well lets see...in the US, money runs basically everything. this is a double-edged sword...if you are on the top rungs, you are screwing other people. if you are middle class or below, you are getting screwed.
we are big and spread out, so our internet sucks and mass transit sucks. to live in anything but the hugest metropolitan areas requires owning a vehicle. land is much cheaper than any other 1st world country, and in rural areas the cost of living is much lower in comparison.
education is free until high school ends, but this isn't as good as it sounds. the quality of education in one town may be ten times better than that of another. this is where rural and poor people really get screwed - the schools in poor areas and backwater towns are completely shit. the urban schools are leaps and bounds better, but there's still problems. laughably mediocre wages for teachers ensures that smart people who would teach subjects well procure other jobs that make them money, and thus, the only teachers in public school are mediocre. private schools exist which are only affordable to rich families, and the quality of education in them is much higher.
any post high-school education is not funded by the government. those who wish to go to college and have no money must take out student loans which can fuck them in the ass for all of their working years. this wasn't too large of a problem ten or twenty years ago when a high school diploma actually meant something, but it's to the point now where most decent jobs will only hire those with college education, and a high school diploma is more or less just a requirement to enter college.
capitalism brings the best skill to the table, because it offers the most money. the most skilled people of any profession will most likely make the most money in the US. at the same time, there is no normalization - the spectrum of wealth ranges from utterly dirt poor to unbelievably extravagantly rich with every shade in between.
we only like new things. there's enough room to expand around cities for hundreds of miles, so what ends up happening is that every 20 years or so the cities grow a lot. city centers aren't renovated, but are left to turn in to lower land value and lower income housing.
the worst part of capitalism is the reckless power that corporations have. companies exist as these uber-powerful entities that have little to no accountability, whereas those in other 1st world countries are closely regulated. politics and business are not separate here, as they should be, but are actually one in the same. all the huge corporations and the government all operate as a huge business together, and morality is not ever on the top of their agendas. nothing is, except generating money, both for the company, and for those leading them.
the US is by and large an aristocracy, and the way it's set up is to keep everyone on their rung of the ladder as best as possible.
Things you like about America ?
Moderator: Moderators
here's what i have to say about that:
1. don't ever blame americans for what their government is doing. we have virtually no control over it.
2. a lot of the idiocy that comes from here is not inherently genetic, but is environmental. people who grow up in different places attain vastly different qualities of education and vastly different cultural memes.
the most fucking retarded thing anyone can do is to stereotype a "typical" american. there really isn't one. america probably has the most diverse population on earth in basically every aspect.
1. don't ever blame americans for what their government is doing. we have virtually no control over it.
2. a lot of the idiocy that comes from here is not inherently genetic, but is environmental. people who grow up in different places attain vastly different qualities of education and vastly different cultural memes.
the most fucking retarded thing anyone can do is to stereotype a "typical" american. there really isn't one. america probably has the most diverse population on earth in basically every aspect.
GUNDAM! OH wait... we are talkin' about 'merica...
umm Louisiana food.
oh and the fact that we are as a people a melting pot, I have such a wide racial lineage that I have recently decided to forget any consideration to ancestors and count myself as what this country was meant to be.. a mixture of good and bad result in a very interesting thing. I love seeing families from other countries here, as legitimate citizens, here to be part of a greater dream.
umm Louisiana food.
oh and the fact that we are as a people a melting pot, I have such a wide racial lineage that I have recently decided to forget any consideration to ancestors and count myself as what this country was meant to be.. a mixture of good and bad result in a very interesting thing. I love seeing families from other countries here, as legitimate citizens, here to be part of a greater dream.
1. it's not a melting pot, it's a salad bowl, mixed together, but not integrated. People stick to their own, which is sad.smoth wrote:GUNDAM! OH wait... we are talkin' about 'merica...
umm Louisiana food.
oh and the fact that we are as a people a melting pot, I have such a wide racial lineage that I have recently decided to forget any consideration to ancestors and count myself as what this country was meant to be.. a mixture of good and bad result in a very interesting thing. I love seeing families from other countries here, as legitimate citizens, here to be part of a greater dream.
2. lol
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Felix the Cat
- Posts: 2383
- Joined: 15 Jun 2005, 17:30
how can you consider my huge post filled with facts to be whining?Felix the Cat wrote:indeed.hunterw wrote:blah blah blah i'm a whiny liberal blah blah blah
and who says i'm a liberal? socialism works nicely until you graduate college and have to pay for all the kids in your country to enjoy the same education you just received for the rest of your life (protip: it's fucking expensive). the smartest thing to do economically is to grow up in some socialist country, get paid to graduate from college there, then move to the USA. trying to accumulate wealth in a socialist country is hard as fuck because half of all the money you have gets fed back in to the system.
don't be retarded pls, thx
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Felix the Cat
- Posts: 2383
- Joined: 15 Jun 2005, 17:30
I never said you were a socialist; I said you were a liberal.
I said you were a liberal based on the things you said in your wall-of-text post, and just as importantly, the way you said them.
I've just come to the realization that liberals think about politics in a fundamentally different way from others - they think in terms of groups of people, rather than in terms of individuals. Liberals love to talk about "the rich", "the poor", "blacks", "whites", "the middle class", et cetera, ad nauseum. Liberals also love to stress economic classes and portray political issues in terms of conflict between economic strata: "the rich" are oppressing "the middle class", "big corporations" are screwing over "the working poor", and the like. Your post exhibited a way of discussing these so-called facts that included such wide categorizations.
Hence my categorization of you as a liberal.
I said you were a liberal based on the things you said in your wall-of-text post, and just as importantly, the way you said them.
I've just come to the realization that liberals think about politics in a fundamentally different way from others - they think in terms of groups of people, rather than in terms of individuals. Liberals love to talk about "the rich", "the poor", "blacks", "whites", "the middle class", et cetera, ad nauseum. Liberals also love to stress economic classes and portray political issues in terms of conflict between economic strata: "the rich" are oppressing "the middle class", "big corporations" are screwing over "the working poor", and the like. Your post exhibited a way of discussing these so-called facts that included such wide categorizations.
Hence my categorization of you as a liberal.
rofl you attack liberalism based on an apparent tendency for generalisations.... by making an enormous generalisation.Felix the Cat wrote:I never said you were a socialist; I said you were a liberal.
I said you were a liberal based on the things you said in your wall-of-text post, and just as importantly, the way you said them.
I've just come to the realization that liberals think about politics in a fundamentally different way from others - they think in terms of groups of people, rather than in terms of individuals. Liberals love to talk about "the rich", "the poor", "blacks", "whites", "the middle class", et cetera, ad nauseum. Liberals also love to stress economic classes and portray political issues in terms of conflict between economic strata: "the rich" are oppressing "the middle class", "big corporations" are screwing over "the working poor", and the like. Your post exhibited a way of discussing these so-called facts that included such wide categorizations.
Hence my categorization of you as a liberal.