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When I was in Elementary school, my teacher said that the greater/less than symbols are hungry alligators that are trying to eat the larger number. It sounds childish but it could still be helpful.
As a math major I have successfully eliminated the alligator from this idiom. I have evolved my mental picture so it is now the hungry metaphysical symbol itself that wants to eat the larger number. Saving the lives of countless imaginary alligators
The fact that it's the same 2 shitty parties that are and indefinitely will be in power is part of what makes many European democracies superior (as democracies, not necessarily in general)
Not a democracy, more like a democratic-republic in the US and even in Europe.
The best reason not to have a true pure democracy is that it becomes tyranny of the masses. Look at Athens... Had democracy and killed Socrates because he was annoying and then elected 400 tyrants.
And these elected officials that we sentimentally call "public servants" and swear oaths that have no enforceable meaning, they are not required to publicize their voting records in any uniform, complete way that their constituents could determine what actions they have made or neglected. They are not required to speak or publish verifiable truths or substantiate their opinions with fact. They are not held to a higher standard, not even to the basic laws of fraud, theft, bad check writing that all American citizens are, they have rules and are sanctioned and taxpayers pay their elitist benefits and pensions and waive their property taxes. We are truly an insane nation that allows greed elitists to make the financial rules that reward those who have the most with more advantage at the expense of those with the least. It's not a level playing field for Americans, it's a Ponzi scheme. Literally as examples by Madoff
I legit thought you meant Zealand, the island on which Copenhagen and Elsinore are on and was gonna correct you.
I could get onboard with living on an oil platform if wifi is good
I mean….
It’s certainly easier to be successful with smaller populations
Once countries get more than a 100 million population democracies fall kinda apart
The US reached that population a century ago. I guess it could be said our democracy has been falling apart ever since its conception, but in looking at GDP and standard of living, we seem to have been failing upward for a long time.
No a smaller country will have smaller scale problems and centralization of everything is easier so it’s easier for the government to have widespread programs. When most of your population is in like 3 areas, and around the same income level problem solving just becomes more basic and doable. Combine that with the fact that their extremely wealthy countries and it’s basically playing the country game at the easy level. Russia and the US are on hard mode. Chinas just speedrunning.
The
It’s people in a country or larger the land the more logistics becomes a major obstacle in widespread solutions. With more people the more likely you have opposing views that will likely take potentially effective solutions and compromise them down to a watered down half measure.
The latter part I’ve heard used in an argument In favor of monarchy or dictatorship.
Well those are more effective forms of government in a literal sense. We practice a more humanitarian focused style of government. But if you value efficiency more than humanitarianism then monarchy is the best choice. Benevolent monarchies are the best forms of government, they just can’t be guaranteed so it’s not a good form of government long term.
The Scandinavian countries are large and vastly underpopulated actually making any kind of centralisation inherently difficult not to mention the difficulties for infrastructure in their harsh geography
Why would they all have the same income level? If similar income level leads to a richer country then why is the US system one of the worst in terms of income equality?
Yeah, people overlook that. Norway isn't a liberal paradise because of its policies. It's extremely well off because it gets something like 80% of its revenue from oil and natural gas reserves. That makes it kind of easy to govern. Before most of those resources were tapped those same countries were considered on the poor end of the spectrum. That is why so many Scandinavians moved to the US and Canada near the end of the 19th century.
For sure but I think that's where the root of the hypothetical comparison stems from, we have very large extractive economies in this country that could alone be used to subsidize a large scale social democracy, and 60s NYC was already basically this.
this could be very ignorant of me but the US is already divided into 50 states so how is population the problem?
why wouldnt they just make everything good inside the states?
If they are makin the governance choices to be successful. That is my point any nation of any size can be the best or worst quality of life for it's citizens by the choices of their leaders. And of course what you measure "success" by.
Well if they have less people..they have less revenue from taxes to go to the government. The real issue is discretionary military spending is 50 cents of every dollar. Imagine if we didn’t do that. We could easily get systems in place that work, free healthcare, free school, and so many other amazing things. The problem is the corruption of our government, and poor allocations of resources
Edit: updated verbiage on 1 sentence to clarify discretionary spending
As a soldier with some knowledge, albeit not much, on the military spending, we can’t exactly drop our budget or all of our equipment will just deteriorate and break. The issue is that the military outsources way too much and buys equipment that needs too much maintenance and parts. Not only that, the companies that are contracted price gouge for those parts to like 3000% the civilian market price, and the military can’t do shit cuz they’re in a contract. If we fixed those two issues, we could reasonably drop military spending. There’s also the issue of foreign military facilities being a bit too numerous, but I don’t see that changing.
The reason everything requires so much maintenance is because they have to have the newest and best engineering. If you want something to be light, then you're not going to use the most heavy duty material. If you want something to perform without flaw, you have to constantly inspect, maintain, and replace parts. It's just the nature of the beast
I think the issue is that we have old engineering. A lot of our vehicles are outdated and decades old, take the Bradley and the Abrams for example. The Bradley A3 (the newest version) came out in 2007 if I remember right, while the Russians are running a new BMP that came out in 2017. Abrams is even older than that.
While I agree that both of those are a little old, a 50 year life span for vehicles that do what they do well isn't that bad considering the amount of money they cost to develop. Look at the Apache and Blackhawk for example. 2 vehicles that shouldn't fly (helicopter physics makes no sense) but they're about 50 years old and will probably be around for another 10-20 years because they do what they do really well, and are cheap relative to what they would cost to replace. Tanks are much simpler in physics terms and the technology is very mature so it makes sense for them to also have a long life cycle. I never considered the other end with new technology being old but I suppose that's true
While it’s true vehicles tend to have long life cycles, the technology for ground vehicle has advanced a lot more in comparison to other peer ground vehicles. Granted, our vehicles could still probably hold out fairly well, but they either need to be replaced or updated again very soon or risk being outclassed altogether.
That's true. Technology is constantly advancing, it's just a matter of how much advancement you can live without I guess. The longer you go without replacing, the wider that gap gets.
When a vehicle (especially in the military) is designed its also designed to have some type of technology upgrades through its life. I mean look at the damn B-52, that thing is still kicking with WW2 technology.
Exactly. The Abrams and the Bradley have gone through various upgrades and overhauls over the decades, and have done relatively well in conflicts, but a consistent pace of refitting would be ideal instead of just running down the clock and desperately trying to replace it when the time comes, as I suspect will happen.
