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America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

Velvet Elvis said:
"Health Care" is not the end-all-be-all indicator of how "great" a country is.
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Try getting in a car accident and not having health insurance because no one will sell it to you. Then come back and say how it's not one of the best indicators of the quality of the country you live in.

Norway's government practically rapes their citizens in taxation. Same as Sweden. You want a TV in your house? Pay taxes on it. You want a tennis court in your park? You pay taxes (and for court time). Norway pays their citizens much worse that the U.S. does. All grocery stores in Scandinavia are of poor quality, and do a poor job of food management. Scandinavian governments are notorious for banning things they (the government) deem harmful or inappropriate to the plebes. Health care in these countries is actually hit-or-miss. If you're critically in need of medical assistance...yes, it's good. If it's a simple visit to the doctor...that's almost impossible, unless you're willing to wait 8 months to get in.
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https://www.thelocal.no/20160316/norway-is-the-worlds-fourth-happiest-country

In every single index available, Norway ranks high among the nations with the happiest people in the world.

There is MUCH more opportunity for personal success in the United States as in any other country. Unfortunately, we're moving away from personal success, in favor of civil servitude to an overbearing government. We've gone from "I want to be rich when I grow up" to "I want to be dependent on my government!"
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We've gone from that vapid idealization to realizing that the vast majority of us will never be rich. "You can be anything you want" is a lie that has lead to disillusion for so many Americans. So Americans are growing up and beginning to wonder just how to make their day to day lives better. We work more hours than anyone yet we receive less benefits for it than any other advanced nation on the planet. That sucks. It really does.

F-that. Go move there if you hate the U.S. this much. Oh...by the way...in the U.S. you still have the freedom to move to other 2nd world countries that totally suck (but hey! We'll keep you alive!).
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If I was 18 years old and knew then what I knew now, I would have moved to one of the Scandinavian nations. At this age though, with three kids, the youngest almost 18 now, it's too late. If I would have known what seething pit of regression this nation would become, I would have learned how to speak Swedish and gotten the F out. But now I'm stuck here with you.
 
I guess everyone hates the Yankees except Yankee fans.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
NoLeftNoRight said:
No, but events from 1946 and earlier had profound effects on where we are today regardless.
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And just how long are they expected to bow down to the U.S.?

France backed us in the revolutionary war. Should we still be kissing their backside? After all, without their help, the U.S. may never have even existed. Spain loaned America money to help us fight the British and they opened up naval fronts in the Caribbean, which diverted British resources there during that war. So should we still owe some great solemn debt to them because of what they did?

The answer of course is that we no longer owe them for it. Time has passed and the world has changed.
 
Ganesh said:
You would have had a good starting point by reading my post, but if that is too tedious, I'll supply a further outline.

1) Free markets are basically self-regulating. Not perfect, no, but work well without supervision, and are the best system we have.

Free markets are not self-regulating, in any significant way that is relevant to macroeconomics, they only work within a public policy framework, and are demonstrably not the ideal system for economic organization, but rather a blend of public policy and limited market freedom has proved historically to be much more functional.

2) It is a good idea to see wealth distributed upwards, to the most affluent, because they are the job creators, and the entrepreneurs that really create wealth in society.

It is a bad idea to skew incomes in any such fashion. The most successful societies in the past and today are those that promote a large middle class. Jobs are not necessarily created by the wealthy, or entrepreneurs, or businessmen. In fact today it is more profitable to eliminate jobs through automation, or allow only low paid service jobs in very many aspects of our society today, due to prevailing economic and technological trends. There are actually few in the rentier class that have much or any incentive to create jobs on any scale that would be significant to US society today.

Upwards distribution of wealth in fact has many negatives, as we have seen. Idle and excess capital, tends to, like errant teens, find trouble to get into if more positive outlets for it cannot be found. That is why we have seen so many financial bubbles in recent years. Lots of money sloshing around, looking for a home.

3) Government is like a business. It should balance the books, not overspend, and show a good bottom line.

