[IdiocyInAction]

The UK leads in Europe for start up founding…

Almost nobody in the UK works for the same company for 50 years and this used to be a thing in the US too.

Canada has similar laws/issues.

Social mobility is also higher in the UK than the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index

Now I don’t trust these indices tbh, but I trust them more than a nice sounding anecdote.

There is a class divide in the UK but it's more complex/nuanced than what is described in this comment.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

That's why Canada also is one of the worst countries in G8 and maybe the most mediocre countries when it comes to actual startup investment and building something new for the world and growing the share of the pie. On top of that, they have a horrible system where nobody can get a doctor. Everybody has to pay double to get a block of butter and housing is so high that you get a whole neighborhood in the US for that price.

That is why the countries like uk canada and also Europe are incredibly poor.

Class system and anti-innovation.

[NetOpWibby]

American here.

I was under the impression that Canadian healthcare was incredible. At least, that's what I've been told for years by randos online.

[monsieurgaufre]

If you have a serious health problem, you will generally be seen "immediatly" and free of charge.

For the rest, mindset plays a role in the perceived doom in Canada. Conservative talking points only ever focus on the gloom.

Source: am canadian.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

Trust me I spent a huge portion of my life there. The reason why I speak so much against Canada these days is because the country is delusional. Nobody wants to take any risks and yet they think things will always fall into place for them.

[IdiocyInAction]

If you do a global comparison the US is incredibly richer rather than these countries being incredibly poor.

[tim333]

>why the countries like uk canada and also Europe are incredibly poor

They are not that poor if you adjust for cost of living and hours worked. If you look at the Wikipedia thing "GDP per working hour (2019 US$ PPP)" some results are:

Denmark 76

USA 74

Canada 57

Spain 56

UK 54

So the pay isn't that much worse per hour. People probably work a little less over here, maybe because we don't have the whole if you don't work you won't get health cover and will be doomed thing.

Also life expectancy is 76 years in the US vs 84 years in Spain. There's more to life than working all hours then croaking.

[throwaway22032]

A company, not the same company.

I don't think that social mobility can be measured statistically, because it depends on people actually trying. I actually think that the UK does have fairly high social mobility _but_ the vast majority of people get stuck in local maxima, and the laws are influenced by that (e.g. stuff like obsession with the mediocre outcome).

Having said that, the index you've pasted is complete bollocks. I don't know what they are measuring but it has nothing to do with what I would consider social mobility (e.g. ability to move into a different social class or perhaps earn a significantly different amount to your parents). The factors they use seem super focused on socialist policies which I don't think have anything to do with mobility.

[IdiocyInAction]

Self employment is 3 times higher in the UK than in the US actually: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SL.EMP.SELF.ZS/r...

[jltsiren]

Interesting that you consider it socialist, because the World Economic Forum has often been considered as the embodiment of neoliberalism. Around 2000, when there were huge anti-globalization protests by left / green / anarchist activists around the world, WEF was one of the primary targets.

[throwaway22032]

My use of the term "socialist" was lazy.

I think that the main issue is that it tries to come up with a metric that works across every country which is basically pointless because a lot of them are failed states where income information isn't reliable or meaningful.

So they come up with stuff like "how high is teenage pregnancy" and "what is the male female work balance" which they define as being proxies for social mobility I assume because if you have five kids at age 20 and you're forced to stay at home then you have none.

The problem is that it just introduces a billion ways to influence the actual rankings, they are value judgements.

If you look at well functioning countries only, then you can pretty much look at how many people in the bottom decile of parental household income end up in the top decile of household income.

You still have the issue though that this only tells you how the distribution actually ends up, not how it _could_ look in a specific country if everyone actually tried their hardest to climb the social/financial ladder.