Purchasing power is up, actually.

Life expectancies are not a conventional measure of "the economy" but also (IMO) likely to improve in the medium term with widespread use of GLP-1 drugs.

As far as young people -- I'm not sure. There is certainly a Taylor Lorenz adjacent crowd of "doomers" but I don't think they're representative of the median young adult.

Everything you've listed is apparent in other countries and even more so. Even today, anybody ambitious would kill for the kind of opportunities Americans have.

Let's not forget:

- US Military patrolling the world's shipping lanes-- with US Citizens & Companies tax dollars directly subsidizing the price of oil & international goods for a significant portion of the world (the prices would be higher without some outside country prividing protection)

- US Military bases-- 750 in 80 countries-- with US Citizens & Companies tax dollars directly subsidizing the security of a significant portion of the world

As an American, I really wish we left the world to their own devices, and paid for their own security and shipping lane protection. The world takes the US for granted. I think we should let them squabble for a few years, then beg us to come back-- when we have them leaning over a barrel, then we charge high fees :P

Then take note of GDP-per-capita growth. The whole of the developed world had to deal with inflation and financial repercussions of covid. What's exceptional is the US recovery and the fact is economic conditions in the US has improved at a more rapid pace.

> young people's expectations of the future are down

Relative to?

> birth rates are down

Absent GDP, this matters because...? The country is growing as a matter of policy through immigration.

> Purchasing power is down

Wages are recovering

Actually in the US, real wages increased in the last several years (adjusted for inflation) so actually purchasing power is up on average. The data is always changing, good to keep up to date!

Right. Our food lines are merely shorter than those in other countries. Sigh.

I lived in Ontario for ~18 years. While national healthcare is fantastic (and the US should totally have it), Canadians are getting squeezed, and have been for the last 5-6 years.

> but something tells me if you do you'll find our Canadian [...] friends are doing drastically better than those in Jackson, MS.

Perhaps true, but also keep in mind that Canada and the US were on more equal standing until the last five years or so, when we started to see a significant divergence. You can ride on the past for a while. Assuming the trend continues, it may simply be that it is too early to see Canada turn into Mississippi.

>Britain, Canada and Germany don't have to pay for health care and education

That is not true: British taxpayers have to pay for the health care and education of Brits.

The point is that when you add the money the government spends on you plus the money you spend on yourself, America has significantly more money per-person to go around.

What you should have written is that although America spends more money on health care per person than Britain does, Americans have worse health, so the money is spent less efficiently than in Britain.

(It is also true that America spends more on "criminal justice", e.g., prisons, but has more crime, so the criminal-justice money must be being spent less efficiently.)

Median income can also be misleading. If the government is taking on lots of debts to pay for things like health care or education, that's not necessarily sustainable economics.

GDP Per Capita is overall the best metric when thinking on a long-term economic scale.

As to how the people in Jackson, MS are doing - a lot of this comes down to what communities are doing with that wealth. There are lots of young professionals having decent lives, even in Mississippi - but a lot of that wealth disappears into cars and big private properties and other unequally distributed things.

> but something tells me if you do you'll find our Canadian and European friends are doing drastically better than those in Jackson, MS.

This will show a lot of selection bias. Any Europeans with American friends who are in the forum are unlikely to be representative of the median German/Brit.

I have a cousin who is a mid-level manager in a steel plant in southern Illinois near near Missouri and he lives like a petty king. I've known FedEx drivers with lake houses in low cost of living areas. Middle income people in low cost of living states often live quite well in the US.

Europeans and Canadians might be healthier and better educated, but its very unlikely they'll earn more than an American electrician.

You'd think The Economist would know better than to use the average there. Stats 101. Geez.

The ability of people to actually receive free medical services has certainly been in a downward trend over the last decade or so.

Those other countries' wealth is often mostly composed of the kind of thing that is easy to enjoy as a tourist and hard to enjoy as a resident.

