I am not contesting that the US could be doing better.
What I am contesting is that you are conflating absolute and relative measurements to try to make a point, and that you are reducing such a complex matter into a question of political ideology that governs the countries. Also, lots of weasel-wording there - e.g, "hundreds of deaths" in country of 320+ million people, comparing with countries that are 100x smaller? - which do show a lack of intellectual honesty.
At least that is the impression that it gives when I read your response as some kind of counterpoint to the comment from GP about socialism and the associated bureaucracy.
If I have read your statement correctly and indeed you meant something along the lines of:
- The USA is doing worse than Greece in this one metric.
- Greece has more Socialist/Welfare-state inclinations than the US.
- Therefore if we want to improve this one metric we ought to adopt more Social-Democratic policies
Consider this: the best country in the list you provided is Estonia, the country with the "Most Competitive Tax System in the OECD"[1], which would basically be an argument that all countries should be like Estonia - a polar opposite from Greece.
But then again, I could have completely misread what you meant. Please correct me if I misinterpreted any of your statements.
(Note to down-voters: do you really think that anything I wrote is so offensive or damaging to the forum, to the point that it deserves to be in negative mark? Gee, I know it is election season for most of you, but let's please keep a HN a place where people can have an honest discussion?)
What I am contesting is that you are conflating absolute and relative measurements to try to make a point, and that you are reducing such a complex matter into a question of political ideology that governs the countries. Also, lots of weasel-wording there - e.g, "hundreds of deaths" in country of 320+ million people, comparing with countries that are 100x smaller? - which do show a lack of intellectual honesty.
At least that is the impression that it gives when I read your response as some kind of counterpoint to the comment from GP about socialism and the associated bureaucracy.
If I have read your statement correctly and indeed you meant something along the lines of:
Consider this: the best country in the list you provided is Estonia, the country with the "Most Competitive Tax System in the OECD"[1], which would basically be an argument that all countries should be like Estonia - a polar opposite from Greece.But then again, I could have completely misread what you meant. Please correct me if I misinterpreted any of your statements.
[1]: http://taxfoundation.org/blog/estonia-has-most-competitive-t...
(Note to down-voters: do you really think that anything I wrote is so offensive or damaging to the forum, to the point that it deserves to be in negative mark? Gee, I know it is election season for most of you, but let's please keep a HN a place where people can have an honest discussion?)