Yeah look, it turns out you're totally right on that front. Part of my point still stands.
Happiness index 6.58 (rank 23) vs 6.98 (16) in favour of US.
80.26 vs 79.74 life expectancy in favour of Costa Rica.
GDP per person US 79,399 (8) vs Costa Rica 24,923 (65).
I looked at social trust hoping I could bring that in and many measures were even, some in favour of the United States, particularly about trusting people in your neighbourhood (81.4% vs 58.6% answered "some"or "a lot").
So it's relatively even on the measures I mentioned - definitely not "it's not close". It's still fair to say that it's an example of GDP and good outcomes being uncoupled. As shown in the graph linked below, from $3k to $30k GDP per capita, there's a 10+ year variance for countries with the same GDP. Eg. Namibia $9k, 62.6 years and Cape Verde $7k and 75.7 years. There's obviously a relationship, but it's not super strong.
My problem is that I've read something that was possibly about GDP being not a good indicator of how people are going in a country that compared the US and Costa Rica for the purpose of showing that another metric or causal factor was much more important than GDP when considering the outcomes of people. I think the causal factor had something to do with publicly funded blah and I can't remember what blah is.
I'm pretty sceptical that health, happiness, and education are much better in Costa Rica and that it's not close.
Yeah look, it turns out you're totally right on that front. Part of my point still stands.
Happiness index 6.58 (rank 23) vs 6.98 (16) in favour of US.
80.26 vs 79.74 life expectancy in favour of Costa Rica.
GDP per person US 79,399 (8) vs Costa Rica 24,923 (65).
I looked at social trust hoping I could bring that in and many measures were even, some in favour of the United States, particularly about trusting people in your neighbourhood (81.4% vs 58.6% answered "some"or "a lot").
So it's relatively even on the measures I mentioned - definitely not "it's not close". It's still fair to say that it's an example of GDP and good outcomes being uncoupled. As shown in the graph linked below, from $3k to $30k GDP per capita, there's a 10+ year variance for countries with the same GDP. Eg. Namibia $9k, 62.6 years and Cape Verde $7k and 75.7 years. There's obviously a relationship, but it's not super strong.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-gdp-per-capita?country=CRI~USA
Lesson for me: look things up before you comment.
My problem is that I've read something that was possibly about GDP being not a good indicator of how people are going in a country that compared the US and Costa Rica for the purpose of showing that another metric or causal factor was much more important than GDP when considering the outcomes of people. I think the causal factor had something to do with publicly funded blah and I can't remember what blah is.