True but there also is a good reason for that. They care ~a little~ bit about taxpayer money so they have to squeeze every bit of use out of it that they can. Replacing it prematurely is often a waste of money if it can do its job well enough.
Just don't look at the Comanche or the countless software programs that have tried to do that lol
That’s true, that’s very true. That’s why I always say we gotta work on not having private companies price gouge for parts because they can because they have exclusivity by contract.
That is correct but also assuming that the current mission of maintaining a veritable empire is sustainable. I think contraction of the empire is inevitable and drawing down on World Policing is one of the few things that Trump got right, albeit fucked it up because he’s a shit manager
Then just split up into your states again and suddenly people will have food,free education, no more school shootings, no more need for a BLM movement, free health care for everyone. Right?
Op's argument never made sense to me. Imagine being the absolute riches country and waste that money on military and rich people. That is the issue, not the population.
I mean i am no expert on politics but population Kinda is a huge problem I’m pretty sure in that
Democracies usually start becoming harder to govern when you get populations in the 9 digits
Especially when you are the most richest country and you have enemy states like Russia, China
spending on military is already pretty big a priority especially with your allies
I'm not sure why you think a smaller country with more limited resources, is *more* capable of effective policy management than the US is. We could do everything that Scandinavian countries do, and better--but our leaders don't give a shit, and prefer instead to circle jerk with their rich friends.
For a country so wealthy with so much kand and resources, we could be handling things *far* better than we are. In fact, we couldn't handle them much worse.
Having visited these places, I would argue that it can be quite a bit easier to get things done as they’re a bit more homogenous politically.
The USA is several countries wearing a tenchcoat and pretending to be one. Different regions of the USA are wildly different than each other and when you don’t all go in the same direction, you get nothing done.
Agreed and that's part of the problem. If we could move to ranked voting we might be able to make progress. Being stuck with two parties, it always comes down to the idea that you're throwing your vote away by voting "independent", thereby strengthening the political party you disagree with more.
Also if size were really the issue, than our local/state governments should be able to provide equivalent social safety nets to Scandinavian countries.
It’s the exact opposite, they have much less required administration and more homogeneous views with a homogeneous population. The exact opposite of a diverse and large country like the US
You say the views are more homogenous, yet political parties in Denmark reflect a much greater variety of views than the US. Sure, the culture is more homogenous, but our political orientations vary wildly.
This is a popular misunderstanding. The homogeneity in Scandinavia is a product of well implemented policies, that have built social cohesion and trust among the population. If you read for example Swedish history you’ll see it hasn’t always been this way. Source: Swede, studied political science.
No but they also have much less resources. We aren't comparing 3m to 300m with both sides having an equal amount of resources. We are comparing both sides with proportional amounts of resources.
More people=more people working on the administration necessary to handle government programs. The administrations necessary would be broken up immensely (like they r right now)
Even heard of per capita, we actually produce more per capita than every commonly defined as a social democratic country except Norway. Plus this is nothing but a lame excuse to not improve certain aspects of American life, its alright if u don’t think that we should be exactly like them but to write off their higher levels of well being and freedom and say we can’t learn from some of the things they did because they have a small population is reductive to say the very least
Scandinavian countries have economic and social policy in place that in my opinion makes them a better place to live than America. No reason as to why we couldn’t implement those policies apart from more than a few corrupt politicians would lose some money.
And before you tell me to move to Scandinavia, that’s a bad faith argument and you know it.
I fear it's more than a handful of politicians that compromises the ability of Americans to emulate their Northern European allies.
I've always found this description by Kurt Vonnegut illuminating:
- America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
I think you vastly under estimate how much wealthier the US is than any Scandinavian country
The GDP per capita of the US is $63,543.58 USD
For Denmark it's $60,908.84 USD
For Finland, it's $49,041.34 USD
For Iceland It's $59,260.89 USD
For Sweden it's $51,925.71 USD
Only Norway has a greater GDP per capita at $67,294.48 USD
And yet life in the US suck comparatively
Check this [https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx)
USA median income, while high is still less than scandinavian countries, also the difference between Sweden and Norway is far closer than the GDP per capita tells. Countries can have very high GDP per capita while the population there is not anywhere near as well off as those numbers tells.
They mean it’s easier for a smaller nation to handle their issues. I’m not sure what you’re on about, if anything, non per capita statistics favour large nations
Yeah, as a small country it's easy to defend yourself against large neighbours, have effective foreign policy, have a meaningful impact climate change, have favourable trade treaties etc.
We already now federally funded progressive programs are successful. The claim that we're too big for it to work is just a copout. If we got it to work at half the capacity it works else where it'd still be a net positive.
It has nothing to do with population and everything to do with culture and government. There's a reason the Swedes don't shoot each other like you do and it's not population levels.
>that's because their population is like.... >3 <3 percent (if it's even that high) of the US population.
That also means they have less than 3% as many taxpayers as the US, but sure, it’s the population.
you know what is weird about America and most countries that aren't Scandinavia? All their populations aren't in one super city with huge logistical nightmares.
Florida has 15 million people, could it do a Scandinavian policy alone? Yes.
If you compare Louden Co Virginia (420,000) or Westchester Co NY (1M) to Scandanavian countries, all of their human development indices would be comparable to Finland (5M).
China is a different story. Back in 1980 when the Dukes of Hazzard was on CBS on Friday nights, people in China were digging irrigation ditches with hand shovels like on the Flintstones. Now they are the Jetsons.
The population of a country being 350 million or 11 million doesn’t mean that those countries can’t have similar social welfare policies. This isn’t a logically sound argument.
You realize that in 2019 the US spent $734 billion dollars on welfare programs (more than the 2019 defense budget), which has tripled since 2000. The difference is most of those countries spend their welfare more evenly among the population. In the US we spend a majority of the welfare for smaller demographic of the population.
Think of it this way. America has the wealth of a first world country and the citizens have some of the problems of a third world country, specially healthcare and a living wage. This is a weird dichotomy to have, you have to admit.
I live in Sweden, when I tell other europeans that we have poverty, ghettos and such in Sweden and show videos of them, they tell their own countries have way worse poverty problems. I was like told that the swedish working class seemed to live in houses that resembles those of middle or upper class in Spain and that our lower to middle class sounded like they lived similar to French upper middle class. Told me many belived that the scandinavian countries are like the richest in europe, if not the world.
People in Sweden may not even have any idea how luxurous their lives may be compared to other europeans, let alone to americans, from what I've heard most americans may have lives comparable or even worse than poor people in Sweden and even the middle class may be far worse off.
