Is America the greatest nation on earth?

I think there is a problem with thinking the US is the "greatest" country. It leads people to become complacent. We should never assume superiority, and we should always strive for better.

cpwill said:

Our reported infant mortality rate is appalling compared to the reported rate of others because we actually report all of our infant mortalities, to include "premies", which are A) far for vulnerable and likely to die and B) therefore, according to many other nations "don't count". :roll:

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What evidence do you have the the countries listed higher than us fail to report all of the deaths?

Where's the "I don't know" option in the poll? I haven't been to every nation on earth.

Tucker Case said:

What evidence do you have the the countries listed higher than us fail to report all of the deaths?

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Clearly their statistic gathering systems are inferior because as you know, they aren't 'murica

I voted yes, but only because I can't imagine wanting to live anywhere else more. I love living here, and I love living in Charlotte, NC. It's a great city, and a great state (even if we have let the country folk turn this state red again). But, I really think we need to take a serious look at what we are investing in as a nation.

1) Finance in this country is a mess. The stock market is a joke. Most trades have nothing to do with buying stock in a company because you believe in that company or want to further its cause. Instead it's because you have a server right next to the exchange, and you can buy and sell a stock in .93 ms, and in doing so, take advantage of market arbitrage. Or maybe you just want to buy and sell the same options so you can grab a free dividend risk free. Either way, it's entirely useless and it only helps a select few people.

2) Return on investment with taxes. We pay a lot of taxes in this country, and we aren't getting the return on the investment we deserve. SS is a mess. The healthcare system needs work (still). Infrastructure... what infrastructure? NASA - where were they on the comet? CERN - why aren't we trying to find the Higgs Boson?

3) Education. Why aren't our kids in the top 5 at least in test scoring and general ed?

4) Wealth inequality. This has to be fixed.

Those are my biggest issues with the country. This is a great country, and we really just need a little nudge in the right direction, and I think we can blow the rest of them out of the water for a long time.

TeleKat said:

The guy in this video sums it up better than I ever could:

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Which is pretty much a slur on yourself. What a pantload. We're the worlds leader in military technology, medical innovation, humanitarian aid, art and culture, automotive/aerospace technology, we're the largest economy in the world (China by a sliver with quadruple the population) and have the largest amount of natural resources known to earth. The speaker in the video is precisely the type of liberal that so many people, including some center-left (myself) people can't ****ing tolerate.

instagramsci said:

Clearly their statistic gathering systems are inferior because as you know, they aren't 'murica

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Actually, he is dead on correct. But even when adjusted by excluding babies born after less than 24 weeks gestation, the US rate was still pretty bad compared to most other developed countries.

TeleKat said:

The guy in this video sums it up better than I ever could:

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That is one of the greatest clips in the history of television. I need fifty likes for that post--one for each state.

BTW, ignore the naysayers; they're part of the reason why we're not the greatest nation on Earth.

Crovax said:

then you must be not be able to sum up your thoughts at all. This ****ing moron claimed the US was 178th in infant mortality like it was a bad thing, the lower you are ranked the less infants are dying.

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Ah, good catch. As of 2013, we're 47th, right behind Hungary and Greece. (I looked at the ill-designed, smaller table on the left, which has more up-to-date rankings, but for some reason doesn't list the order.) And if Mississippi were its own country, it's 50th-out-of-50 ranking among the states would be all the way down at 81st. Russia, Kuwait, Uruguay, and even Sri Lanka have lower infant mortality rates than Mississippi does.

Short answer: hell yea.

a351 said:

Which is pretty much a slur on yourself. What a pantload. We're the worlds leader in military technology, medical innovation, humanitarian aid, art and culture, automotive/aerospace technology, we're the largest economy in the world (China by a sliver with quadruple the population) and have the largest amount of natural resources known to earth. That type of video is precisely the type of liberals that so many people, including some center-left (myself) people can't ****ing tolerate.

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The video can easily be torn apart by anyone wiling to deal with that bull**** -- though there's obviously some legitimate criticism in it, just barely. It's the internet, man, anti-Americanism is the bandwagon clowns jump on as they slurp up and immerse themselves in American pop culture left and right.

Tucker Case said:

I think there is a problem with thinking the US is the "greatest" country. It leads people to become complacent. We should never assume superiority, and we should always strive for better.

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Being the best means one should strive for the best and to always best others, so yea....

joko104 said:

Be sure and don't mention such as mass production of affordable automobiles.

I bet the Japanese would mention the Atomic bomb - which caused their entire country to suddenly surrender - preventing a land war of millions of casualties.

Any you posted that message on a computer running on software and an operating system invented by the French, right? :roll:

But keep running down this country and believe you prove it up by searching for what was invented in other countries thinking you're proving it.

