The United States has a lot of cultural influence on other countries, but when you give examples such as "average quality of life" and "gross domestic product" I doubt that the US has done more per capita than any form of nation in history.
Could you give any examples to back your claims (per capita)?
Edit:
Here's an example:
USA Norway
GDP $46,381 $79,085 (best)
GINI 45.0 25.8 (best)
HDI 0.956 0.971 (best)
Unemployment 9.5% 3,2% (best)
Another example is the public dept. While the United States has a huge dept, Norway's net asset position is positive. The government could repay all government debt without raising new loans.
According to OECD, the United States ranks third worst in inequality and poverty of the 30 member states:
Considering that Norway, as many other countries has a more inclusive welfare system, the poor have a better quality of life as well, with free (total) health care and free education.
Norway is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and third largest natural gas exporter, but has a population of 4.8 million. With petrochemical exports accounting for 20% of GDP on top of a western model economy, of course per-capita GDP is going to be high.
A more interesting comparison would be with the other leading first world countries that don't have gigantic petrochemical industries to skew the figures and don't share the same governmental system. UK would be one option (constitutional monarchy); France would be another (republic, but not based on the US model).
(Hint: both the UK and France beat the US into a cocked hat on healthcare; the UK is significantly ahead on unemployment, and France is way ahead on GINI.)
If we are talking about advantages, let's not forget that there are 310 million citizens (56 times more than Denmark) who all share the same continent, language, currency and government. The home market is huge, which certainly gives companies a significant advantage compared to other countries. This is something that can be seen when companies starts competing internationally. Even a medium sized US company (relative to the home market) has a lot of muscle compared to the average Danish company.
My point is that we can't state that the US political system is superior by design. We have to consider other factors such as the large home market and the political influence that comes with a larger economy and military.
First, you're right to assert that the US system of government is not the be-all, end-all of good governmental systems and it certainly has its share of problems. I'm not really arguing that.
However, going down the path of ad hoc comparisons with other countries never ends and and certainly never ends well. The logic of "government causes everything good or bad about a nation's economy" is implicitly assumed and severely flawed.
Also, where are you getting your numbers? According to the CIA factbook Denmark's GDP is actually in the $36,000 range, which is less than Connecticut and Massachusetts, which are similar in population and culturally more diverse.
Sorry about that. I copied the number from Wikipedia, but picked the nominal GDP by mistake.
I agree that comparing political systems based on numbers directly is a bad idea. It was just a reaction to the many posts I see where the citizen of one country automatically assume that their system is the best as it was a fact.
I might have been wrong when I said "gross domestic product per capita". I meant to compare the US to similar sized nations, like the Roman or Mongul Empires. It wouldn't be possible to get figures to back this up, it's just an estimate on my part.
In terms of debt and poverty, I would say that the US has the financial burden of having the most powerful military in the world. In many ways that also speaks to quality of life. While we may have higher levels of poverty and crime when compared to scandinavian nations, our citizens don't have to live at the whims of foreign military powers. National security is something that doesn't factor into many quality of life charts. I still stand corrected, but it's something to consider.
Could you give any examples to back your claims (per capita)?
Edit: Here's an example:
Another example is the public dept. While the United States has a huge dept, Norway's net asset position is positive. The government could repay all government debt without raising new loans.According to OECD, the United States ranks third worst in inequality and poverty of the 30 member states:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/oecd-o22.shtml
Considering that Norway, as many other countries has a more inclusive welfare system, the poor have a better quality of life as well, with free (total) health care and free education.