thegreekdog wrote:To be fair, your premise is not "Incarceration rates are high in the United States" (which I agree with); your premise is "Incarceration rates are high in the United States, therefore the United States must suck, especially compared to China."
No comparison between America and China was intended. China has only become the focus of this thread because the trollbots (Mets, rishaed, Gabon) want to throw out a nice, distracting strawman so that people stop talking bout 'murica. The comparison I had intended was America (and North Korea) compared to everywhere else.
I suppose I could go look up some other things like median incomes, constitutional protections, mortality rates, etc., but...
Or economic inequality, cost of healthcare, quality of public schools, homicide rate, political atmosphere etc.
Or incarceration rate :>