I'll go ahead and say the United States is the greatest country the world has ever seen. It's not perfect, but once you live in other countries for a bit, even if you enjoy the experience, you appreciate the U.S. a lot more.
This claim sticks in the throat of a lot of Europeans, because of the visible level of inequality in the US. We see many of your citizens suffering in ways that simply wouldn't happen in our countries; we struggle to find a charitable way of reconciling that with the claim that America is the best country.
If you're the richest and most powerful nation in history, why do you have the highest incarceration rate in the world? Why do so many sick and injured Americans end up bankrupt or die prematurely? Why do parts of Michigan look post-apocalyptic? Why are many of your schools still de-facto segregated? Why is there a Wikipedia article titled "List of tent cities in the United States"?
We could understand a claim like "America is really weird - we're ridiculously wealthy, but our government is profoundly dysfunctional in ways that are hard to fix, which causes a great deal of avoidable suffering". That makes sense to us. A claim like "America is the greatest country the world has ever seen" sounds obscenely callous without some very strong caveats attached.
If there was a European nation of comparable size and diversity (class, race, history, etc) as America then these Europeans would have a point. I just roll my eyes when I read points like infant mortality, gun violence, literacy, etc are better in some European countries than the US (and thus, by proxy, said European country is better than the US) because we're comparing apples and oranges.
I'll echo GP's statement. America isn't perfect, but from the many countries I've visited (and with the many challenges that the US has to face), it's "The Greatest Country In the World".
Aggregate statistics for the EU is pretty much the same as for any single member state. You don't get any more complicated history than that, also half bigger than US. I don't see how you're so exceptional an orange. But then I don't roll my eyes as a proxy for thinking.
Let's take infant mortality. The EU average (4 per 1000) is lower than the US average (5.8 per 1000). The EU has a population of 508 million, versus 325 million Americans.
Four of the 28 EU member states have a higher rate of infant mortality than the US average - Croatia (9.3), Romania (9.4), Bulgaria (8.4) and Cyprus (7.9). The first three are ex-communist countries and have only been democracies since the early 1990s.
25% of the Croatian economy was destroyed in the Croatian War of Independence of 1991 to 1995; it still has a number of active minefields. Romania was utterly brutalised by the Ceaușescu regime until 1989; you may dimly remember the horror of Ceaușescu's orphanages. If you don't, I suggest you steel yourself and have a stiff drink before Googling it. Bulgaria has a GDP per capita of just over $8,000 - a quarter of the GDP per capita of the poorest US state.
Cyprus suffered a coup d'etat by Greece and an invasion by Turkey in 1974, creating a lasting political division. There was a wall separating the Greek and Turkish sides of the island until 2007 and UN peacekeepers still maintain a demilitarized buffer zone.
That's what we're dealing with in the EU. Those are our excuses. What are yours?
Even when Europeans critique the United States, they're critiquing the US from the US liberal perspective.
> Why do so many sick and injured Americans end up bankrupt or die prematurely?
Because we don't have a national healthcare system. Why? Because people vote against it. The party in charge of the entire country would cut the government by half if it had the power to do so, and they keep getting elected because a large portion of the country agrees with them. Even within the Democratic party, large portions don't want a national healthcare system (though polling on this has changed in recent years). Why? Because if you have a job you probably have a healthcare plan, and a good portion of the country doesn't want their taxes raised to pay for healthcare ran by the government. Even liberals in the US have trouble understanding this.
> Why do parts of Michigan look post-apocalyptic?
Michigan is a gorgeous state (you'd know this if you were at all familiar with it) with one of the best universities in the world, and a GDP higher than most EU countries. If Michigan is post-apocalyptic, then most EU countries are favelas in Rio after a nuclear holocaust.
> Why are many of your schools still de-facto segregated? Why is there a Wikipedia article titled "List of tent cities in the United States"?
We have income inequality. We don't have a consensus on what to do about it.
> We could understand a claim like "America is really weird - we're ridiculously wealthy, but our government is profoundly dysfunctional in ways that are hard to fix, which causes a great deal of avoidable suffering". That makes sense to us. A claim like "America is the greatest country the world has ever seen" sounds obscenely callous without some very strong caveats attached.
Sure, but many Americans don't understand why you guys are so reliant and on your government and refuse to take ownership of your own lives. Many would argue that your constant need for government to provide for you is why the EU, for being almost twice the size of the US, lacks the cultural and political influence, and innovation that the US has.
The US, for better or worse, is a "get mine and don't worry about anyone else" country. Even the "left" in the US gets upset when something of "theirs" is threatened to be taken for the better good - just look at the housing situation in liberal San Francisco.
> Even when Europeans critique the United States, they're critiquing the US from the US liberal perspective.
You probably know this, but "US liberal perspective" is center-right to the rest of the world (not only Europe). I'd argue they're critiquing from the political center.
My system one thinking has the impression the USA is better than Russia or Saudi Arabia but kinda swings and roundabouts with China.
My system two thinking, given what people say about things rather than personal experience, puts a lot of caveats on top of the China comparison.
However, basing my judgement purely on direct personal experience: regarding “greatest the world has ever seen”… I’d rather have been born a random citizen of France, Netherlands, (west) Germany, Switzerland, or the UK, than a random citizen of the USA — and again, that’s just out of the places I’ve actually visited or lived in.
Going back to second hand impressions: Canada, Ireland, and most of Scandinavia seems better than the impression I have of the USA from three visits of one month each.
Meh. I've spent enough time in the Netherlands and Israel to know that the quality of life in both countries is, in many ways, way better than here. Socialized medicine and cheap education go a really long way toward making people happy (even if they have less disposable income).
Something tells me you have not seen (let alone lived in) that many countries.
