roachboy

a commie?
what decade is this?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

retsuki03

Origin: http://www.austinchronicle.com/issue...s_ventura.html

Calling him a commie was not meant as an attack. It is a characterization of his views. Perhaps I should have said socialist or "progressive."

Like I said before, most of the statistics cited don't bother me. Like the literacy statistic. With the sheer number of immigrants we have in America who don't even speak English, I am actually surprised we manage a 97% literacy rate. Wow, France with virtually no immigration is at 99%, sound the alarm.

filtherton

Well, perhaps if you didn't use it as an attack... There are differences between commies, socialists, and progressives.

How do you feel about the fact that we spend the most on healthcare, yet our overall quality rating is 37th? That puts us no doubt well behind many other countries with universal health care.

alansmithee

It's becoming less true, but the profit motive will ensure that America always is near the top of innovation. Where else can companies make as much on their developments?

That makes no sense whatsoever. It's like saying you can't make the best cars if everyone can't afford them. People from countries worldwide fly to America to take advantage of the immense benefits of American medical facilities.

Quality of facilities has nothing to do with the state of health of a country. State of health has to do with access to facilities. For those who can afford it, America has the best medical treatment available.

That's your mesurement. But from a historical perspective, that might not be the best way to measure a country's greatness. Might Europe be a better place to live for average people? Almost undoubtedly.

Europe seems to have tied their fate to the "average" person. They ensure that most people will have some minimum standards, standards that are higher than America's. The tradeoff is that they will have fewer that are at the high end. And less people who are at the high end will seek Europe, because they will be pulled back to the pack. America takes a much more cutthroat approach which allows for higher levels of success.

And another problem with America adopting European standards is the immigrant burden that is faced by America. Europe restricts immigration far more than does America, hence they can offer more to their citizens without risking financial ruin. America's more open door policy (and the illegals that are largely ignored) would even further hurt the economy if they were to implement much of Europe's social programs.

Charlatan

I keep hearing the terms "burden of immigration", etc. Immigration is what America and Canada are about. Without immigration our collective populations would be in decline.

It isn't a burden. It's something to celebrate.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Manx

Of course it makes sense. It makes so much sense, your second paragraph there just reiterated it.

You might make the most bestest fantastic car in the world. And one person might have it. That doesn't make the automotive industry of your country better than the automotive industry of some other country.
What historical perspective would show that to evaluate the quality of life for the average person within a country it is best to measure the quality of life of the atypical of a country?
There ya go, then.
You say average like it's a bad thing. Almost everyone is average. The aggregate of a society where almost everyone that you know or will ever know has a high quality life is simply better than the aggregate of a society where almost everyone you know or will ever know has a low quality life. The benefit of living in a country that has slightly more atypical people is next to nothing in comparison to the benefit of living in a country that has a higher quality of life for your own self.

Of course, everything I just said is nonsense if you believe you will someday achieve the "American Dream" and find yourself at the top of America, and by virtue, the top of the world. Because if you did get to that point, you'd be better off living in America - you'd be able to afford access to the highly exclusive supreme healthcare, you'd be able to afford access to the highly exclusive supreme education for your children, etc. etc. etc.

But there's a reason that phrase has the word Dream in it. Because it's a mythical achievement. You won't have access to the benefits you attribute to America. So you will find that your life is lower quality than it would have been had you lived in Europe.

NCB

Exactly.

True commis never really exisited, progressives are socialists who are afraid to be called such, and socialists are....socialists

__________________

sob

Well, since the bottom 50% pay no income taxes, and in fact, often receive EIC funds, it's going to be difficult to verify your statement that "the top 10% of americans pay a smaller percentage of their income than everyone else."

But I'd like to see you try.

sob

You left out the former Soviet Union and Mexico. Oh, that's right.

Personally, I think it's a great deal more multifactorial than how extensive the social programs of a country are.

KMA-628

It can't be proven with payroll taxes. This is a made-up argument based on made-up information.

However, the "everyone else" is so vague, that it could be shown to be true depending on how you play with the numbers and depending on which taxes you account for.

Our tax system was never meant to be proportional--that is not the basis of our system. If you want some type of redistributionist system, look somewhere else, ours isn't designed that way - it was designed to financially support the gov't, nothing more.

People making around $30,000 a year or less don't pay squat in payroll taxes.

People making $600,000 a year pay six-figures in payroll taxes (then you add in all their other taxes--not the stuff you and I pay on a daily basis, but stuff like capital gains, etc.)

