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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

"Socially backward" and "ideology riddled" describes the US pretty well.

And "far off" in the sense that American culture is intentionally isolationist and separatist, and Americans tend to be aggressively ignorant about the rest of the world.

Most Western democracies are more safe and have a higher standard of living and score better on the Human Freedom Index and other metrics than the US, and have "advanced" features like socialized healthcare and education, which the US does not, so one could argue the US isn't even advanced as Western democracies go. Having one's system of laws based on the vague and archaic prose of a Constitution written for an 18th century pre-industrial agrarian slaveowning society isn't very advanced as far as modern constitutional law is concerned.

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> better on the Human Freedom Index

Weird that all the metrics keep telling everyone their life is better, but people don’t feel that way. You can’t summarize the human experience of freedom in an index.

I know, people felt like eggs were too expensive and brown people were getting too much of a free ride so they voted to burn the country down.

One might almost infer in this post-truth age of ours that vibes alone aren't sufficient to form an objective model of reality.

Did you know these indices are invented by vibes of other people and are at best objective measurements of subjective values?

You're confusing "vibes" with "data."

If you disagree with the data, present data to the contrary. If you're just insisting that we believe your vibes over others, that would just make for boring conversation.

You’re confusing data with meaning, understanding, and truth.

How many freedom units in the index am I experiencing right now? Will getting more units make me happier?

You can measure data without that data having a meaningful bearing on the topic you care about.

I know, people felt like eggs were too expensive and brown people were getting too much of a free ride so they voted to burn the country down.

The grand summary of America 2025. I don't think anyone has said it better than that in all of media. They gymnastics people run to avoid that simple truth just reveals their rotten core.

"Egg prices" is part of the left's dismissal over the right's concerns about the economy in general. Using it as the basis of a serious argument hints you have no idea what the right is thinking.

How people feel is inherently complex and hard to measure, but we should mind there is a self-selection aspect where people moving to/staying in the US probably tend to care less about some of the racial history or democratic process.

What matters as "freedom" will wildly vary from a US domestic point of view vs an international or EU point of view. "People don't feel that way" is I think on point, regardless of the state of the country.

In particular as those really uncomfortable with the situation give up and move away.

> Most Western democracies are more safe and have a higher standard of living and score better on the Human Freedom Index

More safe I'll grant you.

As for higher standard of living, US salaries and purchasing power are higher than almost anywhere else, so I would need to see some citations to be persuaded.

How is the Human Freedom Index computed? Is Freedom of Speech included?

"purchasing power" and "standard of living" are two very different things.

For instance, Americans have plentiful access to cheap televisions, but an ambulance ride costs thousands of dollars, even with good insurance. This leads to a situation where people have the purchasing power to own multiple TVs, but at the same time forego lifesaving medical treatment because the cost of access is too high.

Is that a high standard of living, by your standards?

It becomes a question of whether the much higher salaries outweigh the higher costs for ambulance rides.

The biggest categories of higher costs vs the rest of the world is education and health care. I’m sure someone has done the analysis of calculating purchasing power including those categories.

That would be the Humans Development Index perhaps ? The US ranks around 20th, below a bunch of EU and SEA countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

Yes, that certainly at least looks like a good attempt.

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