I used to travel to the U.S. every year or two for this or that and I always left thinking about just how stressed out I'd be if I had to live there. There's a sense of having to have your "guard up" so much. That someone or something is always out to screw you. That you need gates on your communities. That your kids' school is going to get shot up. That cops might be the enemy. That you'll depend on someone in a moment of vulnerability and you'll be part of the wrong tribe. That you're a medical event away from financial catastrophe. That even when you have medical insurance, they're trying to screw you. That healthcare is tied to employment. That your government really wants to !@#$ you and your civic duty is becoming a full-time job.
I think it's possible that a lot of this is subjective personal bias, and people may tell me it's not actually that bad. But I also wonder if the people who have to live their lives in it long term are just used to it. And if they were to step outside of it for long enough like this blogger, they might detox from the stress.
I think what I do know for sure is that "it's like this everywhere" feels certainly wrong. Everywhere is different and I don't accept that every single form of different is equal. There are better and worse versions of different.
I have had bouts of strong desire to move to the US, but I can't get past the uncomfortable feeling that you need to constantly have your back up. Unless you're super-wealthy, it just seems a hard place to exist.
Nearly everything you said is inaccurate for the vast majority of the US, and it's obvious you have projected a lot of vaguely accurate online news reports across the nation as a whole.
Ontario -> DFW a bunch, San Diego, Bay Area, NYC, Boston, Buffalo, Nashville, Orlando, Atlanta, Numerous rural nowheres in Wisconsin (it's a long story), DC. Just what comes to the top of my head that I've visited as an adult for longer than a week.
Admittedly I haven't been in a few years. Maybe things have been getting much better there!
> Every time I leave the US, I’m always struck by how happy other people seem to be.
Every time I visit a place I get the impression that people are happier, but it's just an impression based on something you notice and experience for a very short amount of time. You'll see happy and desperate people anywhere, I don't think it has to do with the place.
> Actually, I think I say that about everywhere I travel.
I try not to make any judgement about people, their life and other things based on a few days or at most a few weeks of travel in that place. It is tempting to say things based on a very limited experience on a very limited people in a very limited place.
I think the phenomenon you mention is definitely real, but equally it is true that there are simply places where there are higher proportions of happy to sad people, borne variously of climate, socioeconomic context, culture, social fabric, political histories etc. To avoid the truth that some environments yield happier people is to be needlessly defensive and disingenuous IMO. FWIW -- my bias -- I find America to be a sadder place to be, on various subjectives. It is individualistic just as the author alludes to; the normative fabric does not invite communal multi-generational wellbeing nor filial duties or general actionable concern for fellow person. Compared to my experiences in Bangkok, Beijing, Oslo, even London, there is simply a better structure for welfare communally without everything needing to be a capitalistic fever dream. That said, there is _absolutely_ stark contrasts between Austin, Boulder, SF, NY. The US is a gloriously massive place with such diversity, but its economic and political reality does its people and communities a disservice.
I'm living in Thailand, the self-declared Land of Smiles, and ... it's not very smiley.
I visit Japan, which social media seems to say is a terrible place to work and make friends, and it strikes me as much more friendly and outgoing. Same when I'm in the States, where I find it far easier to strike up a random conversation and enjoy the nods on the sidewalk.
Somehow I think the core differences is wherever you spend the most time, the gilding wears off and there's a core discontent underneath everything everywhere if you stay long enough.
The article doesn’t mention moving to another country, working a local job and enjoying it.
America is absolutely great if you get lucky and want to make a ton of money. I messed up, I didn’t do well on my Amazon or Meta interviews. But say I did 6 or 7 years ago.
Assuming I survived long enough for the 4 year vesting period I’d already have enough to retire. The world is full of safer and cheaper places,
No other country really offers this opportunity. My own career, dropping out of college and coding Unity games until I magically had a 6 figure career , is largely an American dream.
On the flip side, in almost every other developed country people don’t choose between medicine and rent.
Let’s say you have a chronic , but manageable health condition and a great job. You get fired in May, your wife files for divorce in September and you can be homeless by Christmas.
Now you’re in a shelter without the basic medic treatment you need.
Somehow it’s your fault. Tariffs destroyed your employers business, your fault.
If a bank needs a bailout golly gosh no expense shall be spared. A peasant can’t make rent this month, should have worked harder.
Combined with the prosperity gospel and if you suffer on the streets it means you made God angry or something. An infinite all powerful being and he’s upset you ate meat on the wrong day.
