Also valleys tho. Gotta have a lot of lows to have that many highs There's definitely at least three Americas. And that bottom America is a frightening reality that so many have never known otherwise

> The US is particularly great at creating more hills.

Because the US government has a money printer and an insatiable appetite for debt. The day will come for us, our kids, or our grandkids where it catches up to us.

> Many of natural born citizens I grew up with either aren't aware of this reality or are misinformed about it.

The natural born citizens dissatisfied with the US are generally not comparing the US to a developing country or a country with an ongoing war on their soil, which is where most immigrants come from.

Instead, they are comparing it to other developed countries and focused on specific conditions that matter to them, like housing, transportation, environment, violence, etc.

> Yes there are problems in America, but how many of those problems are the result of an apathetic, nihilistic American population and not the foundational systems America is built on?

The criticism of these problems is far from apathetic, and it's an important part of how we begin to remedy them. For example, we aren't going to wish away gun violence by ignoring it.

The biggest current threat to the US isn't this criticism, but rather the attack on its democratic foundations happening now. However even that is not coming from apathy, though its goals are very nihilistic in the short term and oligarchic and theocratic in the long term.

> Yes there are problems in America,

We live in a world where a large subset of people have fooled themselves into believing that there's some other place without problems. If where you live has any problems, then it must be an awful place to live - so their thinking goes.

This group, for whatever reason, don't seem to weigh the pros and cons of every other place and see that most places are either hardly any better or MUCH worse.

Italy, Spain, France, and England were great for hundreds of years before the US, and they're still pretty damn good - all things considered. The odds that the US goes from the global leader for two hundred years and turns to a sh*t-hole in our lifetimes is pretty unlikely.

But somehow ~40% of the country convinces themselves this is true based on who the current president is - and, honestly, it seems like not much else.

> how many of those problems are the result of an apathetic, nihilistic American population and not the foundational systems America is built on?

"Apathetic" is not really a word I'd use to describe most Americans I know, especially the working class. "Informed but powerless" is more like it. Nihilism is the likely result of this sort of learned helplessness from a lifetime growing up in an unresponsive democracy. From the get-go, our foundational systems emphasized wealth over democracy. It was a system designed to empower a certain type and class of people, to liberate them from the English Crown's influence, but not really a democracy for all. Through our history, we've consistently encouraged wealth creation and resource exploitation/monopolization over democratic participation, and where democratic advances were made, they happened against strong headwinds and strong oppression from the wealthy. Slave owners, robber barons, industrialists, tech owners... this has never been a society friendly to the common person.

' any natural born US citizens don't know what makes America so special. ' Can you clearify what makes more special than e.g. Germany where I live now.

systems change over time, which i think is part of the issue.

Trends matter. I think the US is today the best place in the world to be born in.

I have far less certainty for americans 2 generations away

> Yes there are problems in America, but how many of those problems are the result of an apathetic, nihilistic American population and not the foundational systems America is built on?

Excepting refugees, AFAICT U.S. immigration policy purposely selects for people who have the ability, aspiration, and often wealth to be able to be able to successfully pass through the process.

So for any other given country, you could just as easily rephrase your question to ask whether that given country's problems are the result of apathy/nihilism/etc. of the majority of people who don't end up emigrating to the U.S.

To me that seems like a fatuous question. If you think the same, then realize it's no less fatuous than the one you asked.

Edit: Hm... maybe "fatuous" is the wrong word. To me it just seems like a very general question about human civilization masquerading as a question about a specific country's population. I think there's a name for this when it comes up in say, a debate, but I can't remember what it is.

I worked with a Filipino friend. He mentioned in the town he grew up in someone tried to open a market that competed with the other two markets in town and they burned his store down and ran him out of town. He said that's the reality in a lot of the world. Some places the means to do that aren't as overt but they still exist and are effective.

Not surprising that immigrants aware of this fact come to the US and largely do better than the whining, natural-born citizens.

One difference for natural born citizens is the number of debt traps along the way.

Many of the problems are the result of active attempts to dismantle or dilute the foundational systems America is built on.

