comment: >
  
  today i learned china is a poor country.
context: I have a feeling that this 10th place is a result of American statistics being inflated by high average income.
  In case of Education, America ranks 19/41 in regards to student skills, 28/39 in social inequality and 30/39 in gender inequality. Overall Education score is pretty bad. 
  In Health, it ranked 29/41 in life expectancy, which is pretty bad, and its overall rank in Health is inflated by the really high self reported health. Second highest in the world, which is questionable when you remember both the life expectancy and obesity statistics. 
  And America straight up scores badly in Work and Life Balance and Safety Categories, being close to the bottom in both of these. It's 36/41 in homicide rates and 29/41 in both working hours and leisure time
  Many categories are either average or bad, with the exception of Income, Jobs and Housing, which are all related to wealth. In these America scores near the top. 
  So once again it seems that Americans are wealthy, yet in most non-money related categories America is scoring badly when compared to other rich nations. >
  
  Yes, American statistics are "inflated" by having high median income and standard of living. >
  
  My point being: if America scores number 1 in income and number 3 in wealth, but also scores 29/41 in life expectancy, 29/41 in hours worked and leisure time, 19/41 in student skills, 36/41 in homicide rate, and scores near the bottom on inequality in almost every category(34/35 in Civic Engagement, 28/39 in Education, 31/32 in Income)
  Then doesn’t it point to the fact that America has a pretty low quality of life for an average person, but it’s overall score is inflated by the very high income and wealth? 
  Which would support my original point: That America is richer than other rich countries, yet Americans have lower quality of life than people in other rich countries. >
  
  Is quality of life only measured in those criteria? What about general happiness, social cohesion etc? Do you want people here to share other metrics or do you only want to go by your limited list as in your post? >
  
  Happiness is a very hard to measure concept, there is no objective metric to measure how someone feels, as feeling are subjective. 
  We can look at suicide rates, where America scores worse than all other rich nations with 14.5 suicides per 100k people. Compared to 12.2 in Japan, 10.3 in Canada or 6.9 in the UK. Although it is also not a perfect metric. But it does appear that Americans are more likely to commit suicide, which doesn’t paint a great picture of happiness in the country. >
  
  Even in this ranking the US is close to the top, with countries ahead of it infamously having high sucide rates due to serious social issues and terrible working conditions. (Japan/South Korea)
  All other countries on this list, other than Belgium, are much poorer than America. 
  The GDP per capita of Hungary is $18.7k, for Slovenia it's $29k. For Belgium it's $51.7k and for America it's $69.2k
  So depending on the source, America is either the worst of rich countries, or one of the worst. So it's not a big upgrade. >
  
  So close to the top, but not at the top, per your comment. Also, let’s qualify what you consider the rich countries you’re using here. What’s the GDP cutoff? >
  
  Close to the top still means that it does worse than most other similar countries. 
  I would say countries with GDP per capita of $40k-$50k and over are the best comparison. Below that there are countries with less than half of America's GDP per capita. And when one person is twice as rich as another person, it's hard to exactly call them "similarly wealthy" >
  
  Ok. Taking your midpoint of $45k, that’s about 20 or so countries representing about 2 percent of the global population. So arguing that the average standard of living for someone in the US is at the bottom of the top 2 percent globally isn’t all that strong of a point. >
  
  This is not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that the quality of life in America is worse than in other similarly rich countries.
  Yes, Americans live better than Brazilians, or Mexicans, or Nigerians, or Indians, but these countries are way way poorer than America.
  America should be compared to countries that are similarly rich, like Canada, Australia, the UK, or Germany. All of these have similar median income and GDP per capita (In fact, they are still poorer in these regards than America), and outperform America in pretty much all quality of life aspects. >
  
  Ok, so what? The US population is still in the top few percent of standard of living in the world. The fact that there’s a few hundred million people living better doesn’t mean that the US has a poor quality of life. >
  
  You should read that source a bit better regarding hours worked:
  
  The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year because of differences in their sources and method of calculation. >
  