To be honest I dream of moving to a country where senseless stupid violence isn’t the norm. Maybe I’d have a kid and tell him that America is basically Disneyland if the rides occasionally derailed.
I disagree to the maximum extent possible. I have lived in 6 countries. Americans to me are by far most friendly and supportive of new ideas.
When you are visiting a place, you see it with rosy eyes. You are not forced to deal with the day to day difficulties of life, the commute, the commitments, the finances, the outrage about politics and so on. So, comparing the harsh reality of 'back home' against an environment where you don't have to deal with those is going to obviously come out different. When you live in a country for a while, only then the so-called 'bitterness' catches up to you.
About 30% are happy with a Nazi takeover of government with the stated goal of a whiter government and deportation and concentration camps. About 50% are ok with the idea of it if gas and groceries weren't so expensive. 65% if you specifically ask white men.
Many of the rest of us are aware of this and worried we won't be allowed to vote our way out of it. If that ends up being the case millions of us might die.
Of the 50% of us who didn't vote for this the overwhelming majority are cowards who won't do anything.
We aren't good people collectively. We are in a word garbage.
Its excuses. American capitalism gives us endless excuses for why our individual excess and waste is justified because someone else does it too. Then we get more excuses to blame the rich, the poor, the immigrants, the foreigners, the Jews, the Muslims, the africans, etc.
At the end of the day, a lot of Americans say they are one person while their actions prove otherwise. This creates a lot of shame, self hatred, confusion, anxiety, etc. The way Americans self describe vs who their actions say they are is vastly different. Then we blame the rich, the poor, the immigrants, the deep state, foreigners, etc.
"I love the environment" as we vote for a oil baron. "I love animals" as we shove more beef and dairy into our mouths. I'd be confused about who I am if I said one thing and did another.
In modern America the individual can do no wrong. It is always someone elses fault. There is always a scapegoat to let us off the hook. DID YOU KNOW OIL COMPANIES MADE MO MONEY? Keep driving that SUV.
You can count on Americans to do the right thing, after we've tried everything else and run out of excuses.
Americans are, according to our own logic, the most beautifully gifted society to ever exist while simultaneously being the biggest victims ever.
It wouldn't, because the vast majority of people whining about how terrible the US is and how great it is elsewhere aren't welcome elsewhere because they aren't a net benefit to their community.
It's so interesting how I feel the same way about where I live now... and even more interesting that every time I visit the US, people seem happier there than anywhere I've been before.
We can fix it with leadership and mentoring younger people. I'm trying to do this every single day. I love the spirit of people. I love the United States and what it has given me and my family growing up. You can project positive change and it doesn't have to be such a dark place. Look around you at the beauty. Be the change for the world and ultimately yourself.
I'm American but moved to Europe years ago where I am definitely happier. I like the superstitious idea that the American continent is cursed from the deaths of 55 million native Americans since the discovery of the western hemisphere. I mean, I do t believe it but it does make a good story.
Sure, horrible things happened. But a big part of those deaths was the new diseases that people had no developed immunity to. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
Well, for one, the world changes around us in ways that necessitate innovation. But even if it didn't, if life can be better, why wouldn't you want that?
I never said it's wrong to want life to be better. Life is life. If someone finds enjoyment in a different way or pace of life, that's fine. The world's gonna do what the world's gonna do - some people want to be at the forefront, while others want to go with the flow or chill out.
> Every time I leave the US, I’m always struck by how happy other people seem to be.
Seems more than a little rose-tinted. I live in the UK and I can certify that there is a lot of misery here. Overloaded NHS, lack of housing, the Byzantine benefits and tax structures, lack of good jobs, etc.
Personally, I like living in the UK, despite all, but I also liked working in the US last time I did in the 1990s. Things have (obviously, Trumpism etc.) changed there, I guess.
Well, you went to one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I wouldn't want to leave either.
On a more substantial comment, people seem much more happy in appearance and on specific moments than what they actually are. The grass is always greener on the other side, etc. The solution is and has always been to try to be satisfied (not happy) with what you have wherever you are.
>We don’t care for our children, our elderly, or our communities.
This is truly an issue and imo it has reached unprecedented lows.
I agree with the need for an empirical reality check, but have grown really skeptical about these kinds of cohort-level well-being measures.
I wouldn't say they're meaningless, but there's a lot of studies suggesting they don't really change much over time, and my sense is they don't change in tandem with events that should change well-being, except in extremes like widespread genocidal war.
