Many, if not most, of us are jealous of other countries, though. Really, this is only a hard truth for the MAGA crowd, and even that is (I think) largely the fault of the nationalist propaganda that’s been shoveled at us since we were kids.
As an American, I agree with you, though - the US is in no way a ‘strong democracy’, or much of a democracy at all. It may once have been, but it certainly hasn’t been the case for a long time.
Back in 1780s the US constitution was an absolute marvel of progressiveness, but today, it is increadibly outdated and keeps the US political system back from making progress.
We’re like the 40-year-old still wearing his school jacket and talking about winning state.
No shit, what American thinks either are true?
America, fuck yeah!
Has been a joke for like 30 years now
This. Conservatives have poor media literacy. They don’t understand that they’re the punchline in stuff like that. They miss the point of stuff like RoboCop and Starship Troopers and unironically like those movies for the action and don’t even recognize the social commentary. They watched Team America and guffawed into their 24 packs of light beer at every shallow joke without recognizing that the jokes were intentionally shallow to point out what an idiot would think is a good joke. It’s like the TV show in Idiocracy. The real joke is below the surface.
Literally the opposite…
Where are you see conservatives talking about how great America has been under Bidnen?
Like, you put zero thinking into your comment, just like you assume the people you’re “dunking on” do.
You’re a different side of the same coin, that’s never meant opposites, you’re th same thing.
Just neither sid bis smart enough to figure it out, and both think only the other side is dumb
Because thats what you’ve been brainwashed to think the world wants, so thats what you hear
I like the clip, but IMO they basically bailed out in the end by all the nonsense quoted from the ~3:25 mark on.
Jeff basically makes it sound like the US used to be incredibly self-aware, humble, kind, and well-administrated, but I think what most Americans don’t choose to understand is that since the very settling of the continent, it’s been a highly fraught, contentious situation, much of it characterised by greed, cruelty, violence, intolerance and self-righteousness.
Now yes, from what I understand of history, under FDR we more or less hit a peak of being a well-run, progressive country, on the level of many modern Euro countries more or less, but most of that was specifically in response to the utter disaster of the Great Depression and the need to adjust powerfully, swiftly and accurately. Meanwhile, IIRC during his presidency, there was in fact a right-wing movement intending to remove him by underhanded means.
So I like the hopefulness of the clip, but in the end I also find it pretty typical of Americans being largely unwilling to understand the hows and whys of the nation, going back to the early 1600’s.
Eh, sorry for the dang essay. :S
Most “third world” or “developing” countries aren’t that bad, and there are places in the US far worse than the median developing country.
Also most people in most places do not want to go to the US, even to visit much less immigrate. It’s generally either the worst of a particular society or those specifically harmed by the US previously and feel their chances are better off with the abuser instead of in the abused country. It’s not a wanted destination.
Trump has a famous line whining about America only getting immigrants from the “shithole countries”. Wonder why, dude.
And us “shithole countries” receive some immigrants from USA that put to shame the worst we could send back, only they call themselves expatriates.
I’m not sure where you’re from, but at least in the Middle East that’s not the case. It’s a very desirable immigration destination here (less than Western Europe, though).
See the last part of the second paragraph for that. Victims of the empire paradoxically tend to want to immigrate to the empire believing they’ll be better off there than in the country that empire targeted.
There is a book called Factfulness where they talk about presenting the UN scientists their own data and surprising them at the standard of living in many third world countries. People’s ideas of third world countries is based on what they were like in the 50s, but many are catching up to the developed world in leaps and bounds.
This was a MASSIVE eye opening shock to me. You watch NCIS or any pro military show and they’ll pan to Baghdad or anything middle east and you’ll see crumbling buildings or warzone with a sepia filter. I was got smacked when I saw a real skyline photo of Baghdad, and istanbul, and most cities. Our media is dead set on continuing the thought of these empty deserts
I honestly had no idea they had electricity. That’s how bad the propaganda is
The UN General Assembly Human Rights Council 2018 report on USA’s poverty and human rights is a pretty quick and clear overview which makes it clear that parts of the USA are just undeveloped:
http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1
“5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty”
“69. In Alabama and West Virginia, a high proportion of the population is not served by public sewerage and water supply services”
Gasoline prices are heavily subsidized in the US, the gas price you complain about is cheap compared to other countries.
The commodity price for gasoline right now looks to be about 2 USD per gallon. Retail gasoline in the USA is at least a dollar more due to taxes and markup.
Subsidies may play a role as well, but the taxes in some countries are extreme by American standards. My take on it is that a fuel tax is effectively neutral if it brings in enough revenue to pay for the road system.
In NZ it’s roughly $2.50NZD per litre minimum, or $5.31USD per gallon. This is roughly 50% tax (it’s how we pay for roads, plus is subject to sales tax), so a bit over $2USD per gallon at the moment excluding tax.
Is it really $3 a gallon plus tax in the US right now?
I compare it to how I thought mobile phone calls in the US were super cheap, then found out people pay to receive calls, which was super weird to me. Where I live, my whole life it has never been the case that a normal residential connection would pay to receive a call, mobile or not.
