MrPing1000
Member
Letting Corporations control everything definately helps money wise. Screws a lot of people but the wealth generated at the top is higher than that lost by the lower down.
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Why is the US so much more "successful" than other countries?
- Thread starter daw840
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Crash Station
Member
So...... anyone else watching Obama's address?
Most understand and can switch from their native dialect to Mandarin, even more so nowadays with increased internal migration, which necessitates communication. And the written language is the same. I'd say it's comparable to trying to understand Cajun, Scottish, Australian, and Indians, etc. all speaking English.Xeke said:
The government gives pronunciation tests for people to qualify to serve as a teacher, and higher levels for people who want to be on TV. It's different outside, but that's becoming less of an issue in this generation and it's readily apparent.Xeke said:
To add on your previous comment about Uighurs and Tibetans, the complaints about "cultural genocide" that you see from exiled dissidents are that the young populations of Uighur/Tibetans are learning and becoming more literate in Mandarin more than their original languages.
TheHeretic
Banned
Communism is by it's own nature a dictatorshipFafalada said:
Black-Wind
Member
/ThreadSkiptastic said:
Oh, and WWII and us just being a really diverse group of kick ass mother fuckers.
Technosteve
Banned
my usa is everything above the mason dixon line. Except New England and Connecticut pretentious bums.
gutter_trash
Banned
Canada has handled it better because of.....jecclr2003 said:
REGULATIONS!!!
The Librarian
Banned
Because America has a tendency to save its ass at the very last moment. There have been plenty of times throughout America's history where everything should've fallen apart, but it didn't. See: The US Constitution, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, etc.
People going on about how the US isn't the most successful country are missing the OP's point, I think. You can talk about how they don't rank that highly in health care or happiness or whatever. But that would be missing the very obvious point that the US is a fucking superpower. It has far and away the largest economy in the world, its cultural reach is unmatched, and its military supremacy is unchallenged. That, I think, is what the OP was talking about when he said the US was more successful than other countries.
I added a column for the ranking of the country by population, sourced from Wolfram Alpha. Which one of these things is not like the other?
A bit of luck can make a big difference for a country with a population of a couple million. A ridiculous amount of luck would be needed to do the same for a country with three hundred million.
faceless007
Member
Looks like Naboo?cashman said:
roosters93
Member
daw840 said:
Uhh...
daw840 said:
Uhhh...
Mael said:
That doesn't really apply to any of the wars the US has partaken in post-WW2.
Princess Carl
Member
TheHeretic said:
not true communism.
This is pretty much why Marx is viewed as such a villain.
Id say that the vast majority of the American people don't know that "communism" that weve seen isnt actually communism. All thanks to the media and bad history books.
CharlieDigital
Banned
I actually gave this question a lot of thought and I think I've come up with an interesting angle (I hope it hasn't already been mentioned in the thread).
While there are certainly various valid factors that have already been mentioned, I've been thinking that perhaps one of the most important factors is that the US has never had a monarchy and has never had a system of nobility (i.e. Peerage). I don't know the actual numbers, but countries like Japan and China had emperors and most European countries historically were ruled by Kings and land given to nobles.
The US is somewhat unique in that we've never had a monarch of any sort and we've never had this concept of nobility.
Certainly, we are not a classless society. In fact, the class system in the US is very clear cut: it's all based on wealth. However, the key difference, perhaps, is that in the US, class mobility is open. This is the essence of The American Dream; work hard and anyone can make it. Your class and status are not driven by who your parents are or who you marry or your title, it's solely driven by your ambition and willingness to work.
Perhaps this distinction is not so unique now, but consider the mid-late 1800's and early 1900's. This idea of class mobility drove people to work harder and it drove people to innovate, invent, create, patent, and incorporate.
If you think about it, our system of public education played a big part in making us as "successful" as we are today. In colonial times, as was tradition, education was reserved for the wealthy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Colonial_America
By the middle of the 19th century and the early 20th century, no longer was education reserved for the wealthy or the nobility; everyone could get an education, everyone was given an opportunity to move from one class to another, so long as they applied themselves:
http://www.servintfree.net/~aidmn-e...2001-11/PublicEducationInTheUnitedStates.html
Education is one of the enablers of class mobility (and perhaps the most important one).
Perhaps just as important as class mobility is class mobility in the context of gender (credit to my coworker who brought this up to me). By limiting women in academics and employment, you're effectively eliminating half of your opportunities for innovation, creation, and invention. European and Asian cultures historically limited the role of women in academics and in employment. Some of this carried over from our early European settlers, undoubtedly, but the public education system was open to boys and girls, rich or poor (admittedly, in the early days, girls were still given somewhat different expectations than boys and perhaps still are today).
Of course, all of this then leads us to class mobility in the context of race, which -- in the big picture -- is a relatively recent development but one area where the US has been a leader and a champion (even though racism is nowhere near abolished). Getting rid of segregated schools and giving every child -- regardless of race, gender, religion, or wealth -- a chance to an education promoted this idea of class mobility that motivated and gave hope to people; over time, it built up a large, educated, literate workforce to invent, create, and synthesize ideas and concepts.
