Is America proof right wing countries are not something to aspire to?

suicide_circus · 02-05-2015 07:58AM

Damn rightwingers with their gay marriage, abortion and legalised weed

Cold War Kid · 02-05-2015 08:22AM

People really should use the term "communist" correctly, but anyway, America is obviously not a hardline right-wing society - it's too massively diverse, with individual states having their own administrative systems, but economically... it does seem like you're ****ed if you're poor.
That was the principle America was built on - "The American Dream": get out there and make it happen for yourself. A lovely idea, and worked for many people, but not everyone. It's a good ethos, but there should be some supports too. Nothing wrong with a balance of both.

Connemara Farmer · 02-05-2015 09:02AM

I'd like to know, as a % of each population, how many Americans left their country to come work/live here versus the Irish % that left here to work/live in the US, and to be fair about it we can take an average since say 1995.

Edit: For a minimum period of three years or greater.

diomed · 02-05-2015 09:07AM

The USA is three countries: rich white; poor white; other disadvantaged.

steddyeddy · 02-05-2015 09:10AM

Connemara Farmer wrote: »

I'd like to know, as a % of each population, how many Americans left their country to come work/live here versus the Irish % that left here to work/live in the US, and to be fair about it we can take an average since say 1995.

Edit: For a minimum period of three years or greater.

Oh yea America's not bad if you're starting off in another country. I am an Irish graduate with a valued degree. If I went over there I would make I lot more Tha I do here. The thing is if I was born in America I might not have got the degree at all. I'd be competing with stupider but richer American kids to get into a college.

Connemara Farmer · 02-05-2015 10:43AM

steddyeddy wrote: »

Oh yea America's not bad if you're starting off in another country. I am an Irish graduate with a valued degree. If I went over there I would make I lot more Tha I do here. The thing is if I was born in America I might not have got the degree at all. I'd be competing with stupider but richer American kids to get into a college.

I don't necessarily agree, plenty of people in Ireland (myself included, by choice) don't have college degrees.

In the US there are scholarships that go by the wayside each year, they can be applied for and got.

There is, rightly or wrongly, a higher value placed on work over there than here.

UCDVet · 02-05-2015 10:47AM

steddyeddy wrote: »

America is considered more right wing than Ireland say in regards to education, health care and race issues to say the least.

They have a worse education system than ours, they have a worse health system than ours and their justice system seems to be anything but just. Is this what people with right wing views aspire to because it's not working.

You might say America has some of the best schools and hospitals in the world. That would be true but to take those as the norm is missing the point of society. You can't build a society on rewarding people for being born into a certain wealth category. I.e the wealth category and race you're born into in America determines the education you will receive. I can sum up the health care system in America by saying that some parts of America suffer bubonic plague outbreaks (yersinia pestis or the black death to the layman).

Having lived in both, I think this is a common misconception.

When people compare something like 'health care' in a country, they boil down all of the information until they get one or two easily comparable figures. Infant mortality or life expectancy usually, but there are lots more they might use.

Across the board, when you average (or take the median) in a lot of ways, the US doesn't seem so great. But anyone who has taken a stats class knows that two sets of data can have very different values, but still the same average or median.

In the US you have a much wider distribution of values. The poor in the US are a fair bit worse off than the poor in Ireland, but the FLIP SIDE to this is that the middle / upper middle class are a fair bit better off than the middle / upper middle class in Ireland.

Looking at healthcare again, it's really hard to improve the quality of care when you're already getting pretty good health care. The easiest way to improve is to focus on people who get no health care at all. That's the 'easy win', in the US (the relatively new ObamaCare stuff is meant to help, but still) to give average health care to people who currently get none. Giving excellent health care to people with great health care is very expensive and results in only a tiny improvement.

I'd MUCH, MUCH rather be unemployed and sick in Ireland. It wouldn't be great, money would be tight - but I'd have a place to live and I'd get to see doctors. Sure, I'm not going to get a next day appointment with a specialist or anything, but I can get my name in the queue.

Same deal with education. Some of the schools are so bad you'd never consider sending your children - typically in large cities like New York or Chicago. They're filled with gangs and violence. But then, just 30 minutes down the street you've got amazing schools. When you average it out, you'd say, 'Education isn't very good in the US' but the truth is your children are only going to attend one school and as long as they aren't in the ghetto, they're quite good.

TLDR - the US has a much wider range in quality of medical care/education depending on your social-economic area. As an anecdote, my private health care in the US was no more expensive than I pay now with VHI, but had better coverage, fewer out of pocket expenses, ZERO wait time, and let me phone up a specialist directly; if I wanted to see a dermatologist I could just call and schedule an appointment. I didn't need to go to a general practitioner, pay, wait for a letter to be sent to see a specialist or any of that. And the per month cost was actually a tiny bit cheaper (as a % of my paycheck, I can't keep up with the value of the euro)

PowerToWait · 02-05-2015 10:50AM

Another tedious soapbox thread that's been done over and over.

