Differences once you break the 0.9 range are more noticeable at the bottom end, particularly in the context of the OP's claim about people in the US "struggling to stay alive". There's also an "inequality weighted" HDI (accessible from your HDR link above by drilling down to the individual country data) which puts the US a fair way behind many of the EU countries the sheer weight of its per capita GDP puts it ahead of (on that index the US is even marginally worse than some of the wealthier Eastern Bloc countries, but interestingly on dead level pegging with France for the last decade)

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alephnerd 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Even then the US is comparable to France - the only European country that comes even remotely close to America's power projection capabilities - and significantly above Italy, a fellow G7 member and large EU member that also has power projections capabilities.

The only large European countries with a significantly better iHDI are Germany and the UK.

All this does is justify the fact that most EU member states have taken advantage of the peace dividend at the expense of countries that have heavily invested in defense capabilities like the US, France, and Italy which fuels anti-European sentiment that turned into the current diplomatic crisis.

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notahacker an hour ago | parent [-]

Interesting segue from claiming Europe is 20-40 years behind the US to claiming if Europe's policy choices have resulted in any better outcomes than the US its because they're enriching themselves by taking advantage of the "peace dividend"! I guess I'd have to agree that in the current diplomatic crisis of America's making, there is literally nothing some Americans won't use to "justify" blaming it on Europe....

Back in reality, inequality doesn't have an obvious relationship with country size or power projection, countries with superior inequality-weighted HDI like Germany and Poland spend more of their GDP on defence than Italy and the strengths and weaknesses of America's business culture, labour laws, welfare state, privatised healthcare etc (higher incomes for many but lower baseline living standards) really don't have very much to do with its military spending. If Americans want their government to tackle inequality they should probably back candidates advocating European-style policy over candidates advocating anti-European sentiment.

	▲	ragall an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Interesting segue from claiming Europe is 20-40 years behind the US to claiming if Europe's policy choices have resulted in any better outcomes than the US its because they're enriching themselves by taking advantage of the "peace dividend"! That's not what I claimed. Europe is 20-40 years behind in how the social fabric is being destroyed, making everything precarious and lives shitty, stressful and meaningless. Many good choices in Europe have slowed down that decay, but I'm afraid it's just slowed, not arrested. And it's not so much as the "peace dividend" helping Europe, but the opposite: the US have made themselves poor because with the same economic framework as today, the US would be in a much better position if it had an efficient healthcare system, instead of one that spends 2-3x the European average for worse outcomes, and if it didn't drive up the cost of living by allowing boomers to print themselves money by restricting housing construction though zoning.