 Reaction video time today. I'm going to react to a video that one of my followers have sent me called why America sucks at everything I haven't watched it. I'm curious about it. I thought it would be a good video for Reacting we are a family of six that have moved from the US to New Zealand and have been here for eight years And so I have been living overseas outside of the US for a quite a long time now And I'm interested to hear this perspective this video came out two years ago Or I should say 2021 because who knows when you're watching this here we go America is the greatest country on earth The richest the most powerful country on earth never as an American I'm sure you've heard that roughly 135 times a year 235 335 if you go to a Christian Academy We're told that Americans have the best lives of any people in the world that we have low taxes small government The highest living standards on earth and most inaccurately that we're the freest Well, it is partly true. America is the richest country not just in the world But in the history of the world we have 18 million people who are millionaires American households on about 100 trillion dollars in wealth and almost unthinkable amount of money Okay, so America is the richest country ever, but there's a curious paradox Most Americans actually have a much worse standard of living than people who live in poorer countries like Germany or Finland or Britain But how can that be? Doesn't make any sense. Well, here's the shitty deal Americans get significantly worse services because our tax dollars don't fund them So of course our services are worse and thus we enjoy less happy lives than people who live in the aforementioned countries Not that difficult a concept to concede really you get what you pay for said the cartoon dog or the other cartoon dog And why you might think the reason American tax dollars don't fund as many services is because we pay lower taxes than other countries That's not even true When you add federal state local and sales taxes include other costs and services that our taxes don't cover But other countries taxes do like our uniquely high health insurance premiums You'll find that Americans actually give away more of their wages than most of the developed world for example in Canada for married worker with two kids all the previously mentioned costs combined from taxes to health insurance premiums make up Only 11% of the average wage in the UK. It's just about 26% Meanwhile once you tack on the cost of our outlandish health insurance premiums You're spending a whopping 43% of your paycheck that's more than France Finland Sweden the Norway in Real reality Americans keep much less of what we own than in other countries in other countries Their government takes a bit more tax But then gives that money back to their citizens in the form of health care or job support Yeah, or a general safety net for all vulnerable citizens no matter how dusky they are So what do Americans get for the money we pay in? Well, sure we get a crumbling infrastructure shameful homelessness and millions of hungry neglected children, but Get some of the worst services in the developed world Again our health care American health care is Simultaneously the most expensive the least efficient and the least effective health care system in the developed world Hey, the devil's trifecta and in exchange for this extremely expensive Inefficient health care system. What do we get? Well, we get some of the worst health outcomes in the developed world We have fewer hospital beds per capita than people in Turkey or Brunei Americans have a lower life expectancy than people in Lebanon or Cuba and in the Mississippi Delta and much of Appalachia Life expectancy is lower than in Bangladesh We even have a higher infant mortality rate than people in Russia and Serbia in Every single metric America does worse across the board Why is health care so expensive? Because it's so complicated. You have to look for in-network physicians schedule an established care appointment beg for coverage from your insurance company That couldn't care less about you and that's if you're lucky enough to have good insurance Compare that to Britain and all of those other Socialist like countries where it's simple Public hospitals provide free treatment to people who need it That's it I'll repeat that public hospitals provide free treatment to people Even though Britain offers health care for free their system is actually a lot cheaper to run than ours Per capita health care spending in the US is almost three times what it is in Britain and almost five times what Canadians spend in In fact, Americans spend the most per person of any country in the world for health care But the free market is more efficient you screech, but in America Private systems often aren't efficient at all Private drug companies have an incentive to charge whatever they can get away with for pharmaceuticals in Canada a Carton of insulin costs about 20 bucks in the US. It cost 300 bucks. Yeah, and with private insurance companies footing the bill hospitals have an incentive to get as much money out of patients as possible, too In 2015 the average cost of an MRI scan in the US was $1,119 but it was only $250 in Australia. Yeah, Spain about 181 bucks and our health care system is so inefficient that we spend over a third of our cost on Administration well, the United States spends significantly more on administration Now we spend on preventative or long-term health care. Not even a job. That's just not smart Okay, we get it. We all know that American health care is so much more expensive you say But that's the cost of having the freest freedom in God's favorite country Well, guess what medical procedures that are totally free in Britain like giving birth Costs tens of thousands of dollars in the United States I mean you want to talk about the cost of freedom Yeah, sadly because of these high costs