Thread

1. wilburx3 · 1790697687 · focus · HN ↗

   This is a semi-local road to me, what is amazing in the article is the difference between Switzerland and the US in how they actually care about their citizens.

   America is great and fun but also brutal in how the government will actively go out of its way to deny basic living standards. From healthcare to minimum wage, they want you to die just before you reach social security age.

   1. wahern · 1790699648 · focus · HN ↗

      Switzerland has ~440 people per paved road kilometer. The US has about ~80 people per paved road kilometer. That means Switzerland has more than 5x the number of tax payers to support each kilometer of paved road. Maybe Switzerland was smarter than the US in terms of not building infrastructure it can't adequately support, but in any event....

      1. Larrikin · 1790704199 · focus · HN ↗

         Why did you stop your comparison at number of people, instead of comparing the more obvious numbers like GDP vs population size? Number of people actually has no bearing on the ability to actually get things fixed.

         1. wahern · 1790713731 · focus · HN ↗

            I didn't want to guild the lily. Switzerland also has a significantly higher per capita GDP than the US. 1/4-1/3 higher.

            Switzerland is just a really bad example to use because they're significantly wealthier than the US. The only other two non-city-states with a higher per capita GDP than the US are Ireland and Norway, but Ireland's is inflated because it's a tax haven (less real money available for public spending), and Norway's is inflated because of their oil and gas fields. Though, comparing the US to most any other country, especially individual European countries, is already specious. Switzerland is ~9 million, compared to ~340 million for the US. Scale matters, because of variance, selection bias, and the policy conclusions you can reasonably draw. A better apples-to-apples comparison would be between individual US states to individual European countries, or to compare the US to the EU as a whole[1]. People don't like to do that because such comparisons tend not come out the way they want. It would be interesting to read a follow-up comparing Colorado to Switzerland, not least because they're both mountainous regions. Not nearly as easy an analysis, though, because you'd have to figure out Colorado's share of Federal road infrastructure expenditures, plus Colorado-specific road data.

            [1] To be fair, comparing the US to the EU can be a chore because many publicly available datasets, even from EU agencies, encompass not just the EU proper but larger geographic regions, or subregions of the EU. And of course Switzerland itself is just such an example as they're not a full member state. Like, try finding out the number of heat-related deaths. I couldn't find any numbers just for the EU proper. Some numbers included Russia, the Balkans, and/or Turkey, some were for subregions of the EU, and often it was a chore just to figure out which countries or regions were used in the report. It's a mess.

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