> nihilistic

I don't really see this though replace nihilistic with narcissistic and you may be on to something. It's not a belief in nothing, it's a belief in "I."

We are losing the ability to disagree and still keep it civil for one because of identities being so tied to the -ism of the day and no one accepting that they may be wrong about something every once in a while.

The same drive to be independent and "self-made" is becoming a weakness. It's going to an extreme where every man is an island.

In my (albeit unusual, privileged) experience as a highly paid tech worker, vacations/healthcare are not bad in the US... I've had more vacation days, and much better access to healthcare (for a cheaper price) in the US. Also the wealth differential is astronomical.

Why do you feel as though Europe is declining?

I'm really sorry your comment is getting so much pushback. I have a brother with some Medicaid benefits in Texas who can never live independently. He's mute, can't take care of his own hygiene, and can't swallow food, so needs to be fed through a stomach tube. Medicaid is constantly trying to deny him nursing benefits, and he can't ever hold more than $2K in any of his accounts or he would lose SSI.

People have this fantasy that the social safety net takes care of people that can't take care of themselves, but that's really not the case. It is extremely easy to lose benefits and hard to get them in the first place for various services, with very long waiting lists for some things.

I don't understand this... you would qualify for Medicaid. And it covers everything. No copays. Better than private health insurance.

Agreed that the Health Insurance situation (I call it Mafia) is terrible in the US. A perfect example of where we are not even close to being good let alone great. We have great doctors, hospitals, research but the middle man insurance mafia is destroying it for decades now. I honestly don't know what can be done.

I don't know if Single payer is a good solution in a country of our size but I am willing to try anything compared to what we have today.

Also note their use of 'marginally disabled' here. If you have a disability but are still considered 'able to work' you don't qualify for medicaid or medicare. Keeping health insurance becomes super important and ACA plans not only have very thin networks, but are often exceedingly stingy when it comes to approving specialty meds even if your doctor considers them medically necessary.

I have friends who are disabled, and get free healthcare through Medicaid. Where does this fear come from?

One got a full CAT Scan and a full neurological consult, and a EEG due to a history of seizures, all for free and within a week.

If you're unemployed in the US then you'd most likely qualify for Medicaid though

Care to cite/summarize some of the studies?

I think it depends on where you're comparing it to, and what you mean by the "rest of the world". Most of the rest of the world, by area or population, is very poor. But the US is not so special compared to the developed parts of Europe or East Asia or Canada, offering many of the same quality-of-life benefits with inferior social services and less participatory democracy.

Really all you need to be the best is slightly better than everyone else.

People have to be kept into ruined places. That is certainly not the USA.

>Yes you can get ahead here. Yes there is opportunity. The question is: how much joy and happiness will that bring? Will it last? Or is this a false construct that eventally reveals itself?

I think the answer to your question depends on the person and their personality. Many people get happiness and satisfaction from achievement, and the result of their work. For example, many people get happiness from achievements in sports, others in business.

A few years ago, I was writing a lot of proposals for government work, and I was winning a lot of them, even when competing against large defense contractors. So much so that my company didn't need any more work. But I was enjoying the satisfaction of winning that I wanted to keep going. My friend (who was also partnered with me on those proposals) and I were reflecting on that, and we agreed that the validation that came with winning was what really was motivating us, more so than the money.

Will it last? Again, I think it depends on the person. I think most high achievers get long term satisfaction from what they do. Not everyone, sure. But I don't think it's a false construct because some don't.

I’m Swedish and have worked a lot with / for US companies, but not lived there. I think the reason is a fundamentally egalitarian culture, where crab mentality is not encouraged and people (not just engineers) are fine with working for nerds.

Sweden is kind of the opposite, and it really decimates the opportunities available here. Perhaps not so much in quantity, but in quality.

