Pardon my ignorance, but what is the ‘TOBIN TAX’? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it?
By the way, Russia is far ahead of us in pollution, India is ahead also - along with poor medical care for their millions, South America is polluting its rivers, becoming a dumping ground for toxic waste from other nations and rapidly stripping the rain forrest. You dare not swim in the waters of Venice because of the bacterial pollution, China virtually leads the world in industrial pollutants, France ignored nuclear treaties and tested nuclear weapons under ground and in the air. Iraq created the worst oil pollution EVER and released bacterial weapons during desert storm. In Africa they are water mining, which is the use of high pressure water cannons to blast tons of dirt away – and down into local rivers to silt them up, pollute the water and kill the fish. In Thailand, they use mercury by the ton to process gold with from independent miners which has poisoned several rivers and a couple of thousand acres of land, not to mention a couple of thousand miners. Mexico used DDT like it is free, ignoring the proven facts of genetic damage caused by the chemical to all forms of life.
In at least 6 nations, their idea of treating sewage is to pump it into the nearest river, untreated.
So, we are NOT the worlds leading polluter. It also seems to me that we gave back ALL lands captured during WW2, while several nations have not and have been very active in locating and returning ‘spoils of war,’ something never done before. Plus, after WW2, Americans went in to defeated nations and helped them rebuild, provided them with food, medicine and law and then backed out when they could handle themselves. Again, something previously unheard of. And Americans discovered and developed the great Saudi oil fields then were shoved out by the Arabs without recompensation for taking over the expensive American companies. We COULD have gone to war over that and turned the Arabs back into camel jockeys, but we did not.
Didn’t the British recently go and beat the shit out of some small, colonial territory which wanted independence a few years ago? America gave back the Panama Cannel without any bloody battles. Were COULD have gone in and turned Castro into so much manure and certainly could now, but we don’t – even though he is a real pain in the ass. Waiting for the old bastard to die is not why either, because his son will rise to the ‘throne’ and he is worse than his dad.
We’ve sent BILLIONS of tons of food to impoverished countries, only to discover than much of it is being taken by the rich government for not only their own use, but to secretly sell to other nations for money and some of the free food even turns up being SOLD to the people that it was to be GIVEN to. We didn’t stop the shipments.
A friend of mine is disabled and on commodities – a once a month government handout of about 8 to 10 pounds of crappy food. EVERY TIME there is a disaster over seas and we send food, HIS commodities stop! Once our government had fed the victims over seas, THEN his supplies start up again.
I really hate it when people start bad mouthing the States, while wearing American clothing, eating American food, getting American medications, driving American Cars, flying in American designed aircraft, getting American discovered medical treatments, listening to American Music, watching American shows and, especially, if they have fled here to avoid persecution from their OWN governments.
As for inventions, we have the largest history of inventions and registration of same in the world because many foreign inventers fled HERE to be able to create freely. (Some nations like China, invented wonderful things in the past – and then abandoned them or did not develope them to their full potential.)
We’ve developed the artificial heart machine, replacement heart valves, replacement hip joints, artificial skin, ocular lens implants, the heart transplant followed by other organ transplants, artificial bone, neutral plastic mesh, and tons of things have come out of the space industry for average use, like kevlar, high pressure, optical plastics, and more. Our farmers can and have fed the majority of the world. We repay our debts also.
Yeah, we get a bit mouthy at times and some of us overseas get downright rude, but I’ve run into rude people here from other nations, especially Arabs and Pakistani, Indians, Iraq and Iranians. It burns me up that half of Cuba came to the tip of Florida and now the dominate language is Spanish in Miami and you HAVE to be bilingual in order to do business there. THEY came HERE so they should have learned English instead of turning Miami into Little Cuba, but we let them do it anyhow.
I’d say we have a lot more pluses here than negatives in comparison to any other nation.