Simple math tells me that a good proportion (no clue how many) pay a smaller percentage of their payroll taxes than the lucky 10%.

__________________
Before you criticize someone, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. That way, if they get angry at you.......you're a mile away.......and they're barefoot.

filtherton

Are you trying deliberately not to add anything of substance? Or is it accidental?

Hardknock

Makes me want to immigrate. Really.

DJ Happy

It was a serious question. I didn't ask why you love your country - most people have serious and unquantifiable national pride concerning their home countries. I asked why you think it's the greatest.

I come from South Africa. While I love it to bits, I'm certainly not under the illusion that it's the greatest nation on earth. Having traveled a fair bit around the world, I have to say that I regard Australia and the UK as being among the greatest.

So why do you (or anyone) think the US is the greatest?

NCB

Our freedom, our generosity, and the fact that people from such diverse backgrounds can come together and consider themselves proud Americans

NCB

On a related note. Cuba now tops in giving away pressure cookers to women. BTW, the irony in this story is that he made the announcement on the eve on Interntl Women's Rights Day.

Castro to Distribute Pressure Cookers

29 minutes ago World - AP Latin America


By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer

HAVANA - Pressure cookers and rice steamers, essential tools of the Cuban kitchen, are the new weapons in Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s latest battle to reassert control over the nation's economy.



During a 5 1/2-hour speech broadcast on state TV, Castro said 100,000 pressure cookers would be made available each month — an announcement that underscored the communist country's continued retreat toward greater political and economic centralism.


The move "will do away with the rustic kitchen," Castro told the Federation of Cuban Women on Tuesday night, saying the new cookers would use half the energy of the homemade ones they will replace.


The program could wipe out what has become a popular, and in most cases legal, private business that uses molds to make pressure cookers from cheap aluminum. Although imported cookers are sold in stores for about $25 — more than the average Cuban earns in a month — homemade ones cost about $5.50.


At subsidized prices, the government-distributed cookers will cost about the same as the homemade ones. And the government's cookers can be paid for in monthly installments.

__________________

Manx

That is the pure marketing line.

Tide's marketing line is that they're the best laundry detergent. But I don't use Tide because I've found it can sometimes leave oil spots on my clothes. Cheer also says they're the best, and it just so happens that I use Cheer - so they must be right.

NCB

Hey, I admitted in the post above you that we are clearly not the best. We don't give away rice cookerrs to our people. The humanity!!

__________________

flstf

My father was a foreman and worked on the Tide towers at P&G. He told us that Tide and Cheer were the same except for some blue dye. This was probably 20 years ago, they may be different now.

Manx

Ha!

I may also be a fool for succumbing to basic brand differentiation.

Charlatan

Aren't we all... after all... we're soaking in it.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

splck

You can slap that little jingo on quite a few countries around the world.

I've lived in a third world country for quite a few years and the one thing that was constant was, despite the shortcomings of their country, they thought it was great and they loved it. To them, it was the greatest country in the world.
Just because you think your country is best in the world, doesn't make it so.

On that note....Yay Canada!, the greatest nation on Earth!!

__________________
nice line eh?

NCB

Hmmm, not sure you can say that most 3rd world countires are generous and tolerant of their diversity (If they have any, of course). My experience in third world countries is limited to deployments in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and they fall in neither category.


On that note....yay Canada!! The second greatest country on Earth
As a sort of confession, if I had the opp to live in BC, I'd jump at it in a sec. But don't tell anyone

__________________

filtherton

Unless, of course, you're gay, of middle eastern descent, not white(in many places), not christian(in many places), not conservative/liberal(in many places)...

roachboy

or if you fall on the wrong side of the brutal class divisions which are increasingly characteristic of the realilty of american social life--and particularly of its systems of social reproduction. for example. and the horatio alger response does not fly: class divisions in the states are basic structural features of how the american system works. conservatives tend to see them as evidence of some kind of moral divide--in which they are simply delusional--but it does have an appeal: it is always easier of you can blame the victims of a brutal system for the problems that system creates. that way you can pretend the system itself is perfect and explain away the divisions. that and it does not require a whole lot of thought.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

irateplatypus

stick to your particular brand of marxism RB. you have absolutely no idea how conservatives think.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

roachboy

i suppose not, irate:
maybe you are right: maybe reading the right press, researching conservative websites, reading conservative ideological tracts, listening to right radio and from time to time sitting through faux news broadcasts etc. and wasting my time in debates with conservativees gives me no access to how conservative ideology spins particular issues.
this is obviously an exclusive club, the american right.
sustained research is obviously not enough.

