The REAL Reason Life Is About To Get Harder

I agree with all except that the less advanced countries are not record keepers on deaths. If a baby dies in a village in these places.. no records. If records are kept, they are inaccurate. Many women don't even go to hospitals to birth.

Grantham isn't a US citizen. He can take his opinions right back to Britain. Our country is good enough for him to plop his ass down in Boston and enjoy the riches of our country. Don't worry though he "has got his and for his family." Hypocritical.

Sounds like he lives in a left leaning city

Yikes, Japan – not true, the people are so controlled and if they are not obedient they are shunned. No thank you! 40% of the people living in Tokyo live alone! They discourage being social, you can’t eat on the streets you can’t even sit on public stairs. No trash cans and no places for elderly to sit or rest.

How Obese and unhealthy are those women in America giving birth? The Cheeseburger and Fries is the killer.

Like Charlie Kirk…majority of 4 year degrees are worthless and expensive…trade schools are more beneficial than a 4 year degree.

As for the social contract in the U.S., I agree, it has been failing. You can thank liberal beliefs and brainwashing liberals with DEI, BLM, WOKE, LGBTQIS…and so in has harmed the society as a whole. Liberal politicians and liberal media is the main problem.

Amazing how this is America of the present and not the past. We should ask how this happened and change not accept this as how it has to be. I'll bet there are lots of folks in the audience who understand how this happened.

The way maternal mortality is counted includes women who have recently given birth and subsequently die from health complications. That is important information, but it isn't necessarily an indictment of the maternity-care system and I'm not finding any data on national US number of maternal deaths by income.

We can know that cardiovascular disease, obesity-related complications, and substance abuse are significant contributors to maternal deaths in the U.S. If we want to understand the difference between countries, we should separate those factors from deaths directly attributable to failures in maternity care.

If the purpose of the exercise is simply to produce another statistic showing Americans how badly their country compares, because of your hang ups about wealth, don't be surprised when it doesn't create the social consciousness or institutional trust needed to actually improve the situation. You're comparing to a handful of countries based on an assumption. That's the reason it's compare "to other wealthy countries". On a global scale, the US does not have a particularly high rate and it's unreasonable to expect a country to be #1 at every metric.

If people here want to help their medical industry, Europeans should petition their governments to force their own medical companies to trade fairly with the people in the USA. We know that they can't regulate their own prices for medication there, because its a low trust society. People in the EU should maybe do something other than constantly criticise Americans and talk about how great they are. Check the statistics on how many Americans think the USA is #1. They got the message a long time ago and you're telling this an abysmally low trust society. That's not not a social contract problem. What you're doing is something like trying to sell a used car by talking about how everything in it is broken and all the foreign alternatives are better.

I noticed that people in countries with better statistics omit the things they are not better at. USA scores way better in Breast Cancer screening than Germany does. If i brow beat a german with this stat, what do you think the likelihood is that he's gonna be all demoralised and telling me I'm so right that the social contract is broken here and this country needs a radical reform?

Rubbish! The USA (N. America) is the shiny spot on the planet now and into the future, especially for raising children (not the big cities). Everywhere except maybe SE Asia is headed for very dark times ahead. America still has a relatively good birth rate, rule of law and much less regulation, (rebuilding manufacturing, cheap energy) and freedom than Europe. Watch all the money pour into America when times get tough. Japan, Europe good places to move to? Those are the worst ideas! He's a socialist billionaire with ridiculous stats. Ex. Women don't die giving birth in Europe because so few have babies they get an incredible amount of attention! Yes, America has it's problems, but it's the best house on a really bad street.

I still cannot believe that you gave JD VANCE a soap box on your show. He is about as two faced as they come. And I have never voted because they are all incredibly disgusting people.

When people throw out statistics like the pregnancy mortality rates of the US vs other countries, you have to ask WHY? There are many reasons for the disparity between the US and Norway with regard to mortality rates during pregnancy. For example, drug addiction during pregnancy is a big problem in the US, epidemic in many areas, 8% nationwide, vs 0.1% in Norway. Teen pregnancy carries higher risks, with 12 teen pregnancies per 1000 in the US, vs 1.28 per 1000 in Norway. Obesity carries higher risks, with 30-40% of women in the US vs 13% of women in Norway. Plenty of other examples of people making poor decisions that they didn’t make 60-70 years ago. Why? And btw, socialized, DMV style healthcare would undoubtedly make mortality rates significantly worse, not better! Our socialized public school system has already been a disaster for more than a half century, despite spending more on K-12 education than nearly every other industrialized country. Sure, we need to make significant changes in our healthcare system, too many problems to mention here. But socialism is not the answer. ✌️

I am an American and I am so so tired of people especially people who called themselves "experts" This Bull-ish that he is talking is so flawed. How can you compare the amount of mother's death during pregnancy to countries who do not have 1/3 of our population than the US? UK 242 women died during pregnancy with total population of about 70million which includes England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland; Then he stated Nigeria population 247million they have the worst death rate for pregnant women at 993-1050 women deaths that is recorded and more than 50 Percent of these cases are home births due to lack of healthcare so we don't even know what the real numbers are. Let put this into prospective all of these countries he mention can actual fit into one of our states. Which is not a fair comparison. Stop bashing America! Half these countries around the world don't have light, water, food, yes we complain but when we get together and vote we make a difference. Oh we going to run away from American and go where to the UK where there is no Air-Conditioning. LOL

Ha! Denmark again. Love the “move to Denmark” argument. A country with the population of Houston, TX.

