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Comment by sersi | Hacker News Reader

I think at this point the general consensus of most Europeans is that the US has more in common with a developing nation than with a developed nation when it comes to equality in the eye of justice, equal access to health care, support for the downtrodden and freedoms...

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It is easy to under-estimate the diversity across US States. I don't think many Europeans look at Hungary, Poland, or Bulgaria's justice systems and extend that to an opinion on EU justice in aggregate.

This isn't to excuse the abysmal state of affairs in large swathes of the US. Just to say that the US is rarely sufficiently uniform to summarize as a single entity, especially in topics like justice systems where States have significant sovereign power.

I've heard the US described as a third world country wearing a Gucci belt.

I personally still call the USA "the most advanced 3rd world country posing as a 1st world country"

This general consensus is part of why Trump gets support for his recent trade and defense comments and actions. Also, from an economic perspective the US has been successful and has poured that success into different buckets than Europe would prefer but that's fine, let the US be the US and let Europe be Europe.

Numbers for anyone curious US gdp per capita ~$82.7k EU gdp per capita ~$41.1k

All that GDP per capita and there are still hungry children in West Virginia and single mothers that can't afford to eat healthy food because of their medical debt.

Shame.

GDP per capita doesn’t mean much when people are slaving away / need 2-3 jobs to survive / are starving / can't feed children.

All evidence shows the US is a failed democracy.

People posting GDP figures in a thread about jail injustice are why the US has jail injustice.

GDP of Mississippi and Bavaria, Germany are about the same.

You would be simply insane to think that Bavaria wasn't far far wealthier than Mississippi though.

This doesn't show the limits of either the US or European ways of life but rather GDP itself as a figure. It has it's uses but that's it. Lay people are far too dependent on GDP as a meaningful indicator of wealth. Professional economists use a variety of metrics to compare and contrast different areas and systems.

This comment also illustrates why many have an issue with Americans.

“We’re rich” is not a reasonable defense against hurting people, yet it is consistently what Americans choose as their defense.

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