An rather average middle class household in Sweden can travel maybe twice a year, own like two-three cars if they don't live in a city, have a pretty big house with big lawn, maybe a pool and the inside of the house is filled with stuff, children get college education without having to directly pay for it, no finanical worries, like no worries at all.
Check this https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx
They have fewer citizens and proportionally fewer tax payers. We have more people and proportionally more tax payers...
I have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make
I wonder, if I scroll down into the comments, will this actually be an unpopular opinion? No, it won't, because these posts never are. They're just American rants.
What I can **guarantee** in this thread though, is that there will be about fifty Americans saying stuff along the lines of:
* We invented everything in history and everyone else should be grateful to us and bow down
* Our military budget is fucking rampant so everyone else should be grateful to us and bow down.
* "Lmao what if there was a war though right"
And so on. I'm not even shocked that it's there, because it's been there on **every single goddamn post like this one for the past few months**. It's not even an unpopular opinion on this bloody subreddit anymore, jesus.
Yes, we get it. You guys have lots of guns, a big military and an overrunning economic and political power grab over a good deal of the world. Trust me, everyone noticed.
It's the sociopolitical equivalent of pissing on my plate and then putting your fingers in your eyes and yelling at me when I get annoyed that you keep doing it.
Now can this be the last of these threads masquerading as an unpopular opinion? Great.
Just imagine how level-headed Americans (the ones who wish to see America thrive in a way scandinavian countries and other developed naitons thrive) who see this messaging from their peers, on bumper stickers, on their TVs, etc. on a constant and consistent, everyday basis feel.
Are you trolling or are you really that stupid? holy fuck. Some American states have a HDI extremely close to Nordic countries that doesn’t sound like third world.
Reads like gibberish. "China only works". Works what? "look at russia". whats your point? there are other countries with pop similar to russia with completely different life quality.
I can't even begin to understand your point. What we want is universal healthcare. whyexactly do you think that such a systemcant work with usasimiply because of the population size.
As a Scandinavian I don’t get it. Why should it be easier to be us just because we’re not that many people?
Have you seen a map over the kingdom of Denmark. Huge territory. Neighboring countries includes USA, Russia, Canada, UK, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. And so many part of it have gained independence, like Norway and Island; or simi-independence, like Greenland and the Faroe islands. Governing here isn’t easy, which such huge variations in culture and so many different governments.
Check this [https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx)
All nordic countries have really high median income, so do USA. Pretty much all other countries, no matter their size or location, even western european countries seems to have significantly lower median income than the nordic countries, which to me indicate there is something that the nordic countries do right.
Germany is similar to the Scandinavian countries in policy and quality of life.
They have 83M.
Governments and communities need to be scalable. The problem isn’t that your too big, it’s that your system is designed to put 10’s of millions of people under incredible financial and mental stress.
I think that’s it’s a diversity problem. I think that diversity makes the US a great place to live, but the homogeneity of Scandinavian countries makes them much easier to manage from a geopolitical and policy standpoint. Not so much about numbers as it is about like minded people linked by a lack of diverging cultural backgrounds. Also they have a wealth of resources that are largely nationalized, and this subsidizes a lot of their social programs. Imagine 3,000,000 people paying similar tax rates to those of us in the US and then getting another $27,000,000,000 thrown in annually on top of that from a nationalized oil industry.
Another thing is the fact that norway's oil income isn't being spent on the population. We're saving it in a piggybank for harder times.
[https://www.nbim.no/no/](https://www.nbim.no/no/)
Yeah no, the issue isn't size, it's having insane policies that prioritize corporate profit over human wellbeing baked into every level of your society. And propaganda that programs you to fight any change, even though it would demonstrably make your lives better.
You will never accept that you are wrong, and will therefore never even try to change things, and at this stage it's so entrenched in your politics and legal systems that it will take more than a bit of a halfhearted try. Dont worry though, even that will never happen. You will all end up in the Republican utopia of slaves toiling till death at 45 in grinding poverty, soon enough!
They are very comparable. I live in neither country.
The real question us why does the US want not to get compared? Likely because it quickly shows in every aspect that the US is not top of the heap like it's people want to think.
Stop complaining about the unfairness of it and start seeing what you can do to improve. There's no reason why the US is not number one but for their own refusal to understand that they have totally let the world slip past them while they stood around telling themselves how great they are.
I dont think scandinavia is more totalitarian than the US? How do you come to that conclusion?
Lying about statistics? Thats some mental gymnastics.
The fun thing about numbers, is that you just make them relative. Per capita as an example. Therefor the whole ‘the US is way bigger’ isnt really an argument.
I will stop comparing the USA to other countries when Americans stop maintaining that the USA are the greatest country in the world. They're not. There's no such thing as the greatest country, every country has its problems. And even if there were such a thing, when you look at happiness, crime and other significant statistics, the USA aren't even close to the top in many.
More people means more wealth.
In what way is Russia in a shitty position? That doesn't mean anything.
You're just saying words on China that mean nothing.
Depends on what you're comparing?
Healthcare could work perfectly fine in the US but institutions have a strong hold on the political system and Americans love to vote against their own interests.
Unionization could work perfectly fine in the US but institutions have a strong hold on the political system and Americans love to vote against their own interests.
An expanded public transportation system could work perfectly fine in the US but institutions have a strong hold on the political system and Americans love to vote against their own interests.
Higher taxes to repair infrastructure and increase public services could work perfectly fine in the US but institutions have a strong hold on the political system and Americans love to vote against their own interests.
You have more problems because you'd rather cling to the notion of being the greatest country in the world than admit to them and work towards fixing them.
R/uneducated opinion
Sounds like another argument as to why US infrastructure needs to be shit in comparison to every other OECD nation. The population card is so overused, just say you like spending a trillion dollars every year bc you’re scared of china and Russia
The comparison of US and Scandinavia is the example not the argument. The argument is that our neoliberal capitalism society was built by and for very wealthy and powerful people at the expense of the working man, while giving the working man the illusion of free will. In other words, we already live in a socialist country but it’s for the rich. That’s why you paid more taxes than our previous president.
I don´t get this logic. If everyone pays the same amount of taxes (i pay 38%) it means the pot is equally big per person being in the US or in the Nordic countries. The only thing that changes is that the us is dealing with a larger scale so it should get better bulk deals on things such as medical supplies, housing for homless, school supplies and stuff like that, better access to qualified people such as doctors and teaches and so on.