There's even researchers who have kind of taken them seriously to suggest that people have social cognitive biases about the past, and societal changes. I respect them and think what they're suggesting is reasonable (in the sense that they're taking the measures seriously) but the other way of looking at it is to flip it around and raise the possibility that the aggregation-level measurement isn't tracking what we want it to.
I admit I don't have an alternative, and don't think they're worthless per se, I just feel like (as someone who does vaguely related research) like they're tracking something more akin to perceptual sets or world schemas than psychosocial functioning.
I guess at some level I always have the "everything is fine" dog meme in the back of my mind when I see these kinds of well-being or mood analyses.
What nonsense. Of course, everything always looks so great when you're on vacation. Living somewhere full time and visiting for a few weeks is not the same.
There are plenty of kind, generous, happy people in the US. Wasn't there a gazillion memes about it during the World Cup?
This reads like twitter-level rage bait seriously.
A far less compelling narrative is to handwave it away as "it's not really the system." The hyper-competition that capitalism breeds (for relatively little benefit) is the moral bane. More specifically, the recent history of touting capitalism while demonizing socialism has caused this shift, as opposed to the era of the New Deal, when social safety nets and public works were promoted as a net good. While there is a bill to pay for some programs (such as Social Security), the broader approach has largely been vindicated. Capitalism has produced severe wealth inequality, benefiting only a select few and breeding blatant corruption.
Not to defend the down votes, but it's not just one thing. The article praises the attitudes of Mexicans and French folk, both of which are also capitalist countries.
It's capitalism to an extent, sure, but it's also the culture of a country.
There are few, if any, countries which have taken capitalism to the same extremes the US has. The concept of a country which is so at the mercy of capitalists that people will beg you not to call an ambulance for them when they’re injured is incredibly foreign to me despite living in the UK, a country renowned for its financial sector.
Which I guess is to say yes, it is the culture of a country, and the culture of the US strikes me as money above all else.
Well, the "fat" part is true, the US is #2 in obesity among developed countries. In many education metrics we are average or below average compared to the OECD countries (despite spending more than others) - let's round it out to "average". The others are less measurable.
OP's shining example of Mexico is essentially as obese[0], and far less educated[1] than Americans on average. It's embarrassing to be this blind to the state of things when you have the resources to check your opinions for accuracy.
I used to travel to the U.S. every year or two for this or that and I always left thinking about just how stressed out I'd be if I had to live there. There's a sense of having to have your "guard up" so much. That someone or something is always out to screw you. That you need gates on your communities. That your kids' school is going to get shot up. That cops might be the enemy. That you'll depend on someone in a moment of vulnerability and you'll be part of the wrong tribe. That you're a medical event away from financial catastrophe. That even when you have medical insurance, they're trying to screw you. That healthcare is tied to employment. That your government really wants to !@#$ you and your civic duty is becoming a full-time job.
I think it's possible that a lot of this is subjective personal bias, and people may tell me it's not actually that bad. But I also wonder if the people who have to live their lives in it long term are just used to it. And if they were to step outside of it for long enough like this blogger, they might detox from the stress.
I think what I do know for sure is that "it's like this everywhere" feels certainly wrong. Everywhere is different and I don't accept that every single form of different is equal. There are better and worse versions of different.
I have had bouts of strong desire to move to the US, but I can't get past the uncomfortable feeling that you need to constantly have your back up. Unless you're super-wealthy, it just seems a hard place to exist.
Where are you from, and where are you visiting?
Nearly everything you said is inaccurate for the vast majority of the US, and it's obvious you have projected a lot of vaguely accurate online news reports across the nation as a whole.
Ontario -> DFW a bunch, San Diego, Bay Area, NYC, Boston, Buffalo, Nashville, Orlando, Atlanta, Numerous rural nowheres in Wisconsin (it's a long story), DC. Just what comes to the top of my head that I've visited as an adult for longer than a week.
Admittedly I haven't been in a few years. Maybe things have been getting much better there!
> Every time I leave the US, I’m always struck by how happy other people seem to be.
Every time I visit a place I get the impression that people are happier, but it's just an impression based on something you notice and experience for a very short amount of time. You'll see happy and desperate people anywhere, I don't think it has to do with the place.
> Actually, I think I say that about everywhere I travel.
That's it.
I try not to make any judgement about people, their life and other things based on a few days or at most a few weeks of travel in that place. It is tempting to say things based on a very limited experience on a very limited people in a very limited place.
