As for American exceptionalism, I like to say, “Are we a team player or are we a primma donna?”
However many they are, if Texas secedes, all the major indicators of quality of life and society’s progress will improve at least by 50%.
“Most interfering”/“most warmongering”, I think, is perhaps one. Tied to that might be “most hypocritical about own international motives”
The other is definitely “One of the biggest resource consumers,” but that’s not as unique or specific.
Because the USSR fell and nothing’s risen to taken its place in competition for that category? Certainly China doesn’t actually seem to want to, their hegemonic concerns nowadays seem to be strictly with the Sinosphere (Korea, Tibet, Taiwan, various islands) and they are content to use economic force in other areas.
Other than this, I agree that most of the others are just bias against the soft target. Yeah, a lot of Americans are fat, gun-loving, homophobic, Jersey Shore-watching RW Christian rednecks. More live in Portland and San Francisco and NY and Houston. There are just a fucking lot of Americans.
Damn, so where is my half million dollar main residence and my two hundred thousand dollar vacation condo in Amsterdam?
And I think my maid and gardener got delayed by the snow … along with the caviar and lobster delivery. :rolleyes:
There are just as many Americans living just above marginal lifestyles. Most of the people I know don’t have huge expensive houses, or drive huge expensive cars nor go on long luxurious vacations. Most of the people I know have regular jobs, take both of the couple to have any sort of dwelling that isn’t a cheap beehive exisitence in a slum. Many of them barely have any form of dependable health care. Most of them drive compact cars that are at least 5-7 years old. Most of them take vacation and stay at home doing home repairs, going out to eat is maxed out at Chili’s or Applebees and they buy clothing at TJ Maxx and Nordstroms Basement.
most American Exceptionalism on this board seems to come from the Right when they try and explain why perfectly sensible modest social reforms won’t work despite them working everywhere else they’ve been tried.
Such as how despite this not happening anywhere else in the world a public health system would collapse under the weight of Americans stuffing their proverbial faces with needless free treatments. Being exceptionally greedy.
Or poor performing health statistics being explained along the lines of ‘we’re just exceptionally fatter and more unhealthy than the rest of you’.
USA, USA!
That may be a marginal lifestyle to you, but to a significant number of people worldwide it’s still pretty luxurious. For example, car ownership stats for the US in 2002 were 812 cars per 1000 people. In Pakistan it was 12 cars per 1000 people. Even countries like Brazil, Turkey, Egypt and Thailand barely get into triple figures per 1000, if that. What the world’s standard of living is, is definitely skewed by living in arguably the most successful nation. The gap between that and the rest of the world is quite large.
Dude … travel a little bit.
Going by sheer numbers, on most of the planet both parents work and do have a cheap beehive existence in a slum, don’t have dependable health care, don’t have cars at all, have never been more than 100 miles from their home, and would consider trips to Chili’s and TJ Maxx to be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
So you’re saying it’s OK to compare a poor African village with a regular American middle class suburb? That doesn’t sound right.
Comparing similar groups of people across similarly developed countries leads to… wait for it… a whole mess of similarities. “Americans” are not rich gods living on Mount Olympus while the peons toil away in the fields. There are rich American, middle class Americans and poor Americans. Just like their are rich Britons and middle class Britons and poor Britons. And I bet they match up pretty closely.
Both are much different than a rich Nigerian or a middle Nigerian or a poor Nigerian.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware the death penalty was written into the Constitution? Isn’t Congress (with the Senate) sovereign?
I do understand the important place the Supreme Court plays as a check on the power of the legislature but ultimately, surely a federal law which prohibits the death penalty would be the ultimate answer. Ok, amend the Constitution if necessary, its been done 27 times before.
I also appreciate the President holds and exercises executive powers which incidentally he inherited from the King of England. But he can’t make laws by himself. Well…not inside the USA, Guantanamo, Iraq etc are a different matter. 
Dumber: Depends on your view of “dumbness”. I suspect that Americans are less informed, particularly on foreign affairs. But knowledge and intellect aren’t the same thing and there’s no reason to think that actually intellectual power is any lower than in other modern nations. It could possibly even be argued that our focus on a liberal arts education, rather than one which simply pumps students full of factoids, produces people who are on average more able to tackle and solve problems in the quickest and simplest way (which, any engineer will tell you is actually the cleverest solution). And of course, the day that the EU becomes the dominant force on the planet will be the day that Europeans start to lose interest in staying informed on foreign affairs.