Government is most demonstrably not a business. Sovereign governments make laws, and create money, which sets them apart from the business world. Government's role is to be a referee, to try and create an equitable society, and doing this may mean injecting any amount of funds into society if it is deemed necessary ( and removing them also if and when appropriate)

4) Anyone can get a good job, and get rich if they want, if not they are just lazy hippies and layabouts.

Our economy is undergoing vast change, and already we are at a point where all citizens are simply not needed in the workforce, at least not in any meaningful way. That is why work is forever being downgraded to WalMart or other McJobs, or at the top end becoming ever more competitive. It is becoming nearly impossible for young people to obtain the professional career they may desire, and this trend will accelerate in the future. This will take a sea change in thinking to deal with.

Just off the top of my head, those are a few items from the basket of nonsense in question, and the reasons why they are nonsense. There is a longer list, but by now I'm sure you are wiping the spittle off your chin, and pounding the keyboard with an uber-right rebuttal. Pound away.
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Who are these "right wingers" and where did you get all of the above claims you are trying to debunk? Is Trump one of them? If so, how about quotes or links?

Or, are you debunking your own creations?

I personally know about three major "right wing" claims Trump and the conservatives make that moron liberals - sorry for being redundant - hate:

1. No city, no state and not the feds can run deficits forever without going bankrupt. Your "prosperity" is an illusion and is debt-based. Debt is not bad if you have the means to pay it back. Your problem is that nobody has a clue how to pay it off without printing boatloads of new money, which simply means stealing from the savers.

2. No nation ever survived with open borders and uncontrolled migration. Your dream candidate, the first president with vagina - wants both. Conservatives and Trump want neither. Many Americans are unemployed because they don't speak Spanish.

3. Wealth is created only three ways: agriculture, mining and manufacturing. The eco-fascists are shutting down mining. Your short-sighted tax system sends your manufacturing jobs abroad, thus killing the tax base that leads to unsustainable deficits. Your country has become nothing but a receptacle for the surplus people nobody wants, producing nothing that anybody wants to buy. Apple, for example, is just an office as all of their gizmos are made in China. Even engineering is done abroad or by the 41B imported slave labor after they are trained by the about-to-be fired Americans.

You are welcome to debunk those or is what I just wrote too deep?
 
Opopanax said:
Try getting in a car accident and not having health insurance because no one will sell it to you.
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No, actually...as a responsible member of society, I have my own insurance. ...and I've not been in a car accident bad enough to cause that kind of bodily damage..

In every single index available, Norway ranks high among the nations with the happiest people in the world.
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Then leave us unhappy people alone and ship off for Norway then! They'd LOVE your tax money.

We've gone from that vapid idealization to realizing that the vast majority of us will never be rich. "You can be anything you want" is a lie that has lead to disillusion for so many Americans. So Americans are growing up and beginning to wonder just how to make their day to day lives better.
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No...People "like you" have given up. Get out of the way of us more ambitious people. McDonalds is always hiring.

We work more hours than anyone yet we receive less benefits for it than any other advanced nation on the planet. That sucks. It really does.
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If you would have stayed in school, and made yourself more marketable to employers, perhaps you wouldn't work so many hours saying "do you want fries with that?"

If I was 18 years old and knew then what I knew now, I would have moved to one of the Scandinavian nations. At this age though, with three kids, the youngest almost 18 now, it's too late. If I would have known what seething pit of regression this nation would become, I would have learned how to speak Swedish and gotten the F out. But now I'm stuck here with you.
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Sounds like it's rough having to sleep in the bed you made for yourself. Don't worry...you MIGHT have some social security when you decide to retire from McDonalds.
 
Tigerace117 said:
Whelp, without us;

Iceland would probably be, at best, a floating airstrip for Nazi Germany

Singapore would be part of the tender embraces of the Japanese Empire

Sweden would be a Nazi or Soviet puppet

Andorra would have been annexed

The U.K. would have been starved into submission . . . . .
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Of course if Europe had fallen to the Nazis and inevitably the Soviet Union thereafter, America would not be what it is today either - it would have been conquered in turn. The US needed allies, friends, neutrals, rivals-of-rivals and enemies-of-enemies every bit as much as we needed the US. That's still the case today.
 
