Drumheller isn’t a micro climate. That’s where the badlands are.
Well I don’t know anything about the deserts in Canada, nor do I think that the existance of deserts are particularly relevant to why America is so much cooler than Canada. We have mechanized riding spiders. 
Fair enough. So your criterion for goodness is a lack of housing market restrictions.
Which gives rise to two observations. First, it’s a surprisingly specific criterion for “best nation on earth”. You’ll need to persuade me – and, I suspect, many others – that it’s the appropriate one. For one thing, you’ll need to explore what purpose is served by the Swedish restrictions, and whether that purpose is adequately protected in the US.
Secondly, arguing that the US has fewer housing restrictions that Sweden – and I’m happy to take your word for that - does not prove that the US has the world’s least restricted housing market. Even granted your chosen criterion for “best”, all you are arguing is that the US is “better” than Sweden, not that it is the :”best” on earth.
I have to say that if I, as an Irish citizen, have the right to go and live, work, study, etc in Florence if I choose, the benefit to me of that right is in no way diminished by the fact that Florence is in Italy, not in Ireland. If you limit your criterion for “best”, in this way, it begins to look as though by “best” nation you simply mean biggest nation, since only very big nations can offer a wide diversity of environments and habitats.
Exactly. Good man. Thought I’d lost you there for a minute. The OP doesn’t ask which is the best country (place, land, territory) on earth, but which is the best nation (community of people bound by common ties of history, culture, language, origin). Regardless of whether he lives in Sweden or elsewhere, a Swede, by virtue of being a member of the Swedish nation, enjoys the right of settling in Italy, and this is valuable. A US national enjoys no such right. He can, of course, apply to the Italian government, but that is not at all the same thing, and in the consideration of his application US nationality does not confer any advantage over many other nationalities.
But the great bulk of US nationals are not qualified to teach English. And whatever advantage is conferred by having the qualification is enjoyed by everyone who has it, not just by US nationals. This isn’t particularly an advantage of being American. (And you do realise that Italy is not in the far East, don’t you?)
OK, I’ll give you that one.
Mea culpa mea culpa mea culpa. I seem to recall hearing of Canadian badlands before but must’ve forgot. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information online about them.
Well the UK can, officially, suck it :).
One of my criterion is not sufficient no.
I said it’s a definite plus. So together Italy and Ireland are a tough competitor, individually not so much. The argument for Europe as a single country makes sense. The argument for Ireland or Italy as a single country does not.
One can move anywhere in the US.
The levels of qualification to teach English abroad are not nearly so strict as they are in an English speaking country.
This thread is fun.
Look, I hate a lot about the United States. I hate our constant warmongering. I hate the fact that we are always last place when it comes to things like ending slavery and giving rights to minorities. And I hate the fact that our rich people like to pretend that they got that way without any help from society and raise hell every time they are asked to give a little back. But dammit, I don’t see Denmark putting a man on the moon. I don’t see Sweden curing diseases and advancing science like we do. I don’t see Finland leading the way for humanity. Getting ten weeks of vacation is nice, sure, but as a species, we also have bigger fish to fry.
I think the US is the best nation right now. But we have gotten lazy recently and are in easy position to get picked off.
I think your idea that we are one of the last to advance equal rights for minorities is a bit well…wrong. Europe just had a bloody and nasty ethnic war with attempted genocide not even ten years ago. So anyone who talks about moving to Florence to study gets raised a moving to Kosovo to be a UN peacekeeper. The only place the UN occupies in the United States that I am aware of is New York, where they run the damn thing.
So yeah Europe, the US has no ethnic genocides in our recent history.
Amen. I LOVE Europe. I’ve been there 3 times and I’d love to go back. In fact I’d love to live there for a couple years. I’ve had Europeans (plural) live with me in my home. One for 2 years. Almost every European I’ve met has been an intelligent, down-to-Earth person. But goddamn they’ve got some cocky motherfuckers representing them on the internet. The US is a hell of a lot more than Europe’s bastard stepchild and it only makes people look dumb when they pretend otherwise. Part of the reason I bothered stepping up to the plate for the home team* in this thread is because I didn’t want to see another unabated torrent of Europe cheerleading and US-bashing.
(*And let’s be honest, that’s all it is: stepping up to the plate for the home team. Because Somalia is the “Best Nation On Earth” to someone. This is all subjective.)
I meant among the civilized and advanced nations who would otherwise be in the running for “Best Nation on Earth.” There is a lot to admire and envy and emulate in some of the nations of Europe and northern North America. But overall… U-S-A! For now.
Great Britain, and in particular England, is without a shadow of doubt the greatest country on Earth.
When the rest of the world has gone to hell in a handbasket we’ll still be here.
Crumbs, have none of you seen V for Vendetta ?
