COMMON COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE USA AND OTHER COUNTRIES

I enjoy TED Talks bc the opinions shared there are often very interesting- not all agreed with tho. Often people compare education, healthcare, etc, etc, between the USA and utopias like Sweden, Norway, Finland, etc, etc, in efforts to show how the USA generally sucks compared to much more perfect countries. How anybody can think tiny countries with 6M populations of 90+% Northern European ethnicity would compare in any way to the USA and it's 320M much more diverse population is beyond my understanding- not even to mention our form of government. So, today I listened to a TED Talk comparing German incarceration per 1000 population and their prison system to ours. OK, so Germany does have 1/4 the population of the USA- a little closer- but still has 90+% Northern Europeans ethnicity- same homogeneity as the previously mentioned. However, none of the others have incarcerated 20M people and murdered most of them before. I lived in Germany 3 years. I loved Germany, a wonderful, beautiful country with people, wonderful and beautiful too but Germany bares little resemblance to the USA and is a poor comparison in most categories. The USA has more criminals per 1000 and therefore more incarcerations. The rise in the prison population correlates to the rise in Liberalism in the USA as well as it correlates to anything else. That said, we can still probably learn something from their criminal/prison philosophies and other areas of their society.