I mean for my parents, they were discriminated against in their own country (India). Despite all the racism accusations that get thrown around, Americans are much more willing to take chances on people. And then it's very easy to raise your children well here. My parents came to this country in their mid thirties and are well off (retired, own their home, have some disposable income). My brother and I are filthy rich (own homes, multiple in the case of my brother, large investments, etc). We didn't do anything magic. We just studied fields that were high paying, which are open to everyone in this country. People often complain that there's not enough reaching out to various communities. I guarantee you there was no outreach to mine. I'm still the only person I know from my particular background in the United States. My parents were completely clueless as to college and higher education in this country. But if you just take advantage of the free resources and work hard... It's extremely easy to get ahead. I saw so many people growing up simply refuse to take the steps.

Recessions are never "a certainty"

I don't follow you're line of reasoning. The Fed's mandate is maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.

None of that says too much GDP growth by itself means higher rates.

I came to the US on H1B, and while there are some restrictions, and US bureaucracy is dumber than most, calling it "living in servitude" is absurd.

Unless you're from India/China, the wait times are not long to get a green card - plenty of people get it within 2 years. The real challenge is getting the labor certification stating that there is a shortage in skills you offer.

And you can always change jobs (albeit at the risk of restarting the green card process).

Servitude implies no payment and little freedom, whereas with an H1B you have often high payment and complete freedom in all ways besides your actual employer. However, your employer is still bound by all of the employment laws of the nation and state, so real abuse is quite difficult to pull off.

The nicest neighborhoods in the country are in cities and these usually come with low crime rates.

Chicago for all the shitting on it gets for it's high murder rates actually has dozens of neighborhoods that are larger than most towns, suburbs and cities, that have seen zero homicides for several years, which places them well below the national rate and makes them exceptionally safe.

And I'm not some crime apologist. Look at my post history. I'm as conservative as they come. Just following the data.

> Between our terrible healthcare, education, school safety, infrastructure, public transportation, politics, insane housing costs, corrupt judges, stances on drugs and abortion, it really feels like a hellhole where either you're rich or you're worthless.

Sigh. You're painting with a huge black and white brush.

>> We treat our society like a zero-sum game.

This and being a community is not exclusive. Asian countries are some of the worst zero-sum countries, simply by virtue of resource/person, yet simultaneously being very community focused.

People behave in zero-sum way for one thing and in a community way for another.

> I wish I could emigrate

What's stopping you?

> Life actually seemed way better for millions of working class folks during COVID, when the economy was tanking and government simply propped it up, and suddenly workers everywhere had a lot more respect and negotiation power, and unions grew for the first time in decades. It was the first time in my life I saw our society come together to work together, instead of trying to massively exploit the poor.

This is delusional. Aside from government enforced job loss, firings of people with differing views, and forcing low status occupations to continue working crazy hours and burn out, I guess labor won? Maybe? Needing unions to fight for higher wages caused by stupid economic policy is hardly a win

As an immigrant to the US (and having lived in multiple countries before that), I definitely have a different view. It's quite interesting how often that is the case.

> We treat our society like a zero-sum game.

In my experience, Americans are some of the least zero-sum thinking people, perhaps driven by the natural geographic advantages of the country. In other parts of the world, a zero-sum attitude is the norm, not the exception. It's suffocating if you live in it. I regard this as one of America's greatest strengths.

As for some of the things you find dissatisfactory with the US:

> politics

I'm sure many people everywhere think their country has uniquely dysfunctional politics, just like how people in every city claim that their city has the worst drivers. Belgium went without a government for years. The Taiwanese parliament breaks out in fistfights every now and then.

> insane housing costs

I don't know how things are in Scandinavia, but Canada or any part of East Asia are absolutely much worse by this metric. Look up median multiples in different countries; you'll find that the US is very favorable, especially among developed countries.

A middle-class family being able to afford to own a house happens more in the US than virtually any other place.

> corrupt judges

I'm not really sure what you mean. Do you find the US judiciary to be more corrupt than in other countries?

> stances on drugs and abortion

What do you find terrible about these? Drug laws are relatively lax in general in the US, and especially in certain states. Many Asian countries punish drug users and traffickers very harshly.

On abortion, you might be surprised to find that most Western European countries are much more restrictive than the liberal American states.

