[grecy]

Nothing I said was an argument, I was only stating my opinion.

An opinion, it seems, that is not uncommon.

http://blogs.reuters.com/bernddebusmann/2011/10/28/america-w...

> Please leave your preconceptions at the door when having a serious discussion.

Upon arriving in America in 2003, I had no preconceptions. I'm speaking from my experiences living and working in the country.

[tadfisher]

I can tell you that your experience will be vastly different depending on where you live and work. That's why it's hard to make meaningful statements about America as a whole, such as "Americans think they are number 1" or "You're more likely to get murdered if you move to America". Nobody throws a dart on a map and moves to America the country, they move to California or Virgina or Wisconsin.

Your supporting evidence cited a Fox News poll, which is probably the most biased and self-selecting demographic I can think of. That's one of our well-publicized failings, actually--the inherent biases of corporate media and the echo chamber of politics.

[pessimizer]

>I can tell you that your experience will be vastly different depending on where you live and work.

I'm not sure how this makes the US different from the countries it's being compared to. They all have more and less dangerous regions. There are more and less dangerous regions within a block's walk from me, but the average over that area gives me a general basis of comparison with other areas.

I always feel that there's a racial subtext to this kind of defense of US statistics (which I often hear in terms of education, crime, and health outcomes.) It is, basically, that the parts of the US that the average Scandinavian or Japanese citizen would ever be in have comparable rates of terribleness to their own countries - just ignore the massive portion of the US behind the curtain.

e.g. I am more likely to be killed when moving to an average Chicago from an average Finland. Since Chicago is segregated, however, very few white people would ever see an average Chicago - so an average Chicago can't be a meaningful comparison.

[tadfisher]

> I always feel that there's a racial subtext to this kind of defense of US statistics (which I often hear in terms of education, crime, and health outcomes.)

There is, and that is a characteristic of the United States in general of which most who live there are keenly aware. This is why they speak quickly against comparisons of the United States as a whole against Scandinavian countries or Japan. Those countries do not have the ethnic heterogeneity or deep-seated institutional racism that the United States has experienced and still experiences.

For example, my state sterilized violent criminals and the mentally disabled until the 1980s, most of them being ethnic minorities. This would be unthinkable in Sweden, for example.

We also have easy access to guns and a destabilized internal culture in ethnically-heterogeneous areas, where community respect is a factor of how much crime you have committed or how many people you have killed.

You are exactly right, however, in that living in an upper-class neighborhood in Chicago would skew your perspective of crime in America.

[pessimizer]

>This is why they speak quickly against comparisons of the United States as a whole against Scandinavian countries or Japan.

I'm not excusing this perspective on US statistics, I'm saying that it's racist. It's the view that if compared properly, the US isn't so bad. Proper comparison involves excluding groups who are discriminated against from the comparison.

[gnud]

Both Sweden and Norway had sterilization programs for "unwanted elements" (in Norway, mostly Romani, in practice) until the mid-70s.

[grecy]

>This is why they speak quickly against comparisons of the United States as a whole against Scandinavian countries or Japan. Those countries do not have the ethnic heterogeneity or deep-seated institutional racism that the United States has experienced and still experiences.

America is not unique in that it faces challenges and obstacles to being successful. Japan had two nuclear weapons used on it's citizens, half of Western Europe has been invaded and occupied in the last 70 years, and Australia has had the worst drought ever recorded. Those examples barely scratch the surface.

Your line of reasoning that America is "unique" or somehow "different" because of the challenges it continues to face is a perfect example of American exceptionalism.

Facing challenges and obstacles is all part of the challenge of building a successful country where the average person on the street has a high quality of life. When compared against other first world countries, which have also faced very large challenges to their success, America does not rank well. Stop making excuses and finding reasons to excuse yourself from greater comparisons.

[tadfisher]

I am not making excuses for my country, and I am not here to prove that America is unique in that it has to face challenges. I am trying to say that America is not one place or one people, or even one government, and that comparing the entirety of a loose coalition of independent states to single independent nations is disingenuous and ignores specific factors that other developed nations simply don't have to deal with. Yes, all countries have challenges, but all challenges are not the same. I listed a few in my previous posts.

I don't appreciate your belligerent discourse, putting words in my mouth, or typecasting me as a brainwashed patriot. I am well aware of America's problems and I recognize that the United States as a whole is falling well behind in many important metrics. You are not buying my argument that these metrics are skewed greatly by historical and regional concerns that are outside the control of the federal government, and that is your prerogative. But please do not belittle me and accuse me of being ignorant of the world's problems.

[pessimizer]

I'm not sure why you think that other countries are in general by nature more homogenous than the US. Most of the countries that outrank us have engaged in massive internal orgies of slaughter over their differences.

>these metrics are skewed greatly by historical and regional concerns that are outside the control of the federal government

These metrics aren't "skewed" by, they are determined by. That your concerns (if I translate "ethnic heterogeneity" as "racism") are the reason for the bad numbers is clear. The reason that they should be excluded is unclear.

Racism and easy access to guns are written into our constitution.

[grecy]

> I am trying to say that America is not one place or one people, or even one government, and that comparing the entirety of a loose coalition of independent states to single independent nations is disingenuous and ignores specific factors that other developed nations simply don't have to deal with.

There is nothing unique about that. That is the case of all countries in the world.

I wonder what you would like to see happen? Rather than compare Japan to America, should I compare Japan to Oregon, and Japan to Louisiana like they are separate places? I wonder what the attitude would be then? Everyone in Oregon sits pretty because they are ranked with the world's best, and people in Louisiana are condemned to life of poverty and suffering?

I wonder what would happen if violence and poverty broke out in a corner of Oregon, vastly changing it's position - would you then further break-down Oregon into counties, so once again you can sit pretty in the knowledge your county ranks well and can ignore the others?

You sound like a baseball team manager who's team constantly finishes towards the bottom of the ladder- then you say "yeah, but we have unique challenges because our team is made up of different races, etc. If we had a better pitcher and short stop, we'd be so much better". The reality is you have the team you have. You can choose to work with it as a team to improve things, or you can segregate yourself and say "well, I'm a great first baseman, so screw everyone else". How is that productive?

A country is made up of the sum of it's parts - every country has areas that are way above average, and areas that are way below average for an enormous number of reasons - that, of course, is the definition of average

Apologies for offending you, that was not my intention, though reading back through my comments I see I have not expressed myself well.

[smsm42]

Japan has plenty of racism. They just don't have a lot of who to apply it to - not in the scales that it happened in the US.

[smsm42]

When talking about murder statistics, you can't be speaking from experience, can you?

The truth is that there are some very nice places in America, and some not very nice places. In the nice places, statistics is good or better than a developed country, in the not nice places, statistics is worth - because these places are nothing like developed country. While they are inside the borders of the USA, their life is very different from the life of the nice places. Smaller countries frequently do not have such diversity, and averages can be deceptive (when Bill Gates walks into a bar, average wealth of the bar patron raises significantly, even though nobody really got any richer).

[flyinRyan]

Developed countries don't normally have this kind of economic diversity. It's pretty common in developing nations though, with similar results.