies of USA and Canada due to their proximity and collaboration. I think a fairer comparison would be with Australia or New Zealand. Not sure how close they are in GDP per capita but they are also definitely up there.

That's all in retrospect. History could have taken many other branches by now.

I don’t think global democracy (nor the current democracy of Canada) would have been the same without the American Revolution

Canada's GDP is pulled up by the USA being right over the border but is still quite a lot lower per capita than that of the US. We lag far behind the US in wealth per capita - our economic performance is more on par with the nicer EU countries than with the US.

The 2021 numbers, if anyone is interested like I was in what "spitting distance" means here:

Canada: 51,987.94 USD

USA: 70,248.63 USD

That places Canada's GDP per capita at about 74% of the US's.

I could definitely go for national health care right now.

As a European immigrant to the US, turned US citizen, I would never take the flip side of my move; but, you can rest easy knowing you have that option. If you don’t know people who have expatriated to some degree out of the US, invest in widening your social circle.

There's a good chance you're somehow tied to technology, though, and America pays its software engineers a frankly bonkers amount compared to much of Europe. That may way outweigh a lot of other considerations for you.

But I also agree, I'd prefer to stay in the US than move to Europe. But I'd even more prefer to have some universal healthcare and also live in the US.

> As a European immigrant

Could you be more specific? There are many countries in Europe, of course.

> I would never take the flip side of my move

I wasn't talking about moving; I was talking about having UK-style health care here in the US.

> you can rest easy knowing you have that option

Which option?

> If you don’t know people who have expatriated to some degree out of the US, invest in widening your social circle.

What was the purpose of this sentence?

The entire purpose of my comment was to provoke someone who understands the world through glib, thought-terminating catchphrases, into obnoxiously quote-replying every few words of my comment, independently of the context they were presented in.

Then don't go to the UK.

$25 trillion!

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp

There's a pretty strong case to be made that the American Revolution was just a British civil war.

I would be quite OK with living in a country whose GDP per capita is that of Canada or Australia.

the american civil war was the way the british crown took back control of their former colony

catholicism is how rome beat down the 'barbarians', which ended up as the germanic holy roman empire

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