What is up with America?

newgrangepets

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?

The US has fallen to neo confederate, racist, theocratic, libertarian loons. It’s not coming back. Could still be a place to make very good money.

retalivity

Its a third world country, masquerading as a first, and has been for a long time now.

Kermit.de.frog

No safety net? Not entirely true but what people seem to forget is America is built on individualism and doing the best for yourself. That's why it's such a powerful country because it produces innovative citizens that create businesses or work hard to create things. It generates huge wealth.

It's a different mindset to Ireland or Europe. You say there is no safety net, they don't care because they are brought up believing you work and get on with it. The vast majority of Americans would be totally ashamed to be on state supports, the like you see here.

It just wouldn't cross their mind.

It's also an enormous and diverse country. Just because there might be trouble in one place doesn't mean it's everywhere.

Of course it has it's issues but it's very distorted view we get.

KilOit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119264485#Comment_119264485

Work your whole life and pay your tax and be a model citizen, get cancer, go bankrupt

igCorcaigh

I'm 49, grew up in the 80's, and even then I regarded the US as a war-mongering state with a superiority complex. The home of batshit religious tendencies, out of control capitalism and with an overrated, but invasive, populist culture. The "West" has been aping America since then. Time to step back.

Ouch Chinese Byrne

I don’t agree with many US policies but I do respect their move away from political correctness.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119264506#Comment_119264506

Starting to think this position is right in recent years.

The US isn't all it's cracked up to be. In fact, it's just cracked up and becoming ever more divided.

Kermit.de.frog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119264497#Comment_119264497

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

KilOit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119264516#Comment_119264516

Media and corporations have brainwashed them to fear socialist healthcare

sprucemoose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119264525#Comment_119264525

and yet they will happily pay for their oversized military

SEPT 23 1989

I was born in the late 70’s and the USA seemed like the greatest place in the world to a kid living in 1980’’s Ireland

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119264539#Comment_119264539

Which various European countries (not least Ukraine) have recently realised is probably a good thing.

Muahahaha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119264551#Comment_119264551

I think back in the 1980s and 90s the American dream was still very much alive, back then we all heard of the barman or brickie making $1,000+ a week which seemed amazing at a time when wages here were utterly depressed.

The problem now in the US would seem that inflation has caught them up, real wages havent risen anywhere near matching the costs of living and as a result the middle classes are being hollowed out. The US used to be a cheap country to live in back then but those days are over too. There's always going to be exceptions to the rule but in general I think the American dream as we knew it back in the 1980s is dead.

NSAman

I can only comment on my personal experience of the USA. This is not a political commentary, more a social commentary.

i can here with little in the early 1980s first. The place was mad, you worked hard and earned decent money. It was non-stop work. I left and worked in many other countries including Ireland. I worked hard everywhere I went.

i came back here in the early 2000s, then decided to move here when an opportunity arose.

America is a different way of living to Europe and Ireland especially. Do I understand this country? Absolutely not!

The main difference is self reliance here compared to Ireland. People (the older generation) do NOT expect the government to look after them. They look after themselves. Is there a safety net? Yes! Is that safety net being abused? Yes! There is absolutely a generational divide in America. (Amongst many other divides)

America is supposedly the worlds richest country, yet food banks abound and the queues are getting longer. The levels of poverty here I have seen in other countries Africa for example. The level of wealth is also on the side of ostentatious.

America is a divided country in outlook. Not only politically, but racially, educationally, socially and as I have said generationally.

currently, there is a major split in the things that people want. This is causing a huge rift in the electorate and between generations. That rift is the self reliant ideology v’s more government in peoples lives (supports).

The amount of BS I see being spouted by different candidates up for elections is honestly annoying. Weathermen claiming to be scientists, farmers claiming to be morally superior, hoodlums claiming to be righteous, it makes me not want to be involved in anything political here (not that I was anywhere else).

Education seems to be the main cause of many of Americas ills, in my humble opinion. Education standards are abysmal. School standards are crap compared to the education I received in Ireland. Civics, geography, world view, history, have all been politicised. College education is FAR too liberal leaning and not based on educating yourself. The horror I see when graduates finally get a pay check and see that tax is taken out, never fail to amaze me. Herself lectures part-time. She is frustrated by the level of English, the inability of many to write properly and even structure a sentence (won’t even mention spelling) Hey don’t knock me, I know my own sentence structure is awful.

As an outsider, I am constantly amazed that the level of education is so bad amongst many here. General education, general knowledge, things that most people in the rest of the world know, here they do not. My own opinion: this has been orchestrated over decades. Dumbing down is a national “thing”. Thinking for yourself, is frowned on, group think abounds. My own opinion is that CNN and FOX exemplify this, based on political affiliation.