Americans often avoid going to the doctor something almost half the population say they do With shoddy or non-existent health insurance Americans will wait until their conditions force them into the emergency room where treatment is far more expensive Again, not a smart system. Quite often they end up putting off medical visits and dying Susan Finley a 53 year old Walmart employee in Colorado got pneumonia and took one day off of work beyond what Walmart's policy allows So of course Walmart's gonna Walmart, which they did by firing her Without her job. She lost her nominal health care coverage She struggled to find new work and after avoiding a visit to the doctor for flu-like symptoms She was found dead in her apartment When Americans do manage to get treated they frequently can't afford it simple Life-saving treatments can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and if they don't have really good insurance They're forced to take on medical debt and critical tens of millions of Americans owe medical debt often into the tens of thousands of dollars Meanwhile in a country like Britain or Norway medical debt is almost unheard of but hey That's why GoFundMe is such a critical component of American health care One in three GoFundMe campaigns is now for medical bills. I'll repeat that one in three GoFundMe campaigns is now for medical bills America is such a strong Powerful rich and great country that its citizens have to beg strangers on the internet for money So they can get life-saving treatments that are free in the rest of the developed world But hey, that's just health care Americans get terrible deals wherever you look. Let's take work for example Yes, let's take Americans work longer hours and people in any other rich country in the world And that's not because they enjoy sleep deprivation and not seeing their families for days at a time It's because they don't want to starve or freeze or die See America has the least generous job support programs the least generous family benefits and the least generous Unemployment benefits of any wealthy country. It's one of the only countries on earth that doesn't guarantee paid time off for vacations It doesn't even help provide paid time off for parents who just had a child And it's not coincidental that we're also one of the most hostile countries to workers rights America has one of the lowest unionization rates in the entire world Maybe this deprivation our refusal to give people the means to lead a good dignified life commensurate with how rich our country is Can explain a bit of what we've seen in the united states over the last few decades Fraying communities rising rates of depression and suicide huge numbers of deaths from drug overdoses These so-called deaths of despair suicide drug overdoses alcoholic liver disease There's one big reason why american life expectancy has actually started to decline over the last few years And with such poor conditions, it's not a surprise that poverty is so rampant in the united states america devotes a smaller percentage of spending on social welfare than any other industrialized economy because Say it with me socialism is evil It's evil Go to denmark and try telling those happy healthy families enjoying their paid vacation that their system of government is evil Guess what? I guarantee They'll know you're an american. Yeah, but i digress America also has the highest rate of child poverty of any developed country and the highest percentage of workers earning significantly less than the national median income that Seems pretty evil to me Especially since such a tiny fraction take as much of your money from themselves and their families as you will let them All the while both parties smile and shake hands We are the greatest country in the world yet We have the most people in prison of any country and the highest incarceration rate as well And a higher rate of police killings than in angola and sudan America has batted everything because instead of choosing to make life better for people through a public health care system Or more generous child care policies or better public transit or programs that allow people to spend more time with their families American law is designed and crafted to protect a class of parasitical middleman industries Instead of using a proportionately tiny piece of the massive amount of the wealth in this country to make people's lives healthier and happier Most of our elected leaders are and have been for generations engaged in a massive project of looting do it gently And lovingly guiding as much money as possible from working people into the pockets of the well connected and the ultra rich Think about that as we start hearing about the inevitable rise in homelessness poverty Starvation and sickness that will occur during these coming months and years In the greatest Strongest richest most powerful country on the face of the earth that highlighted quite a few things I would love to hear your comments comment below. Let me know your thoughts Um, I will link some other videos that I have talked on these some of the health care The cost to have babies the taxes I've talked all about this on my channel if you want to know more about what it's like In new zealand compared to the u.s. It is it is across our i'm going to have to think about this This one for a little bit. I mean, I think he just kind of said some things that are just like, okay random Like where'd you get that information? Why is that related? But in general, I mean the concept is right over tax health care is so expensive and you don't get anything I mean, I could tell you story after story. It's already on my channel I wish you would have covered like education systems and some of the other systems that are like actually really like public Transportation not good like he kind of highlighted on that But would like to hear more about that share your comments and I will see you next week