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

Wompa1 · 02-05-2015 03:02PM

SeanW wrote: »

What about Asian Americans?

Interestingly, they have one of the largest lobbying groups in the US. If anybody makes an Asian joke on a TV show or Radio Show. There's instant backlash. They get a lot of respect.

Wompa1 · 02-05-2015 03:04PM

diomed wrote: »

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

Nah, poor white are also disadvantaged. It's one of the flaws with the system, if you're born into poverty. Odds are you're not getting out, you're not going to go to the best of schools, you're not going to get the best of anything

Wompa1 · 02-05-2015 03:05PM

engineerbrah wrote: »

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

I've lived here pre-Obamacare and post-Obamacare. Care to explain how it's a socialist form of healthcare?

Egginacup · 02-05-2015 03:13PM

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.

The EU. Population 400+ million

Everyone has access to some form of health coverage. Across the board the education and public services are better. The average high school graduate is better informed and educated than the average university graduate in the US

Egginacup · 02-05-2015 03:24PM

porsche959 wrote: »

America does indeed have a high proportion of the top rated universities in the world. Don't know about high schools, but one would assume some of them are pretty good to enable access to the top universities, no?

Their top schools are top only because of the massive grants they get from the government/Pentagon. Consequently they can afford the best facilities and staff. But woe betide any professor or lecturer who criticises Israel or governmental corruption. He/she will have their careers cut short post-haste. American universities are businesses first and foremost and for the sons of elites they are merely a old-boy's network to open doors to privilege even for the most galactically stupid and incompetent idiots like Geroge W. Bush who ran every business he was ever gifted into the ground before being given a governorship.

Egginacup · 02-05-2015 03:26PM

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?

What do you mean healthcare system was socialised?

folamh · 02-05-2015 03:39PM

The United States:
- Abortion is legal in all 50 states, regulations state-dependent
- Same-sex marriage legal in 32 states
- Spends more per person on health care than any other developed country
- Third highest corporate tax rate in the world
- Affirmative action laws in education and employment
- The Democratic party has won the majority of the vote in the past two consecutive elections

Ireland
- Abortion is illegal
- Same-sex marriage is (currently) illegal
- Lowest corporation tax rate in the OECD
- Have to wait 4 years before getting divorced
- It's illegal to slander religion

Egginacup · 02-05-2015 03:40PM

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.

America's military spending is just a boondoggle. They haven't won a single war they've fought since 1945 and there have been many. You can mention farces like Grenada if you want or ousting Saddam from Kuwait but in reality they were just battles in an overall war that they've lost and continue to lose.

Egginacup · 02-05-2015 03:50PM

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.

The 10's of millions of Americans who are unemployed, or living in poverty don't emigrate for a better life because they are brainwashed into believing that nothing exists beyond their borders or if it does it's 1000 times worse than what they already have.

Egginacup · 02-05-2015 04:10PM

bnt wrote: »

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 ...

:pac:

Are you for real? It went into the pockets of the shareholders of Raytheon, Grumman, General Dynamics, etc. The $10 that Halliburton was charging the Pentagon for a can of coke for a GI in Iraq or the $100 they were charging the Pentagon per kilogram of Army laundry, the bill then effectively fobbed off on the American taxpayer as part of the "defense budget", yeah that all went back into the economy and birthed endless jobs and opportunities instead of being funneled into Dick Cheney's Swiss bank account.

Iwasfrozen · 02-05-2015 04:17PM

Egginacup wrote: »

:pac:

Are you for real? It went into the pockets of the shareholders of Raytheon, Grumman, General Dynamics, etc. The $10 that Halliburton was charging the Pentagon for a can of coke for a GI in Iraq or the $100 they were charging the Pentagon per kilogram of Army laundry, the bill then effectively fobbed off on the American taxpayer as part of the "defense budget", yeah that all went back into the economy and birthed endless jobs and opportunities instead of being funneled into Dick Cheney's Swiss bank account.

It could be worse, they could have diverted the entirety of their country's resources into defence spending, depriving their population of civilian goods and eventually causing the country to go bankrupt and split apart into many different nations.

