You don’t think people can be ambitious during a 35-hour week? Employers in the USA - with the help of the legislature - have done a really fine job of creating an environment where employees effectively work for free to to prove their ambition, and generate more profit for someone else?
If you want to be part of that bullshit, good luck with it. I’m going home to play with the kids.
So essentially you’re using anecdotal second hand stories from your friends as evidence to back up your spurious claim that only the US is competent at executing “big or time critical projects”?
The Manhattan Project was nigh on seventy years ago, son. The Apollo Program was forty years ago. What exactly is it that you think that America has done since then that the rest of the world should find impressive?
Do you Americans have some great universal healthcare program or something that the rest of the world should be impressed by? Because I’m not aware of it.
If you absolutely must invade and conquer one or more countries in as short a time as possible then the USofA must be your country of choice. There is no substitute. That is how the so-called “Greatest Generation” gave themselves that name and that is the common usage today I think. Muhammad Ali was “the Greatest” because he beat everyone else, then gave himself the name. Same for the USA.
If we want to talk about other attributes we should ask who is the “smartest” or the “healthiest.”
MAD is a naturally occurring state of affairs between any two nations with a substantial arsenal of ICBMs and the capability to fire them before they can be detected and destroyed.
The USA, Russia, China, France and the UK are all in a state of MAD with each other. Other nuclear armed states like India or Israel don’t have the ability to decisively incinerate any other country in the world and so aren’t quite in the same club.
I should point out that in verifying these facts I discovered the delightful fact that the French strategic missile force is called “le Force du Frappe.” In true sense that means “Strike Force” but literally it could also mean “Hitting Force.” That sounds like the best action movie ever.
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You should visit the former Soviet Union, outside of East Germany which owes present prosperity to being reunited with West Germany, I haven’t seen anything there to brag about. Those who live there don’t seem too impressed with healthcare availability or cost. Those who have relatives in the US frequently try to come here for treatment. There is mass transit, but it is pretty uniformly crowded and uncomfortable. OTOH, those who have cars are very proud of them, often use them as a supplemental income by jitney driving, and drive as if they wish they could kill the whole world in one fiery crash. Crappy food was plentiful and expensive. Some decent produce could be had from street vendors who frequently were selling from a personal plot. I don’t remember seeing too much meat in grocery shops that looked good. Friends and relatives cautioned that sausage should be avoided as it was adulterated. Good meat could be had if you knew a farmer or raised your own. Coops full of chickens are still pretty common even in major cities. I’ ve been a few places and have no interest in a dickwaving contest over who is most travelled. I saw enough to make me quite content to stay here.
What has the rest of the world done?
Did you quote the wrong post or something? I don’t think being better than the former Soviet Union is anything to brag about either.
Given our fellow citizens healthcare for a start.
But you might want to look at the title of the thread. The onus is not upon non-Americans to disprove the idea that the US is the greatest country on Earth. It’s up to Americans to validate that idea.
So what’s your evidence?
In other words, not you. But you did claim others had had a bad work ethic, which kind of implies that you are paying for it. The alleged “bad work ethic” of certain countries in Europe. Are you some kind of ruler of warm European Countries?
Do you actually read what you write?
He dudn’t have to read what he writes. He’s a Merkin, goddammit. We don’t fucken do that furrin’ shit here.
You have to admit, it is pretty awesome living in a country who has a bunch of Ohio class submarines constantly circling around in the oceans, packing dozens of SLBM’s with countless M.I.R.V.s, able to all be launched in under 30 minutes and wipe out pretty much every major city in several countries in under an hour or two.
Come on… come on. Doesn’t that just give you a hard-on???
No…???
It’s not the greatest country on Earth to me, at least not to live in.
I was born and lived the first 35 years of my life in the USA. I’ve lived here in Ireland for over 6 years now, and have no intention of ever moving back. This is in spite of the fact that when I lived in the USA I made more money (with a lower cost of living), I had health insurance, and I had far more friends and family there. Nevertheless, I wasn’t happy there, and I’m happy here.
When people ask me here where I’m from and why I’m here, I usually tell them that to me, Ireland is Candyland, whereas the USA is The Jungle. I don’t like the pace of life in the USA, or the constant tensions and resentments that seem to underlie so many social interactions, or the way that nothing is secure unless you’re making a lot of money, or the major influence of religion on political life, or the constant militarism.
I still love the USA, and try to visit for a few weeks every year, but the longer I stay away and look at the place from the outside, the weirder and less attractive it gets.
Calvinists. They invented it.
I am disputing the claim that non-US companies/nations have better work culture. It all depends on the nature and time constraints of the project.For example, I was in the development team for windows 7 and windows server when I was at Microsoft n I don’t think employee satisfaction would have been much better or worse if it was a non-US MNC.
America is certainly the mightiest country in the world, that’s beyond a doubt. And might, I think, has a certain degree of greatness to it. And some real peevish folk might go so far as to say that through our tremendous military puissance, we subsidized other countries to allow them to develop more robust social systems. (One can imagine the sort of fascist perestroika western Europe would have developed if they were in charge of defending themselves from the Soviets single-handedly).
But today? Not even a snowball’s chance. In Europe, they have a quality of gentleness to them, a sort of everything-not-forbidden-is-permitted mentality that we’re a long way from acquiring. And in Asia, they have a sense of dynamism and vision that we’ve long since forgotten.
Poor America’s gotta take a good, long, hard look at itself, and decide what it wants to be when it grows up.
No, you initially claimed that people who are not American:
“are lazy, less ambitious or have no experience about what its like working on big or time critical projects”.
Those are your words verbatim from earlier in the thread.
And that is pure and unadulterated BS.
I get American patriotism, I really do. You’ve got a lot to be proud about.
But I don’t abide by arrogance, which your country has in spades.
I quoted the entire post to which I was responding and hit his three points :healthcare, transit, and food. He asked about Americans having been anywhere except Mexico. You either didn’t bother to read any of that or you were so struck with what you believed was your absolutely delicious bit of snark that you chose to deliberately pretend it wasn’t there.
I didn’t refer to all non-Americans, only to some of those who mock ‘American work ethic’
I am not an american . I am an Indian living in india.
…or you didn’t bother to read the other two thirds of the post you quoted, which were about first world living standards.
I have no idea what “absolutely delicious bit of snark” you’re talking about. I was genuinely confused by your post because it didn’t make sense. I mean, okay, you’ve been to bits of Eastern Europe, which are not in Mexico… but then you go on to describe it, as though anybody in this thread would rather live in Moldova.
I sometimes wonder if Americans who haven’t travelled overseas assume the rest of the developed world is also like this - that, for example, it’s a necessary consequence of … capitalism or affluence, or some other developed world commonality.
Fwiw,I remember being shocked by the militarism from the late 80s - the number of people just walking around in one uniform or another long predates 9/11.