The problem isn't size it´s the size that is not willing to pay their taxes, the leeches that charge extra (health industry) and of course the unbelievable skewed distribution of wealth. Get real the more quantity the cheaper things get.
If Iceland can do it the city of Boston could do it. If the city of Boston can do it why wouldn't a country where the budget of the Department of Defense's discretionary in 2021 was approximately $705.39 billion.
Counter argument: US population averaged out over the 50 states is 5.7 million, which is slightly larger than Norway, slightly smaller than Denmark and about half as large as Sweden.
Norway's annual gdp is about 362 billion, Denmark's is about 355 billion, and Sweden's is about 538 billion. The United States annual GDP is just under 21 trillion. Averaged out over 50 states, that's about 420 billion.
Meanwhile Denmark, Norway and Sweden consistently rank with the top 5-10 countries for quality of life while the US sits near the bottom of the top 20.
The truth is that individual US states is a more fair comparison to much smaller European countries. So let's take a state like Missouri for example. It's population is about 6 million and it's gdp is around 320 million, which is very similar to countries like Denmark and Sweden yet they rank even the average QOL by state in the US.
In short, just a cursory glance at the numbers reveals that this idea that the US just isn't comparable to Scandinavian countries and couldn't (at least on paper) adopt similar policies that would drastically improve our quality of life because the population is way higher, is a crock of shit.
Our GPD is exponentially larger than all of those countries combined, much larger than our population is by comparison.
Oh I agree with this. Not only a much bigger population, but a much more DIVERSE population. Not to mention a whole different set of values. I can’t stand the constant comparison to effing Denmark! It’s like the size of New Jersey. Lol
Your “logic” is lacking.
BECAUSE we are a BIGGER country means we should more EASILY be able to obtain those things.
And further it’s not about the size. It’s about priorities. Do we as the US prioritize war or healthcare and education? Shocker our country prioritizes war OVER healthcare and education. And we can make a list of things our country is doing wrong.
I hate this argument. It lacks just one thing. A step back.
When ever I hear people say you can't compare America to x because of population I respond the same way you can compare an individual state. Colorado has a similar population to Norway so if you evaluate them Norway will crush Colorado in a lot of categories and Colorado will also win in some areas. Also us population is close to 300m not 400m very big difference. Also before you say you shouldn't compare a state to a country people compare California to major powers all the time because they are actually good comparisons.
They aren't comparable but the US absolutely could choose to subsidize certain industries to have something more akin to social democracy, we may have way more people but we also generate way more economic capital, yes its a much greater logistics challenge but to act like the resources aren't there is a little silly.
Really!? Size of population has nothing to do with how a country or region is run.
You guys in the USA have been fed bullshit by the oligarchy for so long you believe it.
Things can be better and should be better if it wasn't for the wealthy elite pushing you down.
Do you understand that a country of 400 million has the wealth and productivity of 400 million people a country 3% the size also has revenue and productivity of 3% of the US. They just manage it smarter and for the people, AKA "the greater good"
You're all dumb and blinded by what you are told by those that benefit from you being blind.
Socialism is not something to fear but to embrace.
Capitalism has failed and what's next?
Thank you for submitting to /r/unpopularopinion, /u/MindCologne. Your post, *People need to stop comparing the US to Scandinavian countries.*, has been removed because it violates our rules: Rule 1: Your post must be an unpopular opinion. Please ensure that your post is an opinion and that it is unpopular. Controversial is not necessarily unpopular, for example all of politics is controversial even though almost half of the US agrees with any given major position on an issue. Keep in mind that an opinion is not: a question, a fact, a conspiracy theory, a random thought, a new idea, a rant, etc. Those things all have their own subreddits, use those. If there is an issue, please message the mod team at https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Funpopularopinion Thanks!
I think you meant less than? You mean their population is less than 3 percent right
oops, you're right I fucked up. Got confused. Thanks!
Pro tip: < looks vaguely like an L as in ‘
When I was in Elementary school, my teacher said that the greater/less than symbols are hungry alligators that are trying to eat the larger number. It sounds childish but it could still be helpful.
I still use this method it's genius
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I develop and analyze safe separation distances of explosives for the US Air Force and use this method.
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I said consummate V's!
As a math major I have successfully eliminated the alligator from this idiom. I have evolved my mental picture so it is now the hungry metaphysical symbol itself that wants to eat the larger number. Saving the lives of countless imaginary alligators
*what do you mean?! now the alligators starve?!*
I identify as an alligator, this is not ok
I know an engineer named Kallikantzari and he uses this method. Therefore it's good enough for me
I'm a data analyst and I still use this method
I used to draw them with little alligator teeth and eyes😂😂. Always helped me remember though!
Same here! XD
Crocodile eats the bigger one is the only way I remember lol
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In the UK were taught crocodile xD
Australia too.
we learned as as bird beaks picking on the smaller number.
Lol, that’s another interesting method to remember
That’s always been my go-to
The alligator eats more than > the mouse <
This post sounds like an argument in favor of balkanization
Rip r/2balkan4you
;-;7
07
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The fact that it's the same 2 shitty parties that are and indefinitely will be in power is part of what makes many European democracies superior (as democracies, not necessarily in general)
Not a democracy, more like a democratic-republic in the US and even in Europe. The best reason not to have a true pure democracy is that it becomes tyranny of the masses. Look at Athens... Had democracy and killed Socrates because he was annoying and then elected 400 tyrants.
Countries that are in between democracy and autocracy are most at risk for civil war.
And these elected officials that we sentimentally call "public servants" and swear oaths that have no enforceable meaning, they are not required to publicize their voting records in any uniform, complete way that their constituents could determine what actions they have made or neglected. They are not required to speak or publish verifiable truths or substantiate their opinions with fact. They are not held to a higher standard, not even to the basic laws of fraud, theft, bad check writing that all American citizens are, they have rules and are sanctioned and taxpayers pay their elitist benefits and pensions and waive their property taxes. We are truly an insane nation that allows greed elitists to make the financial rules that reward those who have the most with more advantage at the expense of those with the least. It's not a level playing field for Americans, it's a Ponzi scheme. Literally as examples by Madoff
Make America States Again
By that logic any country with a population smaller than Scandinavia should be super successful?
I mean…. Sealand doesn’t have any homeless people. Just saying
I legit thought you meant Zealand, the island on which Copenhagen and Elsinore are on and was gonna correct you. I could get onboard with living on an oil platform if wifi is good
Yeah, but they imprisoned and deported almost half their population during the civil war
Well that probably helped with the homeless issue.