Clickey

Egginacup · 02-05-2015 04:22PM

folamh wrote: »

The United States:
- Abortion is legal in all 50 states, regulations state-dependent
- Same-sex marriage legal in 32 states
- Spends more per person on health care than any other developed country
- Third highest corporate tax rate in the world
- Affirmative action laws in education and employment
- The Democratic party has won the majority of the vote in the past two consecutive elections

Ireland
- Abortion is illegal
- Same-sex marriage is (currently) illegal
- Lowest corporation tax rate in the OECD
- Have to wait 4 years before getting divorced
- It's illegal to slander religion

In fairness all you're doing is taking fringe facts from one side and comparing them with fringe facts on the other side.

That's as paltry and lame a comparison as saying "Shakira is beautiful. Adele is a bit plain and frumpy. Case closed. Colombia trump Britain!"

Geuze · 02-05-2015 04:25PM

engineerbrah wrote: »

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

Note that must healthcare is provided by the private or voluntary/religious sectors in the USA.

The Obamacare ACA means easier and more affordable access to private health insurance for more people.

We would not call that "socialised".

Geuze · 02-05-2015 04:28PM

Deleted User wrote: »

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

Their income per person is very high.

But, yes, their debts are also very high.

Eugene Norman · 02-05-2015 04:36PM

folamh wrote: »

The United States:
- Abortion is legal in all 50 states, regulations state-dependent
- Same-sex marriage legal in 32 states
- Spends more per person on health care than any other developed country
- Third highest corporate tax rate in the world
- Affirmative action laws in education and employment
- The Democratic party has won the majority of the vote in the past two consecutive elections

Ireland
- Abortion is illegal
- Same-sex marriage is (currently) illegal
- Lowest corporation tax rate in the OECD
- Have to wait 4 years before getting divorced
- It's illegal to slander religion

If Americans voted in most of those states same sex marriage would be illegal. And affirmative action is designed to right historical wrongs. america spends vast amounts on health precisely because it is private sector dominated and yet many people are not covered and most are a serious injury away from bankruptcy.

These lists are designed to emphasise some aspects of course. You ignored deaths by police, incarceration rates, gun crime etc.

folamh · 02-05-2015 04:36PM

Egginacup wrote: »

In fairness all you're doing is taking fringe facts from one side and comparing them with fringe facts on the other side.

That's as paltry and lame a comparison as saying "Shakira is beautiful. Adele is a bit plain and frumpy. Case closed. Colombia trump Britain!"

The facts might be selective, but that doesn't mean they're not significant. They constitute valid reasons why one might prefer to live in America than Ireland, particularly if one were female or gay.

Eugene Norman · 02-05-2015 04:38PM

folamh wrote: »

The facts might be selective, but that doesn't mean they're not significant. They constitute valid reasons why one might prefer to live in America than Ireland, particularly if one were female or gay.

The gay thing is utter nonsense. Ireland will vote for gay marriage by popular vote in a few weeks.

Eugene Norman · 02-05-2015 04:39PM

Wompa1 wrote: »

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

The tax system?

I give you the landscape though.

Iwasfrozen · 02-05-2015 04:44PM

Geuze wrote: »

Their income per person is very high.

But, yes, their debts are also very high.

But the single biggest holder of US debt is the US itself who hold roughly 25% of the country's debt. Also don't forget America owns quite a lot of debt from other countries too, including China.

02-05-2015 04:49PM

Wompa1 wrote: »

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

Yea, but those aren't things that are specific to America though. What makes there good, the majority of countries have too.

As for variety .. I can't remember which comedian it was (maybe it was Dave Gorman, maybe it was someone else), but they had a line about this guy giving the exact same argument about variety .. as they leave one Starbucks and walk into the next down the street. With five others on the same one.