Differences in how we do things make differences appear more than they are.
It’s $3/gal total including taxes here in Illinois right now.
I was in California last week and it was $4.50/gam total
The fuel tax isn’t enough to cover the damage to the environment and quality of life, though. That’s why taxes are that high in many other places. Same way cigarettes are taxed to help discourage use and to help cover the increased healthcare costs it puts on everyone
Fuel, and other car-related taxes (sometimes based on horsepower or engine displacement) in most countries in Europe were much higher than in the USA long before there was widespread concern about the environmental impact of cars.
What state do you live in that the road system is funded adequately? I never hear someone comment positively about the general state of road conditions.
Adequately is a difficult determination.
Is it adequate if there are state maintained dirt roads? In some states, the state or county chooses not to pave all of their roads.
Is it adequately funded if they have potholes? Due to weather conditions, some states are notorious for potholes.
Is it adequately funded if the road gets washed out or carried away by flooding? California gets mudslides that take out sections of roads, other states get sinkholes or hurricanes/tornados destroying their roads
How long can one of these issues plague a road before we consider them underfunded?
My opinion is that the US has too many roads. Most roads are maintained by county or municipalities, and are funded through infinite growth model.
When a developer creates a new subdivision, they pave the roads. Once done, they usually relinquish these roads to the county/city who are responsible for maintaining the roads.
Typically maintenance is low until they require replacing. The cities and counties don’t save money or plan well for replacing these roads and rely on new tax revenue to fund replacing them.
It builds a slowly ballooning road maintenance cost that someone will have to pay. I believe someone made a video about this very fact. I don’t have the link handy
Any price lower than that required to compensate for all the negative externalities of both driving and using fossil fuels to do it still counts as subsidized.
A failure to set an excise tax on a product or service that offsets its externalities is not a subsidy. A lower tax rate than a competing product is arguably a subsidy.
I’m not aware of any modern societies that make a credible attempt to adjust the price of all or most goods and services to include their externalities. That sounds like a good idea in theory, but very difficult to implement in practice.
That’s probably not true, but hard to calculate.
The previous time I looked, which was a while ago, federal fuel tax revenue in the USA and federal highway expenditures were about equal. Since then, fuel tax revenue has fallen behind highway spending; the required increase to even it out would be modest in absolute terms - something like 15 cents per gallon. States each have their own taxes and budgets, of course.
As for the road damage each car causes, it increases (roughly) proportional to the fourth power of vehicle weight. Semi trucks and similar heavy commercial vehicles cause almost all of the traffic-induced road wear, and passenger cars contribute very little. It’s likely the fuel taxes paid for a passenger car (even a relatively large one) are several times its marginal impact on road maintenance.
Fuel tax in the U.S. doesn’t even come close to paying for the road system. The federal fuel tax covers less than half of federal transportation spending. I don’t know about all of the states, but Wisconsin’s fuel tax covers only about 2/3 of the road spending. And, local streets get built with local property and income taxes.
International rankings of the US are abysmal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_the_United_States
Peace:
“Vision of Humanity 2024 Global Peace Index ranked 132nd out of 162 countries”
…yup. sounds about right. We’ve been at some kind of war for pretty much the entirety of our existence…
The winning or losing was almost always secondary. The main thing is to spend a load of money on wars. We’ve never failed at that.
Not everything is awful in the US.
Lately I’ve heard a lot of Americans talk like their country is the worst place in the world. While you do have problems, being grateful for the positive things is also important.
Kinda hard to see it that way when for most people life is getting progressively worse.
Also, people born after 1990 have a lot of uncertainty going forward due things like student loans, housing costs and health care system that provides no coverage in event of catastrophic health event.
The only practical solution is to quit being poor and that’s becoming increasingly hard as many people ate not able to achieve economic prosperity that they grew up in.
My situation makes me consider suicide on a daily basis. I am literally incapable of starting a family, or even starting my life. My friends are all in similar situations. I have no security in any form, and a broken bone or something breaking on my car means I just die. If things are worse elsewhere, they wouldnt be alive.
Yes, the quality of life elsewhere may be lower, but they also dont have as many issues as we do. They have a sense of community, less economic disparity, dont live 40+ miles from their job, presumably arent suffering from a lonliness epidemic that is massively spiking suicide rates among men despite being caused by men, etc.
Im not minimizing their issues, i recognise that I have access to clean water and other basic survival tools that they might not have. But we have societal issues that are just as damning. Our issues are different, but theyre just as bad.
Before I get downvoted to oblivion: is it better to have clean water yet freeze to death because your cant pay your electric bill, or not have access to clean water and yet have a community that is willing to help you through your tough times? Id say they both lead to death. Neither fulfills the heirarchy of needs.
I mean, depending on what part of the U.S. you are in, the water you’re drinking might not actually be clean.
You shouldn’t have to preface your statement with anything, living conditions in some American states are legitimately comparable to third world impoverished nations.