Ganesh said:
No, it is more like a summary of events during the time period you have raised. More millions have been raised out of poverty by China in recent years than at any time in history. It has done this in a very different fashion than the "American approach"- setting economic goals by a top-down, authoritarian regime, manipulating its currency to encourage exports, by not allowing people to buy anything they want, but indeed by holding down wages and redirecting wealth into designated areas, in order to industrialize and set the stage for a middle class emergence.

The other so called Asian Tigers also followed their own logic, and raised tariffs and protected target industries in order to reep long term gain. State and industry were considered partners, and a hands off approach to a free market was never in the cards.

It's no surprise really, because the US did the same things during its formative years. It is only today that ideas like unrestricted flows of capital, deregulation, and unrestricted markets are promoted strongly as the correct way, and that is because they have favored the stronger economy, or at least a fortunate few within those economies.

The US is falling behind today because of a handful at the apex of economic and political power who want to peddle a bag of right wing nonsense, one that secures their wealth in an admirable fashion, but gives the masses the sort of survey results that are quoted here in the OP.
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Where you go wrong is, when you see all the detail and it blocks the rules governing them as they seem to fall into place by different process. And you would be right in a human story way. Germans were very proud of their "Wirtschaftswunder". And the each worked hard and struggled and took risks to make it happen. And they beat out the French and Italiens in this process. But so did the Japanese. These two were the first in the long row of countries. Each experienced their unique path to find out how to ship to the US that was allowing people that succeeded to do so. How the gravy train worked was interesting at the individual level, but it was always the same mechanism that far outstripped the development programs that were in fact usually hopeless, sometimes harmful and often only instruments used as alibis to show one was being moral. And this was well known. When the US and China started down the road of commerce and the US opened its market, it was the development that we have seen that was the calculated reason behind it. It was the opposite to a sanctions regime self imposed or other.

When you allow your people to buy anything they want from a country, then you teach the fisherman how to fish and give him a market to sell them on. That does not mean the fisherman does not have to make the effort and that it is hard work. But it works, because you show him how and buy his produce.
 
joG said:
Where you go wrong is, when you see all the detail and it blocks the rules governing them as they seem to fall into place by different process. And you would be right in a human story way. Germans were very proud of their "Wirtschaftswunder". And the each worked hard and struggled and took risks to make it happen. And they beat out the French and Italiens in this process. But so did the Japanese. These two were the first in the long row of countries. Each experienced their unique path to find out how to ship to the US that was allowing people that succeeded to do so. How the gravy train worked was interesting at the individual level, but it was always the same mechanism that far outstripped the development programs that were in fact usually hopeless, sometimes harmful and often only instruments used as alibis to show one was being moral. And this was well known. When the US and China started down the road of commerce and the US opened its market, it was the development that we have seen that was the calculated reason behind it. It was the opposite to a sanctions regime self imposed or other.

When you allow your people to buy anything they want from a country, then you teach the fisherman how to fish and give him a market to sell them on. That does not mean the fisherman does not have to make the effort and that it is hard work. But it works, because you show him how and buy his produce.
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Free-market economies are quite similar to evolution in some ways: Millions of economic units just doing their jobs to scrape by, but thousands of them also trying wild new ways to get ahead. Most of those thousands fail, but some succeed and the results can be quite spectacular.

I don't think any reasonable person denies that economic freedom is a hugely important component of success in the modern world. But by the same token it would only be pure dogmatism to assert that economic regulation is always bad. I don't think you're saying that of course (any more than others say that regulation is always good). The reality is that as a general rule the most successful national economic policies are those which encourage key infant industries and protect them from more advanced international competitors until they're in a position to successfully compete. Intra-national competition helps ensure the most viable companies succeed, but directly pitting infant domestic industries against foreign competitors with far more experience, capital, established markets and economies of scale to draw on would all but guarantee failure. Though undoubtedly there are exceptions.


Edit: It's worth noting that the relatively free market kind of policies we're talking about here would perhaps more accurately be called the Scottish approach than the American approach ;)
 
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Mithrae said:
Free-market economies are quite similar to evolution in some ways: Millions of economic units just doing their jobs to scrape by, but thousands of them also trying wild new ways to get ahead. Most of those thousands fail, but some succeed and the results can be quite spectacular.

