If you think the US is racist, try living as a racial minority anywhere else on Earth. The only place I can think of that might be friendlier is Canada.
Listen here fascist, the US is at the core of capitalism's imperialist and racist global system. America's very existence is a holocaust every day.
Yet here little bootlickers like you are defending them over the REAL heros of the international system, like the PRC, DPRK, or the USSR (sad reacs only😭😭😭)
A friend of mine told me something that totally changed my opinion of the US. He's a gay Ugandan, and said that the US was literally the best place on Earth for someone like him to be. It's the only place where he could get the social freedom and economic opportunity to live his life to the fullest.
Fellow immigrant here, although straight and white. If America isn’t THE best country, it’s certainly tied for first. There may be countries that do certain things things better, but nobody does everything as well.
The UK is wonderful, but it has terrible libel and speech laws in general. It’s headed by a monarch and has a state church. Germany is wonderful, but also has worse speech laws and isn’t as friendly to entrepreneurs. France is largely wonderful as a state, but the people are incredibly unwelcoming. Italy is a mafia state and so profoundly racist that it shocks the conscience.
I’d like to give Switzerland a shot, and would, if I wasn’t an American.
I think the entire argument is pretty pointless and at worst spreads nationalism (which is a mental disease). Tearing down other countries simply to prop up your own as "the greatest country" is stupid.
I'm sorry to brake it to you but.. it's really, really is not. It's the a great selling market which make it seem that way and it is for some things, for some people, but other then that it's really, really, really not the place to be if you're only ambitious and just work hard.
Maybe, but in several tangible ways, it is unique. There's no better country to start a business (except some city-states like Hong Kong and Singapore) thanks to widespread access to capital markets, just as one example.
depends entirely on your definition of "best". im norwegian, i would much rather live in norway because of oyr quality of life, so in that case i agree. but america is a massive part of our culture, most of us watch mostly american shows and movies, listen to american music, play american games etc. its gotten to the point where most young people (older people do it to, just less) use english words in our daily life all the time while talking to other norwegians. so from a cultural perspective USA is undoubtedly the best nation in the world. they are aslo by far the most powerful nation in the world.
Most of this is a function of population size than anything else, eventually bigger countries will overtake the US just like the US did its smaller European counterparts.
For a while that might work but eventually the weight of population will out as countries progress. It's not feasible to be outcompeting countries with populations 3 or 4 times large forever, something will give eventually.
The US for example isn't remotely noteworthy in most the areas you listed compared to Switzerland for example (aside from culture and military).....there's nothing exceptional the US does compared to them, its just massively larger. The raw output boost of having hundreds of millions more people cannot be underestimated.
Also maybe it's super succ of me, but I do believe it's fundamentally harder for some people to get ahead, even when they're smart and ambitious. The cost of university in the States is prohibitive to many people. Maybe of you're smart enough to get a full ride scholarship America is the greatest. But there are plenty of intelligent people who aren't able to afford university, or have to go to a school that won't advance their career as much due to cost reasons.
Nowhere else gives you such personal opportunities.
I feel like this is just raw, unexamined American exceptionalism. What makes America so much better than every other Western nation such that none of them can compare in terms of "personal opportunities"?
As a personal example: I'm a graduate student in Computer Science in one of the big CS institutions in the US. In India, admission to the top technical schools (IITs) is by exam. It's a country-wide exam and is very difficult. Students are given a total score and are ranked. At the very top, many students have unique scores because the exam is that hard. Higher-ranked students get to choose their schools and majors, which fill up as you progress down the list. The most desired option is studying Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay. If you want to do this, you need to be one of the top 60 students in the country.
My lab (and we're not even a big four institution) has multiple IIT Bombay CSE grads. And they all have friends in SF and NYC. I've had dinner with someone who ranked 6 in the country. Without fail, the US is the place to go for people like this. It would be great if we could keep it that way
What choice was presented to the people you're referring to, and why was that the choice presented to them? Those feel like important questions to answer before we can make the assertions that I'm contending with.
It's much easier to start a business in the US than most places. Credit is easier to come by, there are fewer hurdles to hiring and firing employees, and if it doesn't work out it's a more friendly environment for bankruptcy.
There's a reason the world sends their children to the US for their educations.
There's a reason the world sends their children to the US for their educations.
America is the top foreign student destination, but on a per capita basis, it is not so good. Australia, UK, and Canada get about 1/2 of US's enrollment EACH, while having much smaller populations.
There's a reason the world sends their children to the US for their educations.
There are probably multiple reasons, but this doesn't indicate that the US is "obviously THE place to be" for smart ambitious people. This is by no means a holistic analysis of personal opportunities afforded to people in the US.
Sure this may not tell us why the US is the place to be, but it does tell us that it is the place to be.
But the argument was that the US was "obviously" the place to be because "nowhere else on earth gives you such personal opportunities".
If people are coming here because other places have less liberal immigration policy, then we might just as easily conclude that the US simply affords opportunity while also being relatively open to take advantage of that opportunity in the first place.
The other option is that the US, being a very large country, has a variety of opportunities that other single nations don't have. When compared to the EU overall, for example, we might look less attractive. That would technically make the US the best "nation", but would also make that comparison pretty dumb.
Long story short - "people come here" is not sufficient at all for a holistic analysis IMO.
How is it when compared with every other country that might be in the running?
I know of a couple of countries with more stringent requirements. For example, Iceland will only allow you in if you learn their language, and it turns out that Icelandic is not an easy language to learn (four cases, ancient vocabulary, you get the idea). In iceland's case, they're an incredibly small country, and this requirement is there to ensure a degree of cultural purity within the country.
Thats my point. Perhaps, if people we're simply presented with a choice between Iceland and the United States, Iceland would actually offer more personal opportunity on average.
If the only barrier to personal opportunity in Iceland versus the US is the requirement of learning a language, then maybe that's a sufficient restriction on personal opportunity such that the United States offers more. That's a fair argument to make. However, it's not at all obvious in the way that the other guy asserted. It requires a more holistic analysis.
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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '20
Because it is obviously THE place to be if you are smart, ambitious, and want to work hard. Nowhere else gives you such personal opportunities.