I just feel extremely sad about the mass quantity of events like this happening right now because they are all aggregate to huge negative effects but the average person knows nothing of it. It feels so unfixable.
replies(5):
(proposed/desired reductions in federally funded (NSF) science positions for FY 2026. 250,000 (75%) reduction in numbers)
EDIT: see also: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/american-science-bra...
Record numbers of US citizens seeking to relocate to Canada & the UK. In the last couple months I remember seeing several news stories variously about Doctors, Professors and students applying and/or relocating.
Layoffs in the tech sector haven't slowed at all, and couple that with the DOGE Govt layoffs and the recent jobs numbers stories.
I feel quite certain that if the U.S. is actually measured "at #1" for anything good, it won't retain it much longer.
Bias Disclaimer: I'm a former software engineer working an hourly labor job.
I don't agree that the US won't be relevant, it's more like the US will resemble the position of Russia in the next decade than the position it is in right now.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports
China exports more, but China also must import more, including more of the things needed for the survival of its people, like food, fertilizer, fuel.
US exports: https://www.ondeck.com/resources/every-states-top-import-exp...
Apple keeps half the sales price of every iPhone whereas the last I saw Foxconn gets only a few dollars per phone for the final assembly. It used to be that most of the expensive components (display, memory) in the iPhone were supplied by Japan, S Korea and Taiwan, but I admit that that might have changed over the years.
https://www.amazon.com/Were-Number-One-Stands-Falls/dp/06797...
At least the US has at least a handful of themes to choose from among its many states.
Currently, but even then by nominal GDP not PPP (China's way ahead of the USA already by PPP). Nominal being different from PPP is not just about cost of living though: the US dollar is artificially high by about 10% due to being a dominant reserve currency, and China has a policy of keeping their currency weak. Flip both of those and China would be about equal nominal GDP as the USA.
Also consider that the comment you're responding to said "next few decades", and consider that China's GDP grew at four times the rate of the USA economy in the two decades between 2003 and 2023: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=Nominal+GDP+China+2023+...
And that by GDP/capita, China has room to do the same again before reaching the top of the charts for existing countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
--
But the real critical thing, is that economies can fall very fast when an a poor leader is empowered. Trump is purging anyone who says "no", which is already a dangerous place even if he was competent, rather than someone who tells such obvious lies on multiple health reports (recently his height(!), previously saying an exam had "only positive results" without knowing what positive means in a medical context), or facing a court case because he misrepresented the size of his penthouse apartment.
You remember right at the start of his term, there were fires in LA? And he ordered dams in NoCal opened? That aren't hydrologically connected to LA? When that kind of decision is criticised, it gets stopped. When people around are afraid to say "no", it doesn't stop, and the dams empty. In this case, it would have led to Californian agriculture approximately ending for several years due to the drought, and consequently to food shortages.
Same deal with the currently in progress attempt to deporting all the (Biden's team's estimate) 10-11 million undocumented migrant workers, many of whom are in low-paid agricultural roles, so kicking them out directly leads to less food and higher prices.
Worse than that. Consider that he got RFK Jr as the health secretary: by itself this is likely to have a measurable negative impact on US life expectancy.
Or the trillion dollar healthcare cuts (have they fully passed into law yet? Reporting from abroad is unclear how your system works): also likely to have a measurable negative impact on US life expectancy.
Then there's the incompetent attempt at tariffs, not just Penguin Island, but also that they were without any commensurate attempt to support local industry.
Or choosing a (defence) team so lax that they accidentally invited a journalist to a Signal discussion about active military engagement.
Or that he's banned trans people from serving in the US armed forces despite the US armed forces having recruiting difficulties: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/01/the-u-s-militarys-recrui...
Or consider the reports that Iran's nuclear project wasn't as utterly destroyed as he likes to publicly claim: what happens if Iran does rebuild it all over the next few months, as others say? Does his ego prevent him from responding, letting them get their nuke?
