u/Accomplished-Bass690

I’m not sure if you are aware but the greatest miscarriage of justice in American history just recently occurred and there seems to be absolutely no reaction from the American people.

For those of you who didn’t know the Purdue Pharma verdict was relatively recently announced. The punishment for bribing the FDA, doctors and several government officials and releasing a drug that has in some indirectly or sometimes directly caused the deaths of 750.000 Americas citizens which is more American deaths than every America lost in every war since the Civil War.

There punishment was not the death penalty, life in prison or even community service. They were made to pay 13 billions. They weren’t even forced to pay instantly and much of these fines are going to be paid from gutting the company and paying with the money they will make from investments.

The fact that a group of Saudis can fly into some buildings in New York which don’t get me wrong was a tragedy and the US then decided to invade Afganistan is simply incomprehensible to me. I’m normally against the death penalty but in this case I think it’s more than justified. Why aren’t people protesting in the streets and demanding justice?

I’m somewhat confused about the prevalence of sarcasm when Americans proclaim that America is the best place to live in the world. I mean in terms of quality of life there are at least 10 countries probably even 20 that are ranked above the US. There are several factors which are considered an indicator of quality of life in which the US is ranked shockingly low.

The Argument I often see brought up it the GDP per person in which the US ranks among the highest. The issue with this is however that due to the US being the most economically unequal developed country in the world the number is very deceptive. To exemplify this let’s compare my home country Denmark with the US in terms of GDP per capita.

The US has a GDP per capita of 94.430$

Denmark has a GDP per capita of 83.445$

But if you subtract the 1% from the per capita GDP of both countries.

Then Denmark is suddenly about 1200$ ahead.

This becomes even more extreme if we adjust for the cost of living. Here the difference is more than 8000$

Then there is the concept of America being a country where all it takes to achieve success is picking yourself up by the bootstrap. Ignoring the fact that this term was created as a metaphor for a task that is impossible and was sarcastic, highlighting the absurd notion that someone could succeed without any resources. The current meaning would imply that the US ranked high in terms of social mobility but that is by no means the case since the US is ranked 27th just below the former Soviet republic of Lithuania.

Then there is the freedom. This is a bit harder to quantify but looking at the different attempts at ranking each country there is definitely not a single ranking methodology that results in the US being anywhere near the top.

So why is there such a huge amount of Americans who seem to believe that the US is the best place to be born. Is it just sarcasm or is this a case of ignorance?