+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Science (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-61.html)
+--- Forum: Ergonomics, Statistics & Logistics (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-78.html)
+--- Thread: WC visitors: How bad have US coastal elites depicted their own country to the world? (/thread-20684.html)
WC visitors: How bad have US coastal elites depicted their own country to the world? - C C - Jun 20, 2026
Note that this guy is often lauding Mississippi, which is frequently evaluated as at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to US states (whether rightly or wrongly). If Mississippi is that great in terms of taxes, standard of living, hospitals, technology growth, civility, etc compared to some other regions of the FIFA world, then...
- - - - - - - - - - -
WORLD CUP FEVER
https://youtu.be/WPGIt62nSV8
VIDEO EXCERPTS: You are a Brit in Mississippi. I wanted to get your reaction to some of the Europeans who have come to America and are astonished by how incredible it is, how incredible the infrastructure is, the stadiums, the food, and everything else.
I absolutely love it because they're experiencing what I experienced when I moved here 5 years ago. They're feeling what I feel every morning when I wake up and think, "Thank goodness I'm in America." There's something really magical about the United States.
Don't think of America as New York or Donald Trump or Washington DC or the Golden Gate Bridge. That's the America Brits often think of, but it's not the real America. And what these football tourists here for the World Cup seem to be discovering is the real America. That is to say, often small-town America, often provincial America, but not actually at all backward.
They have ordinary college towns with stadiums larger than Wembley. They have huge wealth. You have, you know, blue-collar plumbers in Mississippi who own second homes and motorboats and yachts. I mean, this is the America that they're discovering. Not just the America of the movies [of Hollywood], but the real America. And it's a joy. It's a joy to watch them discover what I've discovered.
Do you think in Europe there is a misconception about America when it comes to say crime or health care and I guess other things? There's all these kind of stereotypes that Americans are kind of overweight, ignorant, shooting each other. If you go to America, you know, your chances of being shot are quite high.
Absolutely. I find this particularly with health care. It's often told to me by Brits that Americans have bad health care. And my experience is actually on the contrary, Americans have very, very good healthcare. They just pay for it differently.
In Britain, you are forced to pay higher taxes. The state takes the money from your paycheck and spends it for you, spends it very badly for you, because you have no control over it. In America, you have much, much lower taxes. And in return for that, you're expected to exercise some responsibility and and take a large chunk of money that you would otherwise pay for taxes in Britain to provide for your own family's private health insurance. And most Americans do that.
And that's why they have better cancer survival rates. It's why when I needed treatment in a local hospital after an accident, and I asked about the ward, they didn't know what I meant because every single patient in that hospital automatically gets their own private room. So America gets far better health care outcomes than Britain.
Now it's true there are some Americans who can't afford that private insurance. So they therefore have the equivalent of the NHS. So when Brits complain about poor Americans struggling on Medicaid, what they're really doing is complaining about people in America having to do what every Brit has to do, and rely on a system of socialized healthcare. So, you know, it would be the equivalent of everyone in Britain being on Medicaid. That's what the NHS is in the UK.
So, I think when Europeans come here, they have some of these preconceptions challenged. [...] There's a view put around by some on the other side of the Atlantic that Americans are somehow brash and ignorant. And actually, when people come here and discover they are incredibly well educated, incredibly well-informed, incredibly hospitable, incredibly friendly, incredibly warm and good-natured. I think it comes as quite a shock.
We're often told in Europe and Britain that in return for greater material prosperity, we have to somehow sacrifice civility. America, particularly the southern states in America, have shown that actually no, those old-fashioned values are essential for prosperity and social progress and social cohesion. And the two go together. You can be fabulously wealthy like the US South is becoming and retain some of those old-school values of politeness and civility.
So, it's wonderful to see and I hope that many more people in Britain and Europe come over and experience what I've experienced since I moved here over the past 5 years. You know, I've tried to encourage everyone I know to come and visit. It's lovely to see people seeing what I know to be true about America.