One of the big issues these days, IMO, is that slowly, we're creating barriers to class mobility. We can see this in our government and how much our elected representatives kowtow to the corporate lobbyists to promote the will of the wealthy at the expense of the poor. We can see this in the rising costs of college tuition which leave many who graduate with immense sums of debt or even prevent some from even considering college in the first place. We can see this in the financial restrictions that have been broken down in the last 30 years to favor the rich so that they can amass more wealth. You may not realize this, but there are 237 millionaires in Congress. Does that sound right to you? Who are they looking out for? Are their agendas aligned with yours and mine?
All of these factors -- and others -- have contributed to increasing the gap in the classes in the US while simultaneously decreasing class mobility. We are heading down a dangerous path if we don't acknowledge what made the US as "succssful" as it has been.
Now, don't get me wrong: this is not a call for communism or socialism. This is not a call for abolishing classes and wealth. What has gotten us here is class mobility; people must be given the opportunity to achieve. This means welfare to help the poor feed and clothe their children, a strong public education system to educate our workforce regardless of race or wealth, infrastructure investments to support continued growth (be it technological or physical), making secondary and post-secondary education affordable, ensuring that our policies don't favor the wealthy corporations at the expense of the working middle class, and so on.
To remain successful, we must continue to invest (via policy and finances) in the factors and drivers of class mobility. I think this is something that China finally gets (as they've rather quickly become more and more capitalistic and class is as much about wealth as it is about your prominence in the Communist party) but something that we're losing sight of; our policies cater much too frequently to the super wealthy corporations and their lobbyists.
I don't know the source, but Carl Levin cited JP Morgan, one of the richest man of his time: "The tycoon J.P. Morgan said about a century ago that CEO pay should not exceed 20 times average worker pay." Today, we're well beyond this limit of sensibility; this is the danger that we are facing now. It's not that we should discourage individuals from getting rich, but we should expect these individuals to, in turn, also enrich the lives of those who enable their wealth.
While there are certainly various valid factors that have already been mentioned, I've been thinking that perhaps one of the most important factors is that the US has never had a monarchy and has never had a system of nobility (i.e. Peerage). I don't know the actual numbers, but countries like Japan and China had emperors and most European countries historically were ruled by Kings and land given to nobles.
The US is somewhat unique in that we've never had a monarch of any sort and we've never had this concept of nobility.
Certainly, we are not a classless society. In fact, the class system in the US is very clear cut: it's all based on wealth. However, the key difference, perhaps, is that in the US, class mobility is open. This is the essence of The American Dream; work hard and anyone can make it. Your class and status are not driven by who your parents are or who you marry or your title, it's solely driven by your ambition and willingness to work.
Perhaps this distinction is not so unique now, but consider the mid-late 1800's and early 1900's. This idea of class mobility drove people to work harder and it drove people to innovate, invent, create, patent, and incorporate.
If you think about it, our system of public education played a big part in making us as "successful" as we are today. In colonial times, as was tradition, education was reserved for the wealthy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Colonial_America
By the middle of the 19th century and the early 20th century, no longer was education reserved for the wealthy or the nobility; everyone could get an education, everyone was given an opportunity to move from one class to another, so long as they applied themselves:
http://www.servintfree.net/~aidmn-e...2001-11/PublicEducationInTheUnitedStates.html
Education is one of the enablers of class mobility (and perhaps the most important one).
Perhaps just as important as class mobility is class mobility in the context of gender (credit to my coworker who brought this up to me). By limiting women in academics and employment, you're effectively eliminating half of your opportunities for innovation, creation, and invention. European and Asian cultures historically limited the role of women in academics and in employment. Some of this carried over from our early European settlers, undoubtedly, but the public education system was open to boys and girls, rich or poor (admittedly, in the early days, girls were still given somewhat different expectations than boys and perhaps still are today).
Of course, all of this then leads us to class mobility in the context of race, which -- in the big picture -- is a relatively recent development but one area where the US has been a leader and a champion (even though racism is nowhere near abolished). Getting rid of segregated schools and giving every child -- regardless of race, gender, religion, or wealth -- a chance to an education promoted this idea of class mobility that motivated and gave hope to people; over time, it built up a large, educated, literate workforce to invent, create, and synthesize ideas and concepts.
One of the big issues these days, IMO, is that slowly, we're creating barriers to class mobility. We can see this in our government and how much our elected representatives kowtow to the corporate lobbyists to promote the will of the wealthy at the expense of the poor. We can see this in the rising costs of college tuition which leave many who graduate with immense sums of debt or even prevent some from even considering college in the first place. We can see this in the financial restrictions that have been broken down in the last 30 years to favor the rich so that they can amass more wealth. You may not realize this, but there are 237 millionaires in Congress. Does that sound right to you? Who are they looking out for? Are their agendas aligned with yours and mine?