More violent: Technically speaking, Western Europe’s crime rate is now above that of the US. On the other hand, that’s because we instituted the 3-strikes laws and have driven up our prison occupancy by a massive amount over the last two decades. And, at the same time, most Western European nations started to see their first cases of mass immigration of other countries’ tired, poor, and hungry. While I think that immigration is overall healthy, it does generally involve increased crime rates (at least with the second generation).
More greedy: And? Greed brought you the modern world. Before greed, we had ten thousand years of shitting in the woods.
More incompetent: Doubtful. As noted before, there’s no particular reason to think that the US has a lower IQ than other nations by any particularly significant amount. You could argue that our system of government leads to a preference for having the legislature and executive branches in a general deadlock. In return, our government will generally favor more conservative policies (by which I mean conservative, not Conservative) than a nation where the legislature and executive branches are guaranteed to be lead by the same political party. But on the other hand, with a single party running the nation, there’s less pressure to stick to the middle, just to be close enough to be less insane than the other parties. You’re liable to end up with a single-party nation that, while centric, leans one way and will continue to do so for decades on end.
More politically corrupt: Compared to…Italy? Spain? Japan? France? No. Outside of Chicago, US politics seem to be pretty clean.
Gun-obsessed: And? Firstly, there’s no evidence that anyone can point to on the planet which is a slam-dunk for linking gun-ownership and crime. (Take for example this chart of gun ownership (X) versus murder rate (Y)). And secondly, there’s zip in the way of protection for the government staying true to the Constitution and rule of law except for the threat of insurrection. And thirdly, we had a higher crime rate than most European nations did until recently and a lot lower population density than most – meaning that you don’t have a police box every 5 blocks, regardless of who you are. Self-protection was seen as a fairly large necessity.
That’s a silly statement. People have been greedy as long as there have been possessions to be greedy about. Soldiers who sacked cities in ancient times were probably just a tad greedy. So were the people who enslaved others for cheap labor. Or levied crushing taxes. Or just plain bashed people on the head and robbed them. There’s nothing new about greed.
Another silly claim. Gun ownership doesn’t threaten the government; the Iraqis under Saddam had plenty of guns, it didn’t slow Saddam down. Nor are gun owners likely to fight against an oppressive government; they are more likely to be the ones who fight for it. Or if they don’t, to simply ignore any tyranny it commits as long as it doesn’t touch their guns.
Monstro pointed out that “we seem entitled to a lifestyle that most of the world would see as luxurious.”
aruvqan disputed that, and said that plenty of Americans struggle to get by, driving “compact cars that are at least 5-7 years old” and “going out to eat is maxed out at Chili’s or Applebees.”
TheUS poverty line is about $11,000 for an individual. Someone making $11k a year without any other support would indeed struggle to do better than an old beater and the occasional hamburger. She is, in an American context, very poor. Nobody living in our culture would describe her as anything else. Globally, however, the average income is $7,000, meaning that even if we include the entire developed world, the average global citizen makes only 2/3 of of the poverty level in the US. In the world’s two most populous countries, the median income is under $2,500 a year.
We in the developed world feel entitled to potable tap water, houses that are heated by something other than an open flame, flush toilets, and the knowledge that our children are more likely to die of obesity than starvation. Most of the people on the planet don’t have any of those things, and would, as Monstro said, regard them as luxuries. If you own a car or a computer (of any kind), two pairs of shoes, and have eaten meat in the last week, you’re doing better than average.
That’s not a knock or a criticism of poor people in developed countries. It’s just the facts about how very, very lucky all of us living in the western world today are.
That doesn’t take into account purchasing power parity; $2,500 will buy you a lot of the same stuff in India that $11,000 will buy you in the US. Especially staples.
That isn’t to say that I wouldn’t rather be making $11,000 in the US than $2,500 in India, but that’s more to do with the stuff I wouldn’t have to pay for. Government services, specifically.
PPP per capita in the US: $47,000
India: $3,290
So, yes, Americans earning 7% of the US median have income comparable to the average Indian. How many people do you think fit in that category?
Some of which are exactly what I referred to as things we feel entitled to, but that most of the world sees as luxurious.
OK, I’ll address several mostly similar posts with the same answer.
[and I am a dudette]
I am saying that if people go by tv programs, all americans can travel the world spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on second vacation properties, can afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on primary residences, wear all designer clothing and shoes, and go to hundred dollar a person restaurants. Or they live in Watts in a 2 room apartment with roaches and rats sharing the space with 15 people.