> the rich get richer, leaving everyone else even further behind

The real median personal income[0] has been on a broadly upward trend. The great majority of Americans make more money than their parents; more than half of people born to parents in the bottom quintile of incomes end up in a higher quintile; and conversely, more than half of people born to parents in the top quintile end up in a lower quintile[1].

In Europe, some of the very richest have remained the very richest for literal centuries[2]. In the US, you'd be hard-pressed to find people on the Forbes 400 list whose grandparents were also on the same list.

> Life actually seemed way better for millions of working class folks during COVID, when the economy was tanking and government simply propped it up

Your argument is that life seems better when the government prints money and hands it out to people? Surely you understand that there's a very sharp limit to how far that can go.

> if you just want a peaceful, boring life, this is not the place to be

I don't know where in the US you are, but it's a huge country with very diverse lifestyles to be found. Where I live, in a midsize Southern city, my barber, who has no college education or inheritance, lives on a 10-acre property with his wife and children. Their house is very modest, but they are saving up to build a bigger one. This seems the definition of a "peaceful, boring life".

If you want this kind of life on a median or below income in some of the most desirable cities in the country, I grant you that's going to be very tough. But that is the case anywhere in the world. People constantly tread water just to get by in big, competitive cities.

> I also spent several weeks in a few other countries -- enough to get a very basic feel for their society and services

Being on vacation in a country is very different than living there.

Ultimately, different people value things differently, and you may very well find yourself happier in another country. I'm just pointing out that it's very easy to view other countries with rosy glasses, and that the view of the US as "a hellhole where either you're rich or you're worthless" is by many objective metrics untrue.

[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

[1]: https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_a...

[2]: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/18/11691818/barone-mocetti-floren...

> That just means the rich get richer, leaving everyone else even further behind

Why does it necessarily mean that?

As far as the change over time goes, I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you that social mobility used to be higher. I think part of the reasoning for that was an incredibly strong domestic economy compared to the rest of the world, as well as a lower baseline (strides in standard of living and pay get harder and harder to increase the further you increase them).

As far as the comparisons globally, they're ranking countries based on "education, access to technology, healthcare, social protection and employment opportunities" which has the implicit assumption baked in that those 5 metrics are proxies for social mobility. They might be, but why not actually measure the thing you care about? Social mobility to me means changing social classes based on income. Something like moving from a 25k/yr household to a 75k/yr household, or moving from a 75k/yr household to a 200k/yr household, maybe another jump up to 500k or a million/yr.

It seems to me that there is a much more equal distribution of incomes and outcomes in the countries you linked. That makes me think it would be much harder to go from being middle class to upper class in those countries than in the US, simply because almost everybody is part of the middle class. Thus, I think if you measured what most immigrants (and what I) actually care about when we hear about "social mobility," then the countries you mentioned would have great social mobility into the middle class, and basically no other social mobility.

On a per capita basis Gen X and Millennials in the US are now doing better than their parents at the same age[1]. A lot of studies showing the opposite use raw numbers and share of total GDP, but don't account for the wildly large size of the Baby Boom generation.

And anecdotally, pretty much anyone I know who isn't the child of a doctor or lawyer is doing better than their parents.

[1]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/millennials-just-wealthy-pare...

That's tricky. GDP isn't the same thing as productivity, especially in the case of somewhere like Ireland where a lot of that GDP is produced by zero workers, it passively happens by virtue of companies routing their profits through there for tax reasons.

I think the stat to look at here would be median GDP per hour worked, on a per-capita basis. Calculating the median is of course difficult, but it would account for large, person-less streams of money that passively flow through without actually being "productive" in the "creating something new" sense.

The US does have one of the highest productivities in the world, especially once you discount tax haven countries.

So the most productive workers in the world are.. those in Ireland?

I’d love to read a deep dive on how those numbers came to be.

Yep. The best geopolitical starting position in history.

Classic video by a legend we lost far too early- https://youtu.be/ILn85WKo0Qk?si=83X9ptWPH2ZpHsp3

Lol what counts as good

That applies to Canada and Mexico and Argentina and Australia too though right?