All of these factors -- and others -- have contributed to increasing the gap in the classes in the US while simultaneously decreasing class mobility. We are heading down a dangerous path if we don't acknowledge what made the US as "succssful" as it has been.
Now, don't get me wrong: this is not a call for communism or socialism. This is not a call for abolishing classes and wealth. What has gotten us here is class mobility; people must be given the opportunity to achieve. This means welfare to help the poor feed and clothe their children, a strong public education system to educate our workforce regardless of race or wealth, infrastructure investments to support continued growth (be it technological or physical), making secondary and post-secondary education affordable, ensuring that our policies don't favor the wealthy corporations at the expense of the working middle class, and so on.
To remain successful, we must continue to invest (via policy and finances) in the factors and drivers of class mobility. I think this is something that China finally gets (as they've rather quickly become more and more capitalistic and class is as much about wealth as it is about your prominence in the Communist party) but something that we're losing sight of; our policies cater much too frequently to the super wealthy corporations and their lobbyists.
I don't know the source, but Carl Levin cited JP Morgan, one of the richest man of his time: "The tycoon J.P. Morgan said about a century ago that CEO pay should not exceed 20 times average worker pay." Today, we're well beyond this limit of sensibility; this is the danger that we are facing now. It's not that we should discourage individuals from getting rich, but we should expect these individuals to, in turn, also enrich the lives of those who enable their wealth.
The US is were it is today because it didn't get destroyed during WW2, has loads of natural resources, a booming population, and a large territory with room for expansion. However, I'll admit that I'm in the "US is in sharp decline" camp. I think the faults of Madisonian republicanism are becoming evident in our political system, and culturally we've failed to advance with the rest of the developed nations.
Hari Seldon
Member
The US is a super power because of WWII.
The US was already a fairly strong nation before the war, but no super power. Because all of the competition out of Europe was absolutely decimated, everyone had to buy shit from the US. The US was not touched at all by the war and took a proportionally small number of casualties compared to any potential competitors in Europe.
The US was already a fairly strong nation before the war, but no super power. Because all of the competition out of Europe was absolutely decimated, everyone had to buy shit from the US. The US was not touched at all by the war and took a proportionally small number of casualties compared to any potential competitors in Europe.
CharlieDigital said:
Your point is actually supported by the experience in Britain during the late 1800s. In Britain the drive for wealth was to become part of the aristocracy, live on a country estate with a Title, send their children to oxford and cambridge etc whereas in the US, as you say, the concept of nobility did not exist and as such a new capitalistic, wealth seeking upper-class took its place.
TheRagnCajun
Member
Jay-B said:
At the top of my list of countries to visit. Very fascinating country.
Dude Abides
Banned
roosters93 said:
How dare you forget our glorious efforts in Grenada and Panama!
- Geography. Tons of natural resources, and damn good lands theirselves. Then again, the sistematic extermination of the native americans had a lot to do with it, too.
- History. Lack of a battlefront on its homeland during WWI and II helped a lot to its dominance. Like the proverb says, "There is no men taller than the last one standing".
- The cultural pot. Like any of the most sucessful empires (Romans, British, Spanish, Turkish etc) one of the most advantageous cultural traits of the US have been its hability to integrate and unify people from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds under the same political banner.
- Extreme social mobility. I am an European but I have no shame into admit that the "American dream" is not a Hollywood invention, period. The US have always had one of the most strieving laboral markets almost since its inception as a result of its deeply meritocratical society, which have always rejected the notion of birthright and nobilty.
Thing is, I feel that the two aforementioned cultural traits that made the US a superpower have been starting to get dilluted in the recent times, as it seems that the cultural pot is unable to digest homosexuals and that the Wall Street Corporations are becoming the modern modern equivalent of nobilty, financial taxpayer aid and media adoration included (hello Fox news).
- History. Lack of a battlefront on its homeland during WWI and II helped a lot to its dominance. Like the proverb says, "There is no men taller than the last one standing".
- The cultural pot. Like any of the most sucessful empires (Romans, British, Spanish, Turkish etc) one of the most advantageous cultural traits of the US have been its hability to integrate and unify people from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds under the same political banner.
- Extreme social mobility. I am an European but I have no shame into admit that the "American dream" is not a Hollywood invention, period. The US have always had one of the most strieving laboral markets almost since its inception as a result of its deeply meritocratical society, which have always rejected the notion of birthright and nobilty.
Thing is, I feel that the two aforementioned cultural traits that made the US a superpower have been starting to get dilluted in the recent times, as it seems that the cultural pot is unable to digest homosexuals and that the Wall Street Corporations are becoming the modern modern equivalent of nobilty, financial taxpayer aid and media adoration included (hello Fox news).
brianjones
Member
Beardz said:I'm going to leave this right here...
i want to live to there
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