Truly fascinating how when you're a tourist in a place that survives off of tourism, you get treated nicely.
not true for Paris or Prague :) but I guess they don't "survive" off of tourism, more people will come anyway.
Just one of those great mysteries of life.
It's a subjective measure each way, to be sure, and really applies to the the coasts. If you want to see it that way, no one can correct you.
But as an American who has spent decades in Europe (across five different countries), I'm confident that this isn't just a mistaken impression.
I think the phenomenon you mention is definitely real, but equally it is true that there are simply places where there are higher proportions of happy to sad people, borne variously of climate, socioeconomic context, culture, social fabric, political histories etc. To avoid the truth that some environments yield happier people is to be needlessly defensive and disingenuous IMO. FWIW -- my bias -- I find America to be a sadder place to be, on various subjectives. It is individualistic just as the author alludes to; the normative fabric does not invite communal multi-generational wellbeing nor filial duties or general actionable concern for fellow person. Compared to my experiences in Bangkok, Beijing, Oslo, even London, there is simply a better structure for welfare communally without everything needing to be a capitalistic fever dream. That said, there is _absolutely_ stark contrasts between Austin, Boulder, SF, NY. The US is a gloriously massive place with such diversity, but its economic and political reality does its people and communities a disservice.
I'm living in Thailand, the self-declared Land of Smiles, and ... it's not very smiley.
I visit Japan, which social media seems to say is a terrible place to work and make friends, and it strikes me as much more friendly and outgoing. Same when I'm in the States, where I find it far easier to strike up a random conversation and enjoy the nods on the sidewalk.
Somehow I think the core differences is wherever you spend the most time, the gilding wears off and there's a core discontent underneath everything everywhere if you stay long enough.
It’s not black and white.
The article doesn’t mention moving to another country, working a local job and enjoying it.
America is absolutely great if you get lucky and want to make a ton of money. I messed up, I didn’t do well on my Amazon or Meta interviews. But say I did 6 or 7 years ago.
Assuming I survived long enough for the 4 year vesting period I’d already have enough to retire. The world is full of safer and cheaper places,
No other country really offers this opportunity. My own career, dropping out of college and coding Unity games until I magically had a 6 figure career , is largely an American dream.
On the flip side, in almost every other developed country people don’t choose between medicine and rent.
Let’s say you have a chronic , but manageable health condition and a great job. You get fired in May, your wife files for divorce in September and you can be homeless by Christmas.
Now you’re in a shelter without the basic medic treatment you need.
Somehow it’s your fault. Tariffs destroyed your employers business, your fault.
If a bank needs a bailout golly gosh no expense shall be spared. A peasant can’t make rent this month, should have worked harder.
Combined with the prosperity gospel and if you suffer on the streets it means you made God angry or something. An infinite all powerful being and he’s upset you ate meat on the wrong day.
To be honest I dream of moving to a country where senseless stupid violence isn’t the norm. Maybe I’d have a kid and tell him that America is basically Disneyland if the rides occasionally derailed.
I disagree to the maximum extent possible. I have lived in 6 countries. Americans to me are by far most friendly and supportive of new ideas.
When you are visiting a place, you see it with rosy eyes. You are not forced to deal with the day to day difficulties of life, the commute, the commitments, the finances, the outrage about politics and so on. So, comparing the harsh reality of 'back home' against an environment where you don't have to deal with those is going to obviously come out different. When you live in a country for a while, only then the so-called 'bitterness' catches up to you.
There are millions of happy, good people in America. Grass is always greener. You see novelty when you travel.
About 30% are happy with a Nazi takeover of government with the stated goal of a whiter government and deportation and concentration camps. About 50% are ok with the idea of it if gas and groceries weren't so expensive. 65% if you specifically ask white men.
Many of the rest of us are aware of this and worried we won't be allowed to vote our way out of it. If that ends up being the case millions of us might die.
Of the 50% of us who didn't vote for this the overwhelming majority are cowards who won't do anything.
We aren't good people collectively. We are in a word garbage.
Every time I don't live somewhere, I notice that in the place I don't live, everyone is happier. Common denominator there?
Its excuses. American capitalism gives us endless excuses for why our individual excess and waste is justified because someone else does it too. Then we get more excuses to blame the rich, the poor, the immigrants, the foreigners, the Jews, the Muslims, the africans, etc.
