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Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
3,997 posts, read 4,143,759 times
Reputation: 2677
Quote:
Originally Posted by zortation
If it was the best system in the world other countries would emulate it.
Then why do so many immigrants want to come here? We wouldn't have an immigration problem if it wasn't the best.......I don't see em lined up to immigrate to Venezuela......
Switzerland is my first choice. It is a direct democracy with very high voter turn-out. It's people are wealthier than those in the US, and it has outstanding medical care for all its citizens.
I also like Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Austria for much the same reasons. Canada is high on my list also.
Meanwhile in the US, we cannot seem to shake our legacy of racism, and we make it hard for minorities to vote with our voter suppression laws and gerrymandering. We do our best to ensure that members of minorities stay in their place by underfunding schools in minority neighborhoods and making sure they can't escape those neighborhoods by tactics like red-lining.
Our healthcare system is a joke, and citizens of our next door neighbor, Canada have a longer life span than we do. The republican party has taken delight in dismantling whatever small progress we have made toward universal healthcare and won't rest until only the upper middle class and the wealthy have access to competent doctors and state of the art treatments.
We do not believe in the social contract or the social safety net. We are bitter over every single penny we may have to pay to provide meals on wheels to low income seniors and god forbid that a disabled American have access to affordable housing where they could spend their years with a modicum of dignity in an efficiency or a small one bedroom apartment.
We begrudge children from low income families a hot lunch or cold breakfast at their schools. We scream with outrage if a single Mom getting back on her feet is issued so much as a dollar thru SNAP to help feed her small children.
The streets of our cities are filled with the homeless - often people who suffer from schizophrenia or other serious mental illness or just had the misfortune to get laid off and can't pay the rent in cities like Denver or San Francisco because the cost of real estate is now simply obscene, and the NIMBY crowd refuse to allow affordable housing to be built anywhere within a 100 mile radius of their neighborhoods.
As a people we are highly suspicious of education and would rather see our young people drop out of high school than attend college - which the financial industry is making more and more unaffordable anyhow. We hate science with a passion not seen since the time of the middle ages. We love the idea that every last scientist on earth is part of some bizarre vast conspiracy theory even as we hang on to every word that falls from the lips of some shill for BP or Exxon Mobile.
And last but not least, we have elected an ignorant thug for president* who encourages us in our worst behavior and views the highest office in the land as a means of enriching his family coffers and a way to ensure that his "brand" circles the globe.
My poor, poor country! We are going into a death spiral and don't even notice it.
cause as Americans we have a lack of empathy towards others. Also as Americans we think we are the only country on this planet and America is #1 in everything.
Not looking good for most folks' home team. I haven't voted but for politics I'd say Canada, Australia, and Norway, and for economics any of those three beat the pants off the US if the measure is the economic welfare of all of its citizens, because the people who run the US doesn't give a **** about most of us. For economic well-being, Singapore wins and, despite the benevolent dictatorship aspect of the place, maybe it wins as a political system as well. At least they've made diversity and superb education central aspects of the country's priorities. More impressive is that it didn't have to have turned out that way; they could have devolved into chaos easily with their racial/ethnic mix, but Lee Kuan Yew had a greater vision for the country as a country.
Any political system that allows for an election of a leader without the most votes is inherently flawed.
Amen. When empty acres have more of a say in our elected officials than actual people, something is not right.
And when other countries find ways to take care of their citizens that we seem incapable of doing, something is not right.
I love America and I wouldn't live anywhere else, but I'm not blind to our flaws and what we need to get better at. We are living in a time where a regressive minority is in charge, determined to hold us back. We need a decade or so of progressive rule to bring us into the 21st century with the rest of the first world countries.
Any political system that allows for an election of a leader without the most votes is inherently flawed.
We are a collection of STATES in a Constitutional Representative Republic, not a mob rule democracy. States elect Presidents, not people. Your STATE is your primary government, not the Feds.
You tell me who else can deal with over 330 million people and sustain the quality of life most people have here.
America has been very good to me and my loved ones. this amazing country has provided us safety, opportunities to make a living, an education, freedom to move where we want, an abundance of food, excellent health care and so much more. I'm so grateful for the incredible luck to be born in America. there is no other country in this world I'd rather live.
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