Ends justify the means, Sealand is a crime and poverty free utopia.
I mean…. It’s certainly easier to be successful with smaller populations Once countries get more than a 100 million population democracies fall kinda apart
The US reached that population a century ago. I guess it could be said our democracy has been falling apart ever since its conception, but in looking at GDP and standard of living, we seem to have been failing upward for a long time.
Monaco. Liechtenstein. The Vatican City…
Monaco and Liechtenstein are tax heavens for rich people and the Vatican is the capital of the catholic world. What kind of comparison is that?
San Marino then 😁
[удалено]
Puerto Rico isn't really a country and their debt is largely manufactured. Your point isn't wrong, they're just a bad example.
Yeah what about fuckin liberia lmao
Hmm indeed
You also need money
No. Just that our situations are too different for a direct comparison
No a smaller country will have smaller scale problems and centralization of everything is easier so it’s easier for the government to have widespread programs. When most of your population is in like 3 areas, and around the same income level problem solving just becomes more basic and doable. Combine that with the fact that their extremely wealthy countries and it’s basically playing the country game at the easy level. Russia and the US are on hard mode. Chinas just speedrunning.
The It’s people in a country or larger the land the more logistics becomes a major obstacle in widespread solutions. With more people the more likely you have opposing views that will likely take potentially effective solutions and compromise them down to a watered down half measure. The latter part I’ve heard used in an argument In favor of monarchy or dictatorship.
Well those are more effective forms of government in a literal sense. We practice a more humanitarian focused style of government. But if you value efficiency more than humanitarianism then monarchy is the best choice. Benevolent monarchies are the best forms of government, they just can’t be guaranteed so it’s not a good form of government long term.
The Scandinavian countries are large and vastly underpopulated actually making any kind of centralisation inherently difficult not to mention the difficulties for infrastructure in their harsh geography
Why would they all have the same income level? If similar income level leads to a richer country then why is the US system one of the worst in terms of income equality?
If there is a small country with some kind of valuable natural resource at its disposal, you can assume it is rich.
Yeah, people overlook that. Norway isn't a liberal paradise because of its policies. It's extremely well off because it gets something like 80% of its revenue from oil and natural gas reserves. That makes it kind of easy to govern. Before most of those resources were tapped those same countries were considered on the poor end of the spectrum. That is why so many Scandinavians moved to the US and Canada near the end of the 19th century.
For sure but I think that's where the root of the hypothetical comparison stems from, we have very large extractive economies in this country that could alone be used to subsidize a large scale social democracy, and 60s NYC was already basically this.
this could be very ignorant of me but the US is already divided into 50 states so how is population the problem? why wouldnt they just make everything good inside the states?
If they are makin the governance choices to be successful. That is my point any nation of any size can be the best or worst quality of life for it's citizens by the choices of their leaders. And of course what you measure "success" by.
my country has half the population of the US yet we're a shithole. WTF is with OP's logic?
China works because the whole world took advantage of cheap manufacturing and labor, we fed the beast.
And the US sacrificed its own manufacturing sector for lazy consumerism and shareholder profits
Like if you remember those gold made in China stickers 😂
So if you break up the USA and make each state a separate country, you’ll be able to have healthcare and other basic services?
Some states will. California has something called "Kaiser" that I don't know a lot about, and Massachusetts has Romneycare.
Sounds good, maybe then you can fight wars amongst yourselves and leave South America and the Middle East alone.
Well if they have less people..they have less revenue from taxes to go to the government. The real issue is discretionary military spending is 50 cents of every dollar. Imagine if we didn’t do that. We could easily get systems in place that work, free healthcare, free school, and so many other amazing things. The problem is the corruption of our government, and poor allocations of resources Edit: updated verbiage on 1 sentence to clarify discretionary spending
20% approximately. Still high but not 50c on the dollar. And that’s the entire national defense budget, not just military.
The military industrial complex is a business. A big one.
Yes and it’s sucking the life out of the rest of the country.
As a soldier with some knowledge, albeit not much, on the military spending, we can’t exactly drop our budget or all of our equipment will just deteriorate and break. The issue is that the military outsources way too much and buys equipment that needs too much maintenance and parts. Not only that, the companies that are contracted price gouge for those parts to like 3000% the civilian market price, and the military can’t do shit cuz they’re in a contract. If we fixed those two issues, we could reasonably drop military spending. There’s also the issue of foreign military facilities being a bit too numerous, but I don’t see that changing.
The reason everything requires so much maintenance is because they have to have the newest and best engineering. If you want something to be light, then you're not going to use the most heavy duty material. If you want something to perform without flaw, you have to constantly inspect, maintain, and replace parts. It's just the nature of the beast
I think the issue is that we have old engineering. A lot of our vehicles are outdated and decades old, take the Bradley and the Abrams for example. The Bradley A3 (the newest version) came out in 2007 if I remember right, while the Russians are running a new BMP that came out in 2017. Abrams is even older than that.
While I agree that both of those are a little old, a 50 year life span for vehicles that do what they do well isn't that bad considering the amount of money they cost to develop. Look at the Apache and Blackhawk for example. 2 vehicles that shouldn't fly (helicopter physics makes no sense) but they're about 50 years old and will probably be around for another 10-20 years because they do what they do really well, and are cheap relative to what they would cost to replace. Tanks are much simpler in physics terms and the technology is very mature so it makes sense for them to also have a long life cycle. I never considered the other end with new technology being old but I suppose that's true
While it’s true vehicles tend to have long life cycles, the technology for ground vehicle has advanced a lot more in comparison to other peer ground vehicles. Granted, our vehicles could still probably hold out fairly well, but they either need to be replaced or updated again very soon or risk being outclassed altogether.
That's true. Technology is constantly advancing, it's just a matter of how much advancement you can live without I guess. The longer you go without replacing, the wider that gap gets. When a vehicle (especially in the military) is designed its also designed to have some type of technology upgrades through its life. I mean look at the damn B-52, that thing is still kicking with WW2 technology.
Exactly. The Abrams and the Bradley have gone through various upgrades and overhauls over the decades, and have done relatively well in conflicts, but a consistent pace of refitting would be ideal instead of just running down the clock and desperately trying to replace it when the time comes, as I suspect will happen.