At the end of the day, a lot of Americans say they are one person while their actions prove otherwise. This creates a lot of shame, self hatred, confusion, anxiety, etc. The way Americans self describe vs who their actions say they are is vastly different. Then we blame the rich, the poor, the immigrants, the deep state, foreigners, etc.
"I love the environment" as we vote for a oil baron. "I love animals" as we shove more beef and dairy into our mouths. I'd be confused about who I am if I said one thing and did another.
In modern America the individual can do no wrong. It is always someone elses fault. There is always a scapegoat to let us off the hook. DID YOU KNOW OIL COMPANIES MADE MO MONEY? Keep driving that SUV.
You can count on Americans to do the right thing, after we've tried everything else and run out of excuses.
Americans are, according to our own logic, the most beautifully gifted society to ever exist while simultaneously being the biggest victims ever.
Then why doesn't the author just leave?
Imaginary lines called borders tend to be the biggest constraint.
You and I both know it's not always that simple.
Maybe the author just loves to complain and actually does not want a solution.
He can fix them.
Trying to immigrate to another country takes a lot of money and time and may have various other requirements.
I’m too lazy to go back and find your Biden era bitching and tell you to do the same, but if we all followed your advice the place would be empty.
It wouldn't, because the vast majority of people whining about how terrible the US is and how great it is elsewhere aren't welcome elsewhere because they aren't a net benefit to their community.
Maybe the author is opposed to that kind of freedom.
It's so interesting how I feel the same way about where I live now... and even more interesting that every time I visit the US, people seem happier there than anywhere I've been before.
>We don’t care for our children, our elderly, or our communities
This to me is the nub of it. Where is our humanity when people lie homeless and lifeless in stupor on the streets as Waymos glide by?
Some countries do better. Many don't. But we should always seek to model off those that put welfare of all people above welfare of one.
> Where is our humanity when people lie homeless and lifeless in stupor on the streets as Waymos glide by?
We've decided that those people have agency, and are not willing to force them into a facility against their will.
You can disagree with it, but that's the current choice the nation has made and it's not an invalid one.
Also, most people do care for their children, elderly, and communities. The US is not a failed state because not 100% of people or munipalities do.
> But we should always seek to model off those that put welfare of all people above welfare of one.
No thanks.
We can fix it with leadership and mentoring younger people. I'm trying to do this every single day. I love the spirit of people. I love the United States and what it has given me and my family growing up. You can project positive change and it doesn't have to be such a dark place. Look around you at the beauty. Be the change for the world and ultimately yourself.
I'm American but moved to Europe years ago where I am definitely happier. I like the superstitious idea that the American continent is cursed from the deaths of 55 million native Americans since the discovery of the western hemisphere. I mean, I do t believe it but it does make a good story.
Sure, horrible things happened. But a big part of those deaths was the new diseases that people had no developed immunity to. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
But how can you stand the lack of innovation?
Why do we always need to be innovating? What's wrong with being content with what is?
Well, for one, the world changes around us in ways that necessitate innovation. But even if it didn't, if life can be better, why wouldn't you want that?
I never said it's wrong to want life to be better. Life is life. If someone finds enjoyment in a different way or pace of life, that's fine. The world's gonna do what the world's gonna do - some people want to be at the forefront, while others want to go with the flow or chill out.
That's okay. :)
China will beat us to AI.
So ? What did you expect, you think USA will remain number one for ever ?
There is far more to the world than AI.
It all becomes irrelevant if Europe slips into the dark ages.
Yeah, and the hope is that AI will accelerate all of that, too.
AI will accelerate everything? Does everything need to be accelerated? If so, why does everything need to move faster?
This is the funniest comment I have ever read on this website
It's one of those things that I'm really hoping is sarcastic/trolling but I've been here long enough to know it likely isn't.
You forgot the /s, I hope.
innovation in what areas are you talking about?
This is such an ironic blog post it hurts.
> Every time I leave the US, I’m always struck by how happy other people seem to be.
Seems more than a little rose-tinted. I live in the UK and I can certify that there is a lot of misery here. Overloaded NHS, lack of housing, the Byzantine benefits and tax structures, lack of good jobs, etc.
Personally, I like living in the UK, despite all, but I also liked working in the US last time I did in the 1990s. Things have (obviously, Trumpism etc.) changed there, I guess.
"If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day, you're the asshole."
Consider: life may not be all about being happy.
You see what you're looking for, and that's about it.
Because of that, most people see what they feel internally.