maybe it is a secret society, open only to initiates.
do you get a decoder ring when you join irate?
or is that a secret too?

on another note:
what makes you think i am a marxist?
because i mention class and do not immediately shift to blaming the poor for their poverty?
or is it because i mention class at all?

tsk tsk, bringing up such an ugly and pervasive fact of american life when all that some folk really want here is a moment to retreat into patriotic fantasy.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

irateplatypus

i never said the "club" was exclusive... just that you aren't a part of it. i realize that can sound like a personal attack without benefit of verbal or facial expression. please do not take it so.

as to the marxism comment: your language takes the shape of a marxist, even though you seem to believe that it (marxism) is dead for all intents and purposes. my perception that you subscribe to a type of marxism is both a personal observation and taken from your own words found here

and here

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

roachboy

irate: on the personal attack part--no problem. apologies for having take it as such.

on the other: it is an analytic position that is often kinda helpful in particular, highly controlled ways. nothing more. it provides no coherent way of thinking about how capitalism has reorganized itself since 1860, so as a whole operates more as a model for a particular type of theory than anything else. so your point--which seemed to me a bit of redbaiting--is moot.

sorry if you dont like the language--i suspect that what you really dont like is talking about the fact of class divisions in the states and the ways in whcih those divisions are reproduced--by sacrficing the potential of millions of children whose parents happen to live in poorer areas of the country. the point about differential access to resources has been made earlier here as well: manx was talking about it during a particular crescendo of flagwaving...you probably didnt like that either.
social reality is much harder to look at than some prefabircated red white and blue shangri-la.
but if one looks at social realities, it does not follow that they hate america. they just see it for what it is.
you would think that would be understood as a useful thing.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Hardknock

Bravo.......

irateplatypus

you're welcome to your own position RB. but again, i would hesitate (were i in your position) to think you can speak for the conservative side of the coin. you may propose that the result of conservative doctrine would be this or that, but your analysis of conservative philosophy and motivation are simply false.

conservatives, by and large, do not ascribe a moral failure to those in poverty. however, they do describe any sense of entitlement from poor and rich as immoral.

in a free society driven by a free market some would say that the poor are exploited by the rich. many conservatives would counter that they, instead, are sustained by them.

to say that conservatives consider the system perfect is preposterous. there are class divisions... but why do you think that class divisions are evidence of a failure in the system? as long as some men work harder than others, as long as some men are smarter than others there will always be class divisions. a moral and just society will have class divisions, but these divisions will be based along lines of personal achievement not entitlement and privilege. our society is not up to that ideal yet.

a great way to give impoverished kids a chance in life would be for their family's tax dollars to be redirected (at their parent's request) to a private school instead of their local public warzone school. of course, we all know who proposed that and who shot it down.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

splck

With your conservative views, you'd be going nuts if you lived here.... But then again, living here might just change your stance on many issues...come on up and enjoy.

__________________
nice line eh?

MSD

I'm not egotistical enough to say that we're the absolute best, but we're partying on the top floor with the big guys.

Some of my big plusses
-I'm free to practice any religion (or in my case, lack thereof) without the government telling me I can't.
-I'm free to criticize the government in pretty much any non-threatening way I want, and they cannot legally stop me unless I'm violating the rights of others (although there is a frightening trend of declining freedom of speech, we do not have laws in place forbidding our media from criticizing the Royal Family, nor do we have a Royal Family. I see this as a good thing.)
-I'm free to arm myself for the purposes of defending myself against any threat from any source, as long as I am able to pass basic competency tests. This is more than can be said for much of the world.
-If I work hard, I can get an education, begin a sucessful career, and live comfortably with the wealth I have earned.


I know there are downsides, and I'm not the type to be blinded by flag-waving and chants of "We're number one!" so I'll list a few major negatives
-We have begun to display an alarming trend of sliding back into the puritanical pit from which we emerged. We are far behind Europe in social openness and tolerance
-We still allow the views of traditionalist religious groups to take precedence over our guarantees of equality, and deny full legal protection to some who are looked down on by these traditionalists.
-Our public education system is in serious need of a complete overhaul in order to bring us up to speed with the rest of the developed world. When only 27% of the country believes in evolution and over 60% think that creationism should be taught in schools, there's a problem. There's also the estimated 30%+ illeteracy rate.
-We still allow human rights abuses in our own country, and we do not take human rights into consideration when choosing foreign trading partners.
-Contrary to what the two sides of the political spectrum tell you, our monopolized media is dominated mainly by a self-interested bias, and does not provide us with an accurate representation of what is really happening.
-Until we make drastic changes, we are stuck with a national two-party political system, with third parties rarely appearing on anything above the local scale. Like the media, these parties are solely self-interested and do not represent the people.