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I'm about to tear his post apart in a second. Just takes a bit of research. You have to try really hard and have a serious agenda for stretching to truth to even attempt to argue that America has not absolutely dominated the world in the realm of innovation in the past 100 years or so. This is a slam dunk.

I think that history will look back on America as one of the greatest countries on the planet. America has spread its ideals more then any other country on the planet has ever done so. It has lead the world in technology, art, and freedom. And in the past, it has tried its best to export that freedom of expression to other people. However, America has not been the same since after WW2. After WW2 there has been a deliberate try from the liberals to destroy this country. This disease that has infected this country comes directly from Russian influence. They have infiltrated our country and have worked to destroy it thru the feminist/Marxist movement to the anti-war/anti-America movement. Americans are completely ignorant to this, but as someone that can see this from the outside, it is quite obvious what is going on. The feminist/anti-war movement is a product of Russian influence to destabilize our country..

Tucker Case said:

What evidence do you have the the countries listed higher than us fail to report all of the deaths?

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I later edited to throw in a source for you.

X Factor said:

Well first of all, I think those positions are so rare that I doubt they'd make a significant impact. Besides, I honestly don't know that I've seen many liberals rally against either, most especially the breastfeeding. Honestly, and I hate it when I see it, but I've seen the anti-vaccination arguments more from "don't trust anything the government tells you" conservative types.

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The difference between our infant mortality rate and the best in the world is .3% and 2% of parents dont think vaccinations are safe so that could account for a lot of it.

cpwill said:

This is stupid.

The question is not is America the greatest nation on Earth. The answer to that is patently obvious.

The question is: "Is America the greatest nation of all time." now that would be an interesting discussion.

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Yes, and Yes.

Tucker Case said:

I think there is a problem with thinking the US is the "greatest" country. It leads people to become complacent. We should never assume superiority, and we should always strive for better.

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Where's the incentive, exactly, in doing anything better if we're just supposed to believe this is a crappy country regardless of what we do or don't do?

To answer your original question (as a non-American) -- is America the greatest nation on earth?

On some fields yes, on some no. Perhaps it's a manner of debate if you're the greatest nation on more fields than any other nation.


Now a bit more specific:

Peter Grimm said:

My thoughts: Yes, this is the greatest nation on earth. Below are some of the reasons....

- We're the richest. We have more money than any other nation on earth and it ain't close.

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Yes and no. You also have hilarious amounts of debt. And your economy is not as stable as many others. Take away the leading role of the dollar, and it doesn't look so rosy anymore. Also, your producing sector is much worse than in case of other countries (such as Germany ).

Also, while there may be more money in America than anywhere else (not counting tiny countries such as Luxemburg, which basically are just big banks with a border around them, that provide citizenship for its employees), it is not as well distributed as in other countries which have a little bit less. While America is perhaps the one large Western country with the biggest GDP, it's perhaps also the one Western country with the largest number of poor people, and the one Western country with the worst poverty problems.

On the GINI Index, that measures the distribution of wealth (and 0 means total equality, while 1 means total inequality), America ranks at ca. 0.4, IIRC. Canada, New Zealand, Australia and much of Europe is somewhere between 0.2 and 0.35.

- We're the smartest. We have something like over half of the world's Nobel Prize winners. Our universities are the top ranked in the world.

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That's true.

But here too, it goes what was said about the distribution of wealth. America is the one Western country with the very best schools and elite universities. But it is also the one Western country with the largest number of very bad and below average schools and universities.

In many European countries, such as Germany, most universities are solid average. IIRC, there are only two or three German universities that appear on top 20 lists. But on the other side, you don't find many genuinely bad universities in Germany either. And Scandinavia is worldwide leading when it comes to quality education in schools, only challenged by some schools in East Asia (see PISA studies).

- We're the most industrial. Modern industry as you know it was invented and perfected in the US of A.

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Yes. But that's past. Today, America does not produce remotely as much anymore as it consumes.

- We kick ass. Most powerful military in the history of human civilization relative to our contemporaries

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100 points on that field!

- We're not sissies - looking at you, France

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Again, 100 points! No need for French bashing, though. Rather bash today's Germans.

(...)

- We innovate. We invented pretty much everything in existence in the modern world, and that trend is continuing.

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Agreed on that field. Though you have increasingly strong competition in East Asia.

- We sent a man to the moon for christ's sake. That was 50 years ago. No other nation has yet to be able to do it, even today.

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One can argue that the manned moon landing was mostly a not really economically useful publicity stunt during the Cold War. For the sake of scientific research for reasonable costs, unmanned space exploration is more feasible. And on that field, the Russians, Europe are not bad too and China is catching up.

