Please understand that not all US Americans are like this. My house is paid off, I drive a 12 year old car. I have NO desire to get what is the most shinny new thing. My friends are the same.
My desire is to retire with dignity, and have enough money (I save it myself, what a concept!) to enjoy my later years.
I’d say the same, but I still have 6 years on my house, and I actually just bought a “new” car, a 2014 Ford Focus to replace my 1994 Ford Escort, which was sadly no longer worth repairing.
I don’t understand the obsession many of my fellow country men have for consuming as much as possible, having the latest and greatest of everything, having a huge house and an impractical car (I consider a practical car one that is the minimum cost needed to get you where you need to be), and then say they want even more.
A number of people from Scandinavia and other first-world democracies have already commented on this marvelous pile of drivel, but I have to add a comment of my own. As a Canadian I’m rather astounded to be informed that I live in a small house with small furniture and “small amenities” (whatever that means), drive a small car, and “know little of the sense of pride and fulfillment that comes with accomplishment”. If there was any lingering doubt that you’re bat-shit crazy, that amazing proclamation ought to dispel it.
The only part of that rant that’s true is that my car might be considered “small” if the standard of comparison is a 1960s-style behemoth nearly large enough to land a small plane on that used to be considered the iconic American status symbol. It’s hilarious that you consider that to be some kind of value. The 1960s called: they want their values back. This pretty much ended with the 1973 oil embargo and gas crisis, before which it was considered de rigueur for one person alone to commute encased in twenty tons of steel, guzzling gas and belching pollution in defiance of the physical realities of the world we live in. So yes, my car might be considered somewhat “small” by those standards, but it’s by choice because, believe it or not, here in Canuckistan we are still permitted to make choices.
I’ll make one more point, relating to the “land of opportunity” argument you made previously. The problem isn’t that the argument is false, because the US does offer some amazing opportunities in business, science, entertainment, and academia. The problem is that on the balance between social welfare – in the important sense of societal health, happiness, and cohesiveness – and the dominance of unfettered capitalism, the US has adjusted its control knobs as far as they will go firmly in the direction of unfettered capitalism. This creates a society – a nation – with far more turmoil, unhappiness, stress, and early deaths than in most other rich countries. It creates a nation in which the dollar is supreme and valued above moral values, societal health, human health, and even life itself, a nation in which it’s absolutely terrific to be wealthy, but tough slogging for everyone else; a nation which is far, far down on the list of countries with genuine freedoms and, by some measures, is no longer even a democracy. And the problem with Republican wingnuts like yourself is that they’re still pushing ever harder to make every single one of those problems worse.
I’ll also remind you of this asinine statement:
Despite your back-pedaling on praise of Scandinavia, maybe you can explain why this “inexorable” tragedy hasn’t yet unfolded there or anywhere else in first-world democracies, all of which are hotbeds of liberalism according to your bat-shit crazy standards.
Meanwhile, the latest on American refugees in Canada.
wolfpup? Can I have your autograph? hands over notebook and pen
But-but-but… MAGA!!! …and FREEDOM!!!
Hey now, that’s immigrant sponsorship paperwork.
Don’t have time today to address the semi-sized truckload of horseshit that’s accumulated since last night, but this little tidbit especially drew my attention, and all I can say is, ‘Ah yes, socialism, where adequate is good enough’. :rolleyes:
No, thanks. I’ll take the produce of enterprise every time. It creates things like the internet you’re using now, the computer and/or phone you’re using now. Luxurious automobiles that last for hundreds of thousands of miles. Etc., etc., ad infinitum, not to mention the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes from having a part in the creation of all these things. I don’t think I’m the one who’s been brainwashed. (After all, it’s never been democratic countries with free enterprise who’ve found it necessary to send their citizens to ‘re-education centers’, has it? But be that as it may, if you want to live your life as a drone just drifting through your days till they run out it’s fine with me. But I see nothing superior in it, morally or otherwise. Just remember that what lives you do live now and most of what you have now is the result of the creativity and ambition and enterprise (and military might) of those whose economic system you’re deluding yourself into viewing with scorn.
Thank you for making our country look like assholes. Your service shall be remembered.
People who sock never can seem to resist addressing ‘each other.’ (Compliments, always.) That’s the pattern we see with those two accounts, which isn’t proof–but is suggestive.
Yes, and that represents a basic misunderstanding of human nature. Humans can always rationalize exploiting other humans–and not just rationalize it, but enshrine it as a de facto national religion, as in the USA. When there is no referee (government) empowered to level the playing field, those who attained power and resources first will (nearly) always use that power and those resources to squeeze those with less power and fewer resources.
The USA accelerated the process by permitting unlimited money in elections (the Citizens United case). We are headed toward either feudalism, or bloody revolution against the oligarchs. Either way, few people living in any part of this globe will be interested in coming here.
If I may inject something in the neighborhood of the thread topic, couldn’t Dr. Ronny Jackson (sic) have sedated the dotard for twenty-four hours? We all need a breather.
