Many Europeans certainly do perceive themselves as being more sophisticated and worldly, but that hardly makes it so. How many of today’s problems around the world trace their roots back to Europe? Namely, brutal European colonialism and the horribly inept abandoment of those colonies.
Israel/Palestine? The reign of despotism throughout the former British and French holdings in the ME (courtesy of the Ottomans)? Thank you, Britain and France! And let me send a big hug over there, to thank them for dumping the problem in America’s lap, and then hiding behind the UN. And lets not forget to give thanks to the sophisticated and nuanced ‘worldliness’ of the Europeans, for leaving Africa in such great shape.
We don’t need to discuss the benefits of WWI and WWII. Only a well-travelled and well-versed people could spark wars like that! Boorish Americans are hard-pressed to start a proper battle, much less decent war. The world probably wouldn’t survive another bout of such ‘European global awareness’, but that shouldn’t stop them from trying.
The myth of European sophistication is just that: A myth. Propagated by some Europeans, and by their American sycophants.
Here’s a hint, Brutus: If you’re an American and come to Germany to study, do you have to pay tuition fees? No. Have you paid taxes in Germany? No. So how much did you pay for your education. Um, like, nothing.
That would make it free *for you[/], wouldn’t it?
I am not talking about Germany providing education for free to Germans. We’re talking about FOREIGN AID here. We’re talking about the fact that the US is giving scholarships to people who wouldn’t have to pay elsewhere either. The only difference is a formal act of giving out a scholarship by the US, which is solely necessitated by the fact that US institutions charge tuition fees. It doesn’t mean that the US is giving out freebies other countries are not.
Thanks for showing that it is too much to ask of you to actually have an idea what is being discussed.
This is a little predictable. A debate about how globally aware the US is turns into a Europe vs America argument…
By the way Brutus - you are showing a distinct lack of global awareness yourself. You might like to pretend all the world’s ills are solely due to Europe, and the US now has to clean up after them, but i think that is a little simplistic to say the least.
Reminds me of all the anti-american charges some people like to throw around, except that you could be called anti-european.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by OliverH * You are mistaken. Luxembourg can extensively influence EU policy, especially since due to the current system, they hold by default at least one commissioner post.
[quote]
And California can extensively influence US policy. Guess which one matters more. (Hint: It’s not the paper giant known as the EU).
Find a cite then. Or shut up. You provided no evidence, just your own “feelings” about stuff with no evidence to back it up. I called you on it by making sarcastic remarks that were the equivalent of what you did. Please learn how to make an argument.
**
[quoteYou obviously completely missed the point. No one is talking about Japanese-Americans in Duesseldorf. But thanks for showing that you rather waste other people’s time and bandwidth and server space than for a single second actually considering a point. I take it then, that you are incapable of grasping the difference between people who actually come from a foreign country and people whose families have lived in a given country for a couple of generations and who have, to some extent or the other, been culturally assimiliated.
As such, I regret that you have thoroughly disqualified yourself for this discussion. **[/QUOTE]
I’ve disqualified myself? So far all you have done is post a lot of glurge with nothing to back it up. Please learn how to make an argument with cites or dismiss yourself from Great Debates, as you clearly don’t have the understanding or maturity to function here.
Huh? Foreign aid targets? Set by whom? Please don’t say NGOs.
First, I know the difference between the EC and the EU. If you had looked at the cite, it referenced the European Commission. If you care to find a similar statistic for the EU, knock yourself out.
Second, the statistics stand on their own. Reread my post: “Could the US do more to help other countries? Sure. Does the US currently do more than any other country? Unquestionably yes.” If you’d like to argue that some other country contributes more money to international causes, go right ahead, tell me which country. I have already conceeded the point that other countries give a greater percentage of their budget, but I’m talking cash here.
This could be true, but you must provide a cite.
It’s very obvious that you did not look at the cite I provided. Why don’t you go back, look at the document from the UN site I provided, read it, recognize that it contains information on all contributions to the ATM Global Fund – both public and private – and retract that bolded statement.
As far as increases in others’ contributions, I quote from an Agence France Presse article from June 1 (sorry no link, it’s on Nexis):
"The European Union has promised to commit one billion dollars a year to a global fund against AIDS, South African President Thabo Mbeki said Sunday after talks at the G8 summit in Evian.