But let's not be a nitpicker here. 100 points for the moon landing!

- We don't have stupid royalty or aristocracies. America is the only country on earth where going rags to riches is truly seen as possible.

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Strong disagreement. In fact, most Europeans make fun of this American notion, as America is the one Western country where it's most difficult these days to escape poverty, and nowhere else in the West, prospects are so bad for poor people. Once poor, always poor -- that's more likely happening in America than in Western Europe, Canada or Australia.

- We dominate the global political scene. If America wants something done, such as a treaty, it gets done.

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100 points on this field!

- Other nations need us more than we need them.

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100 points again! Related to America's exceptional military power and capacities, as well as the dominance of the US dollar as international currency.

- We utterly dominate popular culture and the arts - Hollywood baby. ALL the movies that seen by a broad audience are American. We invented rock and roll, the blues, rap, hip hop, and all the modern media. We invented television, and pretty much everything that goes on it.

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I'd say 80 points on that field. You certainly dominate pop culture in the West. But especially in non-Western countries, local cultures are still very strong and can easily compete with the American influence.

Tucker Case said:

Let's look at a few of the inventions that make the modern world what it is today:

Antibiotics: A Scottish guy.
Internal Combustion engine: Belgian
Telephone: Scottish guy in Canada
Microchip: British guy
Television: A brit, a German, and a Scot invented the precursors, a pair of Russians invented the first television based on their work.
Computer: A brit if you count Babbage, Turing, or Flowers. A German if you go with Kuse.
Cars: a German
Satellites: Russians
Spaceship: Russians
Light Bulbs: Americans
Airplanes: Americans

On that list, the US has TWO things. Hell, the first personal computer was made by Italians. We often assume things are invented by Americans, when they aren't.

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Not exactly a random sample, eh? Two can play this game.

The Lathe - America (Thomas Blanchard, 1822)
Electromagnetic Induction - America (Joseph Henry, 1831)
Morse Code - America (Sam Morse, 1838)
Telephone - America (Alexander Graham Bell, 1876)
Phonograph - America (Thomas Edison, 1877)
Light Bulb - America (Thomas Edison, 1878)
Process for economically producing Aluminum - America (Charles Martin Hall, 1886)
DC electric motor. (Frank Julian Sprague, 1886)
Airplane - America (Wright Bros, 1903)
Transistor - America (John Bardeen, 1947)
Hydraulic Fracking - America (Floyd Farrisand, 1947)

From the 1950's onward...

December 20, 1951: First use of nuclear power to produce electricity for households in Arco, Idaho

Solar Battery - Bell Telephone, 1954

The first PC used by one person and controlled by a keyboard, the IBM 610 was invented in 1957 by IBM.

Integrated circuit, America (1968 Jack Kilby)
1958-60: The LASER. 'merica

1969: The internet. America. (ARPANET first deployed via UCLA, SRI, UCSB, and The University of Utah.)

1972: The first video game console, used primarily for playing video games on a TV, is the Magnavox Odyssey.

1973: The first commercial graphical user interface was introduced in 1973 on the Xerox Alto. The modern GUI was later popularized by the Xerox Star and Apple Lisa.

1975: Altair 8800 was the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution.

1973-75: The Internet protocol suite was developed by Vinton Cerf and Robert E. Kahn for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ARPANET, creating the basis for the modern Internet.

Then in the 90's, we invented everything germane to the internet that we see today. Oh, and we invented the skyscraper.

Tucker Case said:

You're just wrong there. The computer was not invented by Americans

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See my last post. Yes, it was.

Peter Grimm said:

- We don't have stupid royalty or aristocracies. America is the only country on earth where going rags to riches is truly seen as possible.

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This is not even a little bit true. We have an aristocracy. We just don't codify it into law. Most industrialized nations (if not all of them) have more economic mobility than we do. Rags to riches is not only possible and celebrated in many other nations, it is more likely. In addition, other nations are doing a much better job of keeping people from having to start in rags in the first place.

That we have an aristocracy and are in denial about it is probably the greatest flaw of this country. It is certainly one of the big things keeping us from greatness.

lizzie said:

Yeah, we used to be great.

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No, we really didn't. A century ago we glorified the KKK as national heroes. 72 years ago we stripped 100,000 American citizens of their rights and liberty without any due process. 50 years ago, we still had segregation. 41 years ago, we finally got the idea that a husband forcing himself on his wife was actually rape. 11 years ago, homosexuals could be jailed for having sex with each other.

We won a big war in the 40s and we had an economic boom for a couple of decades after that. We weren't great. We just had a good period. Greatness is something you have to earn every single day, and we have yet to even come close.