I don't think any reasonable person denies that economic freedom is a hugely important component of success in the modern world. But by the same token it would only be pure dogmatism to assert that economic regulation is always bad. I don't think you're saying that of course (any more than others say that regulation is always good). The reality is that as a general rule the most successful national economic policies are those which encourage key infant industries and protect them from more advanced international competitors until they're in a position to successfully compete. Intra-national competition helps ensure the most viable companies succeed, but directly pitting infant domestic industries against foreign competitors with far more experience, capital, established markets and economies of scale to draw on would all but guarantee failure. Though undoubtedly there are exceptions.


Edit: It's worth noting that the relatively free market kind of policies we're talking about here would perhaps more accurately be called the Scottish approach than the American approach ;)
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"directly pitting infant domestic industries against foreign competitors with far more experience, capital, established markets and economies of scale to draw on would all but guarantee failure" was nonetheless a success in any number of European and Asian countries in the period following 1948.
 
joG said:
"directly pitting infant domestic industries against foreign competitors with far more experience, capital, established markets and economies of scale to draw on would all but guarantee failure" was nonetheless a success in any number of European and Asian countries in the period following 1948.
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As Ganesh noted, that's certainly not the case of the Asian economies with the most meteoric successes; they used tariffs to protect and encourage key industries before exposing them to international competition. And (again as Ganesh noted) it wasn't the case of countries such as Britain or the United States in earlier centuries. In fact right into the present century in the case of agriculture - one of the few areas where developing countries have competitive advantages of more clement climates - the United States and Europe both pour huge subsidies in their sectors rather than exposing them to direct international competition, and in some cases impose tariffs on import of foreign goods! Meanwhile after WW2 countries such as Germany and Japan obviously already had a strong technological foundation and industrial experience to build on, even if their infrastructures and economies themselves had been decimated.
 
Mithrae said:
As Ganesh noted, that's certainly not the case of the Asian economies with the most meteoric successes; they used tariffs to protect and encourage key industries before exposing them to international competition. And (again as Ganesh noted) it wasn't the case of countries such as Britain or the United States in earlier centuries. In fact right into the present century in the case of agriculture - one of the few areas where developing countries have competitive advantages of more clement climates - the United States and Europe both pour huge subsidies in their sectors rather than exposing them to direct international competition, and in some cases impose tariffs on import of foreign goods! Meanwhile after WW2 countries such as Germany and Japan obviously already had a strong technological foundation and industrial experience to build on, even if their infrastructures and economies themselves had been decimated.
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You are really not getting through the details to the underlying structure of the economics unfolding. Sure the process can and will be complicated by this tariff here and that special technical capability there. But that is not the essence of what we have seen happen. Sure, India had not been locked out of the US market as much as having done so itself as a fallout of the Cold War. That is why they took off so much more slowly than China, which the US invited to start trade and they accepted. So yes, if a country acted in such a way, imposed tariffs or blocked trade in strategic goods they could have sold and do not allow inward investment, they block themselves out of the US system of trade established after WW2.

But to concentrate on that only obfuscates your vision of how wonderful the US philosophy of free trade being the way to a better life for all participants, the more the merrier. Why this works so well is because it is the way economics has shown the world works best, if you want to have economic development.
 
joG said:
You are really not getting through the details to the underlying structure of the economics unfolding. Sure the process can and will be complicated by this tariff here and that special technical capability there. But that is not the essence of what we have seen happen. Sure, India had not been locked out of the US market as much as having done so itself as a fallout of the Cold War. That is why they took off so much more slowly than China, which the US invited to start trade and they accepted. So yes, if a country acted in such a way, imposed tariffs or blocked trade in strategic goods they could have sold and do not allow inward investment, they block themselves out of the US system of trade established after WW2.

