Many, if not most, of us are jealous of other countries, though. Really, this is only a hard truth for the MAGA crowd, and even that is (I think) largely the fault of the nationalist propaganda that's been shoveled at us since we were kids.
As an American, I agree with you, though - the US is in no way a 'strong democracy', or much of a democracy at all. It may once have been, but it certainly hasn't been the case for a long time.
Back in 1780s the US constitution was an absolute marvel of progressiveness, but today, it is increadibly outdated and keeps the US political system back from making progress.
But we’re really a used car salesman trying to get you to finance a clapped out Nissan Altima with 128k miles, failing clear coat, and a dented bumper.
This. Conservatives have poor media literacy. They don't understand that they're the punchline in stuff like that. They miss the point of stuff like RoboCop and Starship Troopers and unironically like those movies for the action and don't even recognize the social commentary. They watched Team America and guffawed into their 24 packs of light beer at every shallow joke without recognizing that the jokes were intentionally shallow to point out what an idiot would think is a good joke. It's like the TV show in Idiocracy. The real joke is below the surface.
I used to watch Colbert Report with my dad and it took him years to realize that it was a parody mocking him often personally. My dad was not a dumb man. The conservative bubble is hard to pop. Its like a Stockholm syndrome victim sympathizing with their attacker.
Believe me there's no shortage of people who know that were not the shining city on the hill, unfortunately we're drowned out by pandering patriotic country music and gunfire from mass shootings.
I like the clip, but IMO they basically bailed out in the end by all the nonsense quoted from the ~3:25 mark on.
Jeff basically makes it sound like the US used to be incredibly self-aware, humble, kind, and well-administrated, but I think what most Americans don't choose to understand is that since the very settling of the continent, it's been a highly fraught, contentious situation, much of it characterised by greed, cruelty, violence, intolerance and self-righteousness.
Now yes, from what I understand of history, under FDR we more or less hit a peak of being a well-run, progressive country, on the level of many modern Euro countries more or less, but most of that was specifically in response to the utter disaster of the Great Depression and the need to adjust powerfully, swiftly and accurately. Meanwhile, IIRC during his presidency, there was in fact a right-wing movement intending to remove him by underhanded means.
So I like the hopefulness of the clip, but in the end I also find it pretty typical of Americans being largely unwilling to understand the hows and whys of the nation, going back to the early 1600's.
What? We have two right wing parties to choose from! Is that not enough? Should we make three right wing parties so you feel we are better represented?
The commodity price for gasoline right now looks to be about 2 USD per gallon. Retail gasoline in the USA is at least a dollar more due to taxes and markup.
Subsidies may play a role as well, but the taxes in some countries are extreme by American standards. My take on it is that a fuel tax is effectively neutral if it brings in enough revenue to pay for the road system.
The fuel tax isn't enough to cover the damage to the environment and quality of life, though. That's why taxes are that high in many other places. Same way cigarettes are taxed to help discourage use and to help cover the increased healthcare costs it puts on everyone
Fuel, and other car-related taxes (sometimes based on horsepower or engine displacement) in most countries in Europe were much higher than in the USA long before there was widespread concern about the environmental impact of cars.
Which is why I said "environment and quality of life" - they don't want their cities dominated by cars (making life dangerous for pedestrians) and for cars to become a requirement for living. So taxes are added to discourage (not eliminate) driving and car ownership
But also, the mess of smog from exhaust and other impacts beyond climate change have been known since the first automobiles. Concerns about the 'environment' is more than greenhouse gasses.
In NZ it's roughly $2.50NZD per litre minimum, or $5.31USD per gallon. This is roughly 50% tax (it's how we pay for roads, plus is subject to sales tax), so a bit over $2USD per gallon at the moment excluding tax.
Is it really $3 a gallon plus tax in the US right now?
I compare it to how I thought mobile phone calls in the US were super cheap, then found out people pay to receive calls, which was super weird to me. Where I live, my whole life it has never been the case that a normal residential connection would pay to receive a call, mobile or not.
Differences in how we do things make differences appear more than they are.
I don't know if anyone can really get you that number, because the tax isn't clearly disclosed when you buy gasoline, it's just included in the price; the taxes also vary widely between different states/counties/maybe cities too?
Huh, the US gets another layer more confusing. Tax is included in gas prices but not in anything else? How do the arguments for not including that tax in the price stack up when gas stations are already including it?
