Taxes?

[merolpn]

FYI, the HDI you referenced, if you look at inequality adjusted (which is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about) America ranks lower than most any developed nation.

Ok, I did look at that and I guess you could draw some conclusions from it.

The U.S. ranks 4th in the HDI but 53rd in on the inequalities HDI (IHDI) Total population 315 Million.
Norway which is 1st in HDI is 3rd in IHDI Total population 5 Million
Australia is 2nd in HDI and 19th in IHDI 22Million
Canada is 6th in HDI and 22nd in IHDI 34 million = almost to California
The UK is 28th in HDI and 21st in IHDI 63 Million

Now the U.S. ranks 53rd IHDI (in comparison to other countries that rank much lower in HDI) such as the only two countries with higher populations China and India.

So lets look at these two countries and the 2 with the next closest population to the U.S. China is 101 in HDI and 70 in IHDI (1.3 Billion) India is 134 in HDI and 90 in IHDI (1.2 Billion population)
Indonesia with a population of 237 Million is 124th in HDI and 60th in IHDI, Brazil with its population of 193 million ranks 84th and 89th.

The next 2 countries in population, Brazil and Indonesia are much worse than the U.S. on both scales with less people. China and India are also much worse with more people. Canada, China and the U.S. are all approximately the same geographical size. The US is better than than Canada on the HDI but 21 places lower on the equality of that. It looks like China can't take care of their population even though its roughly on the same amount of land as the U.S.

Connecticut is a very small state and has less people than Norway (which ranks first in the world for HDI) but CT has a better HDI score than Norway probably because it is smaller and has less people. In fact 15 U.S. states rank better than Norway(couldn't find IHDI for states). I also would have to conclude that based off of their population and the HDI score, California does a better job than Canada and Norway.

It seems to me that if you want a better HDI rank than the U.S. with more equality, you need to live in a much smaller country with a lot less people (or live in a different region of the U.S) There is simply no way that the U.S. will rank #4 in HDI and make 315 Million people equal. No other country has done it either.