Oh sure. There are several countries that I think are better than the US in quality of life, etc. The “greatest” thing infers power, money and how powerful countries handle themselves. I have many problems with how we roll, too.
Not necessarily. The SA constitution is modelled on the US one somewhat - we just made it better (e.g. adding sexual orientation as a protected class, which came in handy in getting gay marriage legalized by the Constitutional Court)
Proportional rep in the assembly is pretty significant.
There should be a simple exchange program so that US and Canadian citizens who want to switch could simply swap places. Then again, if it were too easy, there’d be a lot of back-and-forth, as people who moved discovered the imperfections as well as the virtues of their new land, and wanted to go back again.
Statisitical measures are things that look good on paper, but don’t always translate to happiness. Finland is at the top or near the top of almost all current lists of great places to live, due to health care, education, and other measures. But every time I’ve lived there, I’ve been miserably unhappy and gone into severe depressions. In spite of fitting in fairly well by looking Finnish, speaking Finnish, having a Finnish name, and Finnish relatives. But it’s a place of misery for me, if I’m there longer than a month, and I am so glad my grandparents moved to the US. But I’d probably be equally happy if they’d moved to Canada or to Australia.
If the greatest country is based on the happiness of a large number of citizens, here’s one list:
happiness ranking
Eric Weiner explores happiness in 10 countries in The Geography of Bliss, which is worth reading.
I think that trying to claim that this country or that is the greatest is futile, though some are more desireable places than others. It may be more useful to think of one’s country is a wonderful place, in spite of its flaws, and do what one can to make it better. If someone loathes one’s homeland; try to make some changes. Or leave, if you can.
To a jingoist xenophobe nativist asshole, the US is by far the greatest country EVAH!!! EVAH, EVAH, EVAH, and shut your lying mouth! QED.
That was only the first sentence of my post. There was more.
MAD, by which I assume you are referring to Mutually Assured Destruction is largely a relic of the Cold War.
Which “rest of the world” are you referring to? Your exchange student friend on Facebook? Half of Europe is on the verge of economic collapse because they have no work ethic. Countries like China, India, Indonesia and Brazil have tens of millions of people who live in shantytowns while their 1% live in walled off compounds.
This statement just appears to be some sort of bizarre non-sequitor.
How many students come to study in American colleges and universities? How many foreigners come to the US on H1B visas (and illegally) to work at our companies?
How about GDP per capita for countries with populations over 100 million?
United States 6
Japan 24
Russia 53
Mexico 63
Brazil 75
China 92
Indonesia 122
Philippines 126
India 129
Pakistan 137
Nigeria 141
Bangladesh 155
Move to China and take a job in one of their factories. Then complain to me about hard work and income equality.
America is “productive” because we have some of the most modern manufacturing, IT and business processes in the world.
One country has a dodgy work ethic (or, to be far more accurate, sees tax evasion as a national sport). Even then it is all relative and very much part of the “live to work” versus “work to live” argument.
To put it more simply: who gets to say what the correct “work ethic” is?
In other news, of course the whole damn mess started somewhere away from Europe. For some reason I can’t quite remember where …
When people tell me that America is the greatest country on earth, I ask them where else they have lived. Turns out they have mostly visited Mexico as tourists.
Areas where the US falls significantly short of first world standards:
-Health care. Twice as expensive, worst outcomes in the developed world. Worse even than many far less developed nations.
-Transportation. Outside of perhaps a half dozen urban areas, it is difficult if not impractical to live without access to a private car. For residents in any large European city, owning a car is almost more hassle than it is worth. US drivers are poorly trained, and licensing standards are very lax. many are unable to deal with a roundabout, fail to keep right on interstates, etc. etc.
-Food. Plenty of cheap crappy food. Good food is less available and more expensive than in most places. Availability of cheap crappy prepared food results in many adults that can’t/won’t/don’t cook. 30 years ago I observed that the US failed at Coffee, Beer, and Bread. The first two have been largely solved in the decades since, but it is still hard to find decent bread, and crap bread is still the default.
LOL. The root of the problems lays very squarely with the banking sector and its involvement with US sub prime - as was very clearly pointed out to the US President at the recent G20 in Mexico where he kindly offered advice.
How you manage to talk about non-sequitors, then root the austerity measures in work ethic is quite an achievement.
Fwiw, the developed world has always rejected US workplace culture and practices, and very often mocks it. I was obv. talking about the developed world, not wanting to equate US work culture and practices with the developeding world.
Smaller countries need not develop all sectors of economy, have international influence and commitments, strong constitution n tolerance, ethics, military etc. Countries having more than 20 million people are complex systems and so, shouldn’t be compared with smaller countries for gdb per capita imo.
Maybe the ones who mock\complain are lazy, less ambitious or have no experience about what its like working on big or time critical projects??
The people who have to pay for it.
No, Europe’s mess has little to do with the 2008 sub-prime blowout and more to do with low tax collection rates and high levels of entitlements in the PIGS countries (Portuguel, Italy, Greece, Spain) and inherent structural problems with the Eurozone itself.
So where have you lived?
Yes, I would conceed that for a vast amount of Americans, our health care system sucks.
This statement seems absurd to me. Yes, owing a car in a European city is a hassle because their roads are laid out like shit. American cities tend to be newer and have thus been designed for the automobile. But every European city I’ve been in has the same problems of traffic and shitty drivers and whatnot that we do in America.
So the greatest country in the world would be Colombia, Belgium or France?
You’d have thought that I’d have mentioned tax collection.
Oh I did.
The problem is the Eurozone (and I have no real thing for the Eurozone, I neither come from nor live in a country that uses the Euro) could have handled things a lot better and easier if there wasn’t a global financial clusterfuck due to, well, you know the rest.
Actually, the greatest country in the world, without question or argument, is the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
End of discussion.
Your list must be a bit dated, since it includes East and West Germany.
Just to note that I was surprized to realize that the median population for a country is 4-5 millions. So, countries with more than 20 millions people are in fact already quite large.
So the entire rest of the world is composed of lazy unambitious people? :rolleyes:
lol, yeah . around 50 of those nations have less than or nearly equal to 100k inhabitants.
The mean population comes around 28.9 millions ( = 7000 million / no. of countries i.e 242).
I believe not all of the developed world will mock. Only the people who are lazy, less ambitious or having no experience about what its like working on big or time critical projects will mock\complain.
I am basing this on my personal n of several friends’ experiences of working for various US n non-US companies . I believe US MNCs have one of the best work culture though there’s always scope for improvement…