One in six won’t admit they were born there, not the same thing at all.
And I, as usual, am stunned by the implication that volume upon volume of research, containing thousands upon thousands of pages detailing thousands upon thousands of facts and figures, would make the slightest difference in your world view. 
You know as well as I do how it works. Facts and figures only matter if they support your side - otherwise they’re ignored.
So that leaves us with things that are innate, such as common sense, judgement and the lessons of life experience. Certainly each of those will tell you that you’re going to come up short if you live in a country whose government decrees you work less hours, in a silly, unworkable attempt to deal with unemployment, rather than by…oh, I don’t know…having an economy that increases job creation!
Or that if you will give people money and relieve them of the necessity to work, they will take the money and stop working, and they’ll tell other people to do the same!
And that if you want to coast through life taking it easy and letting the government provide for your needs, you’re going to be surpassed in almost every positive measure by societies that are entreprenurial, hard working and productive.
Perhaps I’ll see if I can find all this written down somewhere as you seem to find these notions incredible. (Perhaps a fifth-grade social studies book from the fifties would suffice, for I doubt we’ll find such information anywhere in today’s leftie-driven curriculum, as illustrated perfectly by this thread where some leftie is complaining about conservative attempts to include these very things in school books now).
One of the reasons liberals support drug decriminalization is the hopes that it will remove some of the incentives to participate in gang culture as well as much of their funding.
GDP growth in socialized nations is just as rapid as US GDP growth. As is discussed many times in this forum, our health care system actually inhibits GDP growth. It encourages bankruptcy and foreclosure (which screws up consumer lending and the mortgage industry), discourages small business and independent work, causes job lock, marriage lock, wastes a huge % of our GDP, etc.
And if we didn’t have social security, you’d have more and more people in their 60s who couldn’t retire due to poverty. That means they wouldn’t be replaced by younger, healthier, more innovative workers in their 20s.
So two of the biggest foundations of the welfare state (elderly pensions and universal health care) tend to grow the economy because they allow a new generation to move into the workforce while also giving more stability and security to the public. Universal education (which costs a trillion in public funds in the US) is arguably a sign of the welfare state and also necessary to keep our economy functioning.
I can’t find the stats, but according to Paul Krugman after you subtract the role of immigration, GDP growth for the US is on par with Europe.
To the degree that liberals are not as focused on material possessions, it is a lifestyle choice usually born out of a realization of the importance of family, leisure, quality of life, introspection, environmental sustainability and health combined with the realization that a lower material standard of living may be needed to ‘have it all’. However that is a far cry from assuming everyone who doesn’t share those values is evil.
You should debate with real liberals, not with stereotypical strawmen you invent solely to knock down.
Eh, different strokes for different folks. I’m happy living in a country that puts some onus on its citizens to not be jerks just because they can.
The reason France does that is their birth rate is low, and they worry 30 years from now they will not have the labor force necessary to keep their society running. Another fear is they may have to use mass immigration to supply the labor needed, which may change French culture dramatically.
Either way, you are criticizing a nation for planning 30 years into the future.
Government provided care exists in the east. South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan all have universal health care systems. China is trying to implement one. On the subject of China, labor unrest has become so severe that the government has loosened the standards to join a union. They are also working on a pension plan for the elderly.
The world isn’t as simple and black/white as you describe it. The nations you laud as the scions of the future because you feel they are hard working and individualistic have universal education, pensions for the elderly, labor protections, environmental protections and universal health care. If they don’t, they are trying to implement them.
Here’s an interesting page:
Countries ranked by value of exports.
Hmm, is that socialist Germany, with a generous welfare state, strong unions, long vacations, limited working hours, and only 80 million people, exporting more than the USA does? No hard work or entrepreneurship going on there!
Of course, different markets etc, but to listen to the frothing right-wingers in this thread you’d get the impression that everyone in Europe is sitting around all day suckling off the government teat.
And how is drug legalization going to deal with murders committed by people wacked out on drugs, which is a common occurance? And how is going to deal with a thriving black market supported by the fact that druggies will go for cheaper black market drugs that those licensed and taxed to the hilt by the government?
And besides, most of the talk I hear about drug legalization has to do with marijuana. How is legalizing marijuana going to reduce criminal activity caused by cocaine, heroin and methamphetemine? And if those drugs are legalized you’re increasing their usage and therefore the number of murders and other crimes committed by people wacked out on them, not mention other consequences such as automobile accidents and psychological damage. I’ve known some people who’ve been permanently damaged mentally and psychologically by meth.
As for the rest of your post, I don’t accept for one minute that socialized medicine is less costly, tit for tat, than profit-driven medicine.
You know what they say, figures don’t lie but liars figure. How many people have you personally known who’s had to declare bankruptcy because of medical bills? I don’t know any, and I know lots of people who have insurance and lots of people who don’t. And about the only time I read about it is when some government health care proponent is evangelizing for its creation. So I strongly suspect that the effects of medically driven bankruptcy upon this nation of 300,000,000 people is considerably exaggerated.