"“They have made a decision to move immediately” in response to a US pledge to contribute 15 billion dollars over five years to the fight against HIV and AIDS, he told a news conference. Mbeki was speaking after a handful of African presidents met leaders of the Group of Eight most powerful nations on the opening day of the G8 summit…
"Hailing the US announcement as “historic,” he said France would triple its own contribution to the Global Fund for AIDS, set up in 2000, from 50 million to 150 million euros a year. "
I do not need to remind you, of course, that the US has promised to provide $3 billion a year for the ATM fund.
And another thing - out of $913 million in government contributions to UNICEF, the US is responsible for $247 million. Japan is in second place with $118 million, and the Netherlands third (with a per capita contribution ten times larger than the US, hurrah) with $83 million. Cite. (If you care to look at this one, see page 40.)
So, are these cites also misleading? Do they also do nothing to prove my point that the US gives more money in foreign assistance than any other?
Although OliverH is waaaaaaaay off base on 95% of what he’s said in the last few posts, I’ve got to go with him on this one: Luxembourg can influence EU policy far more than California can influence US policy, even though it is a terrible comparison (ie, comparing one of the smallest EU members with the 8th largest economy in the world, a sovereign state with a subdivision of a country).
Because the EU is still more or less in the opening stages of formulating a common defense and foreign policy, foreign policy decisions are still an intergovernmental process that cannot fully disregard the interests of all its members. As opposed to the US system, where the president holds all the cards in foreign policy, the EU depends to a far greater degree on consensus among its members before decisions can be made. Whether or not the power is exercised, Luxembourg has some leverage that it can use to stop a decision on EU foreign policy; the same cannot be said of California, its governor, or even its senators.
In addition, Luxembourg has a say in which commissioners may serve on the European Commission, which is essentially the EU’s executive body; and it participates on the Council of Ministers (which actions sometimes require a unanimous vote, as mentioned before, including foreign policy matters).
Besides, when is the last time that President Bush has had to call up Gov. Davis and talk foreign policy? It just doesn’t happen.
If it’s the case that us 'Mercans don’t have to pay tuition then I have a friend who did study in Germany who would like her money back. Heck I’d like my money back as well for studying in Ireland. (note I’m talking about college education and not before then. I’m pretty sure that younger students do not pay for school but college students do)
As for the OP, Americans are less aware of what’s happening around the globe, just like most outsiders are unaware of what happens inside of America. Really how many people know what’s really going on in any country at any time? Sure Europeans may know who’s in charge in more countries, but big deal, I know what’s going on in West Virginia. It seems to me that people say well France was in the news today so we are more aware, but one little snippit of news doesn’t mean anything.
Americans may also travel less outside the country, but why would you if the US is so damn big? Why go through the hassle of getting money changed, taking a long plane flight, learning at least a bit of another language, usually, when you can go see something different in your own country. I think that a lot of people don’t realize how big and diverse physically the US really is.
Personally I think every one is stupid in one way or another. I also think that these tests that try and see which country has smarter people are stupid too. It’s unfair to ask a US student where Finland is while not asking a European student to know where Kansas is, of course more Europeans will know Finland but I’m willing to bet that the same percentage of US students know where Kansas is as do Europeans know Finland. I know that when I studied in Ireland a majority of them didn’t know where DC was, yet I knew where Dubin was. Also on a recent trip back I found the news to be just the same in Ireland as it is here, very centric to Ireland, the only US news I heard was about US policy on Iraq. So where was all the news on other places?
It all comes down to where you live on what you know around you. I live in Maryland, so I know more of what goes on on the east coast of the States, people in California know more of what happens in the western US, people in Britian know more of what happens in France. It does not make any one more or less educated because of it.
I’d like to add that my focus is on Americans being ill informed and not the putative superiority of European world view. According to the survey, British youth also fared just about as poorly as American kids. I’ll also note what an important role the Internet obviously plays (as seen above) in altering this problem. It is specifically why I deplore such ignorance in this country that invented the Internet.
Another point that needs to be addressed is the placement of immigrants.