Look, if “geographically diverse within its own national territory (and lacking in housing market restrictions)” is your criterion for “best”, then the US is going to rank fairly highly.
But is there any reason why this should be the criterion, other than that it tends to favour the US? Geographical diversity within the national territory is offered by mswas on the basis that it gives people the freedom to settle somewhere geographically different from where they happen to be, should they so choose. But, as I have pointed out, a nationality which confers the right to settle outside the national territory can be just as effective from this point of view, if not more so. Besides, this assumes that people want to resettle to live in a geographically different environment. But US nationality is not so valuable if what they actually want to do is resettle in order to experience a culturally different environment. And all of this is irrelevant if people are quite happy where they are.
Americans do in fact have a much greater propensity to resettle than Europeans do – I recall reading that something like a quarter of all Americans live more than a thousand miles from where they were born. Whether they do this out of wanderlust, because of economic dislocation, or for other reasons I can’t say. For Europe, the corresponding proportion is much smaller – not because they don’t enjoy freedom of movement, which they clearly do, but because they don’t have the same urge to resettle. This might explain why an American would rate the freedom to resettle a long way away as more important than an European would. But, even if it were true that the US gave its citizens a wider or stronger opportunity to resettle than European nations did, that would only mean that the US was better for Americans, because they value that. Similarly, a country which affords its citizens universal health care is better if the citizens want universal health care, or if universal health care delivers some other good which the citizens want (like better health, or a freer labour market).
In other words, this is wholly subjective.
You could argue, I suppose, that the best nation is the one which is most effective at giving its citizens the life they want, whatever that might happen to be. Comparisons between nations become difficult though, since different nations may aspire to different things. The US is pretty good at delivering, say, access to mobile phone coverage and cable television, but is it better at this than Australia is at delivering high participation in sporting activities and an abundance of surf beaches? I don’t think questions like that have any meaningful answer.
Besides, there are cultures where people always claim to be happy, cultures where it’s considered improper to complain, and cultures where people *always *complain. This has nothing to do with objective circumstances, but rather with how people see themselves and what they want from life.
Objection, y’r honor ! While all of this is quite true, those countries are cold as a witch’s tit. Disqualification. Move them to Tuscany, then we can talk 
(Bolding Mine)
Sorry, but India or perhaps China takes the cake on this one by a country mile.
As for geography, Canada’s is very diverse. The only problem is that half of it isn’t inhabitable on a large scale. And what about the geography of Russia and China? Also highly varied and vast. All easily matching the variety found in the US.
Where do you get this stuff from?
People (i.e. UDS who made the Florence remark in the first place) are talking about the EU, not Europe. There hasn’t been a genocide within the EU in ten years. There has been a genocide within Europe.
Talking about “genocide in Kosovo” makes no sense as a rebuttal of an EU national’s ability to move freely throughout the Eurozone: there are no multilateral movement and employment agreements between all the countries that make up Europe (which includes countries like Russia and Belarus), whereas there are with those who make up the EU (pretty much all the Westernised countries in Europe, excluding Switzerland and Norway, who negotiate their own multilateral treaties with the EU as a whole).
The next EU enlargment will probably bring Croatia in, an agreement has been made to bring FYR Macedonia in, and the rest of the Balkans after that, but right now, these countries are not members of the EU.
I was going to quote your first post regarding this and just say it was utter rubbish. I’m glad I didn’t as I now believe there is just a huge misunderstanding.
Sweden, like many European countries, has a lot of social housing and there is no cultural stigma connecting to living in them, unlike say “the projects” in US cities or Britain’s council houses. Many well-to-do people happily live in their “hyresrätt” apartments.
Now, these apartments are all well and good to live in but can be a pain when it comes to moving. You see, they are allocated on a list basis (in Stockholm it is common to put your kid on a list at birth) and if you’re not near the top of the list then you are pretty much shit out of luck as far as hyresrätt goes.
However, as in just about any other country, you can also buy an apartment, known as a bostadsrätt. The only restrictions are based on ability to pay (whether you can get a mortgage) and being accepted by the housing association, again quite similar to other countries.
As an example, I went through the process of going from living in my girlfriend’s parents’ basement (I had a problem with my landlord and moved out quickly without having a new place lined up) to viewing a place in suburban Stockholm, to chatting to the bank and then to buying it in exactly one week.
And no, I am not Swedish.
Finally, in the large cities (the few that there are) there can be a problem with second-hand renting mainly due to the hyresrätt system. That still doesn’t stop anyone buying a bostadsrätt, exactly like I did when I had a problem with the second-hand renting.
And it has “Great” in the name, making it clearly the front runner.
Well, if you look at nobel prizes per capita, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, UK, Austria, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands are ahead of the US (link)
So, if I’m reading that correctly, we have about 300 and Iceland has . . . 1? Hardly a statistic that makes them look better than us in any way.