The U.S. is the leading recipient of immigrants from Germany, with over 7 million. Also, over 50 million Americans, fully 17 percent of the population, claim some German ancestry, which is second to Germany itself with 82 million.
Interestingly, American immigration to Germany appears to have been so negligible that I could locate no statistics. I Googled the phrases “American immigration to Germany” and “American emigration to Germany” and did turn up one hit, but it turned out to be a guy who had immigrated from Hungary to America, then to Germany, so it really doesn’t count.
I agree that abiding by peaceful methods to resolve disagreements is the way to go and in this sense America is better than some third world countries (which is not saying much).
At the same time America has a long history of doing exactly the opposity in its international affairs: not accepting jurisdiction or abiding by international tribunals and overthrowing democratically electec governments and installing dictators. America should change this and learn to respect other nations and play with them without resorting to violence when it does not get its way.
While the anti-science/anti-intellectual trend is indeed disturbing and needs to be stopped, remember that this is not something that is occurring everywhere. It is quite possible to grow up in America going through the public schools and get a very good education, free of any anti-science, pro-creationist drivel.
Certainly, I hope we are able to get rid of this nonsense and make what I just described the standard for all Americans. I agree that doing so is important if we are to continue to homegrow the talent you mention. But you make it sound like we’ve instituted religious based science classes for all and that getting a good education is now impossible in America.
It also occurs to me that we are also be ahead in giving. Almost any disaster anywhere in the world is going to have US aid thrust upon them, and almost overnight.
http://www.cafonline.org/pdf/International%20%20Giving%20highlights.pdf (note it is a PDF) says individual giving in the US was 1.67% GDP, well above the UK in second place at .73% (Table 1). True, we have more to give, but dollar for dollar, it looks like we’re the top exporters of charity.
I think you should read that report more carefully. 1.67% appears to be charitable giving of all kinds, not international aid. And most US Charity is to US churches, IIRC.
As for foreign aid donated by governments, the US scrapes the bottom of the OECD list, as measured by shares of GDP.
Americans are under the false impression that their government aid is somehow huge when, on a per capita basis, American aid to poor countries or to disasters is well below most other developed countries. And in many (most?) cases this aid is tied to American products so that it benefits America. Not to mention military aid. This issue of inflated aid is always brought up quite arrogantly by many Americans to show the whole world they should be grateful to America. It is false.
Now, regarding private help I do not have statistics but I would be very surprised if other developed countries are far behind America. I think it is much more difficult to evaluate though because there are so many private charities doing this.
I have seen demonstrations in Europe demanding an increase of government aid to poor countries while I have not seen anything similar in America. If anything I think the popular sentiment in America is that less (of this mentally enhanced) money should go abroad and more should be spent at home.
Far be it for me to have an opinion on a country I’ve never been to but reading all the replies I think the one thing you can comfortably say is that the US is the most average. You might not have the BEST of everything but you have ENOUGH of everything.
And I’m not being facetious - a strong middle class with relatively good education and relatively good healthcare and relatively good prosperity is extremely important in a country’s welfare. That is what all the developing countries (including China) are striving for - to have a more robust middle class.
I was talking about private aid - what my government takes from me, and gives to others, isn’t really charity, is it?
At the Center for Global Development, I found the (fairly recent) statistics you seem to want - private giving, to non-government organizations, of funds to ship overseas -
( PDF can be downloaded at http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/6303 )
and we read -
“American citizens give the most in absolute terms; American NGOs delivered $10.6 billion in grants to developing countries in 2003. Germany was next with $1.1 billion. At the bottom of the rankings, Portuguese citizens gave $4 million and Greeks gave $8 million, according to the data their governments reported to DAC.”
However, you are not totally wrong - the next paragraph states that
“The picture changes when looking at giving per person (Table 2). In 2003, Americans gave $37 per person, less than Norway, Ireland and Switzerland. Italy joins Greece and Portugal at the bottom; all three countries gave less than $1 per person during 2003.”
So it seems the US leads in total giving to charity in absolute and % GDP. In giving to developing countries, in terms of absolute dollars, we’re well ahead, but were only number four in that category per capita.