E.g. beautiful real estate that is owned by the same family that owned it hundreds of years ago. An American tourist can rent space there and enjoy but a resident can never hope to earn enough to buy a piece of that.

or amazing public transit, which to a resident is just a commute to work but an American tourist sees the novelty in

> when one spends time in those other rich countries

Visitors usually get a warped view of the places they visit. You can't judge the UK by London, for example.

The Economist is a british magazine. It's not triumphalism if they claim that the US is doing better then the rest of the world.

Sometimes I like to think of GDP as a measure of economic (productive) power more than well-being. But other indicators are more important for the long-term, such as those on demographics, education, debt levels, etc. You probably don't want to sacrifice those for a transient boost in GDP.

GDP-per-capita is a thing

This feels not even wrong.

The American economy is generating massive amounts of goods and services. This is a relatively hard fact.

The effect of the dollar being a worldwide currency is complex and not so straightforward. Strong demand for dollars actually would increase dollar value, which would increase borrowing costs, ceteris paribus. The US then increases money supply, to accommodate. It’s unclear that this dramatically increases GDP.

Unless your assertion is that the financial industry is overdeveloped? I don’t think it’s more than 10% of GDP off the top of my head.

I don't buy the assumption that others are "subsidizing" the USD when they choose to use it -- they're choosing to use USD for their own benefit.

The US Dollar is an export.

It'll be hard for our economy if we stop exporting it, but that's true of any export.

What makes that dubious? It makes this advantage rest on a single factor, but the advantage is still there, no?

It's not just that. Compare the GDP per capita of individual US States to other countries. Even the poorest performing US State is still doing better than most of Europe.

This is a terrible, terrible understanding of how international trade works. It's also not even relevant when comparing GDPR per capita.

Yes, the US really leaves the bottom third behind

If you look at incomes for graduates in the US vs the UK, it's far higher. [0]

For non-graduates it's the same, and the social safety net in the UK is far better.

This ties into median wage in the UK being barely above minimum wage.

What this tells me is "don't bother educating yourself, just leave school asap and get a crap job stacking shelves"

The UK just isn't an attractive place for graduates to work in, and the few that are there (mainly in London and the south east [1]) massively subsidise the wealthy retired and the minimum wage jobs.

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/570d23b3-d286-4cb9-a319-b49cc4056...

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/e5c741a7-befa-4d49-a819-f1b0510a9...

But we’re talking about economic output, not a qualitative assessment.

America has lower transaction costs, a better regulatory environment (e.g the EU with AI), better access to lending and investment, and a more robust consumer market. The US is clearly doing some things better.

Exactly. If the US economy is 10x larger but 90% of the economy is benefiting only the richest 0.1%, what's the point? Too many mainstream media pieces focus on overall GDP when they should be focused on averages.

The end of the article handwaves away this criticism.

> Many critics of America’s economic model contend that it is intrinsically flawed, beset by extreme inequality and ever-more dominant companies crushing competitors. But these are exaggerations. There may be scope for a fairer distribution of the country’s wealth without undermining America’s growth, but the widely held belief that the top 1% are taking it all is overdone.

Handwaving.

> As for tech behemoths such as Apple and Amazon, their potential for dominance must be watched and, if necessary, curtailed, but it is also true that they have generated incredible value in daily life and shaken up stodgy industries. And they face fierce competition to stay on top.

Where's the fierce competition? Apple and Google have a phone duopoly.

Measuring the economy is not measuring quality of life or health of the population.

Money doesn't make you happy, although it helps. This is common knowledge.

"[...] specifically monitoring performance in six particular categories: gross domestic product per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make your own life choices, generosity of the general population, and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels."

US ranks pretty high in GDP-per-capita. Given the remaining factors, I imagine the obesity rate and intensified political polarization is skewing the result. The perceptions might be informed in large part by rate of consumption of news media content on social media (other developed countries have this problem, but lesser polarization may mute the impact).

Among good news is that the obesity rate has stalled in recent years, iirc.