From a very long article on healthcare, "High US health care spending is quite well explained by its high material standard of living", I got an idea that neatly explains my experience in the USA and the perception of various groups from outside in (I'm from Moscow, that some people jokingly claim is a separate country from the rest of Russia).
It's still not a well-formed idea, just a gist of it.
US to me looks like a first world country with a 3rd world country attached to it; with the bleed of culture both ways (making urban-rural divide worse, sort of), and obviously economic effects both ways. It's sort of like if Russia joined the EU as far as people and economics are concerned - it'd still be a hellhole outside few major cities, but overall richer and with lots of angry anti-EU people. The US is like that, and the states are much more integrated than the EU is.
The strongest case for this can probably be built by analyzing human capital as well as metrics such as healthcare (like the original article did), crime, etc by county.
The weaker case for me personally is that the "feel" (and the norms if online sources are any indication) of rural/small-town places in the US vs urban/rich places in the US, is much more like small-town Russia vs Moscow (except more pissed instead of resigned to their fate), or other semi 3rd world countries, than the same in Europe.
I don't actually think that Civil War was a war between those countries, but its interpretation these days by many people seems to cast it as such... and the present-day GOP leadership looks to me basically like United Russia in Russia - it's a party of power, plain and simple, that aspires to unleash the freedom to shear the great unwashed.. a typical 3rd world party of which there are few or no European equivalents. The Dems (and centrist GOP, I guess) are such a bizarre party these days because they, in turn, have to represent almost the entire spectrum of the first-world parties - from Bill Clinton liberal and Christian centrists, to Greens and Socialists.
US to me looks like a first world country with a 3rd world country attached to it; with the bleed of culture both ways (making urban-rural divide worse, sort of), and obviously economic effects both ways. It's sort of like if Russia joined the EU as far as people and economics are concerned - it'd still be a hellhole outside few major cities, but overall richer and with lots of angry anti-EU people. The US is like that, and the states are much more integrated than the EU is.
The strongest case for this can probably be built by analyzing human capital as well as metrics such as healthcare (like the original article did), crime, etc by county. The weaker case for me personally is that the "feel" (and the norms if online sources are any indication) of rural/small-town places in the US vs urban/rich places in the US, is much more like small-town Russia vs Moscow (except more pissed instead of resigned to their fate), or other semi 3rd world countries, than the same in Europe.
I don't actually think that Civil War was a war between those countries, but its interpretation these days by many people seems to cast it as such... and the present-day GOP leadership looks to me basically like United Russia in Russia - it's a party of power, plain and simple, that aspires to unleash the freedom to shear the great unwashed.. a typical 3rd world party of which there are few or no European equivalents. The Dems (and centrist GOP, I guess) are such a bizarre party these days because they, in turn, have to represent almost the entire spectrum of the first-world parties - from Bill Clinton liberal and Christian centrists, to Greens and Socialists.