American culture relies on a myth of prosperity that justifies income inequality — we assume anyone can get ahead equally, which is not true if you look at cost of living and pay gaps.
New Zealand’s Treasury has developed the Living Standards Framework (LSF) to create an index of wellbeing to gauge whether government policies support a society where “people can live lives they have reason to value.”
In this country, despite our medical/industrial complexes, we seem to have a “sick-care” system — one that is focused on treating the symptoms but not the causes