>I’m recently back from Baja California Sur.
Well, you went to one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I wouldn't want to leave either.
On a more substantial comment, people seem much more happy in appearance and on specific moments than what they actually are. The grass is always greener on the other side, etc. The solution is and has always been to try to be satisfied (not happy) with what you have wherever you are.
>We don’t care for our children, our elderly, or our communities.
This is truly an issue and imo it has reached unprecedented lows.
Maybe worth checking the data first...
https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction
I agree with the need for an empirical reality check, but have grown really skeptical about these kinds of cohort-level well-being measures.
I wouldn't say they're meaningless, but there's a lot of studies suggesting they don't really change much over time, and my sense is they don't change in tandem with events that should change well-being, except in extremes like widespread genocidal war.
There's even researchers who have kind of taken them seriously to suggest that people have social cognitive biases about the past, and societal changes. I respect them and think what they're suggesting is reasonable (in the sense that they're taking the measures seriously) but the other way of looking at it is to flip it around and raise the possibility that the aggregation-level measurement isn't tracking what we want it to.
I admit I don't have an alternative, and don't think they're worthless per se, I just feel like (as someone who does vaguely related research) like they're tracking something more akin to perceptual sets or world schemas than psychosocial functioning.
I guess at some level I always have the "everything is fine" dog meme in the back of my mind when I see these kinds of well-being or mood analyses.
Wow Argentina surprised me given all the hand wringing about inflation. It must just be a fact of life there you adjust to and get on with your life
> I think a part of it is the individualism we’re raised to embrace.
> We don’t care for our children, our elderly, or our communities. It’s all me me me. How do I get mine and fuck the other guy.
Capitalism, I'm looking at you.
Right, because socialist and communist states were shining beacons of morality, compassion, and abundance.
What nonsense. Of course, everything always looks so great when you're on vacation. Living somewhere full time and visiting for a few weeks is not the same.
There are plenty of kind, generous, happy people in the US. Wasn't there a gazillion memes about it during the World Cup?
This reads like twitter-level rage bait seriously.
Twitter-level rage bait or agitprop is a daily appearance on the HN front page these days.
[dead]
[flagged]
The irony hopping into a popular post to promote your own tangentially related blog post where you rail against "advertising" is papable.
Cue https://www.persuasion.community/p/ugh-capitalism in response
A far less compelling narrative is to handwave it away as "it's not really the system." The hyper-competition that capitalism breeds (for relatively little benefit) is the moral bane. More specifically, the recent history of touting capitalism while demonizing socialism has caused this shift, as opposed to the era of the New Deal, when social safety nets and public works were promoted as a net good. While there is a bill to pay for some programs (such as Social Security), the broader approach has largely been vindicated. Capitalism has produced severe wealth inequality, benefiting only a select few and breeding blatant corruption.
Calling everyone stupid is a surefire way to get them to read your post.
I imagine the parent comment was just paraphrasing on the "Is the economy stupid" phrase from the Clinton campaign,
It's a famous way to phrase rebuttals , famously political ones, and it's been used about a trillion times.
Flag fiends: Have some appreciation for nuance. This is not a hostile comment -- it's a concurrence, and on-topic.
The first sentence is insulting (even if indirect), for no reason other than attention seeking to click the link. The content is was an ok read.
Not to defend the down votes, but it's not just one thing. The article praises the attitudes of Mexicans and French folk, both of which are also capitalist countries.
It's capitalism to an extent, sure, but it's also the culture of a country.
There are few, if any, countries which have taken capitalism to the same extremes the US has. The concept of a country which is so at the mercy of capitalists that people will beg you not to call an ambulance for them when they’re injured is incredibly foreign to me despite living in the UK, a country renowned for its financial sector.
Which I guess is to say yes, it is the culture of a country, and the culture of the US strikes me as money above all else.
Capitalism is a symptom of a people who are only focused on tearing each other down.
“ By and large, we’re fat, lazy, poorly educated, and blind to the state of things. It’s embarrassing.”
100% wrong. Didn’t even bother reading after that
Well, the "fat" part is true, the US is #2 in obesity among developed countries. In many education metrics we are average or below average compared to the OECD countries (despite spending more than others) - let's round it out to "average". The others are less measurable.
OP's shining example of Mexico is essentially as obese[0], and far less educated[1] than Americans on average. It's embarrassing to be this blind to the state of things when you have the resources to check your opinions for accuracy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index