Same chippy points repeated ad nauseam but set in America. For variety.

bb1234567 · 02-05-2015 11:06AM

fedor.2. wrote: »

For a nation of over 300 million people, I think America handles it really well. Is it perfect? Course not, show me somewhere of equal size that does a better job of it.

If the european union were a single nation

smurgen · 02-05-2015 11:08AM

fedor.2. wrote: »

For a nation of over 300 million people, I think America handles it really well. Is it perfect? Course not, show me somewhere of equal size that does a better job of it.

America has a smaller population than Europe and I'd argue that the living standards in Europe are alot higher on average than the average US living standards.

smurgen · 02-05-2015 11:12AM

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Two that can't be and won't be matched for many many decades and will automatically grant them total air superiority in any war they want to fight.

It's an ace in the hole investment to their foreign policy alright.

Sure they have 20 B2 stealth bombers than cost $2bn each back in the '90s, adjust that to todays inflation levels and the mind boggles.

Personally I'd rather see that money go to NASA or health science R&D.

Fighters are going to be obsolete in modern warfare.drones and missile technology is where it's at.they are relics just like aircraft carriers. Great for fighting small badly equipped armies but not very effective against the likes of the Russians.

steddyeddy · 02-05-2015 11:30AM

enfant terrible wrote: »

Why does the college turn into a bad college when it becomes expensive to enter?

I'm talking about the school. Well either way think about it. Expensive means that something is out of a lot of people's reach.

Would you pick athletes from a small gene pool or a large gene pool?

SeanW · 02-05-2015 11:31AM

diomed wrote: »

The USA is three countries: rich white; poor white; other disadvantaged.

What about Asian Americans?

As of 2012, Asian Americans had the highest educational attainment level and median household income of any racial demographic in the country,[2][5] and in 2008 they had the highest median personal income overall of any racial demographic.[6][7]

Emphasis mine.

osarusan · 02-05-2015 11:50AM

UCDVet wrote: »

In the US you have a much wider distribution of values. The poor in the US are a fair bit worse off than the poor in Ireland, but the FLIP SIDE to this is that the middle / upper middle class are a fair bit better off than the middle / upper middle class in Ireland.
)

bingo!

The USA has a massively wide range in so many areas. They have some of the very best universities in the world but, every for M.I.T. or Harvard, you have a Liberty University.

They have some of the very best hospitals in the world, but for every good hospital, you have people unemployed and without insurance who find it difficult to get any medical attention at all.

They have some of the very best and most intelligent people in the world, who get paid a lot of money. But for all of those very well-paid people, there are more who get paid much worse than Ireland, or unemployed without a similar welfare system to support them.

MRnotlob606 · 02-05-2015 11:52AM

I think it would be more liberal than Ireland in some respects.

smash · 02-05-2015 12:13PM

Fcuk you OP. What have got against freedom?!?!?! :pac:

Manach · 02-05-2015 12:17PM

While of course there are dark spots in America's history, it is still one of the worlds most vibrant, rich and powerful countries in the world. The leftist slurs on the state convenient ignore the stagnant economies of old Europe and the destruction wrought over the environment by the command & control model in the old Eastern Block.

steddyeddy · 02-05-2015 12:21PM

Manach wrote: »

While of course there are dark spots in America's history, it is still one of the worlds most vibrant, rich and powerful countries in the world. The leftist slurs on the state convenient ignore the stagnant economies of old Europe and the destruction wrought over the environment by the command & control model in the old Eastern Block.

When you label an argument instead of counter it effectively you lose all credibility.

02-05-2015 12:24PM

Someone said that America has the wealthiest economy. Is this actually true anymore?

I mean given that Japan/China own the majority of their debt.

I often talk with American ex-colleagues of mine and we often have discussions about what is good about America and they often find it difficult to come up with reasons.

smash wrote: »

Fcuk you OP. What have got against freedom?!?!?! :pac:

I always find this funny because America has far less freedom than many other countries.

bnt · 02-05-2015 12:25PM

Supergurrier wrote: »

The fact they spent almost 150bn

Yes 150000000000

To develop two fighter jets says alot

So, where did that money go, then? Down the plughole? No, it went back in to the economy, in to jobs (both govt. and subcontractors), infrastructure, industries, and so on. There are probably more efficient ways of doing that, and there are also problems with the uneven allocation of resources by Congress (pork barrel spending). But it's not economically accurate to characterise defense spending as all wasted, any more than it is for the space program.

What should be done, in my opinion, is reduce spending on defense and spend it more directly on infrastructure. But I don't see how this is a left- / right-wing thing. Do you think that government spending on defense is a right-wing thing? Conservatives are supposed to be in favour of small government, which makes it weird that government spending shot up under every Republican president since Eisenhower (link). But the increases can be attributed to defense spending, which means that Republicans don't mind. If this sounds confused, you can hardly blame me ...

Zebra3 · 02-05-2015 12:33PM

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41086.