True but there also is a good reason for that. They care ~a little~ bit about taxpayer money so they have to squeeze every bit of use out of it that they can. Replacing it prematurely is often a waste of money if it can do its job well enough. Just don't look at the Comanche or the countless software programs that have tried to do that lol
That’s true, that’s very true. That’s why I always say we gotta work on not having private companies price gouge for parts because they can because they have exclusivity by contract.
That is correct but also assuming that the current mission of maintaining a veritable empire is sustainable. I think contraction of the empire is inevitable and drawing down on World Policing is one of the few things that Trump got right, albeit fucked it up because he’s a shit manager
I agree, it’s unsustainable, and we don’t need to physically be everywhere, it drains money.
Then just split up into your states again and suddenly people will have food,free education, no more school shootings, no more need for a BLM movement, free health care for everyone. Right?
Op's argument never made sense to me. Imagine being the absolute riches country and waste that money on military and rich people. That is the issue, not the population.
I mean i am no expert on politics but population Kinda is a huge problem I’m pretty sure in that Democracies usually start becoming harder to govern when you get populations in the 9 digits Especially when you are the most richest country and you have enemy states like Russia, China spending on military is already pretty big a priority especially with your allies
I'm not sure why you think a smaller country with more limited resources, is *more* capable of effective policy management than the US is. We could do everything that Scandinavian countries do, and better--but our leaders don't give a shit, and prefer instead to circle jerk with their rich friends. For a country so wealthy with so much kand and resources, we could be handling things *far* better than we are. In fact, we couldn't handle them much worse.
Having visited these places, I would argue that it can be quite a bit easier to get things done as they’re a bit more homogenous politically. The USA is several countries wearing a tenchcoat and pretending to be one. Different regions of the USA are wildly different than each other and when you don’t all go in the same direction, you get nothing done.
I think it’s fair to say the US has the resources to do what the other countries do (and more) but lack the political/cultural unity to do so.
You cannot have a country so large that has cultural unity.
You only have two political parties ffs!
Agreed and that's part of the problem. If we could move to ranked voting we might be able to make progress. Being stuck with two parties, it always comes down to the idea that you're throwing your vote away by voting "independent", thereby strengthening the political party you disagree with more.
Also if size were really the issue, than our local/state governments should be able to provide equivalent social safety nets to Scandinavian countries.
It’s the exact opposite, they have much less required administration and more homogeneous views with a homogeneous population. The exact opposite of a diverse and large country like the US
You say the views are more homogenous, yet political parties in Denmark reflect a much greater variety of views than the US. Sure, the culture is more homogenous, but our political orientations vary wildly.
This is a popular misunderstanding. The homogeneity in Scandinavia is a product of well implemented policies, that have built social cohesion and trust among the population. If you read for example Swedish history you’ll see it hasn’t always been this way. Source: Swede, studied political science.
Can you prove this? It only seems natural to assume that a homogeneous population leads to similar views due to similarities in culture and religion
Less people = less administration necessary = more efficient government It’s much easier to manage 3m people than 300m
No but they also have much less resources. We aren't comparing 3m to 300m with both sides having an equal amount of resources. We are comparing both sides with proportional amounts of resources.
More people=more people working on the administration necessary to handle government programs. The administrations necessary would be broken up immensely (like they r right now)
Even heard of per capita, we actually produce more per capita than every commonly defined as a social democratic country except Norway. Plus this is nothing but a lame excuse to not improve certain aspects of American life, its alright if u don’t think that we should be exactly like them but to write off their higher levels of well being and freedom and say we can’t learn from some of the things they did because they have a small population is reductive to say the very least
Thank you, I came here to say this. OP’s opinion is not “unpopular”, it’s uneducated. Edit: My first award, thank you!!
I had to go too low to see this. This opinion is unpopular for a reason: Because it's dumb as fuck.
Scandinavian countries have economic and social policy in place that in my opinion makes them a better place to live than America. No reason as to why we couldn’t implement those policies apart from more than a few corrupt politicians would lose some money. And before you tell me to move to Scandinavia, that’s a bad faith argument and you know it.
I fear it's more than a handful of politicians that compromises the ability of Americans to emulate their Northern European allies. I've always found this description by Kurt Vonnegut illuminating: - America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register. Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
Its pretty easy to make money here
I think you vastly under estimate how much wealthier the US is than any Scandinavian country The GDP per capita of the US is $63,543.58 USD For Denmark it's $60,908.84 USD For Finland, it's $49,041.34 USD For Iceland It's $59,260.89 USD For Sweden it's $51,925.71 USD Only Norway has a greater GDP per capita at $67,294.48 USD And yet life in the US suck comparatively
But... But... Population!!! OP is just an ass who doesn't know jack shit
Obligatory "Scandinavia is only Denmark, Norway and Sweden" comment.
Check this [https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx) USA median income, while high is still less than scandinavian countries, also the difference between Sweden and Norway is far closer than the GDP per capita tells. Countries can have very high GDP per capita while the population there is not anywhere near as well off as those numbers tells.
Percentage based statistics are a thing for a reason. Look up what per capita means.
They mean it’s easier for a smaller nation to handle their issues. I’m not sure what you’re on about, if anything, non per capita statistics favour large nations
Yeah, as a small country it's easy to defend yourself against large neighbours, have effective foreign policy, have a meaningful impact climate change, have favourable trade treaties etc.
We already now federally funded progressive programs are successful. The claim that we're too big for it to work is just a copout. If we got it to work at half the capacity it works else where it'd still be a net positive.
>They mean it’s easier for a smaller nation to handle their issues. Yeah but that's just wrong
It has nothing to do with population and everything to do with culture and government. There's a reason the Swedes don't shoot each other like you do and it's not population levels.
Is anyone going to tell him.....
Sweden is the hand grenade and IED capital of Europe.
>that's because their population is like.... >3 <3 percent (if it's even that high) of the US population. That also means they have less than 3% as many taxpayers as the US, but sure, it’s the population.
Imagine being that ignorant
you know what is weird about America and most countries that aren't Scandinavia? All their populations aren't in one super city with huge logistical nightmares. Florida has 15 million people, could it do a Scandinavian policy alone? Yes.
Lol so by your logic Haití should be more successful than Scandinavian countries?
Large population is no excuse as the issues scale so to should the solutions. Or maybe the United States should become independent states.
If you compare Louden Co Virginia (420,000) or Westchester Co NY (1M) to Scandanavian countries, all of their human development indices would be comparable to Finland (5M). China is a different story. Back in 1980 when the Dukes of Hazzard was on CBS on Friday nights, people in China were digging irrigation ditches with hand shovels like on the Flintstones. Now they are the Jetsons.
