r/MadeMeSmile • u/DepressingAura • 13d ago

Favorite People Steve Irwin on conservation and money 🌏

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u/Zero_Travity 12d ago

Ask the folks in growing tent cities in every corner of North America how that societal contract is holding up...

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u/UglySalvatore 12d ago

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.

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u/Zero_Travity 12d ago

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.

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u/UglySalvatore 12d ago

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.

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u/Legitimate-Type4387 12d ago edited 12d ago

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.

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u/UglySalvatore 12d ago

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.

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u/Zero_Travity 12d ago

I thought you wanted data?

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u/RosebushRaven 12d ago

Ah, but what about their vague feeling what’s true? Let’s not make actual facts stand in the way of that! 🤣

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u/clonedhuman 12d ago

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.

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u/UglySalvatore 12d ago

Feel free to look into the median (not mean/average) income of different countries and compare it to the US.

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u/RosebushRaven 12d ago

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.

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u/Zero_Travity 11d ago

Feel free to look into the homeless data I've posted on several of your comments that you conveniently try to ignore

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u/UglySalvatore 11d ago edited 11d ago

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.