I'm defining rich in this context as the US, as that was the developed nation we were talking about.
You will note that despite the US being richer than most developed nations, it has poorer benefits like you highlighted [1], compared to those other developed nations. So I fail to see how that is circular, if the richer country has less of those things.
"Richer countries tend to (or should?)"
There is a correlation (tend to), but there are exceptions as you have identified, so to avoid getting bogged down in arguments like this, I added the parenthetical. I then added a question mark because I am aware its attempting to impose ethics on something amoral.
I will attempt to hedge my statements even more in the future.
Well I guess I don't understand what point you're trying to make.
Is it just the following? "High GDP per capita is positively correlated with other metrics of development, so it is an interesting exercise to attempt to understand why this applies more strongly in some societies than in others". If so, I agree with you that it's an interesting historical and sociological question.
I guess what I have a negative reaction to is people living in modern parliamentary democracies like the UK or France, people who are used to a system where elected officials tend to accurately represent their constituent's wills and are able to make those wills reality, scratching their heads failing to understand why the US doesn't "just" pass some reforms to make life better. From my perspective this is like asking why Syrians don't just decide to stop having a war. (I am sure if you polled Syrians, 99.9% of them would say they wish the war weren't happening!)
The US political and institutional system is so extremely deadlocked and broken that there is no person alive -- not even Trump or any Senator or any other powerful person you care to name, who would be able to institute mandatory sick leave for workers, free childcare, or any other plausible solution to the problem stated in this headline, no matter how much they wanted to. So it gets a bit tiring to constantly hear moralizing about these issues from people who don't realize that no path to fixing them exists.
"Is it just the following? "High GDP per capita is positively correlated with other metrics of development, so it is an interesting exercise to attempt to understand why this applies more strongly in some societies than in others". If so, I agree with you that it's an interesting historical and sociological question"
Yes, and I think the parents question of "What's your excuse, USA?" was getting at the same thing, which is why I was confused about why you were questioning it.
You will note that despite the US being richer than most developed nations, it has poorer benefits like you highlighted [1], compared to those other developed nations. So I fail to see how that is circular, if the richer country has less of those things.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2730947/Americans-p...
Edit: To answer your 2 additional paragraphs:
"Richer countries tend to (or should?)" There is a correlation (tend to), but there are exceptions as you have identified, so to avoid getting bogged down in arguments like this, I added the parenthetical. I then added a question mark because I am aware its attempting to impose ethics on something amoral.
I will attempt to hedge my statements even more in the future.