Can you give us a sense of the economic gap between Europe and America? Because one of the biggest shocks I think we've seen online is Europeans saying it's incredible the quality of these stadiums and how large they are and how technologically advanced they are and how beautiful they are.
I put a lot of effort as a think tanker into producing data that shows how much better states like Mississippi are doing than Europe and Britain. And I've got a website called Mississippi Winds.com where you can go in and you can see that, for example, you know, Mississippi has grown three times faster than Britain over the past few years. Mississippi has far more investment in AI and data centers than any European country. It's possible to look at the standard of living and look at the metrics, and it's quite shocking that Mississippi's per capita GDP is now greater than that of Britain. In fact, this year Mississippi's per capita GDP is likely to overtake that of Germany.
But it's not simply statistics that capture this. It's, as you say, going and seeing a run-of-the-mill SEC college somewhere in the South in a small southern city that few people have heard of. And it will have a football stadium bigger than Wembley. And that is a real shock.
I came to Mississippi, started to befriend people here in Mississippi, and I was shocked to discover that there would be people who had respectful blue-collar professions like plumbing, garden design, etc... Who had a higher standard of living measured by cars and trucks and second houses and beach houses and vacations and boats. A higher standard of living than hedge fund managers I knew back in Britain. It's quite staggering.
A generation ago, I remember hearing people from the former Soviet Union marveling at what it was like to stand in a supermarket in the West. I sometimes now think that some of the Europeans visiting America must feel a little bit like that when they see what is possible and it dawns on them what years of social democratic economic policy has reduced their countries to. They could be like this. They really could.
And I think one of the really compelling things about following this chap Freddy online, is he's obviously just a regular guy by the sounds of it...
[...] When it comes to the World Cup and America, how do you think the United States has handled hosting the World Cup?
[...] I think it's been absolutely phenomenal. I mean, just look at the raw data. Look at the average attendance of matches. People said, you know, holding the World Cup in America ... soccer football is not really their number one sport.
Well, look at the number of people attending the matches. More people have attended the matches so far in this World Cup than I think pretty much any previous World Cup has. Huge attendance, huge enthusiasm....
https://youtu.be/WPGIt62nSV8
RE: WC visitors: How bad have US coastal elites depicted their own country to the world? - Syne - Jun 21, 2026
(Yesterday 11:46 PM)C C Wrote: Now it's true there are some Americans who can't afford that private insurance. So they therefore have the equivalent of the NHS. So when Brits complain about poor Americans struggling on Medicaid, what they're really doing is complaining about people in America having to do what every Brit has to do, and rely on a system of socialized healthcare. So, you know, it would be the equivalent of everyone in Britain being on Medicaid. That's what the NHS is in the UK.
...
A generation ago, I remember hearing people from the former Soviet Union marveling at what it was like to stand in a supermarket in the West. I sometimes now think that some of the Europeans visiting America must feel a little bit like that when they see what is possible, and it dawns on them what years of social democratic economic policy has reduced their countries to. They could be like this. They really could.
I wonder if any Brits/Europeans will take this Brit seriously and try to reexamine all their ignorance of the US.
RE: WC visitors: How bad have US coastal elites depicted their own country to the world? - confused2 - Jun 21, 2026
I don't understand the claim that the US has (effectively) an NHS for poor folks yet is ranked by (?) as the poorest health provider of 38 advanced nations .. what is true?
AI says Mississippi is a poor state .. yet the visitor is seeing greater wealth than (say) the UK. But (obviously) they aren't seeing the poverty
AI Wrote:The contrast between national and global standing is primarily due to the unique gap between high overall economic production in the U.S. and unequal internal distribution. While Mississippi generates significant economic activity overall, that wealth is not evenly dispersed among the general population.
RE: WC visitors: How bad have US coastal elites depicted their own country to the world? - Syne - Jun 21, 2026
The poorest US state is still more prosperous than most Brits. "Poor" is relative to other US states.
The U.S. health system excels at specialized, high-tech intervention for individuals who already have a disease, but it underperforms in preventative care, social safety nets, and public health for the general population.
- gemini