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Farsala on 14 July 2018
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Ka-pi96 said:
Jon-Erich said:

In the US, the average American pays roughly 14% in taxes, though the bracket can range anywhere from 10% to almost 40%. A lot of it depends of what state you're living in. The poor are not taxed a lot simply they do not make enough to be taxed. 

As for entertainment and tech, population has little to do with it. In entertainment for example, look at how many actors and comedians are from Canada. There are a lot of them. Why can't they make it in Canada? They have to come to the US. In fact, there are a lot of foreign entertainers who either work or live in the US. They're not going to Europe or Canada. There's very little there. It's the same thing in the tech field. A lot of the startups happen in the United States, but a lot of the talent comes from places like India. They're not coming to Europe or Canada. They're coming to the US. Even if you wanted to take population figures into account, lets look at Japan. The US has roughly 2 1/2 times the population that the Japanese have and yet the Japanese have their own success in tech and entertainment, much greater than Europe and Canada. At one time, they had the second largest economy in the world. I think they're #3 now.

When looking at the success rate for blacks in the US, if we wanted to go strictly by population, then arguably, there should be fewer successful blacks. In reality, they're over represented in sports. They pretty own an entire music genre that was invented by them in the US. We even had a black president. Also, if you want tp go back further into history, the first female millionaire in American history was a black woman who had been a slave just a few decades before becoming rich. In fact, there are quite a few success stories of ex-slaves who couldn't read or write but ended up owning successful businesses.

With all this being taken into account, there is something about the United States wether it is within the culture of the people or the freedom they enjoy that allows success to occur, especially from unlikely people in unlikely places. Out of the developed nations in the world, it is Japan and the United States that exports most of the culture and tech. Most of this tech and culture came from people were not rich before they found success.

"population has little to do with it"? For entertainment it's probably the single largest factor there is. The world's largest film industry in terms of movies made and tickets sold is India, the world 2nd most populous country, and it really isn't far off being #1 in population either. China is right up there too, higher on revenue than India as well due to being a wealthier country. The largest film industry in Africa is Nigeria, Africa's most populous country. So the US being the most populous of all developed countries having a large and wealthy film industry shouldn't be a surprise to anybody, and that large population is a huge part of the reason why.

The main market for entertainment products will always be the domestic market, so when you have the largest domestic market in any developed country (and therefore the wealthiest overall as well) there's going to be a lot more money earned and a lot more money available to spend. That's why entertainers go to the US. They absolutely can make it in their own countries, any suggestion otherwise is just complete bullshit, but a bigger market means more money. If you're able to make more money because there are more people to buy whatever you're selling in a more populated country, then why wouldn't you try and sell your entertainment to them?

Oh and Europe is definitely more successful in terms of entertainment than Japan. Is there a single Japanese movie/book as popular as Harry Potter or James Bond? Is there a single Japanese band as popular as The Beatles or Led Zeppelin? Is there a single Japanese video game as popular as Grand Theft Auto, Minecraft or Tetris? Are there any Japanese sporting events as popular as the UEFA Champions League, Bundesliga etc?

As for tech, there's no shortage of huge European tech companies either. Spotify, Kaspersky, King Digital (Candy Crush) and many more. Plus if we're including all tech (ie. vehicles and the like) then Europe has no shortage of large car manufacturers either.

Oh and by the way a combined Europe has a larger economy than the US. It also has more than twice the population than the US which is a large part of the reason, but you don't think population is a factor so that shouldn't bother you

People can be and are successful in plenty of countries. There's nothing special about the US in that regard.

@bold, seems like a hard thing to prove. But it should be obvious considering the demographic difference of the west vs only Japan.

Regardless Hello Kitty is far bigger than anything Europe has produced. Pokemon is bigger than everything in the world including US products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_highest-grossing_media_franchises

Even assuming a large margin of error, nothing comes close to the top 1 and the top 3.

And it still doesn't discredit his point that all these top sellers are going to the US, whether they are Japanese or European.