  I live in Canada and our quality of life is declining rapidly, what you said might have been true 10 years ago but it is not true today, our healthcare is failing, housing the most expensive in the world our wages have been stagnant for decades, there's help wanted signs everywhere because people literally can't afford to live in the area on the wages being offered and instead of letting the market sort it out our country is importing more people to drive down the wages which will also increasing housing prices. 
  Despite our infrastructure and government services failing our taxes are increasing and to make matters worse the government is reducing fertilizer farmers can use so we'll be starving in a year. 
  The boomers owning property that's perpetually rising in value is masking the stats so  it looks like everything is fine, but everything is only fine if you bought a house decades ago the mortgage on that is cheaper than rent for a bedroom is today it's also why employers are struggling to replace retiring employees boomers had cheaper bills to pay and ever appreciating assets but that boon is turning into a deficit for the next generation who can't even afford rent on the wages being offered so they can't replace staff, they also haven't been training anyone because they can just demand schooling and experience and get it from foreigners who likely just lied on their resume. >
  
  You are not alone mate, same is happening in the UK for example. But also happening in the US. Even if it's declining in Canada, it's still better than the US because you started off better. >
  
  No it's not our housing is higher, our wages are lower and our taxes are higher and our healthcare is worse because we simply can't get access to it. I'd rather be bankrupt and alive then die in a waiting room.
  Maybe it's better for the boomers but like I said before their boon has become future generations deficit anyone under 40 is way better off in the US than Canada. >
  
  You can do this kind of post with basically any country. All you did was point out areas the US is not the best in, in comparison to other countries. Not even the same set of countries in each comparison.
  Also, with a country as large and populated as the US, it isn't really a good comparison when comparing the entire US to a single European nation. Many states are the size of a European nation and have similar populations. Comparing the US vs EU as a whole would be more accurate, as this would encompass the similarly large land area, population densities, and cultural shifts from region to region.
  Also, have you ever lived outside the US? Every place has good and bad things about it. Really changes your perspective to be honest. >
  
  
  Cultural shift from region to region. 
  
  I often hear US people say that. It really doesn't make sense. The US is not unique in it's diversity within it's territory. Pick almost any large European countries and it will be similar to the us. Random exemple, I think there is as much difference between Marseille-Strasbourg-tahiti as there would be between newYork-huston-hawai >
  
  There are differences, maybe not in architecture, language, or pop culture, but there are major cultural differences between those three examples. How people act and speak to each other and ways of thinking are quite different.
  Maybe not as different as your European example, but very much different. If you have lived in these places for long periods of time, you would see it easily.
  People in the US view much of Europe as the same, but Europeans really see the differences. The same applies in the opposite direction. >
  
  That's my point, there is as much differences within those 3 places in  france in my example as there is in the 3 US places. The US is not unique in the level of diversity it has within it's borders.  
  But I agree with your other points though, if you look at territory and population, you could almost compare the entire US to the entire Europe. Not exactly, but it's a fair comparison >
  
  True, but Texas alone can satisfy the same argument. It's as big as France and there are major cultural differences between Dallas, Austin, and El Paso. Most people from Texas know these differences, just as someone from France knows the differences between Marseilles and Strasbourg. People not from these places view it as all kind of the same.
  Northern California and Southern California are very different. East and West Oregon are very different. So comparing a land mass the size of a single state isn't accurate.
  I'm not saying the US is unique, quite the opposite. I'm saying each state is about the same as a European nation (barring very low population states) and the US as a whole about the same as the EU. >
  
  The poorest Americans are still richer and consume more material resources than the average person - not the average poor person - in Europe
  America's Poor Still Live Better Than Most Of The Rest Of Humanity
  The Poor in the US Are Richer than the Middle Class in Much of Europe >
  
  My point is exactly that despite being rich Americans have worse quality of life than people in other rich countries. I am not saying that Americans are poor. My point is that despite this material wealth America scores poorly in all quality of life statistics
  All these sources just say that Americans can buy more stuff than people in other countries, but what about other aspects of life?
  What good is being able to buy a bigger car or more iPhones when you will live a shorter life, work more, be less healthy, have worse healthcare, be more likely to be murdered and be more likely to commit suicide than in other rich countries? >
  
  We live shorter lives and have more obesity due to lifestyle choices lol. >
  
  But our society makes many of those positive lifestyle choices more difficult to accomplish. Poor standards in food (for political reasons/profit), lack of pedestrian minded infrastructure, required hours put in at work to survive, plus a lack of affordable health care, results in worse health than would have occurred under other circumstances.  It's easy to blame the people, but the country is not supporting and caring about the health of their citizens in the ways that other wealthy countries do. >
  
