Africa is tricky due to historical reasons, though. Any western power that would intervene there without the explicit invitation of the local government would be accused of neo-colonialism etc.

Did they? It was occasionally in the news but that's about it.

They had 3 referendums since 2018. So it seems nobody is stopping them from leaving if they wanted to...

At a certain point there ceases to be a middle path between violent resistance and complete surrender.

> Protesters which foreign states (China or Russia)

This type of relativism is dishonest. Of course US is speed running the path to authoritarianism but its not quite there. e.g. morally it would be perfectly acceptable to support weapons to protestors in Russia and not the other way around.

The Iranian regime is objectively evil, period. Regardless of what honest or dishonest motives foreign actors might or might not have.

As opposed to standing idly by when the regime 'stabilizes' the country by murdering thousands of people? It's well past the stage where non violent protest or resistance stopped being a viable option..

Yes but tech companies and startups are still highly concentrated in a handful of locations.

So literally Musk and his pals?

> society’s well-being should stop meddling.

So again, Musk et al.? I'm really confused... what are you trying to say. That only some people are allowed to meddle while everyone else should shut up and mind their own business? How do you determine that? Wealth? Political opinions? Class? Race?

Elected by 23.41%? What about the remaining 76.50%? Also 30% didn't even vote.

Also what about the president of Poland and other victims of the nazis? Did they "exonerate" him?

Of course to be fair its hard to blame a drug addict who seemingly lacks self control for his erratic public behavior.

> seems performative

If those people stop buying Tesla's cars and that hurts its share price its not performative anymore.

So if a Trump made a Twitter post "exonerating" someone who said something awful about America that would be the same? Because he represents 100% of the country.

Almost half of the countries hates Netanyahu and he's only in charge because of the support from far-right.

Regardless of this you think that a certain limited subsection of Israeli population who share Netanyahu and not the millions of Israeli's who don't let alone all the people who are Jewish are not allowed to have an opinion about his actions? Rather a silly thing to say.

You could all then march around the office or even out on the street with your hands raised. Surely nobody but snowflakes could be offended by that.

So? Does that means nobody else is allowed to have an opinion about the salute that he made. Sure he's pro Israel, that's not uncommon at all amongst the far right these days.

> who might have been offended by his gesture

What about the people who seem to be highly offended by people who have been offended by his gesture. What do you call them?

Utah on the other hand (surprisingly or not) has the highest first quintile mean (yeah.. slightly apples and oranges but gives an advantage to Utah) in the US, yet it's still only around 25% of the state median.

So if compare Utah to the national average and use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c... to compare it with Sweden

it's 62.30 * 1.28 (Utah vs US median in 2022) * 0.25 = $19.936

Sweden:

43.9 * 0.49 = $21.51, so a 1st decile Swede has higher PPP + social transfers adjusted income that the first quintile mean in Utah.

If course it's rather convoluted since I'm too lazy to find directly comparable data. Disregards (uses US PPP + social transfers instead of just Utah's etc.).

However I think it's broadly accurate(ish), considering that Utah has higher than average median income and the highest first quintile income all other states would do even worse.

Of course Eastern European states are poorer but Sweden is closer to the EU average than Utah is to the US average (and Sweden's GINI is around average in Europe while Utah's is the lowest in the US).

Of course, money obviously isn't everything (not /s). And income inequality is much higher in WV than in Sweden. It's actually higher than in any European country. Which makes comparisons like this rather tricky (it's not even rich vs poor but median vs poor which is the problem in the US when you compare it to Europe).

The most equal US state (Utah) is still more unequal than the EU country which has the highest income inequality ( Bulgaria).

Interestingly enough before taxes France, Finland, Italy, UK etc. have comparable income inequality to the US.

West Virginia isn't the poorest state though (e.g. it's about on par with New Mexico). Mississippi and Louisiana are.

You can compare the disposable incomes in Europe and the US. I mean a median American can afford a whole lot more of those things than a median European.

Same applies to economic growth and higher disposable incomes I presume?

> and that an economy should follow the people, not people following the economy.

It's not exactly working though is. Or are you saying that Europeans are somehow "stagnant" therefore the economy should also be stagnant? Which doesn't sound that reasonable or a nice thing to say...

Apple's and oranges? MS doesn't have a phone OS anymore...

AFAIK in Europe most food safety regulation is coming from the EU directly and not the national governments. Also it's not like all countries in Europe have public tax funded healthcare systems.

Fundamentally some are inherently not that different from the one in the US (i.e. semi-private or even entirely privatized) it's just that they much better regulated and much more efficient.

Even if we exclude private spending the US government already spends more per capita on healthcare than most other countries so why would anything change if e.g. Medicare was extended to a higher proportion of the population?