A good rule of thumb at this point, honestly

Lol this has been a good rule of thumb for a while. There's not a richer nation on earth that feels poorer than the US.

Who woulda thought the most capitalist developed nation on earth would also have the most inequality?
It's almost like thats a features of unfettered capitalism, not a bug.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_inequality
- ... but we're far from the most unequal nation on earth?
  Inequality is a feature of capitalism, but it's not as simple as a linear relationship between the development of capitalism and inequality.
It really is. I've lost count of how many times I've visited the US and the massive class divide and disparity, plus the general state of despair, hits me every time
For the average person.
If you are rich, there is no better country in the world than the USA.
But if you work for a living you'll be getting ground into powder.
Sadly 50% of the population think they are rich, so they don't even realize how awful they have it. Being afraid of getting sick and going bankrupt is insane in 2025 for a civilized country.
Yet here we are....
- I'd disagree, a stable and well functioning society is better for the rich - but they'd rather have instability and a penny more, than seeing the poor prosper in any fashion.
- And the craziest part is that unless you're homeless in the US, you're in the top 10% wealthiest in the world.
- No man, I mean for the rich too.
  It is depressing to travel around the US and see crumbling infrastructure, poverty, crime etc. and that makes you feel much less safe overall.

Love it. I use the same logic in the US.

Man I hope our politicians have realised this, I feel everyone i know understands how fucked up the USA is but yet our politicians copy everything they do a few years later

The libs are fighting over it right now.
They're electing a new leader on Tuesday.
Taylor is going to double down on Trumpism. There's a faction that somehow believes they lost the election because they didn't do nutty right wing culture wars hard enough.
Ley is going to be more centrist.
- Ley? A WOMAN leading the Liberal Party? There's no way.
- They're probably right. There simply are not enough empathetic, moral and not entirely mentally challenged Americans to win through elections. If you want power in America, you have to lean into Third Reich and show the average American you're just like them (hateful, amoral, hellbound and immature).

That’s true for pretty much everything.

It's funny we finally got here. For the longest time it was the exact opposite. There is hope, maybe we can still turn this ship around (before it falls off the edge).

Finally? Private health rebates have been around quite some time. There's been a two-tiered system for non-emergency hospital healthcare for literal decades now, and we don't have a fully public system anyway. So much of our doctors are subsidised private businesses.
Let's be clear, this whack-a-mole of bulk-billing is never gonna end until we vastly expand directly employed healthcare workers, at competitive rates, and kill the profit motive in our healthcare system.
Death to private health insurance. All of it. It's a scam.
Not saying this is you, but I grow tired of Australians being proud of the state of Medicare. Chiming in to dunk on the Americans is super cringe because the bar is so, so low.

But, we’re good at… ice cream…

Took the world long enough to figure it out.

(OK actually we did do one thing well, we made it really easy for adults to get gender affirming care by adopting the informed consent model)