I have been pirating on and off for almost 25 years. This wasn't a problem in my early years so I learned and know all the sides of it. I would have definitely got those in my early days. But the whole thing started way later and they should still be around.

Please don't perpetuate or escalate nationalistic flamewar here. It's against several guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> #1 among high income countries in Cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, drug overdose deaths, Deaths from violence and accidents, Infant mortality, Obesity-related mortality.

...and also #1 in healthcare costs, which just adds an expensive insult to multiple injuries.

Is that per capita or total?

In the early nineties Andrew L. Shapiro wrote an entire book on this theme:

https://www.amazon.com/Were-Number-One-Stands-Falls/dp/06797...

So the U.S is number one in several largely irrelevant and in any case partly ambiguous rankings of X and Y, and this is your counterpoint to the very hard facts of it still being the world's richest, largest, most dominant economic and political power, and continuing to stay that way for the foreseeable future due to how hard it is for any other major country to just magically supplant such positions?

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.

> #1 among high income countries in Cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, drug overdose deaths, Deaths from violence and accidents, Infant mortality, Obesity-related mortality.

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

US citizens relocating to Canada and the UK seems misguided at best.

At least the US has at least a handful of themes to choose from among its many states.

Pulling back on federally-funded research grants for the sciences does not address how the economy, hard power, and culture of the States will completely fall off the map leaving an "irrelevant nation" though.

Please don't do this here.

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I don't entirely agree with all of your points, but at least here, an example of someone commenting with something well-argued, instead of the ridiculous vomit of cliches and emotional outrage that so many comments here put forth on any political/economic debate about the United States.

>Ukraine losing the war will be a massive blow for Europe

There is no such thing. Even if Ukraine cannot recapture all of the lost territory, it's Russia who has already lost. That a country four times the population, ten times as rich has incurred a million casualties, switched to a war economy, has to throw tens of thousand of North Koreans into a war in Europe, merely to creep forward by a few meters has to be the largest humiliation to an alleged "great power" in a century.

All of this while Europe has not even remilitarized, with Ukraine becoming a major producer of military technology in its own right, the country is now largely self sufficient in terms of its drone output among other things, is one of the strongest signs of resilience of this continent.

"End of Europe" as a coherent entity that's willing and able to look after its own interests. Even as Ukrainians die in the meat grinder and Germany is lauded as Ukraine's best friend in Europe, millions of dollars of dual-use technology products from Germany continue to transship into Russia via Kazakhstan. Imagine if it was 1942 and Britain was still shipping millions of dollars of weapons components into Germany via Sweden or Switzerland?

It makes no sense whatsoever for Russia to attack more states than Ukraine.

The sole reason Russia invaded Ukraine was that it was flirting too much with NATO.

Putin might be a lunatic, but he is not stupid.

> Pendulum has swung too far to the left, while the best long term place is as usually somewhere in the middle (which would still be extreme left by US standards but who cares about that)."

Is there an EU state government where a left-wing party has the majority? I can't think of one, certainly not one of the bigger countries in EU like Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland...*

can you please talk more about the socialism that is prevalent in the EU? what do you exactly mean by "hard focus on socialism"?

In Europe, "hard focus on socialism" would mean something akin to the USSR.

I am not aware of any party that could hope to win elections in their county pushing for anything close to this ?

> US has trump and I see no end of US anytime soon, sure some self-harm is happening right now but thats about it, that nation is stronger than that.

That remains to be seen. Trump and his goons are breaking apart the foundations of society as we speak, not to mention the decades of Republican gerrymandering. The complete and utter loss of trust in the US on the geopolitical stage is another huge issue, it will be a long time before Europe or Southern America trust the US again - the hope that Trump would be a short-term one-off event went out the window last year.

> Compared to hard focus on socialism that was (and still is) prevalent in EU, some better balance is required in these times.

Where outside of Spain does Europe actually have socialists even as part of the government?

Most countries here are run by the far-right (e.g. Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, the Netherlands), centrists/conservatives (Germany, Poland, Croatia), Social Democrats, neoliberals (France) or coalitions of these.

> Nah I am not worried about [Russia], they are consistently unable to wage modern war to benefit of us all.

Never underestimate the willingness of Russian leaders to sacrifice their population for meat-grinder wars.

> In the meantime we arm and train ourselves, stronger Europe is always better for any future scenario, internally and externally.

Agreed, the problem is we can't be arsed to actually evolve to a truly federal society anywhere close to the US. Economically there has been a lot of integration happening, but politically... oh that's one hell of a clusterfuck.

Ok, let's just take your facetious argument on face value.

So that's $5.80 / hr in our land that has a minimum wage of $24.95 / hr. Still, a bit over 20%, crappy for sure (if it was true).

Now, of course, most people are not on the minimum wage, and definitely not here on HN. The tax system benefits those at the low end more though, so let us look at median wages.

Median hourly wages (in main job) are $40 / hr (Source: ABS - August 2024).

Median incomes are actually a touch higher (because not just main job), at $102,742 / annum, which attracts a tax rate of 21%, before the MANY MANY middle class welfare rebates we get (Source ATO tax calculator for 2024-2025).

So, for most of us, maybe we pay approximately our Monday to the State, but that gives us free school education, one of the world's best health systems per $ value (seriously, there are studies!), not to mention a relatively well functioning society (roads, police, firefighters, etc), on top of that we get the horrendous welfare state that you are bemoaning.

That welfare state includes things like the NDIS, which is out of control and needs to find an equilibrium between all the rent-seekers, but the ambition is amazing! We SHOULD support all our disabled people to be the best they can in society! Meanwhile, even with such a fuckup, we're doing ok. Pull your head out, mate.

Do we have issues? Hell yeah. But our terrible "social security state" is not the start of them at all.

That's until you get disabled in an accident - or your son or daughter is.

Then you'll suddenly convert to how benefits are essential.

(In before: "I don't need a car insurance, I'll never get into any accident, I am too good a driver for that")

In other words, every year each Australian pays 12K to other Australians?