But to concentrate on that only obfuscates your vision of how wonderful the US philosophy of free trade being the way to a better life for all participants, the more the merrier. Why this works so well is because it is the way economics has shown the world works best, if you want to have economic development.
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"Don't confuse the issue with mere details and facts"? ;)

I've already said that economic freedom is an essential component of success. Freedom encourages innovation and competition encourages efficiency. But competition inevitably means losers as well as winners. Within a nation, the only losers are companies, and ideally given social safety nets that's as it should be: But as long as distinct nation-states exist, there inevitably must be some degree of nuance in their economic approach and exposure to market risks. That has been the case historically and remains the case today.

A cynic might point out that the "US philosophy of free trade" in rhetoric whilst ensuring heavy domestic subsidies and import tariffs in less competitive sectors like agriculture is not necessarily an impeccable yardstick of what's best for everyone in the world. You might note in response that the free trade philosophy hasn't always been to America's cynical benefit - as in the case of loss of manufacturing jobs - but that hardly supports the claim that it's always good for everyone, and more to the point it suggests that America's policies may be influenced a little by whoever does benefit by unimpeded access to cheaper foreign labour.
 
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Mithrae said:
"Don't confuse the issue with mere details and facts"? ;)

I've already said that economic freedom is an essential component of success. Freedom encourages innovation and competition encourages efficiency. But competition inevitably means losers as well as winners. Within a nation, the only losers are companies, and ideally given social safety nets that's as it should be: But as long as distinct nation-states exist, there inevitably must be some degree of nuance in their economic approach and exposure to market risks. That has been the case historically and remains the case today.

A cynic might point out that the "US philosophy of free trade" in rhetoric whilst ensuring heavy domestic subsidies and import tariffs in less competitive sectors like agriculture is not necessarily an impeccable yardstick of what's best for everyone in the world. You might note in response that the free trade philosophy hasn't always been to America's cynical benefit - as in the case of loss of manufacturing jobs - but that hardly supports the claim that it's always good for everyone, and more to the point it suggests that America's policies may be influenced a little by whoever does benefit by unimpeded access to cheaper foreign labour.
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Oh, it requires enormous detail for the research proper. But when you have done that, you have a chance of cutting through the parts you do not need for the particular point of interest and ignore the false paths like "competition inevitably means losers".
 
joG said:
Oh, it requires enormous detail for the research proper. But when you have done that, you have a chance of cutting through the parts you do not need for the particular point of interest and ignore the false paths like "competition inevitably means losers".
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Unless you imagine for example that Microsoft and Apple are the only computer technology companies to have ever existed, pretending that there are not inevitably losers in a competitive market is absurd. Dozens if not hundreds of others have fallen by the wayside over the decades. I suppose in the scenario where one or two or three companies so thoroughly dominate a market that there's never any thought of new competition, a relatively stable balance between those few might mean there's never any complete failures: But that obviously cannot describe the situation we are considering, a path of economic development for countries whose industries start from a position with no market dominance and (if your philosophy were to be applied) not even an initial domestic base to build from or fall back on.

Really, I don't think you've made a coherent case for anything at all, as far as I can tell. I'm assuming this is a summary of your views, as it seems to be:
But to concentrate on that only obfuscates your vision of how wonderful the US philosophy of free trade being the way to a better life for all participants, the more the merrier. Why this works so well is because it is the way economics has shown the world works best, if you want to have economic development. ​
Yet within the United States itself there are fairly well-known counterexamples to that viewpoint in at least two major economic sectors: Agriculture (subsidies and tariffs) and manufacturing (loss of jobs to cheaper labour overseas). Both of these support the fact that competition inevitably means the prospect of failure, and both of them support the possibility that US trade policy is governed more by business interests than by an idealistic 'best for everyone' philosophy. But both of them demonstrate that the way the world works best, even for the powers that be in the United States, is not through unregulated free trade.

In a world where environmental standards, labour standards, social safety nets, costs of living and state of economic development fall within a similar narrow band all around the globe, maybe. But in the real world, even the biggest economy proves that its citizens and its businesses both still have things to lose if it doesn't apply some nuance and regulation to its trade with other countries.
 
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This has been a Eurocentric poll for a very long time.
 
Serenity said:
Fear not. Trumps going to make America great again. He even wears a hat that says so.
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Exactly if 'Merica was already great how could Trump make it great AGAIN?
I'm surprised it isnt last on the list!
 