With regards to the healthcare, it is still a pretty screwed up system. Remember that story about the woman who had health insurance, was involved in an accident and knocked unconscious, so the ambulance brings her to a hospital that isn't covered by this, resulting in her filing for bankruptcy.
Can you think of any other country on Earth in which this could happen?

smurgen · 02-05-2015 06:14PM

Wompa1 wrote: »

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

Roads are better but that's about it.i like the added flexibility with banks and post office too.as regards quality of service I've always had great quality of service in Ireland,not false or insincere. The quality of food like dairy and meat in Ireland alone is higher than almost anywhere in the US.as regards scenic you're probably right also.
alaska is on my bucket list.i drove through the desert too all the way to vegas and found it beautiful too.the night sky away from the city lights is unbelievable.its like looking through a telescope into space. As regards entertainment I'm not too sure.vegas is one of the wildest places in the us and still the partying is pretty tame.i was in Boston one weekend during summer and the red sox were playing we went to see it and there wasn't a bar open after 1 in the city.if that was in Europe you'd find bars and clubs open til the early morning.the Americans just aren't as fun or spontaneous as Europeans in my experience while they like to portray the opposite image.

bnt · 02-05-2015 07:38PM

Egginacup wrote: »

:pac:

Are you for real? It went into the pockets of the shareholders of Raytheon, Grumman, General Dynamics, etc. The $10 that Halliburton was charging the Pentagon for a can of coke for a GI in Iraq or the $100 they were charging the Pentagon per kilogram of Army laundry, the bill then effectively fobbed off on the American taxpayer as part of the "defense budget", yeah that all went back into the economy and birthed endless jobs and opportunities instead of being funneled into Dick Cheney's Swiss bank account.

Did you even read my whole post? Too nuanced? Nowhere did I say it "all" went back in to the economy, I actually pointed out that it was inefficient and that there are better ways of doing it. Excessive executive remuneration in the USA is a whole topic of its own.

I don't know why I bother trying to describe reality in colours other than black and white, I really don't ... :P

metrosity · 04-05-2015 01:49AM

Eugene Norman wrote: »

The gay thing is utter nonsense. Ireland will vote for gay marriage by popular vote in a few weeks.

yeah, leave it to the liberal hipsters in Ireland to put gay marriage to the top of the priority queue. The country's basically dust.

Won't be long now before Irish people are labelled slackjawed pikeys by the new international upper class consisting mainly of Chinese and Indian nationals, who like to paint a picture of Irish people as lazy and incompetent for no other reason than to improve their own labor chances now that they feel they have enough power and connections to take you on and win at the slander game. After all, they have all the civil rights you have and more.

Manic Moran · 04-05-2015 03:32AM

steddyeddy wrote: »

I agree. It's a point very few people seem to grasp. If you select a select few to enter a school based on a non intrinsic value like parental wealth instead of intelligence then the quality of graduate isn't going to be optimal. It's the equivalent of selecting athletes based on parental wealth.

There's always a way of getting in, for those who apply themselves and deserve it. I'm dating a lass who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, inner-city Newark. (If you've been to Newark, you know what I'm talking about. I lasted about a half-hour when I visited a few years ago before deciding I wanted to be somewhere else). She worked her ass off, got a scholarship (academic, not sports) to a top university, took out student loans, which yes, she'll be paying back over time, but is now working for an AmLaw 100 firm earning clear into six figures her first year.

Or, you can do the Colin Powell technique, grow up in Harlem (inner city black lad, the system obviously is stacked against him, right?), join the Army, have the government pay college, and end up (a) running the US military, and (b) as Secretary of State.

Finally, just because you can afford Harvard or MIT doesn't mean they'll let you in. You still have to meet their academic standards, which are tough enough.

This is why it irks me to see people say that the good education is not accessible to all. It is, if you work at it. Is it fair that my GF had to pull two jobs and take out loans to get to where she's at, as opposed to someone else who just took daddy's chequebook? No. But she worked, and earned herself onto the right side of the tracks, and isn't that what the "American Dream" is about? The opportunity is there, if you go after it.

Junkyard Tom · 04-05-2015 03:46AM

Manic Moran wrote: »

The opportunity is there, if you go after it.

Delightful anecdotes aside, that opportunity appears to be getting more-and-more difficult to avail of in the land of the free where you have to pay for everything.

Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe.

nytimes.com

Manic Moran · 04-05-2015 04:10AM

smurgen wrote: »

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.

You're joking, right? What other system current or planned has the power projection capability of an aircraft carrier? Is there anything which says "We're paying attention" as a carrier battlegroup floating offshore?

As to the drones, it's not as if the US hasn't been paying attention to them. If you've not noticed, we're the largest users of the things. And, yes, they've managed to get some to take off, bomb a target and land from the aircraft carriers. But as of right now, manned aircraft are still the most capable. Besides, you can't jam a pilot. There's a reason they still teach soldiers how to use a map and compass, despite all the GPS and INS systems we have.

As to the cost of the things, yes, it's stupidly high, because it's an evolutionary, long-term program. (I've just had my 'procurement and equipping process' lessons recently, and it's god-awful to learn). Unfortunately, it's a result of the 'equitable and accountable system' we've set up. The US military is capable of getting good something fast and cheap if it has to, but the problem is that there's very little oversight with the system. As a result, the 'pot of money' available to things like the Rapid Fielding Initiative is kept very small by Congress. A long-term procurement program like F-35 is, unfortunately, saddled with reviews, milestones, competitions, appeals, more reviews, it's daft. Fair, but daft.

Finally, comments about how the US spends craploads on the military compared to other things like health or education miss two minor points.

Firstly, the military is 16% of the annual federal budget. As opposed to 27% for healthcare, or 33% on living subsidies (Unemployment, social security)1 (2015 figures) So if you think we're spending a lot on weapons, how much are we spending on healthcare?

Secondly, there's more than one government in the US. Only one of them is responsible for national defense, the Federal government (Indeed, of all the things the US government spends money on, defense is about the only significant expense it's -supposed- to spend money on as per the Constitution. Everything else has been tacked on over the years). But the States are responsible for lots. As a result, you'll see that the military budget for, say, my home State of California is 0.1% of the State's $113bn budget, (About $169m) but California spends some $61bn (54%) on education, and $24bn (21.3%) on health. (Figures from ebudget.ca.gov).

So before lambasting the US military budget, bear in mind that pensions, education, and healthcare all get higher government spending in total than the military does. Don't just look at the federal budget. Education or health isn't even the federal government's job.

Junkyard Tom · 04-05-2015 04:34AM

Manic Moran wrote: »

So before lambasting the US military budget, bear in mind that pensions, education, and healthcare all get higher government spending in total than the military does.

How the hell do you place using public money for education, health, and senior citizens on the same moral footing as funding war/militarism?

How does that work exactly?

Manic Moran · 04-05-2015 04:36AM

Junkyard Cat wrote: »

Delightful anecdotes aside, that opportunity appears to be getting more-and-more difficult to avail of in the land of the free where you have to pay for everything.

Article discusses effect, but not cause. We're not Canada, and the lack of upward mobility probably has to do with more features than how good the education system is. As it says, "the causes of America’s mobility problem are a topic of dispute" For example, we incarcerate an unGodly number of our poorer adolescents. We also seem to have an unGodly number of them join gangs, which probably correlates with the incarceration. As to why they join the gangs, I don't know, but presumably it was a choice to do so. Once they go down that path, through incarceration, they get hosed.

Junkyard Cat wrote: »

How the hell do you place using public money for education, health, and senior citizens on the same moral footing as funding war/militarism?

How does that work exactly?

Do you dispute that the military is one of the fundamental responsibilities of a national government?

Junkyard Tom · 04-05-2015 04:44AM

Manic Moran wrote: »

Do you dispute that the military is one of the fundamental responsibilities of a national government?

Defence would be one of the fundamental responsibilities of a national government not war. What state is anywhere near invading the US? None.

Manic Moran · 04-05-2015 05:08AM

Junkyard Cat wrote: »

Defence would be one of the fundamental responsibilities of a national government not war. What state is anywhere near invading the US? None.

Nobody was near invading the US in WWII, yet I don't think people would object to the fact that the US spent more on the military than any other nation.

National interest, to include overseas operations on anything from full-scale war to disaster relief, are the function of the military. Not just domestic territorial defense.

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

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