THis is why no one can take you seriously when you say such a one sided, exaggerated article is a good essay.. Stop being such a blind far left extremist.
You seem to be living off random generalizations and pure PATRIOTISM YAYYYYYY instead of actually providing some meaningful examples.
Actually with the advent of GMOs and some other issues relating to food choices, along with the economics of organic products available to those of us who have money, it's not as free as it used to be 30 years ago and certainly not in the future.
There are plety of people willing to take this guy's spot. Very biased way of measuring "quality of life."
Random Generalizations? You mean like al the claims in the OP's article? Examples? You mean like the crappy examples in in the article? What meaning does that provide? That is one persons opinion and experience. Another persons experience could be the total opposite. Which is what I was trying to convey. Do we have problems and issues? YES WE DO. But SO DOES EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.. Someone in Italy or Finland or the UK could easily write and there are thousands out there already a article blasting their healthcare system. You cant satisfy everyone. You will always have someone complaining. Have I had bad experiences with our health system? Yes I have and I am sure we all have.. But in the end of the day America is still one of the greatest countries and places to live.. You think those countries the article mentions is a utopia? Trust me there are just as many people there complaining about how crappy their health care system and how stressed they are and how they worry about their finances and fear of being bankrupt. Just look at the Euro now.. Look at Japan's fiscal crisis.. there is a reason why Japan has the highest suicide rates in the developed world. ANyways I have gone off topic but see what Im saying? We all have our problems.. How is that blind patriotism, I call it being reasonable.
Thanks. The truth is the US has continued to outstrip just about every other developed country economically. Glynch and others can go live in Greece if they like...
What most people around the world (in developed countries) critique about the US is that having the #1 GDP, per-capita income, salary level is irrelevant. [Generalization rant] What's the point of having a six figure salary when you're allowed 2 weeks vacation only? A lot of one's income goes to payments for a house, a fast-depreciating car, insurance, student loans, and health care. We send our kids to run-down public schools, eat fast food bad for us and the environment, etc. Not to mention that most of us in the top 5% income-bracket work incredibly long hours, who see little of our families, have barely enough time to watch movies or read books, and think that nominative income levels has anything to do with subjective/hard to quantify real-world happiness. I go to countries like Canada, Luxembourg, and Australia and see an entirely different sort of life. Unfortunately, a lot of those high-stds of living countries have tried to emulate the US since the 1980s while trying to stay the way they are and this is one of the contributing factors to any unrest or complaints that've resulted because of that. Countries like Iceland were SO close, but they drank our Kool-Aid and their economy was destroyed.
I don't remember calling those countries utopia and I still don't see you provide anything substantial. I also wouldn't call everything the OP article listed as his "personal" experience, there are some valid concerns in there. Listing other countries' problems don't magically make ours go away. Unless your main concern is to constantly compare yourself to people in poorer condition, instead of actually living a healthy and fulfilling life yourself.
The writer of this article makes a huge mistake here. It's that what he criticizes America for isn't really so much as our gov't but our culture. We're a puritanical, hard-working group of people. We don't take 2 weeks of vacation because we can't afford to take more, it's because we're freakin workaholics across the board. That's what Americans do..they work hard. We don't take pills because we're some medicated lab animal - we do it because we want instant gratifications. We work so damn hard we can't stand to wait for anything. That means every problem needs an instant cure. And instant fix. Whether it be an oil spill or dinner, we want everything done now versus done well. That's what differeniates us from Europeans / Austrailians. We don't travel to Nepal not because we don't have the money or time, it's because we don't care to. We'd rather go to the beach and fry. I'm sick and tired of Europeans looking down upon us. They are more racist, lazier, and not any brighter. We school them in sports and business (except for soccer) and out produce them. Great, they get to spend more time sitting drinking beer? Actually they don't. All the Europeans I know who are successful work just as hard as we do.
In elementary school the teachers repeatedly informed my parents and I that I was ADHD. They were insistent that I needed medication. My parents and some outside parties decided that I was just bored with the slowness of the school system. Who ended up being right? Well I graduated top 10% of my class and went on to attend a top 20 business school with a scholarship - without medication. I say this not to brag (heck, I'm just a mediocre guy in the midst of a lot of smart people here), but to suggest that teachers may overreact. I absolutely believe medication is over-prescribed (over-prescribed being an atrocious understatement).
America is probably the best country overall for the upper 1%. Very good for the top 10%. Good for the top 25% in the US. Probably even comparable to the top 90% in Sweden or Norway. Sucks big time for the lower say te lower 33%. I know, OMG discussing this question by sorting the population by income or wealth (class warfare and a quick road to a communist dictatorship!!). Besides the lower 33% have it worse in Botswana or the Sudan or even China or Russia, but is this really who we want to compare ourselves to?
I think the article makes a lot of valid points. A lot of them we are just scared to admit to ourselves - particularly the diets. When you think about all the crap we eat... it aint pretty. Europe does have better food in general. And the produce? I lived in Brazil for a few years... produce here tastes like soap compared to the flavors of real fruit. Also our economic outlook is far from rosy. I say as long as we're being criticized and have weaknesses let's own up to them, we should be constantly striving to improve rather than plugging our ears and reminding them that we're the best.
Never changes. I remember "America love it or leave it" by the same crowd who was into killing a couple of million Vietnamese and 50, 000 plus American draftees to keep Vietnam from becoming a place for American tourists and business today.
Great post full of good points. I'd only suggest that the income spent on a big house and a fast-depreciating car is almost always the consumers fault. I have ranted many times about Americans' inability to buy houses and cars intelligently - and sadly those two objects make up most of the equity in a mid to lower tier income household. I'm not sure where you're going with the whole 'kool-aid' thing so I'll leave that alone.
This reminds me of a project that we did in my history class, we had to compare the US and an african country, in my case Egypt, what really bloew me away was that despite major economic and development differences, Egypt's life expentancy was only 5 years less then ours.
This. I will not lie when I know how damn fortunate I am to be in the income bracket I am, and that's just as an individual. According to the 2005 Census Bureau, there's only a few other thousand in my shoes. Out of the billions on earth, the tiny size of this group can't even fill a third of Toyota Center... Michael Moore, as polarizing of a figure as he is, made a great point in Capitalism: A Love Story that the top income earners sell this idea of the American dream to the bottom 99% of the income pyramid. Everyone at the bottom is jumping around and hoping for that promised piece of life-pie, but ending up with the leftover crumbs thrown away. Whether it's defending that Americans are workaholics (they're not, it's behavior that's learned in capitalist society) or denouncing other countries based on their economic benchmarks. I love America. But I don't love what it has become, especially since the early 80s. Our income distribution is extremely skewed and this disparity has only increased dramatically in the last 10 years. This is just one of hundreds of problems facing our nation today. Unfortunately, the message has been dominated by those who have the most to lose (top 1%) and ironically the people at the bottom have decided to support them.