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I think that we could be the greatest, if we could face our shortcomings and do the hard work to solve them. But I don't think we will. We like our myths and illusions too much. We like to think that we're the best, and we like to think that we had some kind of golden age. We like to lionize the WW2 generation, but we seem to forget that they were racist, sexist, homophobic, and religious bigots on a scale that would be completely intolerable today. We like the myth of the land of opportunity, even though we have some of the most concentrated and immobile wealth in the entire world. We are enamored with our own stories, and they blind us. Greatness is not something that we had in the past. It's not something we have now. It's something that we have to work really hard every day to earn in the future.

Don't ever think that Americans who criticize this country do so out of hate. It's not hate. It's disappointment. This country could be so much better and when it fails to do so, it's tragic. But we're not trapped. We can improve. We could be the greatest.

German guy said:

To answer your original question (as a non-American) -- is America the greatest nation on earth?

On some fields yes, on some no. Perhaps it's a manner of debate if you're the greatest nation on more fields than any other nation.


Now a bit more specific:



Yes and no. You also have hilarious amounts of debt. And your economy is not as stable as many others. Take away the leading role of the dollar, and it doesn't look so rosy anymore. Also, your producing sector is much worse than in case of other countries (such as Germany ).

Also, while there may be more money in America than anywhere else (not counting tiny countries such as Luxemburg, which basically are just big banks with a border around them, that provide citizenship for its employees), it is not as well distributed as in other countries which have a little bit less. While America is perhaps the one large Western country with the biggest GDP, it's perhaps also the one Western country with the largest number of poor people, and the one Western country with the worst poverty problems.

On the GINI Index, that measures the distribution of wealth (and 0 means total equality, while 1 means total inequality), America ranks at ca. 0.4, IIRC. Canada, New Zealand, Australia and much of Europe is somewhere between 0.2 and 0.35.



That's true.

But here too, it goes what was said about the distribution of wealth. America is the one Western country with the very best schools and elite universities. But it is also the one Western country with the largest number of very bad and below average schools and universities.

In many European countries, such as Germany, most universities are solid average. IIRC, there are only two or three German universities that appear on top 20 lists. But on the other side, you don't find many genuinely bad universities in Germany either. And Scandinavia is worldwide leading when it comes to quality education in schools, only challenged by some schools in East Asia (see PISA studies).



Yes. But that's past. Today, America does not produce remotely as much anymore as it consumes.



100 points on that field!



Again, 100 points! No need for French bashing, though. Rather bash today's Germans.

(...)

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German guy said:

Agreed on that field. Though you have increasingly strong competition in East Asia.



One can argue that the manned moon landing was mostly a not really economically useful publicity stunt during the Cold War. For the sake of scientific research for reasonable costs, unmanned space exploration is more feasible. And on that field, the Russians, Europe are not bad too and China is catching up.

But let's not be a nitpicker here. 100 points for the moon landing!



Strong disagreement. In fact, most Europeans make fun of this American notion, as America is the one Western country where it's most difficult these days to escape poverty, and nowhere else in the West, prospects are so bad for poor people. Once poor, always poor -- that's more likely happening in America than in Western Europe, Canada or Australia.



100 points on this field!



100 points again! Related to America's exceptional military power and capacities, as well as the dominance of the US dollar as international currency.



I'd say 80 points on that field. You certainly dominate pop culture in the West. But especially in non-Western countries, local cultures are still very strong and can easily compete with the American influence.

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Woah, level headed commentary with fair criticism?

There's a rarity!

TeleKat said:

The guy in this video sums it up better than I ever could:

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The first sign that Sorkin's new series was going to have little restraint or authenticity. We all started to wait for that moment when Sorkin was tired of his characters doing the work and felt like going on some naive soapbox for one minute.

Mr. Invisible said:

I generally consider nationalism to be pretty stupid

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I actually consider it one of our best conceptions.

I voted "yes". America has always bounced back when put to the test. Now we have to bounce back again from being "fundamentally changed" by Obama. There still is a chance for Hope and Change from his "Hope and Change" failed policies.

America as a whole has been a positive and a most dominant force. America's hardest critics are ourselves. We have it built into our intellectual DNA. We see ourselves as having a special mission, but we put so much pressure on ourselves that we think if we do not succeed to our expectations, it will come back to haunt us in a greater capacity than another society. Our exceptionalism is the most dire catch 22.

In other words: we often think we are worse than we are, because we think we are special enough to warrant being better than anyone else has ever been or ever will be.

the lord make it like that of New England: for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world, wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake; wee shall shame the faces of many of gods worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into Cursses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whether wee are going

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