Ok apparently Illinois has a 39c per gallon gasoline tax, another 18c in federal, and another 6% or so on state sales tax, plus any regional sales tax. It's unclear whether the sales tax applies to the gasoline tax (in NZ it does), but let's assume it doesn't. Then that's $3 - 0.39 - 0.18 = $2.43 then remove 6% tax is 2.43/106*100 = $2.29
We can probably knock a bit more off because there is probably some regional/city sales tax but it should be the right ballpark.
It does seem we pay about the same for petrol, though from what I've been searching up, this is wildly different across states because states have much different ways of paying for roads (e.g. Hawai'i is mostly taxed at the pump where as Alaska has big taxes on oil extraction to keep taxes for residents low, including for roading).
Any price lower than that required to compensate for all the negative externalities of both driving and using fossil fuels to do it still counts as subsidized.
A failure to set an excise tax on a product or service that offsets its externalities is not a subsidy. A lower tax rate than a competing product is arguably a subsidy.
I'm not aware of any modern societies that make a credible attempt to adjust the price of all or most goods and services to include their externalities. That sounds like a good idea in theory, but very difficult to implement in practice.
Fuel tax in the U.S. doesn't even come close to paying for the road system. The federal fuel tax covers less than half of federal transportation spending. I don't know about all of the states, but Wisconsin's fuel tax covers only about 2/3 of the road spending. And, local streets get built with local property and income taxes.
The previous time I looked, which was a while ago, federal fuel tax revenue in the USA and federal highway expenditures were about equal. Since then, fuel tax revenue has fallen behind highway spending; the required increase to even it out would be modest in absolute terms - something like 15 cents per gallon. States each have their own taxes and budgets, of course.
As for the road damage each car causes, it increases (roughly) proportional to the fourth power of vehicle weight. Semi trucks and similar heavy commercial vehicles cause almost all of the traffic-induced road wear, and passenger cars contribute very little. It's likely the fuel taxes paid for a passenger car (even a relatively large one) are several times its marginal impact on road maintenance.
What state do you live in that the road system is funded adequately? I never hear someone comment positively about the general state of road conditions.
Is it adequate if there are state maintained dirt roads? In some states, the state or county chooses not to pave all of their roads.
Is it adequately funded if they have potholes? Due to weather conditions, some states are notorious for potholes.
Is it adequately funded if the road gets washed out or carried away by flooding? California gets mudslides that take out sections of roads, other states get sinkholes or hurricanes/tornados destroying their roads
How long can one of these issues plague a road before we consider them underfunded?
My opinion is that the US has too many roads. Most roads are maintained by county or municipalities, and are funded through infinite growth model.
When a developer creates a new subdivision, they pave the roads. Once done, they usually relinquish these roads to the county/city who are responsible for maintaining the roads.
Typically maintenance is low until they require replacing. The cities and counties don’t save money or plan well for replacing these roads and rely on new tax revenue to fund replacing them.
It builds a slowly ballooning road maintenance cost that someone will have to pay. I believe someone made a video about this very fact. I don’t have the link handy
Florida, with the tourist money and gas taxes all our roads and highways are solid. The great weather year round means they can maintain and build roads all the time non stop.
Nothing new to that. In 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the US Supreme Court declared that companies are people too. With the same rights — under the 14th amendment.
Most "third world" or "developing" countries aren't that bad, and there are places in the US far worse than the median developing country.
Also most people in most places do not want to go to the US, even to visit much less immigrate. It's generally either the worst of a particular society or those specifically harmed by the US previously and feel their chances are better off with the abuser instead of in the abused country. It's not a wanted destination.
This was a MASSIVE eye opening shock to me. You watch NCIS or any pro military show and they'll pan to Baghdad or anything middle east and you'll see crumbling buildings or warzone with a sepia filter. I was got smacked when I saw a real skyline photo of Baghdad, and istanbul, and most cities. Our media is dead set on continuing the thought of these empty deserts
There is a book called Factfulness where they talk about presenting the UN scientists their own data and surprising them at the standard of living in many third world countries. People's ideas of third world countries is based on what they were like in the 50s, but many are catching up to the developed world in leaps and bounds.
I'm not sure where you're from, but at least in the Middle East that's not the case. It's a very desirable immigration destination here (less than Western Europe, though).
See the last part of the second paragraph for that. Victims of the empire paradoxically tend to want to immigrate to the empire believing they'll be better off there than in the country that empire targeted.