Finland? Iceland? Norway for the great outdoor life and fuel profits shared by all.

Can we all just agree that Trump has ruined this country? THere has been absolutely no progress. Golden Statues? A ball room? a gaudy arch? WTF have we made better, besides corruption? Thanks MAGA. Dummies.

The video features veteran investor and market historian *Jeremy Grantham* discussing macroeconomic structural risks, the fraying American social contract, and the challenges facing ordinary workers. While Grantham's core critique touches on very real systemic issues, several of his sweeping claims require critical deconstruction.

### 1. The Claim: US Maternal Mortality is "50% Worse Than the Next Worst" Developed Country

* *The Critique:* Grantham highlights a staggering gap in maternal mortality, stating the US is not only last in the developed world but 50% worse than the runner-up. While the US does have a severe and well-documented crisis in maternal mortality compared to peer nations (particularly for women of color, as he accurately notes), the specific numerical comparisons across international borders are heavily skewed by **methodological inconsistencies**.

* *The Nuance & Context:* Different countries record live births, fetal deaths, and maternal mortality indicators using vastly different criteria. For instance, the CDC utilizes a pregnancy checkbox on death certificates that dramatically increased the capture of maternal deaths compared to European nations that rely on stricter, narrower clinical classifications. Even when adjusting for these statistical discrepancies, the US still underperforms economically peerless nations due to systemic healthcare disparities, high costs, maternity care deserts, and deep socioeconomic inequalities.

### 2. The Claim: The US Social Contract Has Dissolved Into "Screw Everybody Else"

* *The Critique:* Grantham paints an overly dystopian picture of the United States as an entirely atomized, cutthroat landscape devoid of community solidarity or corporate civic responsibility.

* *The Nuance & Context:* While American hyper-capitalism, weak labor protections, and a frayed social safety net create immense economic precarity—especially for the bottom quartiles—this view completely overlooks the robust tradition of grassroots community organizing, mutual aid networks, and local philanthropy deeply embedded in American society. The critique holds structural truth regarding corporate behavior and public policy failures, but it caricatures the daily lived reality and civic engagement of millions of Americans.

### 3. Economic Pessimism and the "Perma-Bear" Frame

* *The Context:* Grantham is a legendary market historian famed for calling major asset bubbles (such as 2000 and 2008). His warnings to "brace yourself" and move away from speculative mania align with his long-standing investment philosophy. However, blanket declarations that the US is inherently a "bad place to live" ignore structural economic resilience, wage growth for lower-income brackets during tight labor markets, and massive regional variance in cost of living and quality of life.

—

## TL;DR

* *What Grantham Says:* The US social contract is collapsing, economic mobility is shrinking, corporate America is purely extractive, and the safety net (highlighted by poor maternal health outcomes) is deeply broken, making life significantly harder for average workers.

* *The Reality Check:* His macro-critiques of US wealth inequality, healthcare gaps, and structural precarity are largely accurate. However, his international metric comparisons are exaggerated by reporting discrepancies, and his blanket dismissal of American society ignores robust community-level solidarity and resilience.

Japan is collectivist, like many Asian cultures, but the US is individualist – I hear what he is saying but people, even from Japan, sought to live in the US…not Japan. Our way of life cannot be that off putting ….look at our borders a few months back – that was not the happening at the border of Japan, et al.

A little insulted by his insinuations. I am in Florida and actually have stored enough food for not only me but also all my neighbors 2 houses in every direction, plus I have extra first aid, solar power kits and basic supplies for all my immediate neighbors.

He is right. Since inflation my neighbors attitude have been slowly changed for the bad, doing things they usually don’t do and a wise one only observe.

This from Los Angeles C.A

The worst times brings out the worst in people, it’s scary to wonder what would happen if a collapse being around these same people

4.44

Boomers

We are not coming back from this.
Just remember the story of the woman who took a wheelbarrow full of fiat currency to a store and someone stole her wheelbarrow and left the currency.
We are arriving at that point folks. All these old folks think theyre going to flash a 20$ bill around to get what they want during hard times and a whole new generation of youths are going to take over and look at them like they are crazy….