Corruption is everywhere. Don’t kid yourself, it is endemic.

The ability to make things happen, that is the main difference I find in America toEurope. The open mindedness and can-do attitude where a profit is evident, still exists. The “new think” way of making things happen is very evident here. Business is open to new ideas and people will listen even to someone like me without the old boys club ties that abound in Europe.

America feels to me like it is going through a cultural revolution currently. Socially, it has never been more divided. Culturally it has never been as divided since the civil war. That puts many worries on me for its future.

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.

starkid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoZDyBUAjYE

there is two Americas

threeball

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119271200#Comment_119271200

Agree with alot of this. America seems to have perfected a system where the very wealthy have managed to convince the plebs that they too can be very wealthy one day if they just believe. So you get your alabama trailer dweller defending the fact that the super rich pay no tax, and that having no state health care is a good thing.

Education is not based around education but rather indoctrination. Every morning you pledge your allegiance, everyone worships the military and everyone believes and are constantly told they live in the greatest country in the world.

Even sport is designed to promote one individual above others. I really like American football but I know of no other sport where one individual is regarded as being on a different plain to all his team mates. Everyone is subservient and that individual gets paid the most, wins all the accolades even when it's obvious other team mates were far more valuable in a game and is seen as the spokesman for the team no matter how dumb he may be.

dorothylives

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119271200#Comment_119271200

Food banks are springing up everywhere here. Some school in Limerick was boasting about having 40 different nationalities in the school so it's highly unlikely any kid in that school is getting a decent education. Some headmasters around the country are complaining that the non English speaking Ukrainian kids are getting prioritised over the non English speaking African kids from Direct Provision for English language teachers and calling it racism. How one school can have 30 non English speaking African kids from Direct Provision is beyond me. There was a push to get that silly bint Ebon whatever her face is, Critical Race Theory book into Irish schools.

Educate together schools are pushing identity politics on little kids telling them that the only non privileged white kids are Travelers and that no matter how bad the white kids life might be it's still not as hard as a kid from an ethnic minority background. Now the white kid might be dirt poor and starving and the minority kids rich and comfortable, nah, they wouldn't be going to crap hole schools if they weren't poor, but still the ethnic minority kids lives are still harder.

Identity politics everywhere. Mentally ill thug attacks someone in a shop, ignores cops, gets killed by Cops entering a house where his family have a barring order on him, now we have our first ghetto payout court case on the way with the family looking for a payout claiming racist police. I could go on and on, we're well on our way to becoming a cheap American clone.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119264485#Comment_119264485

How do school shootings, fascism, racism and religious fundamentalism fit into this exactly?

ArthurDayne

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119271200#Comment_119271200

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.

Donald Trump

Everyone is sad and disappointed about America lately due to the travesty that they didn't re-elect the bigliest most stable genius ever.

When you see a whole country throwing away, never mind not appreciating, such a gift, then you know that there is something rotten at the heart.

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

Enter name here

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119275491#Comment_119275491

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.

Pissy Missy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119264485#Comment_119264485

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.

Miadhc

Europe is heading in the same direction.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119277892#Comment_119277892

The systemic problems in the United States are many decades old.

I cannot see the European Union falling into that decaying system of healthcare, education standards etc. that the US has openly supported.

On the cultural and social issues, perhaps there's a point, but definitely not on the above wider scale.

Better to be poor in a European Union member state than in the United States, that's for sure.

Danno

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119277988#Comment_119277988

Better to be poor in a European Union member state than in the United States, that's for sure.

To a point - while welfare systems such as relative ease of access to healthcare and a generous unemployment benefits programmes here are in contrast to those the USA offers, it results in two starkly different outcomes.

Our ever expanding welfare system is too generous in some respects whereby some folks can choose never to work and live a standard of life that while is not comfortable - it's not uncomfortable enough. This system IMHO is too broad-based resulting in those who really need welfare supports are then left in need because the money isn't there to cover what they require. For example, someone with a life-long disability isn't really that much better off than someone on jobseekers allowance. If I was the minister of Social Protection in the morning, someone on a life-long disability would be awarded 80% of the living wage with free healthcare - whereas someone on jobseekers for more than 12 months would see their €208 cut to €160, and then some more after that.

In the USA, you barely get enough for food.

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.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119278080#Comment_119278080

This system IMHO is too broad-based resulting in those who really need welfare supports are then left in need because the money isn't there to cover what they require.

Completely agree.

The US seems to be on one extreme side of the spectrum and we, on the other hand, are at the opposite side of that spectrum - with benefit security way more favourable than it should be, and which disincentives the need to find work or to become entrepreneurial.

A balance between the two is perhaps the best solution.

Danno

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119278114#Comment_119278114

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.