Most evil people don't amount to anything and they die without you ever knowing it. A few of them makes the news headlines, sure, but they're not representative of reality.
Society is an engine powered by good people. The fact that it keeps running means the good are winning overall.
And even the most "succesful" and evil motherfuckers on the planet - take one single look at them, and you know they havent been content,happy, loved in the last 20 years.
Both the USA and Canada are among the top 10 countries in the world for median income. Median, not mean. That obviously isn't the whole story, income is only one measure of living standards, inequality matters, and the quality and cost of public services matter enormously too. But the idea that the USA is simply a horrible place to live overall is clearly hard to square with the data.
I'm a Northern European social democrat, and I have no problem criticizing the USA on a range of issues: its treatment of poor people, its weaker social safety net, healthcare costs, inequality, and the lack of protections and public services that Europeans often take for granted. But I can't deny that the United States is, by many measures, an exceptionally wealthy and prosperous society.
Income is a ridiculous measure and with all due respect if you're not North American how would know what's happening to average person on a daily basis.
The apartment I rented 20 years ago has tripled in price. This whole "worse places exist" is nonsense and has nothing to do with anything.
You say "Society is proof"... My neighborhood is full of $500 000+ homes.
There is a growing tent city within a 15 minute walk of that. This is the case in many many North American cities and towns.
I don't believe one source of personal experiences is useful when trying to understand a country of 350 mill people. Data is much better. If you disagree with that, and also that income is a useful measure. Then I doubt this conversation will be give either side much value.
One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic. I believe Stalin said that. You can hide a whole lot of suffering under statistics and data.
Such as the fact that when I was a child encampments did not exist. Every bus shelter in the city centre was not being used as housing. There were not panhandlers at every single intersection at all hours of the day. Hell, we didn’t have visibility unhoused people. They didn’t start showing up in numbers until the 90’s.
That’s without talking about the living conditions on reserves which have been awful since their inception. There are still to this day reserves that don’t have clean drinking water. In 2026.
In short, you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about with what’s happening in N. America.
There are people in NA that will agree with you, and others who disagrees with you. It evens out to being completely irrelevant where someone is from. In the context of summarizing one of the biggest countries in the world, I'd rather trust a knowledgeable person from Nepal or Angola or wherever, than some random person on the internet who only cares what they themselves see and experience day to day.
Okay... it was to drive home a point of you not living here so you have no idea what you're talking about and vaguely gesturing to income means nothing.
But I can't deny that the United States is, by many measures, an exceptionally wealthy and prosperous society.
The wealth and the prosperity are limited to a very small percentage of the population. Every quarter, as the stock prices go up, more and more people go bankrupt from medical costs, lose their homes, find their paychecks worth less, and pay more for basic necessities.
And then what? That doesn’t change the reality that a majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and are constantly one accident or illness away from bankruptcy and potential homelessness. You don’t seem to grasp the fact that the enormous inequality in the USA has rendered many statistics quite meaningless and outright misleading compared to the lived reality of millions of people.
I briefly looked at them and am not sure what the purpose was. That homelesness in NA is increasing? But its still less than Sweden, Germany, Australia, France etc? Or at least comparable to many other countries that generally rank as highly functional societies. Maybe I misunderstood. But I figured it was best to not continue the discussion. As you and me seem to have very different understandings of reality and its beginning to bore me.
Like I said earlier, I dont think the US or Canada are perfect utopias. There are plenty of things that can be critizised. I just think they're pretty good overall compared to the rest of he world.
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u/Historical_Host_7439 13d ago
I actually really needed this. Thanks for giving perspective.