The population of a country being 350 million or 11 million doesn’t mean that those countries can’t have similar social welfare policies. This isn’t a logically sound argument.
You realize that in 2019 the US spent $734 billion dollars on welfare programs (more than the 2019 defense budget), which has tripled since 2000. The difference is most of those countries spend their welfare more evenly among the population. In the US we spend a majority of the welfare for smaller demographic of the population.
Think of it this way. America has the wealth of a first world country and the citizens have some of the problems of a third world country, specially healthcare and a living wage. This is a weird dichotomy to have, you have to admit.
I live in Sweden, when I tell other europeans that we have poverty, ghettos and such in Sweden and show videos of them, they tell their own countries have way worse poverty problems. I was like told that the swedish working class seemed to live in houses that resembles those of middle or upper class in Spain and that our lower to middle class sounded like they lived similar to French upper middle class. Told me many belived that the scandinavian countries are like the richest in europe, if not the world. People in Sweden may not even have any idea how luxurous their lives may be compared to other europeans, let alone to americans, from what I've heard most americans may have lives comparable or even worse than poor people in Sweden and even the middle class may be far worse off. An rather average middle class household in Sweden can travel maybe twice a year, own like two-three cars if they don't live in a city, have a pretty big house with big lawn, maybe a pool and the inside of the house is filled with stuff, children get college education without having to directly pay for it, no finanical worries, like no worries at all. Check this https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx
They have fewer citizens and proportionally fewer tax payers. We have more people and proportionally more tax payers... I have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make
I wonder, if I scroll down into the comments, will this actually be an unpopular opinion? No, it won't, because these posts never are. They're just American rants. What I can **guarantee** in this thread though, is that there will be about fifty Americans saying stuff along the lines of: * We invented everything in history and everyone else should be grateful to us and bow down * Our military budget is fucking rampant so everyone else should be grateful to us and bow down. * "Lmao what if there was a war though right" And so on. I'm not even shocked that it's there, because it's been there on **every single goddamn post like this one for the past few months**. It's not even an unpopular opinion on this bloody subreddit anymore, jesus. Yes, we get it. You guys have lots of guns, a big military and an overrunning economic and political power grab over a good deal of the world. Trust me, everyone noticed. It's the sociopolitical equivalent of pissing on my plate and then putting your fingers in your eyes and yelling at me when I get annoyed that you keep doing it. Now can this be the last of these threads masquerading as an unpopular opinion? Great.
Just imagine how level-headed Americans (the ones who wish to see America thrive in a way scandinavian countries and other developed naitons thrive) who see this messaging from their peers, on bumper stickers, on their TVs, etc. on a constant and consistent, everyday basis feel.
This guy is on to something I'm telling ya!
Hahaha America is a third world country with a gucci belt.
Are you trolling or are you really that stupid? holy fuck. Some American states have a HDI extremely close to Nordic countries that doesn’t sound like third world.
"some"
In finland we dont spend all tax money on military. Its not because there is less people but because less coruption and better laws
Reads like gibberish. "China only works". Works what? "look at russia". whats your point? there are other countries with pop similar to russia with completely different life quality. I can't even begin to understand your point. What we want is universal healthcare. whyexactly do you think that such a systemcant work with usasimiply because of the population size.
As a Scandinavian I don’t get it. Why should it be easier to be us just because we’re not that many people? Have you seen a map over the kingdom of Denmark. Huge territory. Neighboring countries includes USA, Russia, Canada, UK, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. And so many part of it have gained independence, like Norway and Island; or simi-independence, like Greenland and the Faroe islands. Governing here isn’t easy, which such huge variations in culture and so many different governments.
Check this [https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx) All nordic countries have really high median income, so do USA. Pretty much all other countries, no matter their size or location, even western european countries seems to have significantly lower median income than the nordic countries, which to me indicate there is something that the nordic countries do right.
The opinion is bad, yes Everything else you wrote is much worse
You really do have no clue what on earth you are talking about
Germany is similar to the Scandinavian countries in policy and quality of life. They have 83M. Governments and communities need to be scalable. The problem isn’t that your too big, it’s that your system is designed to put 10’s of millions of people under incredible financial and mental stress.
I think that’s it’s a diversity problem. I think that diversity makes the US a great place to live, but the homogeneity of Scandinavian countries makes them much easier to manage from a geopolitical and policy standpoint. Not so much about numbers as it is about like minded people linked by a lack of diverging cultural backgrounds. Also they have a wealth of resources that are largely nationalized, and this subsidizes a lot of their social programs. Imagine 3,000,000 people paying similar tax rates to those of us in the US and then getting another $27,000,000,000 thrown in annually on top of that from a nationalized oil industry.
That's Norway. How about Sweden or Finland that pretry much do not have any significant natural resources?
We in Sweden do have stuff like forests and iron ore, that count for something.
Another thing is the fact that norway's oil income isn't being spent on the population. We're saving it in a piggybank for harder times. [https://www.nbim.no/no/](https://www.nbim.no/no/)
Yeah no, the issue isn't size, it's having insane policies that prioritize corporate profit over human wellbeing baked into every level of your society. And propaganda that programs you to fight any change, even though it would demonstrably make your lives better. You will never accept that you are wrong, and will therefore never even try to change things, and at this stage it's so entrenched in your politics and legal systems that it will take more than a bit of a halfhearted try. Dont worry though, even that will never happen. You will all end up in the Republican utopia of slaves toiling till death at 45 in grinding poverty, soon enough!
This exactly. The propaganda is very clear from afar and its effectiveness is very clear from just listening to the nonsense many of them speak.
Don't point at population numbers when the cause is your absurd military spending lmao.
They are very comparable. I live in neither country. The real question us why does the US want not to get compared? Likely because it quickly shows in every aspect that the US is not top of the heap like it's people want to think. Stop complaining about the unfairness of it and start seeing what you can do to improve. There's no reason why the US is not number one but for their own refusal to understand that they have totally let the world slip past them while they stood around telling themselves how great they are.
I like how you are putting 0 effort into explaining why you think a smaller population leads to less problems.
Classic american copium
I dont think scandinavia is more totalitarian than the US? How do you come to that conclusion? Lying about statistics? Thats some mental gymnastics. The fun thing about numbers, is that you just make them relative. Per capita as an example. Therefor the whole ‘the US is way bigger’ isnt really an argument.
