Actually a ton of stuff he's posted in this thread is complete bs, i.e. flat out wrong
Like EU GDP not growing for 8 years, wrong.
Median household wealth being better in the US than Italy, Sweden or Germany, wrong
The US producing more nobel prize winners than the EU, wrong
Statements about the danger of living in Amsterdam, wrong
Canadian gun ownership being comparable to the US, wrong
The murder rate for 99% of US citizens in cities being < 2 per 100k, wrong
Then there's a lot of statements he makes which are so vague, they're likely his opinion rather than substantiated facts, but I can't disregard them altogether as he didn't qualify them. For example the US having more opportunity than any other nation is hard to qualify so one can't even begin to dispute it. But if define what that means by say 'social mobility', which can be qualified to a large extent, and look at social mobility for example, the US is nowhere near the leading country.
And then finally there's a ton of facts which are correct, and they're completely disingenuous. For example he references median student debt at $13k. He doesn't mention that this is the median student debt for all people. i.e. if you graduated in 1970 and still owe $3k in student debt after having paid off tens of thousands already, then you're part of that equation and it hugely understates the debt burden for students. When what you THINK he's talking about is what is the average debt that a student graduates with. And that number is $36k for 2015, much more than his truthful statistic.
The only reference he made is to the OECD better life index, and I'm glad he did because I'm familiar with that index. If he hadn't referenced it I might've taken for granted that he must know what he's talking about. But as I mentioned in another post, here's a little joke: the OECD better life index ranked the bottom 10% of Poland to have a better standard of living than the bottom 10% of Japan and France. And here's the kicker, same with the top 10%. Yes, Poland's bottom and top 10% respectively have better lives than the bottom and top 10% in France. It's a total joke. Of course you could say it's a (giant) anomaly but I've lived in many of the countries in the index in 4 different continents and there's a lot of misguided information there. Like gender equality in the Netherlands being one of the poorest of all studied countries, environment being one of the worst of all countries studied, being one of the least safe countries in the study (even worse than the US), or health being better in Greece than Germany, oh and if you want a good education you better move to Slovenia from the US because the OECD says it's better! I think you get the point, it's a total joke once you look at the individual parameters and the scoring on them.
So yeah some references would've been nice here and there. Not asking for links or anything, but just some reference to a source, like 'OECD better life index' which he referenced and turned out to be nonsense.
Like EU GDP not growing for 8 years, wrong.
Median household wealth being better in the US than Italy, Sweden or Germany, wrong
The US producing more nobel prize winners than the EU, wrong
Statements about the danger of living in Amsterdam, wrong
Canadian gun ownership being comparable to the US, wrong
The murder rate for 99% of US citizens in cities being < 2 per 100k, wrong
Then there's a lot of statements he makes which are so vague, they're likely his opinion rather than substantiated facts, but I can't disregard them altogether as he didn't qualify them. For example the US having more opportunity than any other nation is hard to qualify so one can't even begin to dispute it. But if define what that means by say 'social mobility', which can be qualified to a large extent, and look at social mobility for example, the US is nowhere near the leading country.
And then finally there's a ton of facts which are correct, and they're completely disingenuous. For example he references median student debt at $13k. He doesn't mention that this is the median student debt for all people. i.e. if you graduated in 1970 and still owe $3k in student debt after having paid off tens of thousands already, then you're part of that equation and it hugely understates the debt burden for students. When what you THINK he's talking about is what is the average debt that a student graduates with. And that number is $36k for 2015, much more than his truthful statistic.
The only reference he made is to the OECD better life index, and I'm glad he did because I'm familiar with that index. If he hadn't referenced it I might've taken for granted that he must know what he's talking about. But as I mentioned in another post, here's a little joke: the OECD better life index ranked the bottom 10% of Poland to have a better standard of living than the bottom 10% of Japan and France. And here's the kicker, same with the top 10%. Yes, Poland's bottom and top 10% respectively have better lives than the bottom and top 10% in France. It's a total joke. Of course you could say it's a (giant) anomaly but I've lived in many of the countries in the index in 4 different continents and there's a lot of misguided information there. Like gender equality in the Netherlands being one of the poorest of all studied countries, environment being one of the worst of all countries studied, being one of the least safe countries in the study (even worse than the US), or health being better in Greece than Germany, oh and if you want a good education you better move to Slovenia from the US because the OECD says it's better! I think you get the point, it's a total joke once you look at the individual parameters and the scoring on them.
So yeah some references would've been nice here and there. Not asking for links or anything, but just some reference to a source, like 'OECD better life index' which he referenced and turned out to be nonsense.