Price to income ratios are lower than / on par with most developed countries, and were not much higher than historic values until 2020, when the US executive tried to out-Europe Europe.

Healthcare, maybe. Although, breaking down US live expectancy by demographic or even just by states and comparing with the corresponding European breakdown shows that most of the worse outcomes in the US are not due to healthcare.

This can easily be fixed by changing policy with allows for the building more homes. The demand is there we're just not able to meet it

A big part of this is more lower skill workers in construction. Controlled immigration would be a great start.

Healthcare is valid, but U.S. has the most affordable housing relative to income.

Like, you can expect to straight up own a house during your lifetime without inheriting it or striking it rich.

Housing is even worse every where else. There is no utopia hidden outside of USA.

Education is also burdening 21 year olds with sometimes six figures of debt, and wages are wildly suppressed

Almost everybody on HN who have been working for a few years can afford a house. You just might not be able to live in SF. Go move to Kansas and you too could afford a house.

The housing is a great example of "the grass is not greener". Try and buy a house in Europe, or Canada, or Asia.

Affordability is far, far worse.

> Americans don't plan for a rainy day.

This sentiment scares the crap out of me, and explains a lot of frustrations I felt through the pandemic. I've complained [0] before about feeling like I was getting screwed by making "reasonable" or even fiscally conservative choices throughout the pandemic and it's recovery. It's a topic I have complicated feelings on: I don't want my fellow citizens to be "punished" for being reckless, both because I don't like the idea of punitive reformation and because punishing basically everyone would do Bad Things to the economy, but the feeling of "something's got to give" has been hanging over me for years.

Everyone seems over-extended, but anyone who "plays it safe" just gets taken advantage of by everyone else. It feels like a microcosm of peoples' reaction to climate change in a lot of ways; we see older generations reveling in the spoils of just not caring and know that if we're going to do anything about it _we_ will have to give up luxuries they've enjoyed for years--and that there will be plenty of others who will just take up the "slack" we're creating by cutting our emissions.

Maybe I'm just projecting my own FOMO, but I see a _lot_ of the sentiment of "they got theirs, why shouldn't I get mine?" when it comes to saving money or climate change or even just post-COVID travel. There's no sense of communal responsibility or "we're all in this together."

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35265201

> Americans don't save - haven't for 30 years - this isn't anything new.

It's also worth noting that the intuitive relationship of "savings is low, ergo times are hard" doesn't really fit the data. For example, during the bubble years prior to the '08 mortgage crisis, the savings rate declined significantly. When the crisis hit, the savings rate went up and stayed up afterwards.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

> Looks like car payments were the first to go.

Car repo rates are an extremely reliable signal for an impending economic crisis. Problem is, right now, the signal has been active for an unusually long period. Maybe it's just the previous administration's "free" money drying up?

I guessing we'll probably see a change on the next update, and then a bigger change in the next update after that, since student loans got unpaused at the tail end of Q3 2023.

Historically low unemployment is usually when things break.

If you project the first three quarters of GDP growth, the US should end the year with $27.6 Trillion of GDP. The annualized rate is 8.5% without adjusting for inflation. Inflation adjusted, the annual rate of growth is 3.75% in the first three quarters.

In that case, the $1.7 Trillion deficit is 6.1% of GDP, so actually a half-percent lower than your calculations.

> GDP growth fueled by deficit spending is still legit GDP growth

That feels like a super bold claim that needs a lot of justification. Sorry I won’t just go with the hokey household metaphor.

One thing I do like about Democratic presidencies is that it makes the Republican party care about the deficit again. Every time we elect a Republican president they explode the deficit and lie to our face that deficits don't matter.

Maybe these metrics are what's crap? GDP doesn't mean much for people day to day. Neither does how high a score the stock market happened to hit in its arbitrary magic points system.

People care about the job market, the cost of living, direction effects of inflation on buying goods and services. When people say they economy sucks they mean they can't buy a car right now because the bank will only give them an ass interest rate even with great credit and the price of groceries has skyrocketed.

I've believed for awhile now the stock market has been a poor measure of the economy because its become decoupled from the "real" economy, ie: the things I listed above.