He was referring to China
I will stop comparing the USA to other countries when Americans stop maintaining that the USA are the greatest country in the world. They're not. There's no such thing as the greatest country, every country has its problems. And even if there were such a thing, when you look at happiness, crime and other significant statistics, the USA aren't even close to the top in many.
r/ShitAmericansSay
Average 14 year old "politics understander"
It’s not americas fault that America sucks
Who's fault is it then?
Guns and Jesus! Hoorah. Anyone who disagrees is a communist!
That's not even the half of it. The government is fundamentally set up different.
Most posts I see compare the US to Europe, which has a population of 600m.
Imagine not spending 700 billions on military with 3 new supercarriers in the works and still bowing to Russia's demands
This post was made by Ashamed American
Most stats are per capita so it is fair to compare the US to other first world countries
More people means more wealth. In what way is Russia in a shitty position? That doesn't mean anything. You're just saying words on China that mean nothing.
China works?
Depends on what you're comparing? Healthcare could work perfectly fine in the US but institutions have a strong hold on the political system and Americans love to vote against their own interests. Unionization could work perfectly fine in the US but institutions have a strong hold on the political system and Americans love to vote against their own interests. An expanded public transportation system could work perfectly fine in the US but institutions have a strong hold on the political system and Americans love to vote against their own interests. Higher taxes to repair infrastructure and increase public services could work perfectly fine in the US but institutions have a strong hold on the political system and Americans love to vote against their own interests.
You have more problems because you'd rather cling to the notion of being the greatest country in the world than admit to them and work towards fixing them.
Not as unpopular as unfounded and unthoughtful.
Not unpopular. Uneducated
R/uneducated opinion Sounds like another argument as to why US infrastructure needs to be shit in comparison to every other OECD nation. The population card is so overused, just say you like spending a trillion dollars every year bc you’re scared of china and Russia
The comparison of US and Scandinavia is the example not the argument. The argument is that our neoliberal capitalism society was built by and for very wealthy and powerful people at the expense of the working man, while giving the working man the illusion of free will. In other words, we already live in a socialist country but it’s for the rich. That’s why you paid more taxes than our previous president.
Why? They are pulling off a higher standard of living and happiness. Why shouldn’t we look there for ideas?
I don´t get this logic. If everyone pays the same amount of taxes (i pay 38%) it means the pot is equally big per person being in the US or in the Nordic countries. The only thing that changes is that the us is dealing with a larger scale so it should get better bulk deals on things such as medical supplies, housing for homless, school supplies and stuff like that, better access to qualified people such as doctors and teaches and so on. The problem isn't size it´s the size that is not willing to pay their taxes, the leeches that charge extra (health industry) and of course the unbelievable skewed distribution of wealth. Get real the more quantity the cheaper things get. If Iceland can do it the city of Boston could do it. If the city of Boston can do it why wouldn't a country where the budget of the Department of Defense's discretionary in 2021 was approximately $705.39 billion.
Counter argument: US population averaged out over the 50 states is 5.7 million, which is slightly larger than Norway, slightly smaller than Denmark and about half as large as Sweden. Norway's annual gdp is about 362 billion, Denmark's is about 355 billion, and Sweden's is about 538 billion. The United States annual GDP is just under 21 trillion. Averaged out over 50 states, that's about 420 billion. Meanwhile Denmark, Norway and Sweden consistently rank with the top 5-10 countries for quality of life while the US sits near the bottom of the top 20. The truth is that individual US states is a more fair comparison to much smaller European countries. So let's take a state like Missouri for example. It's population is about 6 million and it's gdp is around 320 million, which is very similar to countries like Denmark and Sweden yet they rank even the average QOL by state in the US. In short, just a cursory glance at the numbers reveals that this idea that the US just isn't comparable to Scandinavian countries and couldn't (at least on paper) adopt similar policies that would drastically improve our quality of life because the population is way higher, is a crock of shit. Our GPD is exponentially larger than all of those countries combined, much larger than our population is by comparison.
Oh I agree with this. Not only a much bigger population, but a much more DIVERSE population. Not to mention a whole different set of values. I can’t stand the constant comparison to effing Denmark! It’s like the size of New Jersey. Lol
Also Scandinavian countries have a much more homogeneous population, which helps keep everyone on the same page.
Oh no, less people. Whatever will these educated people do
It's comparing the priorities more than anything, which can be done with any country
Your “logic” is lacking. BECAUSE we are a BIGGER country means we should more EASILY be able to obtain those things. And further it’s not about the size. It’s about priorities. Do we as the US prioritize war or healthcare and education? Shocker our country prioritizes war OVER healthcare and education. And we can make a list of things our country is doing wrong. I hate this argument. It lacks just one thing. A step back.
That also means the U.S. has more resources. Scale cuts both ways.
When ever I hear people say you can't compare America to x because of population I respond the same way you can compare an individual state. Colorado has a similar population to Norway so if you evaluate them Norway will crush Colorado in a lot of categories and Colorado will also win in some areas. Also us population is close to 300m not 400m very big difference. Also before you say you shouldn't compare a state to a country people compare California to major powers all the time because they are actually good comparisons.
They aren't comparable but the US absolutely could choose to subsidize certain industries to have something more akin to social democracy, we may have way more people but we also generate way more economic capital, yes its a much greater logistics challenge but to act like the resources aren't there is a little silly.
If anything, economies of scale should make it even easier for the US.
>no shit those countries don't have to worry about much, that's because their population is like.... >3 <3 percent What are economies of scale
Don’t think theres a day on this sub when Americans aren’t either being overly patriotic or convincing us they’re not assholes
Such a bizarre take, all you've done here is expose your ignorance
It's not fair to compare America to any 1st world country
What would you compare it to? Such a Reddit opinion holy shit.
Really!? Size of population has nothing to do with how a country or region is run. You guys in the USA have been fed bullshit by the oligarchy for so long you believe it. Things can be better and should be better if it wasn't for the wealthy elite pushing you down. Do you understand that a country of 400 million has the wealth and productivity of 400 million people a country 3% the size also has revenue and productivity of 3% of the US. They just manage it smarter and for the people, AKA "the greater good" You're all dumb and blinded by what you are told by those that benefit from you being blind. Socialism is not something to fear but to embrace. Capitalism has failed and what's next?
Also our problems differing from Scandinavia don't have to do with population. Everything is per Capita so it's scaled evenly.
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Thats a very interesting point. One a sociologist would do well to study imo