I do not have cites for this but will hope someone might assist me if this is disputed. Few nations place as many new immigrants within their borders as the United States. I would not be surprised in the least if this country has some of the largest spending on immigrant services of any in the world. Barring possibly higher spending levels per capita of immigrants in socialist countries, I’d wager that America accepts more immigrants and spends more of its annual budget settling them within our borders than any other country.
I previously mentioned how there may easily be a close dollar for dollar match of government money spent and immigrant overseas remittance. OliverH notes that other countries also have guest workers sending home money to their native countries. I feel an important point has been missed. It is likely that few other countries accept such a significant fraction of their overall population in terms of immigrants each year as does the United States. Ergo, our spending upon immigrant services represents a larger portion of the GDP than that of other countries.
(OliverH, please note that I did not bold the portion of my cite that mentioned scholarship funding. That was not a point of contention.)
This government spending effectively subsidizes, to an extent, the money being sent home by these selfsame immigrants. That cannot be said for other countries where foreigners are merely present as guest workers and not landed immigrants. Both the economies of Mexico and the Philippines are heavily dependent upon remittance from those residing in the United States. I doubt that few other countries make such a substantial contribution to a given foreign economy in the way that America does. While this may merely be a factor of sheer numbers and overall economic might, it probably is not. I do not hear much about other countries taking in such large quantities of refugees as America does. If someone has the statistics to disprove that, I welcome them to this debate.
I’ll make a final request that sniping and adversarial exchanges be kept to a minimum. I think this is an important topic to debate and would prefer that it not devolve into verbal fisticuffs.
I still maintain that Americans are less globally aware than people in Asia, Europe or Australia, and I believe that the most important reasons for this is media coverage and travelling. However, I’m not saying that is a bad thing, or that Americans are not as smart as others. If we accept the fact that America is more culturally diverse than Europe (which I believe), then it might be so that Americans actually receive more diversified information about, say, cultures, then Europeans, only that it’s related to issues within their own borders.
However. given that America likes to meddle with the internal affairs of other nations, then yes, maybe Americans should be more aware of what goes in the world. After all, we’re discussing global awareness here.
IMO, it’s pointless to discuss what exactly Europeans know about America and vice versa, or if knowledge of where Kansas is on the map is equal to knowing the location of Finland.
I would guess(!) that if you ask Europeans about the names of the different Parliaments of the EU nations, very few would be able to name them all, just as they will be unable to name the US states. But they will be able to say quite a lot about a specific country, about which issues are important, about their political direction, about their economical situation, about how people live, etc. And that’s what awareness is to me, - not whether I know the dialing code to Canada or Spain, or not.
First off, I would like to commend Zenster for several excellent posts, my notions below are just minor diagreements.
No, I don’t think America puts more immigrants between their borders, measured in a percentage of the current population, than others, I checked that a while ago. The UN website should have some data. But America probably puts more culturally diverse immigrants between their borders than any other nation - and if I’m not mistaken that was the heart of your arguement.
And no, I don’t think that America’s spending upon immigrant services represents a larger portion of the GDP than that of other countries, given that America generally spends less on public services, and because the bulk of the spending in other countries are related to teaching the immigrants the country’s language. But you will never find a cite for this, at least the media in my homeland was unable to find one when the topic was in the news couple of years ago.
Just a short note: The “$15 billions over five years” to fight AIDS in Africa, proposed by Pres. Bush, is actually $2 billions going to Africa, the remaining $13 billions are going to US companies, this according to a WP article a while ago.
So what are those US companies going to do with the $13 B? If they are going to use it to do whatever one does to fight AIDS in Africa, then that’s fine with me. The services are still getting there. Suppose they are using it to, say, create and distribute anti-AIDS drugs, or pay doctors in Africa, fine. Now, if there were evidence that they were using the money to do some unrelated tasks, that’s a different matter.
I agree. However, now I can’t seem to find this article at all anymore so I could be mistaken. Someone else here may better know which programs got funding.
Precisely that, Alien. Thank you for seeing to the core of my argument and avoiding completely needless contention.
I’ll add that, besides the duties of World Cop requiring greater global awareness, the existence of so many other cultures within our borders equally mandates this. I am also beginning to lose all patience with the crappy quality of education in America’s schools.