I’ll grant that that might be the impression, but most of us take for granted that most people will know that not everyone in Europe is on the dole. It’s just that enough are for it to be dragging Europe down the drain, with every indication that things will only get worse with time.
Exactly.
I suppose your post is a testament to the abysmal state of American education standards these days. Europe is poorer than the USA because … Europeans hang out their washing to dry? Are you shitting me?
Posts like this from upstarts like you crack me the fuck up. My house is older than your country. European states will still be here in another 1000 years, just like they were 1000 years past. Your country will be lucky to reach its 300th anniversary, the way things are going.
I’m not criticizing France for its immigration policies. They are perfectly valid. What I’m criticizing it for is such things as paying women with two children $2,600 a month…assuming my buddy at the bar was correct of course. Still, it’s the socialistic policies of European countries that is causing the slow economic growth and other difficulties they are faced with, and to whatever degree Asian countries adopt the same practices they will face those same difficulties as well.
So, not even anecdotal evidence is offered, but the absence of anecdotal evidence?
Oh, it’ll get there, all right. But to the degree that liberal politics rule the day it will be a shadow of its former self.
This illustrates how people become inured to things, and which, IMO, is much of the reason why people in European countries say they’re happy with things the way they are - they’ve gotten used to them and no longer have a frame of reference, if they ever did to begin with.
This country is unique in that it was founded with the idea in mind of keeping its citizenry as free from government control as possible, and in limiting and spelling out clearly just what the proper role of government was to be.
Unfortunately both of those tenets have been under increasing assault by the left in this country over the last hundred years, with the result being that we are now losing our edge as a world leader and are becoming more and more like the stagnating countries of Europe - and with government similarly more and more in our face as well.
The paperback edition with the subheading “Soon to be Banned in Canada” was issued in April of 2008, just about two years ago. When should we expect the banning?
The proponents of the OP’s position (and the OP) are remarkably free from factual content in this thread.
They’re doing a pretty bad job of banning this in Canada…
Europe comprises dozens of different countries, with vastly different laws and standards of living. For example, the per-capita GDP in the UK is about 7 times that in Macedonia. It’s not very meaningful to compare the USA with Europe as a whole.
Comparing the UK with the US, we are on average less well off, but there is more protection for the poor in the form of socialised health care and benefits. The murder rate is far lower, but robbery is more common here. We live is smaller homes due to higher land prices, a consequence of 60 million people living in a country less than half the size of Texas.
Anecdotally, the USA strikes me as good place to live if you are well off, but a bad place to live if you are poor.
Cherry picking a couple points that show the UK has a long history of racial tolerance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Early_life_and_background
Which are a couple of interesting factoids, but say little about the big picture.
This is untrue. Growing up, I remember we used to recite the lord’s prayer at my first primary school (age 5-10), can’t remember ever doing it at the second one, or at secondary school (age 10-16). That was the sum of my religious indoctrination, unless you count singing carols at Christmas. Speaking as an atheist, I find nothing objectionable about the lord’s prayer. “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Technically, the monarch is the head of the Church of England. In practise, the UK is one of the most secular countries in the world. For example, it’s very rare to hear a politician say anything about God or their beliefs.
How do you think Jews, Arabs and Gypsies are treated over here? Do you have any cites to demonstrate this? Overt rasism is very rare here. I can’t imagine anyone I know caring if someone was Jewish. I’ll ask the Algerian guy at work when he last came across any racism.
Prosecutions based on censorship are incredibly rare. Here is a link about police “stop and search” powers in the UK, it’s hardly draconian:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/powers/stop-and-search/
Police need some powers if they are to be at all effective.
Whether you consider “the right to own a gun” to be significant is a matter of opinion.
That seems unreasonable. I mean, by that basis, I could argue that your disapproval of lefties is as a result of you no longer having a frame of reference thanks to your own “used-tos”.
I really don’t like arguments like this. Disagreeing is fair enough, but this is dismissal; not only are their arguments wrong, but they are made inherently invalid. Oddly enough, it would seem to be at odds with your assertion of the power of common sense et al, since those are the kind of things that are affected by the circumstances you’re talking about here. Pointing out that people can have problems with these things is pointing out they can have problems with them in general - you’ve made the point that statistics can be used by either side to support their arguments, but you seem to have not applied that logic to common sense and so on, which suffer from the same problem (and if anything, a much greater one, since at least with statistics you’re *somewhat *constrained by outside events).
Teach us, oh wise one, in the ways of America. Preferably by means of relaying a serendipitous conversation you’ve had at bar. Thanks in advance.
“I was talking to this French dude, right, and then this single mother showed up!”
My anecdote is my cite.
Still available in Canada. How about that.
Perhaps… just perhaps… it was a marketing ploy?