Mithrae said:
Unless you imagine for example that Microsoft and Apple are the only computer technology companies to have ever existed, pretending that there are not inevitably losers in a competitive market is absurd. Dozens if not hundreds of others have fallen by the wayside over the decades. I suppose in the scenario where one or two or three companies so thoroughly dominate a market that there's never any thought of new competition, a relatively stable balance between those few might mean there's never any complete failures: But that obviously cannot describe the situation we are considering, a path of economic development for countries whose industries start from a position with no market dominance and (if your philosophy were to be applied) not even an initial domestic base to build from or fall back on.

Really, I don't think you've made a coherent case for anything at all, as far as I can tell. I'm assuming this is a summary of your views, as it seems to be:
But to concentrate on that only obfuscates your vision of how wonderful the US philosophy of free trade being the way to a better life for all participants, the more the merrier. Why this works so well is because it is the way economics has shown the world works best, if you want to have economic development. ​
Yet within the United States itself there are fairly well-known counterexamples to that viewpoint in at least two major economic sectors: Agriculture (subsidies and tariffs) and manufacturing (loss of jobs to cheaper labour overseas). Both of these support the fact that competition inevitably means the prospect of failure, and both of them support the possibility that US trade policy is governed more by business interests than by an idealistic 'best for everyone' philosophy. But both of them demonstrate that the way the world works best, even for the powers that be in the United States, is not through unregulated free trade.

In a world where environmental standards, labour standards, social safety nets, costs of living and state of economic development fall within a similar narrow band all around the globe, maybe. But in the real world, even the biggest economy proves that its citizens and its businesses both still have things to lose if it doesn't apply some nuance and regulation to its trade with other countries.
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Of course policy is not poured in one mould in democratic systems and regulatory mistakes are made. This is often the case, when people use absurd arguments like "....is not though unegulated free trade". It shows beliefs and populist level understanding of the economy. You see, one of the fundamental pieces of understanding is that markets themselves are a set of regulations and can hardly be conceived otherwise.
 
joG said:
Of course policy is not poured in one mould in democratic systems and regulatory mistakes are made. This is often the case, when people use absurd arguments like "....is not though unegulated free trade". It shows beliefs and populist level understanding of the economy. You see, one of the fundamental pieces of understanding is that markets themselves are a set of regulations and can hardly be conceived otherwise.
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You can mock me and exalt your own "research" and "understanding" 'til the cows come home, but it's not helping me to understand what perspective you're trying to convey here.

By the looks of it you have not decided to defend the bone of contention in your last post, that competition inevitably means losers as well as winners. Nor have you shown or even explicitly claimed that examples such as agricultural subsidies and tariffs are disadvantageous or even unnecessary for the United States, nor that cheaper foreign labour and loss of US manufacturing jobs is somehow advantageous to them. But you are acknowledging that regulation is an essential element of functional market systems, which is part of what I've said all along. So what exactly are you disputing here? As one of the more respectable posters on the forum, I'm interested in learning your opinions.
 
Mithrae said:
You can mock me and exalt your own "research" and "understanding" 'til the cows come home, but it's not helping me to understand what perspective you're trying to convey here.

By the looks of it you have not decided to defend the bone of contention in your last post, that competition inevitably means losers as well as winners. Nor have you shown or even explicitly claimed that examples such as agricultural subsidies and tariffs are disadvantageous or even unnecessary for the United States, nor that cheaper foreign labour and loss of US manufacturing jobs is somehow advantageous to them. But you are acknowledging that regulation is an essential element of functional market systems, which is part of what I've said all along. So what exactly are you disputing here? As one of the more respectable posters on the forum, I'm interested in learning your opinions.
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I don't see that the "winners vs losers" thing very interesting in this context. It has been discussed in various literature. A very interesting take on its bigger brother is Schumpeter's Gale of Creative Distruction, which is applicable to your question quite well.
 
legalimmigrant said:
Who are these "right wingers" and where did you get all of the above claims you are trying to debunk? Is Trump one of them? If so, how about quotes or links?