> This literally always happens during a Democrat presidency: the numbers are good but everyone goes “well it doesn’t FEEL that way so I’m gonna ignore it.”

A common and easily mocked media meme. On the New York Times Pitchbot humor account, an hour ago: "We're not in a recession. So why does it feel like we are?"

This sort of thing happens with subjects where it's difficult, time consuming, expensive, or risky to get the actual information you want.

Feelings are more present and real. It's a mistake to expect that anyone will ignore their feelings. The question is how to get upstream of those feelings.

I had a big anger problem when I was a kid - my dad told me that if someone can make you angry, they control you. It's hard to tell someone they are being controlled while they are angry though.

Sometimes people are happy to be angry because it makes the world simpler. All I have to do is be angry, and this guy will fix things for me. And maybe that guy fixes things, or fixes one thing, but later things get worse again, because just being angry and trusting someone to fix things doesn't work.

Humans are very smart animals, but the world is very complicated.

Feelings of the public matter when groceries start costing double, or triple in some cases. What once filled my entire fridge now gets me one shelf. Rich propagandists don't feel this. Everybody in my life that I talk to however, do.

>the numbers are good

The numbers are meaningless, even if they are accurate, which I sincerely doubt. GDP is up 5%? My salary hasn't gone up 5%, but my grocery bill has gone up way more than 5%. Health insurance costs went up more than 5%. Maybe all those increases in prices are boosting GDP, but wages aren't keeping up. Maybe the numbers are hand-waving nonsense.

People know whether they are doing okay or not. GDP is a blunt instrument metric of little value except as a broad comparison. But noting that it "happens during a Democrat presidency" is quite telling.

Counter-argument: my father generally votes right, but he claimed the best economic times of his life occurred during the Clinton presidency.

That literally always happens with every presidency.

Good luck gaslighting the working class into believing their day to day situation is something it's not. "Don't believe your lying eyes. Your grocery bills and rent and gas and car and healthcare didn't go up, and you're closer to owning a house than before! It's the bad people telling you otherwise. Trust Us. Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad."

Your truthiness sensor needs adjusting!

Most people in this country are much poorer than the people remodeling their kitchens. You're speaking from a solidly middle-class perspective.

I don't understand why there should be any relation between deficit (which is a percentage of government revenue) and gdp growth (which is a percentage of total gdp of the whole country).

I dont I think that is the right way to think about this, but I agree that the government grossly overspends.

A one time expense of 8% GDP for a 4% growth is great. That means it would get paid back in two years, or faster if you consider compounding.

The problem is determining if the 8% spending is related to the 4% growth (and how much.

Another way to to frame the whole topic is that the US government spends %40 of GDP in taxes, plus another 8% borrowed, per year. Even this could be a good deal, but it comes down to how much of the growth is causes by govt spending, which types of spending, and if the growth is permanent.

If you spend 8% and the GDP is boosted by 4% once, and then grows at the normal rate afterwards, then the GDP will stay 4% larger indefinitely.

That 8% debt would generate 4% more economic output this year, next year, the year after, the year after that, etc...

If your 8% debt only generates 0.5% of extra growth once, and then we get back to a baseline 3.5% growth, the additional economic output will equal the debt in 16 years and continue generating economic output afterwards.

But it's also completely unclear why, as a government, you should care about the ratio of debt to growth. The two numbers are of an entirely different nature. That economic output corresponds to things produced by the economy. The 8% debt corresponds only to who has control of which money pile (in particular, it includes the promise that the government will redirect a large chunk of money to the lenders in the future, which you might or might not find problematic). It doesn't take anything away from the total sum. So by shuffling money around, you have created real economic output. That's great!

Future money is cheaper than current money. The approach totally works in a low rate environment. But as rates get higher in relationship to inflation expectations it becomes unsustainable

What are the absolute numbers?

The percentages don't appear comparable here. They also don't allow for future multiplier effects from the spending.

No agenda, just holding that sentence up to a little scrutiny.

If you're rounding, the growth is 5%.

Not that comparing those two numbers is at all meaningful.

