Better in the sense of using the United States to earn enough money so that they retire earlier and move to a place they enjoy more. If you call Canadians using the United States in the same way that Americans from all over the country use, say, New York City as evidence that it’s “better” than everywhere else, that’s one way of looking at it, I reckon, but it’s hardly a universally-recognized criterion or metric for one country being ‘better’ than all the rest.
You may not be aware of it, but you’re still single-mindedly on this “money” kick. You do realize that when one speaks of something “outweighing” something else, it means that for them, the benefit is worth it despite all the downsides. Money alone – even if it offsets all the downsides for certain individuals in certain circumstances – does not make for “greatness”. No one disputes that the US is a terrific place to live for the wealthy or at least the comfortably well off. Ask any billionaire. I’m sure he’ll confirm your conviction about what a swell place America is.
The point that you’re sadly missing is that if you’re not among the wealthy, then all of the multitude of societal ills I just listed affect you proportionately, and many of them affect you even if you are rich. (Those were just off the top of my head – I just thought of another one: far more people in prisons than in any other first-world nation in the world.) It’s a highly stratified society that can be tough even for those in the middle class who are struggling to make ends meet no matter how hard they work. And that stratification doesn’t just affect the poor – it permeates all of society and affects everyone. It doesn’t make for a society that is stable, happy, and socially cohesive; it makes for one that has massive inequalities and high crime and stress levels and in which the culture of Big Bags of Money promotes the attitude of “fuck you, I’ve got mine”. But … but … (you reply) … but money! Yeah. The attitude that you’re expressing, quite frankly, reminds me of Basil Fawlty arguing with an American guest, and saying “I know how important money is to you Americans”.
Not that the Canadian ex-pats I spoke of are like that, but they are frustrated, angry, and sad that this culture is pervasive. They live in liberal areas (mostly the northeast and California) and have liberal friends but still, in the big picture, they are like fish out of water. Two of them are now retired and tell me that they are likely coming back to Canada. This does not speak to me of “greatness”.
Hey, I basically think the US overall is a pretty good place, but the point I’m making is that in many important respects it lags far behind other advanced nations. The point I’m making is that a much more productive attitude than a proclamation of greatness is one that says “we can do better than this”.
I don’t disagree with your underlying message, but I think there are some key details wrong.
Is America really “broken for most people who live here”? I think a large number of Americans have no problem spending $5 for a cup of coffee and are thinking of replacing their old-model iPhone. They may be caught in an economic trap, but their spending power is very high compared with other countries.
At the time of the French and Russian revolutions, 90% of the populations were living in abject poverty. When the destitute people unified, the revolutions could succeed through sheer force of numbers. The poverty (and low-income) rate in the U.S. is somewhere between 10% and 30% depending on what threshold you use, but is nowhere near 50%, let alone 90%. And some of these poor are well-off compared with the destitute centuries ago, or the destitute in present-day poor countries.
I agree that there is a risk that America’s poverty, rage and despair will lead to civil strife. But I don’t think it will take the form of poor vs rich that we saw in France or Russia. More likely would be poor vs poor strife, perhaps rioting blacks fighting with low-income white people who view other ethnic groups as scapegoats for their own troubles.
What he said. And believe me, we have to endure ten times as much of it as Leaffan does.
But looking at it another way, this isn’t a stellar recommendation for us. We’re getting desperate people fleeing civil unrest, drug cartels, and war zones–in short, they come here due to negative push factors rather than positive pull factors. Hell, I’d rather live where the lights stay on and the streets aren’t full of IED craters, too.
To add to that: Perhaps the more educated migrants are choosing other countries to go to, whereas the USA is getting more of the truly desperate
Interesting study here: International Migration to the OECD in the 21st Century | KNOMAD
Reported.