Or, are you debunking your own creations?
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The fact that you are surprised by, and demand links to some of the larger economic controversies of our time suggests to me that you have spent more of your time with Beetle Bailey and Madonna, rather than Keynes and Galbraith. I can give you some reading suggestions if you want though, although I suspect you do not.

legalimmigrant said:
I personally know about three major "right wing" claims Trump and the conservatives make that moron liberals - sorry for being redundant - hate:

1. No city, no state and not the feds can run deficits forever without going bankrupt. Your "prosperity" is an illusion and is debt-based. Debt is not bad if you have the means to pay it back. Your problem is that nobody has a clue how to pay it off without printing boatloads of new money, which simply means stealing from the savers.
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The US has run deficits for almost every year of its history, and has risen in that time from peasant agricultural state to world power. Deficits are an essential economic tool, and provide part of the framework for a functioning free market. Individuals, businesses, cities and states are a different case, as they are not monetarily sovereign, and hence do not control their own currency. You may go bankrupt, Mr L, but the US will never go bankrupt. Debt is generally not a problem if the rate of economic growth exceeds the rate of debt. What is important is the advancement of pro-social projects in the real world, something that is lacking today in the US, as the scramble for wealth has led to a hollowing out of the economy, with a bloated financial sector often producing nothing of real value, except for the high rollers extracting fees and salaries, and industries such as manufacturing shifted to low paid and low standard countries that better suit the rentier class, but not the American worker.

legalimmigrant said:
2. No nation ever survived with open borders and uncontrolled migration. Your dream candidate, the first president with vagina - wants both. Conservatives and Trump want neither. Many Americans are unemployed because they don't speak Spanish.
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Hyperbole and nonsense. Clinton has never advocated open borders and uncontrolled immigration. And in fact today illegal immigration from Mexico is at historical lows. And at any rate migration, legal or illegal, is not a major factor in unemployment. If it was the US would be in deep trouble today, after accepting wave upon wave of immigrants through history. The real culprits today are technological change and globalization, which most politicians do not address, as the choices available here are uncomfortable.

legalimmigrant said:
3. Wealth is created only three ways: agriculture, mining and manufacturing. The eco-fascists are shutting down mining. Your short-sighted tax system sends your manufacturing jobs abroad, thus killing the tax base that leads to unsustainable deficits. Your country has become nothing but a receptacle for the surplus people nobody wants, producing nothing that anybody wants to buy. Apple, for example, is just an office as all of their gizmos are made in China. Even engineering is done abroad or by the 41B imported slave labor after they are trained by the about-to-be fired Americans.
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Wealth is created in quite a number of ways, certainly far beyond the three mentioned. Companies like Apple do indeed create wealth, and that would stay within the country, and be better distributed, except the vigorous lobbying by special interests and accepted wisdom of the prevailing political establishment, that finds it hard to do anything that might impinge the income of the rentier class. The sad fact is that technological change and vastly increased productivity has caused GDP to rise to the extent today that no one should have to work three jobs to get by, or indeed to go without any of the basics of life. But they do, as nearly all the gains of recent times have been redistributed: upwards.

You are correct though about increasing amounts of surplus people. They are the collateral damage of technological and economic change, and a problem few politicians will take on today. I'm not sure even Bernie Sanders addressed this directly.

legalimmigrant said:
You are welcome to debunk those or is what I just wrote too deep?
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No, it isn't deep, pretty shallow actually, the usual screaming cliches and right wing truisms, the sort common on Fox News or others such mean entertainments. Its lack of depth does say something significant about Trump's rise though.
 
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joG said:
Where you go wrong is, when you see all the detail and it blocks the rules governing them as they seem to fall into place by different process. And you would be right in a human story way. Germans were very proud of their "Wirtschaftswunder". And the each worked hard and struggled and took risks to make it happen. And they beat out the French and Italiens in this process. But so did the Japanese. These two were the first in the long row of countries. Each experienced their unique path to find out how to ship to the US that was allowing people that succeeded to do so. How the gravy train worked was interesting at the individual level, but it was always the same mechanism that far outstripped the development programs that were in fact usually hopeless, sometimes harmful and often only instruments used as alibis to show one was being moral. And this was well known. When the US and China started down the road of commerce and the US opened its market, it was the development that we have seen that was the calculated reason behind it. It was the opposite to a sanctions regime self imposed or other.