Sadly, much of school funding is paid for through property taxes. Many communities have provisions that require a substantial majority (66%) of property owners to pass school bond measures. While this avoids unfair taxation of land holders by fiat of renters and other local tenants it also permits people who tend to be fiscally more conservative control of educational funding.
Another strong issue is school administration. Currently, American teachers are outnumbered by their own administrators on the order of something like ten to one. In Japan the exact opposite ratio applies. Furthermore, teacher salaries are among the lowest of payscales for degreed professionals. This is a national disgrace and there seems to be no ready solution to the problem. The current administration has made all sorts of noises about special housing benefits and the like for teachers as it turns around and gives giant tax breaks to the wealthy.
This nation’s tongue-tied and amazingly incurious chief officer is a picture perfect poster boy for the problems besetting our schools. His actions are an excellent indicator of just why teachers and the American educational system are in such dire straits. That the most powerful nation on earth churns out semi-functional students is more than shameful, it is a recipe for disaster. The United States’ evolution into a service based economy is a direct result of this slipshod scholastic downhill slide. Our politicians should have to answer in open court for permitting this situation to deteriorate in such a fashion.
Fascinating. This reminds of something I read a year or so ago, about a city in the US where the politicians decided, or wanted to decide, that the tax money from the (wealthy) west side should only be used in schools on the west side, and not in any of the schools on the poorer east side. I might be straying from the OP here, but is this actually legal?
I also find it surprising that school funding is paid for by property taxes. Over here all taxes are transferred into one large pot, then the politicians fight over how they should be used, without discussing where the money came from. The only instances where “taxes” is earmarked a specific program is when there is a direct connection between money in and money out, for example when a road charge/toll is used in repairing enviromental damages caused by the cars.
Amazing numbers. Sounds like an enormous waste of money to me.
I’d be interested in the source of that statistic; it seems rather high to me, and certainly doesn’t reflect the status of the schools in my town. I spent 9 years on my local school board, and had intimate knowledge of both the budget and staffing, and never saw anything like that.
I’m with you on school funding being too heavily dependent on property taxes. Here in NJ the vast majority of our local tax burden is for local schools. However, the school budget only needs a majority of those who vote in the budget election in order to pass, and any resident citizen may vote, not just the property owners. This includes bond issues as well as current expense. It must be very different where you are. I didn’t realize there were places left in the U.S. that required property ownership as a prerequisite for voting.
The overdependence on property taxes is a serious issue, though. It falls especially heavily on the retired, and on anyone else whose income drops due to layoff, illness or disability. Some of our senior citizens who paid off their mortgages long ago are now paying taxes that are higher than their mortgages ever were, but of course their income has not risen enough to keep up.
This system also causes problems in some of the major urban areas. Property values are already low, but to get any school funds at all the tax rates must be quite high. It’s still not enough to do enough to improve the schools, considering that these same taxes must also try to address the other urban issues such as poverty, crime, health needs, and so on. As a result, the cities can’t attract new businesses or improved housing, so the property values fall even further. It’s a vicious cycle.
Frequently on these boards I feel as if my experiences of things like blacks who aren’t African-American, or diversity that is unrelated to AA (since I know little about AA but much about diversity) aren’t interesting to the others posting, since they are so limited to America.
And, this very thread is a conversation about nations which are geographically huge, culturally diverse, a major destination of immigrants, bordered by oceans and few other nations, and so on - and is, again, limited to America ! Canada shares most of the features which are suggested as reasons for the U.S. to be so insular, and yet the ‘global awareness’ of Canadians has barely been addressed.
Did anyone else notice that only 51% of British adults polled could find Mexico on a map?
Meanwhile 56% of Americans polled could find Italy. (Comparable to British familiarity with Mexico.)
Only 28% of British adults could find Sweden. (Higher than the US at 16%, but then Sweden is a European nation.)
52% of British adults could find the Pacific Ocean (which is pretty big, and hard to miss). The US number was 71%.
23% of British respondants knew what El Nino was, while 48% of Americans knew.
I think the lesson is that we tend to know more about the geography of our own neighborhoods. So it’s hardly surprising that Europeans know more about the Geography of Eurasia than Americans.
The other lesson from that survey is that British posters to this thread might want to consider whether to throw any more stones.