As for the original article, it reeks of pro-EU bias, and I understand, although I don't quite completely agree with, the poster who called the author a Communist (I think that Socialist would be more appropriate, and that's still an ideology that I disagree with.)

joeshoe

I think every developed nation considers itself #1. I'm sure if you go to Britain, or France, or Japan, people from each country will say that they're the best country.


Actually, Americans work a lot more compared to Western European countries, for better or worse. It often seems like corporations own their employees. In European countries, people have a lot more leisure time, holidays, etc. that are mandated by the government.

host

irate, as you write those great sounding phrases, our conservative congress is voting to change the chapter 7 bankruptcy filing rules, which will have the effect of selling out their own debtor class constituents. These politicians largely come from the states with the highest per capita chapter 7 filings. They are voting against the near term economic security of their local economies, trading $40 million in contributions from financial corporations, for yes votes on this bill. This is corporate welfare, and a sellout of the majority of their constituents.

The working class and the poor have no influence or political representation from their conservative politicians. They serve business interests and high net worth individuals.

Superbelt

I wonder, if, taken by themselves.... (and removing the federal money surplus they get [i.e. no TVA]) Would some of our poorer states be considered "developing nations"

Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee....
They are, I believe, something that pull many of our rankings on filtherton's list down so far.

NCB

Using that logic, you can also make a case that some third world countries (using only a properous area/city) are more developed than some states like MI, NY, and MN.

__________________

Charlatan

This is one of the most reasoned responses on this thread... There is a lot to be proud of in the US (not to say that other nations don't have similar freedoms and laws).

Ultimately what this whole discussion comes down to is again (and I've said this in other threads) the EQUALTIY vs. FREEDOM debate.

The redistribution of wealth that occurs through taxation is seen by many in the world as a good thing. It allows the greater majority of a nation up to a higher standard of living. It brings services to the poorer elements of society.

The great American experiment of personal liberty above everything has been embrased by many. The myth that anyone can be President, wealthy, famous, whatever, if they just work hard is the great American dream. The reverse of this is that many people will never achieve that dream no matter how hard they try.

It is just a matter of how you look at it... some feel that "socialist reform" and the slide towards a more equality will lead to the proverbial "lead weights on dancers feet" (i.e. no one can be better than anyone else). I don't think anyone is advocating that sort of extreme here.

It is just a matter of what system you think works best.

The free market types would leave all of this up to the market to decide. In an ideal world that might work but there is that nasty human condition of greed and avarice that always steps in ruins it for everyone else. This is where responsible government has a place. For example: without seat belt laws would cars be safer today? Probably. But would that change have happened as fast as it did? Probably not. This analogy can be extended to all sort of reforms that the free market would never consider because of what it would do to the bottom line in the short term.

There's the rub. Short term. The free market rarely thinks into the future unless it is forced to do so? It is cheaper to dump toxic waste in the river than it is to treat it properly.

It all depends on how you look at things and where your personal priorities lay.

/end rant because I'm not sure I'm making sense.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Superbelt

I brought this up because you (i believe) singled out some EU nations.

Our states are meant to be semi-autonomous. It's apples to oranges to go another step and separate out urban to rural in another nation.

I also bring this up to show that there are some seriously bad places to live in this country. Places that, if they weren't propped up by other states aid would be no better.

squirrelyburt

I'm not understanding why there is so much hatred toward the country you live in!! No, we aren't perfect, but why base your negativity on statistics? I recently heard that America has more people in prison than nearly all other countries in the world. This is because other countries kill people for much lesser offenses!!! Just one of the quirks you can be hateful for. Anyone ever been caught shoplifting? Be thankful you aren't caught in the middle east the next time you use both hands. I hate that. Remember the American kid that got lashed/whipped in the Phillipines when he got caught for vandalism? Betcha he hated that.

Thus endeth my rant. God bless America.

__________________
If you've ever felt there was a reason to be afraid of the dark, you were right.

NCB

Have you ever been to a third world nation and seen what they live in? I'm not talking about the rest room in Senor Frogs in Cancun or Paradise Isle in the Bahamas either.

Those folks live in some serious squaler and to think that if it wern't for the federal govt and their money, some states would be no different is insane.

__________________