When you allow your people to buy anything they want from a country, then you teach the fisherman how to fish and give him a market to sell them on. That does not mean the fisherman does not have to make the effort and that it is hard work. But it works, because you show him how and buy his produce.
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It is hard to know what to make of your mish mash of ethic stereotypes, rightist truisms, and libertarian fishermen here. The reason the US was central in the postwar years was because the rest of the world rather foolishly destroyed themselves. If I burned my house down, while you were securely locked into your own next door, you would definitely appear more prosperous than I, for a while anyway.

To restate, the successful economies we see around the world today got there by aggressive public policy decisions, strong government planning and oversight, and informed economic advice. The ones that now exceed the US in sociological indicators, like those in the OP, are exactly the ones that have considered long term social goals, and the wellbeing of citizens, and have not left all that to some magical hand wafting through a theoretical market place. The current sentiment with many in the US, including a large number on these pages, aligns with the latter, which is why Americans are slipping in quality of life issues to the extent that they ooh and awe when visiting places like W Europe, and then come home and vote uber right, and wonder why things aren't better.
 
americanwoman said:
Interesting how instead of facing our flaws and the fact that we need to really work on them, some people deflect big time by putting down the other countries or just blowing it off completely. No wonder we're at where we're at and probably won't be going up anytime soon.

My comment would be to use those countries as an example to see what's working so good for them and learn from it.
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Cherry picking policies from small European countries and advocating them for adoption in the US isn't always valid. Those countries don't have the same problems the US does. They have tiny military budgets, ethnically homogenous, well off, and highly socialized and law abiding populations, political support for more taxation and government services. They in general used not to have whole ethnic groups that reject their culture and militate for destruction of their society, but that is increasingly a problem for some of them.
 
Ganesh said:
To restate, the successful economies we see around the world today got there by aggressive public policy decisions, strong government planning and oversight, and informed economic advice. The ones that now exceed the US in sociological indicators, like those in the OP, are exactly the ones that have considered long term social goals.
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What a bunch of nonsense. Which nations are you talking about? The Europeans, who haven't seen significant positive growth in some time? With all this talk of strong government planning and oversight you seem to be describing the USSR, and we know how that turned out. China got to be prosperous by reducing controls, opening up markets and allowing entrepreneurs to flourish, not by planning. Government meddling in the markets distorts them and reduces growth and prosperity.
 
LowDown said:
What a bunch of nonsense. Which nations are you talking about? The Europeans, who haven't seen significant positive growth in some time? With all this talk of strong government planning and oversight you seem to be describing the USSR, and we know how that turned out. China got to be prosperous by reducing controls, opening up markets and allowing entrepreneurs to flourish, not by planning. Government meddling in the markets distorts them and reduces growth and prosperity.
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How do you think the US got to where it is today? Some sort of magic guiding hand? In the 19th century, the US decided to catch up with the big boys, and industrialize. Government had to start the ball rolling, because otherwise it would just be cheaper for Americans to buy manufactured products from whoever was already established (read here: the UK and Europe). And so it did, with high tariff walls to protect infant industries, subsidies targeting key sectors of the economy, such as railroads, energy, and steel production. There was also a conscious decision to import millions of immigrants, workers to provide cheap labour and also pump up demand for finished products. In other words, there was a plan.

And please don't chuck your red herrings in here, we are talking about liberal social democracies making informed economic choices, and being successful in them, not the failed pseudo-communism of the USSR, in which shoe purchases for the next ten years were presupposed.

China has opened its markets only to the degree that is beneficial to them, and although they now have many of the trappings of capitalism, China is still a non-democratic, authoritarian, state directed economy. What Beijing says goes, and if some nascent libertarian capitalist disagrees, he or she may find themselves in hot water. When high speed rail is built despite the cost, and despite the drooling over car ads by the masses, that is state planning (and good planning, in this case).
 
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