What all is good & bad about america?

Great Debates
21

Mandelstam:
Agree on just about all of what you said.

Recognizing that Switzerland is tolerant and diverse in religion and language, it still does not have AFAIK anywhere near the diversity that many other countries, including the US, deal with in terms of racial and broad cultural diversity. I don’t think it has had cities with a large influx of immigrants from countries with dissimilar cultures, for example. I could be wrong on this, especially as concerns recent years, so please correct me if my impressions are inaccurate, but I think the U.S. has a harder job to do because it is more diverse.

That said, I think American cultural diversity is a wonderful thing. From a selfish viewpoint, although I am not living in a major city, I can get good Japanese, French, Italian, Chinese, Indian and Turkish meals with less than a half hour’s drive. It’s also a challenge, since people with very different cultural backgrounds have to try to accomodate each other, and some are more successful than others, to put it as kindly as possible.

22

Another good thing about America: BASEBALL!

23

Mandelstam:
I asked earlier about your mention of Bolivia, and did a quick lookup on Yahoo. Here’s what I found:

Hmm. Doesn’t sound all that stable. Maybe it was a different South American country you were thinking of.

24

No I was thinking of Bolivia–and if you re-read my post I never said that either it or Haiti was stable. What I said was that they had begun with violent revolutions and “lasted.” (And I also quite specifically said (twice) that maybe Earl had meant to make other stipulations beyond mere “lasting.”)

I would not have expected Bolivia to be stable for the reasons I mentioned in my last post. And, as I also said, I know very little about South America, and about Bolivia–beyond its historically important independence–almost nothing at all. That said, 200 coups is quite eye-opening. Yipes!

If I sound a little cranky it’s b/c I try very hard never to present myself as an authority when I am not, and to be as clear as possible about what I am saying.

As to Switzerland: I totally agree that today it is a very culturally homogenous place, somewhat boringly so, I’ve been told by people who know it better than I do. My point though was that back in the nineteenth century it experienced some turbulence due to cultural and religious differences. Protestant/Catholic differences sometimes counted for a great deal centuries ago, which is sometimes hard for us to realize.

So I’m saying that when we consider how unstable many post-colonial countries we have to think 1) of the historical and economic conditions under which they have come into being and 2) that it sometimes takes a lot of time to produce stability. For the US that mainly wasn’t true: and yet look what happened in the middle of the nineteenth century to the US! I’d say the US Civil War which, IIRC, is still the bloodiest war in US history counts as more than a blip on the radar screen.

I’m also not sure that I’d want to overvalue the importance of stability in the history of any country. Although most of us who are lucky enough to have a decent life value stability very highly–and for good reason–it’s also true that in historical terms a certain amount of instability can lead to good changes. For complicated reasons, major strides in civil rights have tended to follow periods of strife (the civil war, WWI, the Depression, WW2, Vietnam). So we owe some of our current wellbeing not only to the vision of the original framers (and those who inspired them), but also to generations before us who suffered and then learned from mistakes. I hope that we, who are also living through somewhat turbulent times, will eventually continue this legacy in a positive way. :slight_smile:

25

MLS: I’ll try to provide some substantiation for a few of my claims:

A good source for data, by the way is the Statistical Abstract: http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-02.html

Foreign Aid: My view was somewhat outdated. US foreign aid and loans increased during the 1993-1999 period, then dropped in 2000 to traditionally low levels. (1999 figures were distorted by a big payment to Nicaragua). I don’t have later data. The variation appears to be explained by loan levels: loans comprised 3/4 of the total in 1999, for example.

Ignoring loans, my initial characterization is probably accurate, though I don’t have the data handy.
Foreign Aid and Loans to Developing Countries, Nonmilitary

Country …1999 share of GDP …2000 share of GDP

US…0.65 …0.25
Japan…0.82 …0.23
Great Britain…1.19 …0.50
Germany …0.87 …0.67
France…0.81 …0.43
Netherlands…1.71 …1.85
Sweden…1.00 …1.76
Australia…0.76 …0.40

Anyway, the US is at the bottom of the list of these major countries. New Zealand isn’t so hot either.

More Data:
…Health Expend, …Life Expectancy…CO2 emissions
Country …share of GDP 1998…2001 …per capita

US…12.9…77.3…20
Japan…7.5…80.8… 9
Great Britain…6.8…77.8… 9
Germany …10.3…77.6…10
France…9.3…78.9… 6
Netherlands…8.7…78.4… 11
Sweden…7.9…n/a… 6
Australia…8.6…79.9…17

See Table 1313, 1312, 1315, Stat Abstract

In my list, the US has the lowest life expectancy, the highest health care expenditures and the highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions. Note that Germany’s data is skewed by the inclusion of East Germany.

Good

Actually, the service in US restaurants is among the best in the world, although admittedly I can’t vouch for Hong Kong, Singapore or certain other countries.

26

Thanks flowbark, interesting stats. In regards to health data, I’m sure there is a factor in all cases of the relative number of immigrants, but I can’t imagine it is overwhelming. Knowing a few people lacking good health insurance, it is a real barrier in the U.S., which is a shame. I don’t know that nationalizing it would be a panacea. Well, that’s probably an issue that is a different great debate. Food for thought, anyway.

Good things: Did I mention BASEBALL?

Bad things: So-called “professional” wrestling. Or do other countries have this, too?

27

Here’s an old post of mine:

You may be interested to review that statistics for foreign aid. Calculated as a share of the total economy, the US has traditionally donated among the smallest amount of aid to the third world in the OECD.

Alas, I don’t have the GDP share figures, but I was able to find the aid per person figures for 1993. Source: http://www.unicef.org/pon95/aid-0004.html

	Aid given
	per person

Country ($) 1993

Denmark 259
Norway 236
Sweden 203
Netherlands 165
France 138
Luxembourg 127
Switzerland 112
Japan 90
Germany 86
Canada 82
Belgium 80
Finland 70

Average 70

Austria 69
Australia 54
Italy 53
United Kingdom 50
United States 38
Spain 31
New Zealand 28
Portugal 25
Ireland 23

28

Another old post of mine

US Incarceration Rate 1925-1973: About 110 per 100,000
US Incarceration Rate 2000: 478
(State and Federal)

US Incarceration Rate including local jails: almost 700, higher than Russia.

That’s from the Economist, 8/10/02

Fun facts:
Disenfranchised Felons as % of Voting Age Population
Florida …7%
Alabama …7%
New Mexico…6%
Virginia…6%
Mississippi…6%
Delaware…6%
Wyoming…5%

Florida tops the list. It seems reasonable to mention that a certain election dispute also occurred in Florida in the recent past.

On the bright side, since the late 1970s a number of prison programs have been demonstrated to reduce recidivism. I haven’t noticed much interest in them though, perhaps because Americans find punitive schemes to be highly satisfying.

29

On Immigration

Foreign or Foreign-born population as a share of the total population, 1999

Country …

US…10.3
Japan…1.2
Great Britain…3.8
Germany …8.9
France…NA, 6.8 in 1988
Netherlands…4.1
Sweden…5.5
Australia…23.3

The US does have a large share of immigrants, but it is not an outlier.

MLS: Australia provides an interesting counter-example to your hypothesis.

30

Each edition of the Statistical Abstract has a chapter devoted to Comparative International Statistics:

Here is the link. WARNING: PDF file is 1.5 MB!

http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/02statab/intlstat.pdf