Both of those numbers are wrong. It's more like 6% deficit and 8% GDP growth.

Apparently just giving money to the rich isn't a very good way to build an economy

OK, what numbers do you propose are the ones we should trust if they're basic?

basically, I'm wondering if we'd go into a recession immediately if the government was forced to cut spending to sustainable levels. The debt is finally hitting a point of no return where we have to cut, next year we'll spend more on debt interest payments than our military

the main argument that the economy is doing well is that "the labor market is strong" and unemployment is low, but how many jobs are tied to government deficit spending via contracts or direct employment? If that spending is cut back, I'd imagine the jobs numbers will quickly start to decline

Agreed that GDP in isolation is a poor measure, but when you take it in context (every report is done the same way) and with other financial data it can help paint a picture (still an imperfect picture).

Fuck their “feelings”. I’m so tired of hearing about people’s feelings when it comes to how the economy is doing. The only thing that matters is the data.

Inflation still rampant, unaffordable cars, unaffordable homes, salaries growing slower than inflation. In other words, things that don't affect the rich (that's why the numerical growth in GDP), but are essential for the middle class (the majority).

It all depends on what kind of social group you're in. Upper middle class and higher are still doing just fine. People like you most probably don't have friends who are living in the streets or cannot afford to buy cars anymore. Just look at the statistics of people living in the streets of big cities and the situation looks more like the great depression.

No. The USA is set to succeed in the next 10 years because of geographic and demographics.

Perhaps you're a pessimist.

Well, the world is increasingly becoming more unstable which is good news for the dollar. The US financial system will continue to excel so long as global demand for dollars remains strong.

This number is inflation adjusted.

what do you mean by this? that inflation is currently 1% or 10%? it's ~3.5% right now

4.9% is inflation adjusted. God, don't any of you RTFA anymore?

Write a short story for me and charge me $1 trillion. I'll draw a picture for you that's worth $1 trillion to cover that debt.

We just raised GDP by $2 trillion!

It's not much different in Europe.

Here in Spain health spending is so high that you have to pray to the gods to see a GP. Usually you end up having to go to the ER for any kind of problem because there are no appointments available for weeks.

Food and rent have skyrocketed these years. The official inflation numbers are a joke, they are like... 5%? When food has gone up in average by at least 50%.

Not sure about insurance.

GDP is the worst metric ever devised. Even the guy who came up with it said not to look at it. If we ever fix healthcare the GDP is going to plummet, and everything other than GDP is going to be way better.

The growth in the US economy between 2000 and 2020 has resulted in many high-paying software jobs, including my own. Absolute BS that it’s all going to billionaires

I'd urge you to consider that your personal lived experience may not match the experience of the other 332,000,000 Americans.

Instead of trying to explain away official statistics by talking about things you see on your drive to work, consider updating your priors instead.

I'm sure there is more adjustment than in your caricature, but it is interesting to wonder how exactly a medical procedure contributes to GDP when every patient gets a different price and a significant fraction skip the bill (7% of people currently have significant unpaid medical debts).

Doesn’t PPP account for this? Comparing nominal vs PPP doesn’t really change the USA rankings.

This is inflation adjusted.

It's not true that we're printing money like there is no tomorrow. Look: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S

This is as % of GDP, but it's a good stand-in for inflation. Deficits are going down since 2020.

The US doesn't import much from Saudi Arabia. It is mainly for East Asia and Europe. Even tiny, little Belgium imports as much oil and gas from Saudi Arabia as the US does.

And the Yemen conflict is nearing a negotiated end. Soon you can stop worrying about Belgian economic support for Saudi war crimes.

The majority of Americans are the richest most privileged people on the planet.

Do you have any pointers or read about either of these? Because to the best of my understanding neither of these can explain a GDP growth as high as this.

Sure, but they can rebalance equities and carry those losses forward for years, reducing their taxable gains. They aren’t playing the same game as most of us.

Having cash and taking advantage of treasuries and other loans is providing pretty solid returns as well.

The rich people’s accountants have this covered for the most part, I think they will be fine.