median household income is not higher in missisippi vs germany, especially not true if you adjust for the value of healthcare, education, and social benefits including time off work.
Broadly speaking, the median Mississippian is about as rich as the median German, with the tradeoff being that the Mississippian has greater access to private goods (e.g. a fishing boat or a big car), whereas the German has greater access to public goods (e.g. socialized insurance or college).
My point is that even "the poor" in America are really quite well off, and not just in historical terms.
Because most big-city coastal Americans think of the median Mississippian as that way.
> If you neglect everything it takes to live a good life [...]
We're speaking past each other somewhat. You seem to have a belief system that says a good life is not possible without the stuff that Germany provides via taxation and redistribution. Whether that stuff is a necessary or sufficient condition for a good life for you, I'm not sure; but it is clear you place a lot of importance on it.
I'm saying that in America, more of those things are left to choice to the people, and that a good life, even a great life, is available to the average Joe (hence my banging on about the median) in one of the poorest states in the union, to a degree that is not matched anywhere else.
Put another way: you've defined a good life in large part as access to taxpayer-subsidized goods and services, or at any rate the lifestyle outcomes enabled by such access. By that metric, you're right, Mississippi comes behind Germany, and America as a whole likely behind Germany. But if you look at people voting with their feet over the past few decades, more Germans settled in America than the other way around in absolute numbers; which is even more striking if you consider the difference in population. Clearly there exist people who value the stuff that America has to offer that Germany doesn't.
Objectively wrong, because Germany does better in the things that subjectively matter to you?
> Germany's average life expectancy is ahead of Mississippi by 10 years.
Comparing like for like, that gap drops down to 5-6 years and puts Mississippi on par with, say, Thailand or Latvia. Hardly grounds for condemnation.
> Germany ranks as one of the highest in the world in general satisfaction of the people, Mississippi does not.
Those rankings are all stupid, but in most of the ones I've seen, Germany ranks a scant few spots higher than the US. Sure, if Mississippi were a country, the distance would be greater, but how meaningful is it? I just saw one that ranks Saudi Arabia and El Salvador ahead of Spain and Italy[0].
And in any case, why do people keep leaving those satisfactory countries for America?
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2026/...
America used to be a great place to be. To put it in perspective, I myself am an American in the top 5% of earning households. I am strongly considering leaving. The value is no longer here. I don't want to live in a country where my healthcare is conditional, on principal. I don't want to live in a country where the Epstein class is protected.
Different groups of people have different ideas of what "general satisfaction" is. Hence, such cross-group studies are pretty suspect.
This is no good because different companies use different criteria for infant mortality. For example, the US leads the world in trying to save premies, and does well at it. But the failures are counted as infant mortality. Other countries categorize premie death as a miscarriage.
Some societies do not count a baby as an infant until it has survived its first year.
> life expectancy difference
Criminality, drugs, tobacco, alcohol and obesity strongly affect life expectancy. It's an error to blame it all on the health care system.