  You can buy whatever quality of food you’d like at the store.
  We don’t have pedestrian minded infrastructure because we haven’t been living in the same place for thousands of years. 
  Every country on earth, you have to work to survive.
  In healthcare you can only have 2 of the 3:affordability,quality,timely. We have the most advanced healthcare in the world. Don’t believe me? Why do we make 80% of medical patents each year? Also, why do we have the highest 5 year cancer survivor rate. 
  If we (Americans) weren’t so fat and lazy, we would live much longer than our current average >
  
  
  You can buy whatever quality of food you’d like at the store
  
  Unless you're poor in which case affording a meal McDonald's is cheaper than real groceries. Or the issue of food deserts in many parts of America which is further exacerbated for poor people by the lack of pedestrian/public transit options.
  This sentence shows your privilege so much... >
  
  
  Unless you're poor in which case affording a meal McDonald's is cheaper than real groceries
  
  I just got 10 pounds of ground beef for less than my last McDonald's order - which was just for myself
  It comes out to like 15 dollars a person normally and then 30 a person if you are looking for ~7000 calorie maintenance (construction worker here) >
  
  You spent $30 on one meal and you’re using that as an argument? >
  
  Go look at a McDonald's menu and look at the actual prices >
  
  Spending $30 on one meal is literally insane when their meals are less then $10 each. 
  Obese fuck buying 3 meals. >
  
  There are a lot of nuances to your stats that your aren’t fully considering:
  Life expectancy: Two factors that reduce life expectancy in the US are drug overdoses, and the fact that the US is more ambitious in treating very premature births, which are risky and a relatively high percentage don’t survive more than a few days, which has an impact on overall life expectancy stats that many other countries don’t experience. You could argue that quality of life is much better in the US if you are experiencing a risky pregnancy because in the US more extreme measures will be taken to help your baby survive, even if the odds are low.
  Americas homicide rate is skewed heavily by a handful of small regions in our large cities. If you exclude those regions, then the homicide rate is significantly lower. If you don’t live in one of those places, which is the vast majority of Americans, then homicide rate doesn’t really apply from a quality of life standpoint.
  Obesity rates are meaningless for measuring quality of life. North Koreans don’t have a high quality of life because obesity is unheard of there (unless you are the dictator)?
  America’s health care system is certainly screwed up in terms of paying for it, but in terms of quality of care, people still come from all over the world to be treated here. And even poor people can’t be turned away from receiving life saving care.
  If you are comparing quality of life of the most disadvantaged Americans and the most disadvantaged people in the wealthiest European countries, there may be an argument that the European has it better.
  But the average American has at least as good a quality of life using your metrics as the average person in other rich countries. 
  Now what about factors that you didn’t consider? Americans have protections from the bill of rights that others don’t. You might appreciate them if you ever get accused of a crime. America is a huge country with an amazingly diverse economy, so the average American has many more options as to where and how they want to live, and what they want to do than people in European countries. We also have relatively fewer barriers to starting a business and being self employed (in most places). The US also has a lot of ethnic and cultural diversity compared to any of the countries you listed. If quality of life includes belonging to a culture that isn’t the majority, the options are far more open in the US than in any other country.
  In America, you can start a business and - if you choose to - work your butt off and, with a little smarts and a little luck, you can become quite well off. You may think of quality of life as how much time off the government forces you to have. Others don’t see this as a quality of life feature. They want the freedom to be able to work hard and reap the reward in 20 years. Is quality of life much less freedom and being taken care of by the government, or more freedom to take risks, fail, learn from your failures, and grow? >
  
  
  Americas homicide rate is skewed heavily by a handful of small regions in our large cities. If you exclude those regions, then the homicide rate is significantly lower. 
  