The U.S. is a bloodthirsty empire, of that there is no denial.

the evasion_kid · 02-05-2015 12:41PM

What was the last figure on their federal debt? A little over 16 trillion if I remember correctly....eventually someone's going to have to pay the piper and pay up for their financial sins

the evasion_kid · 02-05-2015 12:53PM

the evasion_kid wrote: »

What was the last figure on their federal debt? A little over 16 trillion if I remember correctly....eventually someone's going to have to pay the piper and pay up for their financial sins

That works out at each man women and child having to pay $53,000 to retire the national debt

metrosity · 02-05-2015 01:03PM

steddyeddy wrote: »

America is considered more right wing than Ireland say in regards to education, health care and race issues to say the least.

They have a worse education system than ours, they have a worse health system than ours and their justice system seems to be anything but just. Is this what people with right wing views aspire to because it's not working.

You might say America has some of the best schools and hospitals in the world. That would be true but to take those as the norm is missing the point of society. You can't build a society on rewarding people for being born into a certain wealth category. I.e the wealth category and race you're born into in America determines the education you will receive. I can sum up the health care system in America by saying that some parts of America suffer bubonic plague outbreaks (yersinia pestis or the black death to the layman).

Most definitively, America is not something to aspire to, but I fear it may be too late to change course. Their big tech companies already have too much power here.

This ring any bells (taken from slashdot):

"I've been unemployed for 6 months and the job market in San Diego CA for electrical engineers is the worst I've ever experienced.

1. It's mostly recruiting companies doing the hiring. There seems to be a lack of direct company recruiting going on (At least in San Diego, CA).
2. If it is companies doing direct hiring, they want "new college grads" at all times of the year
3. They want master's degrees at a minimum.
4. Thay want someone who can speak Mandarin.
5. The list of skills required is so detailed and complex, it would be very difficult for someone to be a master of everything on that list, and one would have a terrible time maintaining any degree of focus to ensure a good result.
6. They whine to congress about the H-1B cap.

Fortunately for me, I have plenty of money in the bank and in investments, plus I have rental income. I'm 54, and not sure I'll ever get to be employed as an engineer again. I'm mostly keeping my self occupied with personal engineering projects and code. I'm hoping things eventually turn around, but am prepared to retire if they do not."

from: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/05/01/235248/want-30-job-offers-a-month-its-not-as-great-as-you-think

Iwasfrozen · 02-05-2015 01:28PM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Someone said that America has the wealthiest economy. Is this actually true anymore?

I mean given that Japan/China own the majority of their debt.

I often talk with American ex-colleagues of mine and we often have discussions about what is good about America and they often find it difficult to come up with reasons.

Actually the majority holders of US federal debt are US departments. So it's not neatly as bad as it seems.

bb1234567 · 02-05-2015 01:47PM

MRnotlob606 wrote: »

I think it would be more liberal than Ireland in some respects.

Definitely with regards homosexuality, well in the more liberal states.

Vandango · 02-05-2015 01:59PM

PowerToWait wrote: »

Another tedious soapbox thread that's been done over and over.

Says the poster who's barely here 2 months :rolleyes:.

Rabo Karabekian · 02-05-2015 02:38PM

engineerbrah wrote: »

America is a liberal country you numbnut. Just because a few black people were killed by white police officers doesn't make it 'right wing'.

Their education system is very critical on slavery & dead white males in general and the new common core system is as leftist as it gets. Common core is specifically designed to benefit the growing minority groups in the US.

Their healthcare system was socialised like 2 years ago (Obamacare).

America allows every race & religion in the world to immigrate there, allows homosexuality, abortion, freedom of speech, etc. Are you fukkin awake son?

Being liberal on social matters doesn't necessarily mean you're left wing. Most right wing people I know would be liberally very progressive (on matters such as homosexuality, minority rights, etc). Even economically in America, you have had the neo-cons who have a very liberal attitude to economics.

The right/left divide is increasingly becoming meaningless if you take out the extremes of both. Even within the Republican party in America, you have an incredibly diverse range of opinions, from libertarian to the more orthodox conservative mindset (not forgetting, of course, the Tea Party).

PopePalpatine · 02-05-2015 02:56PM

steddyeddy wrote: »

When you label an argument instead of counter it effectively you lose all credibility.

Do what I did and stick him on the Ignore List. It's not like he ever comes back for a discussion anyway.

Wompa1 · 02-05-2015 02:57PM

Deleted User wrote: »

I often talk with American ex-colleagues of mine and we often have discussions about what is good about America and they often find it difficult to come up with reasons.

Pandering to you, perhaps. I'm pretty unhappy with a lot of things over here but I can easily find things that are amazing over here.

Roads
General Convenience. US Postal Service delivers on Sundays. Banks are open on evenings and weekends. Shops are open until 10pm on weeknights at the earliest...some are 24 hours
Quality of Service
Tax System
Granularity of Government
Positivity
Choice and Variety of pretty much everything
Attentive and Prompt Healthcare
Some of the best entertainment in the world
Incredibly scenic, beautiful and diverse landscape

Is America proof right wing countries are not something to aspire to?

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