In my previous post, I forgot to address another point of hilarity in Starving Artist’s inane bloviations, which was this (emphasis mine): "To the degree that any of this is true, it’s been made possible by the fact these countries (England largely excluded) haven’t had to pay for or finance their own freedom from outside threat.
Translation: The reason the US doesn’t have a universal health care system or a decent social support system like every civilized country on earth is because, in its capacity as the richest country in the world, it can’t afford it! Cuba can, but the US is just too poor, what with all that freedom-fightin’ and stuff. It certainly isn’t because of bat-shit crazy ideologues like our very own Starving Artist, it’s just lack of money. I swear there’s more intelligence in a head of cabbage than in whatever this dimwitted cretin uses for a brain.
Sooo stupit. :rolleyes:
It would be easy enough to find out. Enroll a mod to check us out and report back. There may not be many who feel as I do on this board, there are millions of us out in the real world, and at least 65 million of us* are fed up enough with your bullshit to have put Donald Trump in the White House despite his many shortcomings.
*Disclaimer: I did not vote for Trump and am not a supporter of him as a person. This doesn’t mean however that I should necessarily suffer every bullshit claim made about him in silence, nor to oppose everything he does. He’s governing as a Republican, and as a conservative there are going to be things he does that I’m happy about.
Ridiculous. You know perfectly well that the issue with these things goes to their effectiveness and desirability and not their expense, or at least not primarily. Most who’ve had to deal with the bureaucratic ordeal of just trying to get a drivers license don’t want the government anywhere near their health care.
And now I’m out. You’ll have to call yourself a dishonest idiot for the rest of the night.
You truly are an insufferable moron but at least you’re funny. The Internet was a government-led initiative, beginning with early work funded by ARPA and later expanded by the National Science Foundation, and later still guided to commercialization as a public resource by Congress, under the leadership of bleeding-heart liberals like Al Gore. Computers were originally developed by and for the government. The telephone system critically depended – and still does – on publicly regulated infrastructure, and the semiconductor that makes smartphones possible was a public-private collaboration with multiple universities making critical contributions. The private sector, however, was solely responsible for the Pet Rock, the hula hoop, and Tickle-Me Elmo.
Just out of curiosity, what was your ordeal? I presented some documents, took a written test, a vision test, and a driving test. Then they took my picture and handed me my license.
Every four years, I return, I don’t even have to take the tests anymore, just the vision tests.
Did you have odd circumstances that made your ordeal harder, or are you calling what I described an ordeal?
Yes, computers and the internet in their infancy were government projects (albeit financed by our thriving economy), but it took the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and corporate entities like AT&T to bring computers, telephones and the internet to the rest of the world.
Sorry but I’ll be gone by the time of your next inanity. The gentle reader is advised to take anything you say with a giant grain of skepticism until my return.
Starving Artist also pointed at the cars as products of enterprise, as if the Scandinavian nations do not have cars that last thousands of miles from the likes of Volvo or Volkswagen.
So, yeah. like his demonstrated lack of understanding that many Republicans also agree that what Trump said was racist (making a mockery of his point that his side is insulted by the left ‘imagining racism’ when also conservatives and Republicans did notice how racist it was already) Starving Artist does not really get why he voted against Trump in the first place.
Like I’ve said all the times before, he’s still breathing.
I said American cars last for hundreds of thousands of miles and you said Scandinavian cars last thousands of miles. I’m thinking you may want to rephrase that. On the other hand, maybe you’re just being factual.
I’d be curious to know how many Volvos populate Norway. And Volkswagens? Pffff…adequate.
More proof of idiocy with every new post. I wish SA would try to address the full content of my original post as that would make for no end of hilarity! 
But I don’t recall getting a driver’s license to have been any particular bureaucratic ordeal. You do, however, in the interest of public safety, have to show that you know how to drive. I’m sorry that SA found this to be so difficult. I guess when you hate the government with the seething mouth-frothing passion of SA and his like-minded gang of imbeciles, getting licenses and stuff is annoying. In SA’s world, you should just be able to get into your luxurious car – make sure it’s very, very large, like a 1962 Cadillac Coupe de Ville with the 20-foot long tailfins and not like those Mercedes or BMW shitboxes that Europeans have to endure – without the evil gubbermint getting in your way. Whether you know how to drive or not is nobody’s business. This is America! And the only requirement to be a doctor should be the ability to paint your name on a shingle.
In any case, I got my driver’s license and I don’t share the sentiment that I don’t want the government anywhere near my health care. But wait, I almost forgot! The government is my health insurance! Because we have single-payer where I live. And neither I nor the vast majority of citizens would have it any other way. That’s why democratically elected governments in province after province adopted the same single-payer model. But it’s always nice to have an American far-right wingnut tell me that it doesn’t work and that most people “don’t want the government anywhere near their health care”. Keep 'em coming, SA! What a priceless cretin.