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What is up with America?

  • 28-06-2022 10:46pm
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 16


    Growing up, America was the country everyone talked about. I come from a third world country, moved to Canada, and then came here. Many people who were asked about emigration considered the U.S. their number 1 destinations.

    But it seems that now that's changed and for good reason. The healthcare sucks if your not rich, a non-existant safety net. I know all countries have their problems but for a developed nation America really seems to have gone downhill. Trump and COVID were the two worst combinations in the last decade. The uprising in 2021 on Capitol Hill was even more astounding. In no other first world country would you see hundreds of people break into the seat of government.

    Some say most of the problems are the result of excessive capitalism and the 'bootstrap' mentality that many people there have. What can be done to get the country back on track?



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Comments

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  • Registered Users Posts: 22,806 ✭✭✭✭Kermit.de.frog


    They don't see it like that and the majority don't live like that either.



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  • Registered Users, Moderators, Regional Abroad Moderators Posts: 1,993 Mod ✭✭✭✭Nigel Fairservice


    The US is a strange place. It has some great aspects to it and some terrible ones. I spent a few weeks travelling around there a few years back by myself. I was fairly shocked at some of the poverty I saw. I'd much rather be poor in Ireland than somewhere like the US. I had the feeling that many people thought that if you were down on your luck it was your own fault and it was up to you to get yourself out of it. I don't understand the right to bear arms mentality or the over the top flag waving stuff or how entrenched the political polarisation can be. As an outsider looking in the place just seems more and more divided.



  • Registered Users Posts: 762 ✭✭✭starkid




  • Registered Users Posts: 1,252 ✭✭✭ArthurDayne


    The problem with the “self reliance” mantra in the US is that, in the absence of government support, the vacuum is exploited financially when it comes to things like utterly exorbitant university and healthcare costs. It’s not really a pure form of “self reliance” when things swing from reliance on government support to reliance on debt finance. The other problem is that the American appreciation of self-reliance often seems to overcook into paranoia about Communism, where even light socialist policies can be decried as the demon spawn of the Soviet Union.

    The results of that culture haven’t been bad in certain aspects. Healthcare / education can be truly excellent for those who can access it, while there is a competitiveness driving people to aspire to success, innovation and entrepreneurship. The downside however, as their growing population has made it ever harder to mask, is that those born into the poverty cycle have lesser support in breaking free from it. It’s most apparent in my view in how poor black communities have fared over the 20th and 21st centuries. The country’s “self-reliance” culture almost seems to deem it sufficient that people in those communities have freedom now and therefore the freedom to do well if they just apply themselves — rather than it probably being the case that further state intervention might help to balance things out.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 296 ✭✭Ham_Sandwich


    the US today is no different from nazi germany at this stage, killed for being black, killed for being a woman, killed for being trans couldnt imagine having to live there must be a living nightmare



  • Registered Users Posts: 394 ✭✭Enter name here


    Whilst all being perpetrated by the very same people you mention. When governments choose to indulge the mentally unstable instead of offering them the psychiatric and medical help they need this is what you end up with. When the left choose to enforce the will of the minorities onto the majorities this is what will always happen. Welcome to Biden's America, the land of the free where criminals go unpunished, paedophiles end up becoming presidents and career democrats make you believe its all your own fault.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,857 ✭✭✭Pissy Missy


    Thank god we have support here, I was over there for some time and it was the norm to work 2 to 3 jobs in a go and be a slave to work, be 100s of thousands in college debt and be screwed if you had a health issue, the more money you had the better person you were. Land of the free... absolute joke.



  • Registered Users Posts: 394 ✭✭Miadhc


    Europe is heading in the same direction.



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,913 ✭✭✭Danno


    The USA's welfare system (in general, some states are slightly better than others) has an almost non-existent safety net, Ireland's is a catch-all.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 8,913 ✭✭✭Danno


    Totally agree - it breaks my heart seeing folks who through no fault of their own (often in many cases have worked hard much of their lives) being left to live off a welfare rate not much better than the local waster (we all know one or two) who'll drink away most their dole and back horses with the rest on a Monday afternoon.



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