If you had, you'd know different societies have different ups and downs. Some countries have more taxes, they also have more perks (e.g. schools and healthcare are not a lottery); some have less money, but also less problems (lower crime rate, low pollution). "Greatest" is meaningless.
It might be the greatest if you have a decent amount of money. My experiences with poorer rural communities really changed my perspective on the US (and I assume inner cities communities would also have the same effect).
>I'll go ahead and say the United States is the greatest country the world has ever seen. It's not perfect, but once you live in other countries for a bit, even if you enjoy the experience, you appreciate the U.S. a lot more.
Depends on whether you have lived in an advanced Western European country.
It also depends of your tolerance of rednecks, prudes, puritans, and ignorant people (which exist everywhere in the world, but have particularly large concentrations there).
Or on your tolerance of a messed up party system, a messed up legal system, a messed up prison system (and the biggest incarceration rates in the world), cops that have an open license to shoot people, and the worse and more widespread racism this side of South Africa. Or on your tolerance on very bad statistics on violence (especially gun violence).
Or on your tolerance for businesses having near feudal reign on their workers.
That said, if you have the money, and the connections, the US is a pretty good deal to spend them. Not to mention very nice landscapes, and generally good hearted and optimistic people (besides the aforementioned negatives).
Plus, for some industries (basically IT and movies), they're tops.
> It also depends of your tolerance of rednecks, prudes, puritans, and ignorant people (which exist everywhere in the world, but have particularly large concentrations there).
FYI, using "redneck" as a pejorative, as in this context, can be interpreted as pretty offensive, and maybe this is unintentional. I for one consider it offensive.
>According to Chapman and Kipfer in their "Dictionary of American Slang", By 1975 the term had expanded in meaning beyond the poor Southerner to refer to "a bigoted and conventional person, a loutish ultra-conservative."[20]
If the OP was using it in this way, I don't see the issue. If he/she was using it to just describe laboring, rural whites, I agree; it's offensive and inappropriate. Given the context of the statement, I assumed the former.
On the topic, Randy Newman's song "Rednecks" is a scathing critique of Northerners and their "hidden" racism and hypocrisy on the subject.
>Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage
On the South Side of Chicago
And the West Side
And he's free to be put in a cage
In Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage
In East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage
In Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage
In Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around . . . (apologies for the formatting)
When Jeff Foxworthy does his (incredibly unfunny) "You might be a redneck, if..." bits, the crowd is not laughing and nodding and saying "That's so true, I too am a bigoted and loutish ultra-conservative!"
To many people, redneck simply describes a particular rural lifestyle. If the OP wanted to call out bigotry, they should have called out bigots.
(This, admittedly, might have been a difficult sell given that it was immediately followed up an attack on a religious group)
As an Asian, I have been to 10+ cities each in the US and Western Europe, and have spent considerable amount of time on both continents. While being a data point of one, here are my observations:
- Residents of European cities were less welcoming to foreigners like me. (Maybe due to language issues? I speak accented German, a bit of Spanish and English, which can explain why Parisians were rude).
- Immigration to USA, along with path to its citizenship, was a hard but straightforward process (6-7 years once you get H1B). In Europe, I found that UK and Switzerland has a simpler process, but other countries (eg. France) make it very hard to be their citizen.
- Stereotypes abound on both sides of Atlantic (eg. "socialist countries stuck with horrible economies", "rednecks, puritans, prudes, ignorant" as your comment says), which seem highly exaggerated.
- both US and Western Europe offered a far better quality of life compared to my home country. And such debates (USA vs Western Europe) seem farcical from that perspective, or "first world problems" as they say.
This isn't true at all. The EU is just now starting to think about self defense because of Trump. Trump's insurgence is putting into question the US-led world order and NATO alliances. Without the US, NATO is functionally useless.
The EU is under the security blanket of the US, whether it likes to believe it or not. Hell, most of those countries pay less than 2 percent of their budgets towards their own defense, and they get pissy when the past three US Presidents call them out on it.
It is true that the EU has worked with NATO. However, it's not clear that America needs all the military force it has since a lot of it is quite cleary force projecting on economic adversaries.
Suggesting the EU "needed" this is a bit misleading. And I say this as an American exasperated at our refusal to reduce force projection on foreign nations.
The EU definitely "needed" it. Aside from France and the UK, EU countries are pathetic militarily.
NATO was originally formed to be a defense alliance of democratic countries against communism and Russia. Russia, while a threat to the United States, poses more of a threat to Europe (for geographic reasons) than to the United States.
Let’s go back a bit. The US intervened in Afghanistan against the Soviets decades ago, training what would become Al Qaeda, which would later attack the US. In response the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq (again) destabilizing the region and leading to the birth of ISIS, the “Arab Spring” and the Syrian civil war.
It’s just waves of blowback from bad decisions without any concept that the groundwork for more blowback is being laid.
I still don't get why someone has to say A is better than everything else. The second someone says A is better, there's an army of people frothing at the mouth who will (usually justifiably) say the opposite. There doesn't seem like any happy mediums anymore. One person is wrong, one person is right, but I'm pretty sure they're usually both right and both wrong.
If you're the richest and most powerful nation in history, why do you have the highest incarceration rate in the world? Why do so many sick and injured Americans end up bankrupt or die prematurely? Why do parts of Michigan look post-apocalyptic? Why are many of your schools still de-facto segregated? Why is there a Wikipedia article titled "List of tent cities in the United States"?
We could understand a claim like "America is really weird - we're ridiculously wealthy, but our government is profoundly dysfunctional in ways that are hard to fix, which causes a great deal of avoidable suffering". That makes sense to us. A claim like "America is the greatest country the world has ever seen" sounds obscenely callous without some very strong caveats attached.