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i just found out that the girl who has been the love of my life since i was 10 yrs old just got engagrd to some other guy...how's that for quality of life...
America by a long shot. Why? America currently has one of the greatest gaps between rich and poor in the entire world. America ranks as the 93rd worst country in terms of income inequality. Mind you that there are only 196 countries in the world.
That being said, every big city and metro area in the country is becoming more or less unevenly split between the filthy rich and the dirt poor with little in between. Look at any big American city. Take our nation's capitol for instance. Northwest DC, which is overwhelming wealthy and White in demographics, is the cause of DC currently being the most educated and wealthy big city in America. However, the impoverished mostly Black ghetto Southeast quadrant of DC has the highest recorded unemployment rate of anywhere in the United States.
How bad is it in the average American inner city? Very bad. American inner cities have comparable violent crime rates to war-torn places in the third world. For example, DC has been statistically found to be more violent than Iraq. Refuges from Iraq have found places like Oakland to be more violent than their war-torn country of origin!
America is home to some of the statistically most dangerous cities on the planet. Tell me, where is there a city like Baltimore or Detroit in England, France, Ireland, Japan or Spain? *crickets* A huge underclass of impoverished Black people is warehoused in decaying de-industrialized cities in America. Huge swaths of these cities have no legitimate jobs available or opportunities to speak of outside of the booming underworld economy of drugs and gangs. Houses in many American ghettos can be bought for as little as a single dollar bill. Detroit and New Orleans ranked in the top ten most dangerous cities in the world list based on a statistical analysis based on pure numbers:
Ghetto cities and neighborhoods are so rife with crime because people need money to live but America is constantly bleeding millions of jobs. If you give people the option to sell hard drugs or starve, they are going to choose to sell drugs because starving is not fun. When people don't have jobs, they resort to crime to survive or retreat into a world of hard drug/alcohol use to escape their gloomy existence.
And no, extreme poverty and poor quality of life is not limited to infamous ghetto cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland. Some of the worst poverty in America is hidden even in its spectacular jewel cities. For example, San Francisco is home to some of the most substandard public housing in America in largely neglected unheard of places like Potrero Hill (home of O.J. Simpson), Hunter's Point and Sunnydale. The impoverished Hunter's Point district in San Francisco is sitting on the most toxic waste dump in California. Non-coincidentally, Hunter's Point has the highest infant mortality rate in California and the highest murder rate of anywhere in the city and maybe the entire state.
And no, the declining quality of life in America is not entirely an inner city problem. Inflation, outsourcing, massive lay-offs, increasing cost of higher education, predatory student loans and unsustainable credit card debt are killing the American middle class. Approximately 95% of the jobs lost in the last economic downturn were middle class jobs.
Today, higher education, healthcare and home ownership are incredibly unaffordable for the average citizen and these things have become rigged scams designed to enslave people to debt for the rest of their natural lives. Wages have remained flat all while the cost of living has risen very high in the past few decades. College has become a giant money making scam that guarantees nothing but debt for the two-thirds of students who graduate with student loans that cannot be expunged even through bankruptcy. Student loan debt doesn't go away until every last cent is paid off plus interest. Higher education is a gamble at best. Over half of recent college grads in the past six years are working in full-time jobs that require a college degree related to their field of study. It is not comforting that high school graduates who never went to college have much worse unemployment rates than college grads. It doesn't help that salaries of recent college grads are dropping all while the cost of education is steadily increasing. Also, most people who enter college do not graduate even within six years.
America locks up more people than anywhere in the world. Although America is only 5% of the world's population, we have about 25% of the entire Earth's prison population. Why? Because hundreds of thousands of nonviolent Americans are locked up because they use or sell drugs. Many places in America can be accurately described as police states where poor people, who are disproportionately ethnic minorities, are hunted down like stray dogs, rounded up for petty "crimes", like smoking and selling weed or other drugs, and thrown in jail for years at a time.
Horrifyingly, the drugs that cause the most death in America are as legal as 2% Milk. Deadly and addictive prescription drugs pushed by doctors and the like have literally caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. New editions of these killer pills are recalled every other week because people usually die after ingesting these man-made toxins. Modern medicine makes more people sick than anything to say the least. Prescription drugs, which long-term side-effects are not known, are even given to the youngest of children. This is truly criminal. Marijuana, which has been proven to have natural beneficial medical qualities and has caused zero deaths through pure use in itself in the history of mankind, is as illegal as homicide.
The food we eat is also incredibly unhealthy. Americans have gotten astronomically fatter over the past 30 years because of the crap we eat. In America, extra large french fries and mega gulp sodas are practically food groups.
I could go on and on but several books can and have been written addressing why America has the worst quality of life for average people in the developed world.
Last edited by goldenchild08; 06-12-2012 at 01:07 AM..
You don't know what you're talking about
Ok, I am italian and in the USA I have unfortunately heard too many bulls**ts about my country
The VAST majority of italian people DON'T live in old apartments and DON'T own a motorino.
Do you really think that cheesy Hollywood movies such as "Under the Tuscan Sun", "To Rome with Love" and "Eat, Pray, Love" represent the real way of life in Italy?
Well, if you think so, I think you should take off your pink glasses...
Also, as far as quality of life is concerned, in Italy it depends on WHERE YOU LIVE: honestly, Italy is not only the beautiful Sienna and Venice, there are unfortunately several unpleasant cities such as Rome, Milan, Naples, Genoa, Palermo etc etc and, as I have already written, the South looks like a developing country, with the difference that it is not developing... it seems to be that it is on a point of no return.
Listen, I don't live in the US but at six hours from your country (running like hell through French autoroutes using Annibal's route). I was just was using an example as a mode of illustration. South of Italy is magnificent, and I think that the place has been the same during the last three ir four centuries, but I'm a Mediterranean slug.... Developing country?...perhaps they are too developed...
Last edited by cojoncillo; 06-12-2012 at 04:30 AM..
Listen, I don't live in the US but at six hours from your country (running like hell through French autoroutes using Annibal's route). I was just was using an example as a mode of illustration. South of Italy is magnificent, and I think that the place has been the same during the last three ir four centuries, but I'm a Mediterranean slug.... Developing country?...perhaps they are too developed...
Too developed?
You're kidding, right?
I guess you're talking about the North... 'cause in fact Southern Italy is one of the poorest areas in Europe.
Spain needs to drive out these lazy and corrupt politicians and bring in people who can get the job done. It´s sad how high the unemployment is, though it does depend on what sector you work in because in the medical field (what I am qualified in - nursing) there are lots of jobs, all my friends have good jobs too but I think as a whole the country is on its knees and because of the politicians. I believe Spain is far more corrupt than Scotland - they have the money, I mean where does all my taxes go to and look at the millions made on tourism alone! It´s scandalous, the corruption reminds of me that of in the US.
It´s rife.
surely you mean far more corrupt than the uk , scotland is not a country
Conservative propaganda is very effective at getting people to vote against their own interests. It's very puzzling, and alarming. I don't understand how people can fall for that.
I, too, have been mystified by this. Truly bizarre...
Conservative propaganda is very effective at getting people to vote against their own interests. It's very puzzling, and alarming. I don't understand how people can fall for that.
I'm an American, and BELIEVE ME, this drives us more "liberal" citizens crazy! I don't get it at all. And there is no reasoning with them, no amount of facts can overcome it. It makes my head want to explode!
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