  "If you exclude the regions with high homicide rates, the homicide rates are lower". Yeah..
  83% of the population live in urban areas. (source)
  This is not a skewed statistic. This is the statistic. >
  
  "The life expectancy is skewed by those who are ill". 
  It’s not skewed. It’s just how those statistics are. And it’s the same everywhere. But excluding the crime hotspots from a crime statistic is just very misleading and makes it completely useless as a basis for comparison.
  You might as well argue the same for income. That’s also "skewed" by certain areas in large population centres. Should that be excluded from the national average as well? >
  
  The OP states that the quality of life is “significantly lower” in the US than in other wealthy nations. One of the five rationales OP uses is that Americans “have a significantly higher chance of being murdered.” This is factually incorrect. You cannot use the overall homicide rate of an entire country to determine any individual’s risk of being murdered. The fact is, any individual American’s risk of being murdered is highly dependent on where they live. And the vast majority of Americans have a low risk. >
  
  Do you think a varying crime rate based on the region of the country or even area within a city is something unique to the US? >
  
  No, I’m saying using homicide rate like this isn’t any indication of overall quality of life.
  A better indication would be, pick a random person in the US, and a random person in, say, Germany, then compare their risks of being killed. The vast majority of people in the US have a relatively low risk of homicide. A random person in the US still has a higher likelihood than a random person in most European countries, but it’s not the significantly higher chance as indicated in the OP.
  But again I’ll say this is a myopic view of quality of life. Singapore has a minuscule homicide rate, but being LGBT or black there is not nearly as accepting as in most places in the US and Europe. >
  
  Nothing you are saying has anything to do with the comment I made, which was about supposedly skewed statistics.
  Just because you don’t think it’s relevant doesn’t mean the statistic is skewed. >
  
  This is a funny hit piece almost as if OP gets all his data from reddit and cherry picked it.
  the life expectancy differs a lot state by state so you have NY and Cali around 80 and other states in the lower 70s so the measure of life varies a lot in the US.
  
  Additionally, America has infamously bad healthcare system. 
  
  Complain about the billing all you want but it's not bad per say in terms of actual care. >
  
  If you can't afford it, it is. Other countries have free, at the point of use, systems. No one left behind.
  There is no way that leaving anyone in financial jepordy, over health, can be justified in a society that wants to call itself advanced or civilised. Except, of course, if that shit is all you've ever known and you think it sane.
  From the outside, it's beyond fucked up. >
  
  Life quality is significantly lower is the OP argument. 91% of Americans are covered. Does this warrant the words significantly lower? I know US healthcare is very flawed. It sucks for those in that area of salary that make more than Medicaid but less than a decent life. I’m only arguing OPs CMV. Life quality is not significantly worse. Maybe slightly worse but not significantly unless you read Reddit propaganda 24/7. It’s usually American young adults that have never left the country or edgy European redditors that need to feel superior. I know the NHS is having a strike and your healthcare systems are being pretty rationed at the moment. I don’t think Reddit talks about that. >
  
  Police summary executions.
  Health care.
  Mass shootings.
  Corrupt, non representative "democracy". (No one really does this well, but PR helps)
  Piss poor train infrastructure.
  Piss poor pavements and human friendly walking spaces in most places.
  Fucked up traffic system. Roundabouts have existed for ages.
  Guns. Did I mention them enough?
  I know all of this is normal, and it's great. And I get that. It's just all fucking weird when you're on the outside. >
  
  Way to take all the most extreme default subreddit examples and generalize that to significant lower quality of life. The vast majority of Americans 10x more than your population are living similar lives to you in the UK. Mass shootings are still on the same level of winning the lottery. You had 3 prime ministers in just 90 or so days. Your privatized train systems are incredibly confusing and cause chaotic strikes. Your NHS is on strike. Does this sound significantly better? >
  
  50% of Americans earn $150k+ and live a very comfortable life, it's evidence free market capitalism works or millions wouldn't be trying to sneak in or emigrate here >
  
  This is a fallacy called “Texas Sharpshooter.” You’ve defined QOL as a series of statistics that you’ve empirically shown to support your argument, emphasized how they’re linked, but you’ve ignored other things that may promote a higher quality of life—or a different definition of it—and this leads to a pretty bullet-proof (forgive the pun), though fundamentally flawed argument.
  You’ve made an “if this, then this” statement without a lot of wiggle room. Often when people don’t include “if this then only this,” they fail to see how “only” is built into their argument; in this case, it’s definitely there. I’m not even saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying, given your argument, there’s not really anyone can say to overcome the argument you’ve made.
  By way of a quick example, I could argue that spending power—or “Purchasing Power”—is the top factor in QOL. 40 of the top 50 cities, worldwide, in Purchasing Power are in the US.. I can also argue the more cities has in the top 50 of this list, the more quality of life the country has. Therefore, US has the highest QOL in the world >
  
  The US has the best healthcare in the world. You’ll be stuck with a big fat bill afterwards, however.