I am saying that I consider myself to be at the marginal level - we live paycheck to paycheck, live in a property that cost under $100 000 to buy [and for that read we have a mortgage] that has not had more than routine maintenance done on it, no renovations, no ripping out of walls and putting in of new kitchens and bathrooms though I confess to spending $3000 on a wood stove to replace the ancient one with the cracked top plate that I can use to heat, and cook with when the power goes out. I also spent $250 on tiles and mortar and grout to cover the shitty cracking bricks. I was able to afford this and a 1 week vacation to Germany with hubby because my dad died and I came into a bit of money.
Most of the people I know live similarly. Paycheck to paycheck, no major expenses in living arrangements, and no elaborate festive restaurant/clubbing/international vacations. Maybe I need a better class of friends, working class schlubs like us suck for entertainment value.
And I don’t consider myself poor, even though as I pointed out I definitely do not live the luxurious american lifestyle that tv portrays us as having almost universally.
I count myself as happy mainly because I do have a comfortable house, and a great husband. I do not need to eat steak every night, nor do I need more than my 2006 Jetta, and I dont need designer clothing and a huge closet full of shoes.
but I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t like to be able to afford all that …
Um… what TV programs are you talking about? The rest of the world, believe it or not, understands that we’re not all Kardashians.
I’m not sure people have that much of a misconception about American wealth; plenty of sitcoms and the like show middle-class (though I’ll agree that it’s upper-middle class as often as not). I lived in Asia for three years, and by far the biggest myths I encountered about America were 1) they imagined it was more violent and crime-filled than reality and 2) they imagined a lot more sex.
People in developed countries, IME, generally understand that Americans have an only slightly higher standard of living. People in developing countries think we have wealth beyond their wildest dreams … because we do.
Think about the info you just gave about yourself:
You own a 2006 Jetta: Only ~15% of the people on the planet own a private car of any kind, and a four year old VW is better than most of them.
You live paycheck to paycheck: Most of the people in the world have never gotten a paycheck or been inside of a bank. Roughly half the world’s population are subsistence farmers.
You own property: the vast, vast majority of the world does not.
You have travelled internationally at least once: “vacations” are something only westerners and other rich people do.
(Honestly, you’re doing fine even by American standards; you’ve got a better car and house than me and most of my family.)
I’m really not slagging on you: I never really realized, viscerally, how rich I was until I visited the Phillippines and saw millions of people living at about the wealth level of a homeless vagrant in the US. After that, I’ve never forgotten how lucky I am.
The impression that Americans are stupid stems from a few different places, in my opinion.
One of the big ones is that, IME, if an American isn’t sure about something, they’ll ask, so you get some pretty dumb sounding questions from yanks. I’m sure you’ve seen lists of these laying around. I personally don’t mind fielding questions like “So do they speak English in Australia?” when I visit the states.
Also, there’s a streak of anti-intellectualism or something going on. Something. Bill Bryson claimed it might have to do with the way the news spoon-feeds Americans information as if they’re retarded. A story titled “The Queen Walks Her Dog” will start with the words “London, England” as if readers might not be able to make the connection of the Queen to England and assume the story is set in some Midwestern small town named London. The American media seems to do well putting stupid people in the spotlight, like when Jay Leno interviews college graduates who never heard of the planet Mercury, with shows like “America’s Dumbest Criminals”, or with news articles about the latest study on how some astonishing proportion of the populace cannot find Canada on a map.
It doesn’t help that America is a major exporter of bullshit. “The Springer Show”, “Crossing Over”, and “Oprah” all are or were shown overseas and prominently display some deeply stupid American behavior. The fact that they are or were successful overseas doesn’t speak well of other countries or humans in general, of course. Still, it seems that Americans are often trendsetters for stupidity, including bad ideas such as Creationism, trendy new quackery, celebrities with opinions about why you shouldn’t vaccinate your children, and the Hummer SUV.
I could go on but it’s important, I think, to underscore that much of this is because of the one way flow of information. An absurd amount of attention throughout the world is lavished upon America and America’s politics, and a great deal of the world’s entertainment comes from America. For example, while I’m willing to bet that 90% of the people I know in Australia could tell me that 911 is the emergency number to dial in America, I doubt that 10% of the people I know in America could tell me that 000 is the Australian counterpart.
What bump meant is that indeed that the powers the Constitution grants the federal government are such it can not just decree an end to the death penalty*** as applied by the states***. The national legislative and executive branches cannot just command the states to eliminate the death penalty. It could be ruled unconstitutional by the SC, but that can’t happen just on their own initiative but must result from a case (was once, then was reinstated), or there could be a constitutional amendment, but to pass that, the Constitution says Congress needs the separate consent of 3/4ths of the states. So the constitution does --procedurally–preclude the Prez and Congress from just abolishing the Death Penalty. Or Sunday Closing laws for that matter.