And of all this, only two examples ("positive results" and penthouse size) are more than 6 months old. When does congress get a chance to change, with the possibility of him being impeached (for a third time)?
It's all originates from each person's decisions. If a person wants to pay attention to their lifestyle and health, then in the US he will get one of the best results in the parameters you listed. That is just a fact.
And if we want to maximize these parameters among everyone, we need a ultratotalitarian government that will put all the people into concentration camps where they will work under threat of execution in the open air and eat a specially designed low-calorie diet.
> It also has its lowest-ever World Happiness Rankings.
Yeas, and North Korea has the highest.
> The U.S. is currently leading in global declines in reputation, trust, happiness, and perceived positive influence.
And that's good thing. For decades US has been doing atrocities all over the world, to the approving cries of other Western countries. So the only problem with US declines in reputation, trust, happiness, and perceived positive influence I see is that this should have happened decades earlier
We could guess, but there's been a lot of guesses (confidently made out to be facts and inevitabilities) made in this thread so far. I'm trying to ground the discussion in actual facts.
Is it? What are some obstacles to a similarly committed person attaining health/lifestyle benefits in other developed countries? What are the factors uniquely provided by the US that make this “fact” true? Are there factors in the US working against good outcomes for committed people?
Apple's total worldwide revenue for fiscal year 2024 was $391.035 billion. The Americas Segment (which includes the US) represented $167.05 billion of that, leaving $224 billion for the rest of the world.
Apple reports that their cost of goods sold was $210.352 billion, leaving 180.68 billion as so-called "gross profit". The majority of this gross profit will be used to pay salaries and other expenses (e.g., office space) of having employees, most of which goes to Americans. (Most of the rest will be "retained earnings", which means it either goes back to investors or is used to try to generate new streams of revenue.)
But only some of that gross profit will come from exports. Let's assume that exports are as profitable (per unit of revenue) as US sales are, which seems reasonable to me because competition (mostly from Android) would be the main thing keeping gross profit low, and Android is a major competitive force in the US market, so estimated gross profit derived from sales to the rest of the world would be 180.68 * (224 / 391.035) == $103.5 billion. That is revenue from all products and services, and Apple reports that revenue from the iPhone is 0.5145 of all revenue (worldwide) or about $53 billion per year flowing from the rest of the world to Apple (and to governments in the US in the form of taxes).
To be clear, that's assuming that zero of the hardware (more precisely, zero of what accountants call the "variable cost") that goes into an iPhone is bought from US suppliers (which seems a reasonable assumption to me).
...and also #1 in healthcare costs, which just adds an expensive insult to multiple injuries.
If it is a fact, you should be able to back it up.
> And if we want to maximize these parameters among everyone, we need a ultratotalitarian government that will put all the people into concentration camps where they will work under threat of execution in the open air and eat a specially designed low-calorie diet.
Or the government could actually regulate things like food additives instead of just going with whatever industry lobbyists are saying. Sure, lobbying is of course a thing here as well, but clearly there are still differences there.
Hell, things like infrastructure funding could be used to encourage things like walkability which also helps with the health and quality of life of the population, but alas.
> > It also has its lowest-ever World Happiness Rankings. > > Yeas, and North Korea has the highest.
No, Finland has the highest. North Korea is not even ranked in the World Happiness Report.
> > The U.S. is currently leading in global declines in reputation, trust, happiness, and perceived positive influence. > > And that's good thing. For decades US has been doing atrocities all over the world, to the approving cries of other Western countries. So the only problem with US declines in reputation, trust, happiness, and perceived positive influence I see is that this should have happened decades earlier
While I am sympathetic to this line of thinking as a European myself, the current way this is going on over in the US just looks a bit silly. Basically just going out of its way to shed any remaining goodwill and soft power because... what, exactly?
The quality of reasoned political and economic debate on this site, so full of self-congratulatingly intelligent people, continues to be generally absurd, deplorable and full of cliched foolishness passing for opinion.
I'm not sure what the point of this thread is anymore, so I'll stop here.