Quote (bogie160 @ Nov 24 2020 12:46pm)
When we compare disposable, after-tax income we find that Americans outpace many of the advanced European democracies. Pew did not include the poorer EU members (e.g. Romania) in the model, or the United States would have been in an even more favorable light.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/05/through-an-american-lens-western-europes-middle-classes-appear-smaller/#:~:text=With%20the%20exception%20of%20Luxembourg,behind%20the%20American%20middle%20class.This isn't to say that there aren't needed improvements to our current model, because there are with respect to infrastructure, health-care (the current insurance oligopoly model is unsustainable), and byzantine regulatory rules that dramatically reduce economic freedom and competition (one of the main reasons the United States has been falling down economic freedom indexes in recent years). But it's a classic case of "grass is greener" to hold Europe up as some Eden with the United States as Paradise Lost.
I'm assuming you mean Europe specifically when you say "the rest of the world", because the actual rest of the world is a pretty terrible place to live by comparison.
Their specific policies are the policies that fix the unsustainable things you reference.
We should have been making huge investments like the GND calls for, but we didn't and so China is the current world leader in green energy. Similarly, a carbon tax has been wildly successful in the rest of the world and has had a consensus among economists for literal decades as the best way to fix the issue of carbon emissions. We should have had universal healthcare decades ago, but we don't and as a result our system has the worst outcomes of the western world, and much of the east. We're not even competitive with Cuba unless you've got hundreds of thousands of dollars to throw at the problem. We should already have a model for universal access to education and could easily afford it as well. Even going back to the 80's reform of police to take things off their plate and give it to other professionals (defunding the police) was hugely popular and an acknowledged problem in the United States.
I could go on really, because the vast majority of the left wing economics are things that are supported by an insane level of evidence and have massive popular support.
It's literal propaganda that there is even a perceived debate on these subjects. Propaganda by very specific right wing individuals and organizations.
This post was edited by Thor123422 on Nov 25 2020 10:20pm