I know it’s sort of a hijack, but I’m really wondering what you’re basing this claim on. How do you know the U.S. prison system is the worst or most “evil”? By what standard? (I’m also sort of hoping Qadgop pops in and gives his perspective.)
More to the point, by “bottom 0.7%” (or whatever %), what do you mean? On what scale? Income level? Standard of living (measured how?)? How generally happy or miserable a person is? If it’s the latter, I think that many of the factors that go to make that up are going to be independent of what country you’re living in.
I generally think Germany is a better country than the US. I’ve spent a lot of time there, but never “as a German,” living and working by German rules. So I freely admit my view could be wildly romanticized.
Still, from a close but still “outside” perspective, it’s the better country in most ways, and IMHO more conducive to health and happiness and productivity than most parts of the United States. It’s also on average more beautiful (though lacking the wild physical diversity of the US) and is better maintained. German culture and values strike me on balance as being stronger than the US.
So never mind the percentiles. If you’re filthy rich in either country you’re going to have a pretty sweet life, but if you’re filthy rich in Germany you have the added bonus of living in a country/culture that is a little “better.”
(And no, I’m not trashing the US: Germany may on balance be the better country of the two, but the US is better than the majority of countries, and there are probably countries even better than Germany. In the grand scheme of things, both countries are pretty high up there.)
Income’s the only way I could make this make sense. And I’m assuming that he assumes prison is bad because you have to work for really cheap wages. Lots of people I know talk about the prison system in America just being a round about method of slavery. Hence the large number of drug-based offenses.
As stated, I can define the criteria however I want, so this is how I handled it:
How many letters in each country’s name matches these letters: “G”, “U”,“S”,“A”, “Q”
After the first letter Germany took the lead
By the 3rd letter the US was ahead and although Germany scored again on the 4th letter it wasn’t enough to make up the difference.
Man, the OP isn’t that eloquent… but it is pretty clear what he is saying. Really a lot of people here that seem to dislike Simple Lictus.
I don’t have an answer (mostly because I’m too lazy to look up numbers), but it should have to do with living standards. I would almost say: at which US pecentile do people stop worrying about health insurance (something I can’t even imagine, but according to what I learned here it’s a pretty serious issue in the US).
Stuff like ‘I like guns’; ‘I like Nazi uniforms’; ‘I like prostitutes’; ‘I like to be able to have a beer as an 18 year old’, etc. isn’t very helpful. On those kinds of issues, it’s Germany all the way for me btw;).
People here like to play dumb and snark when anyone could understand what was being said, but they are just looking for a chance to snark so of course they won’t.