The referenced paper also agrees with you that there is some difficulty in developing rock solid hard data in this area, and that is discussed is some detail.
AFAIK, the US continues to lead the world as the largest economy (measured by GDP) and we continue to have one of (if not the) greatest university level education systems in the world.
As for specific industries, I don’t feel like doing the reasearch right this minute to figure out what exactly we’re best at. Clearly there has been a general trend away from manufacturing and other heavy industries over the past several decades. The US does not dominate the steel, automotive, or shipbuilding industries anymore.
I believe we are still pretty much up there in aircraft manufacturing but I couldn’t tell you if Boeing (US) or Airbus (EU) is the industry leader at this time.
Our media industries (film, TV, etc) is clearly the best in the world.
Look, Europe is great and all, but I’ve been to enough European countries to know that I like the US better.
Except that he actually posted that and I didn’t post my personal preference because I know it is irrelevant in this thread. This is not IMHO. Look at the title of the thread.
I disagree with this contention though. If the country is democratic and donates substantial amounts to foreign countries, that surely reflects well on the generosity of its citizenry.
And your report showed that by this broader metric, the US lags. We know this because
public aid to the third world as a share of GDP is very low in the US and
even in the US, public overseas aid is about 4 times that of private overseas aid. ($60 billion/yr vs. $15.5 billion).
By my reckoning, the US lags behind other countries in terms of foreign aid (though some of argued that our military spending should be factored in - I’m just noting this for completeness).
But, pending further information, I will agree with Dobb that the US has a large and leading nonprofit, nongovernmental sector. This aspect of civil society deserves mention.
BTW: While religious groups are the largest recipients of US charitable contributions, they only make up 36% of the total, contrary to my earlier claims.
Table 4. Charitable Contributions by Type of Recipient Organization
Type of charity % of charitable contributions
Religion-related 35.8%
Education 14.8%
Human services 9.7%
Health care 8.7%
Gifts to foundations 8.3%
Unallocated 6.2%
Public and societal benefit 5.4%
Arts, culture, humanities 5.2%
Environment, animals 3.4%
International and foreign affairs 2.5%
Taking into account all information it just seems America is in the same ballpark as other rich nations although somewhat lower in aid. I would add that probably all nations use this aid to further their own interests to some extent. The problem is how you classify things. Is military aid really “aid”? Etc.
The difference I see is that many Americans have the erroneous perception that America is giving so much more than anybody and that the third world owes America a big debt. Mention any third world country doing something America does not like and many posters will come out screaming that America should just stop its aid to that country.
I think this is much less common in Europe and also that in Europe there is more of popular support for enlarging aid to poor countries. There is a certain support for the 0.7% target which I do not see in America.
Again, all this could be qualified. Some could say that supporting the goal of the government giving money is not the same as giving money yourself. On the whole though it is my impression that Europeans have a more positive attitude towards helping poor countries.
Military humanitarian spending is certainly a form of aid, although maybe that’s counted in your figures. The US military spent about $1B on relief efforts after the tsunami in Indonesia, for instance.
I’m just surprised about 80% good coverage as opposed to 80% coverage because of the many stories (e.g. here on the Dope) about people who are insured but have a high copay, certain procedures aren’t approved by their insurance, only very few doctors are on the list of their insurance, …
And as for the better and more health care than most of the developed world - I don’t know how you measure that. Better because more people get well after treatment? Less staying time in hospitals? Less doctors visits? (Both seem to be more related to the costs than to the actual health, I think). Are people happier with their care?
It’s similar to the hospital thing: I don’t think US hospitals are bad or worse than European ones; but I don’t think they are the best in the whole world, generally speaking. Yes, there might be specalist doctors, or clinics specializing on some treatment or condition who have more knowledge; but we have that in Europe, too.
And you’re the only country in the world - the bestest, leading one - that resolves political problems in court? What do you think Europeans do, throw stones at each other? Have ourselves a revolution each time something doesn’t work?
Again, I’ve seen comments both by Americans and outsiders that this showed that the process didn’t really work. Similar to Nixon stepping down instead of being sentenced for his crime, because everybody is so humbled and awed by the POTUS.