The UN General Assembly Human Rights Council 2018 report on USA's poverty and human rights is a pretty quick and clear overview which makes it clear that parts of the USA are just undeveloped:
I dunno, i understand it pretty well. Lack of education, lead paint/gasoline, nationalism, fascism, racism, sexism, economic disparity, lack of healthcare to deal with neural degeneracy common in trump supporters, and finally lower borth rates among the more educated. America is a shithole, and has been for the past 40 years at least. Until we finally grow a spine and start "adjusting", things are going to continue getting worse until were all dead and the olligarchs own everything. Then theyll move on to fucking the rest of the world (harder than they already are)
Great, thanks. I want to know what OP actually wants us to do. I hate the situation we were in and I sure as shit didn't vote for this asshole the first or second time, but other than voting and trying to survive what exactly do you want us to do to "get our shit together".
About 1/7 are less than voting age. Another 1/7 or so voted for the oompa loompa, and another 1/7 voted against. So actually, about half of the population just doesn't vote because they're a different type of idiot.
Welcome to every election, not just presidential and not just a Republican or Democrat problem. Trump is disgusting but Seattles former mayor was way worse and didn’t get a peep nationwide.
Hah! Let's make a list of the countries where leadership of that ilk has never existed. (We'll just ignore that most of them did not allow elections.) Won't take much paper.
Military skill was a use it or lose it thing. I wouldn't be surprised if all of the wars that the US has been fighting have been intentional, specifically in order to maintain skilled soldiers.
Varies state to state and city to city, but my city has the majority of that list… plus the freedom of speech is nice. When I read the news about people in Europe going to prison for comments online but getting slapped on the wrist for violent crimes I’m baffled.
Oh really? I would like to know which city is that so I can confirm, but I seriously doubt you have most of that list since that's regulated on state or federal level.
Also we have freedom of speech in Europe, but you obviously can't incite violence, the same is true in the US, going online and trying to get people to bomb a building filled with gays or immigrants is hate speech and will get you arrested in most civilized countries.
I gut upvoted you because I want to confirm your point of view, it resonates with me. But you are asking the guy to doxx himself for an internet argument, besides maybe where he lives isn't so bad and he wanted to express his sentiment.
Yes, I don't expect him to answer, even though just naming a city where you lived or have lived before is not doxxing yourself, it is personal information that I understand someone not wanting to share.
That being said, his claim was that his city had most of a list of things, you can't make that claim and not expect to divulge the city, he could have hidden the fact that it was where he lived or had lived before by saying "X city has most of that" which would have allowed him to give verifiable information about his claim without doxxing themselves. But as it is it sounds like the person who swears he has a girlfriend who lives in another country and has natural blue hair, but no one has ever seen her.
The thing is that the US also does not have 100% free speech.
You can absolutely get arrested in the US for shouting "FIRE!" In a crowded area.
Regarding punishment for violent crimes seeming low in Europe, that is mainly due to us focusing on rehabilitation rather than revenge. However change is comming, we are moving to longer punishments.
If I got to decide, we would have a system where we focus on rehab for the first X times a person commits a crime, when it has been shown that the person does not want to change, then they are put in containment prisons, they are less nice, and focus on containment firstly, rehab secondly.
Free speech doesn't not mean freedom from consequences.
Example. If you tell someone to kill someone else, and they do it, you will be charged with a crime. Free speech means that you can voice your views, and the government (not private corporations btw) is not allowed to restrict it. That's why you can still read Luigi's manifesto, or the Unabomber's. It's why you can still publish and read the Articles of the Confederacy, or the Anarchist's Cookbook.
The small brained “you can’t yell fire in a movie theater” argument so we don’t have free speech is the intellectual equivalent of Jeff Bezos is poor because he drives a ‘93 Honda civic.
Yet that is exactly your argument, that only the US has free speech because Europe puts people in jail for online comments, without regard to what those comments are, it's the equivalent to saying the US jails people for speaking in the movie theaters in the fire example.
This one is far more complicated than non-americans think. I've spoken to people outside the country, and they tend to only listen to the really dumb democrats when it comes to this issue.
You can't close Pandora's box. There are 393 million guns in the hands of civilians here. If you have a crazy neighbor with a gun, you kind of have to go get one yourself. That, or devise another method of viable self defense. The cops won't help you, not in virtually any situation.
Well I can't go back in time to preemptively stop them from getting a gun in the first place, I'd love to hear any suggestions you have for that situation.
"Just do something a large portion of the country would kill to stop from happening" isn't a good solution, but you know that. If reason was going to work, we would have used it decades ago.
The main reason US can and could ever delude itself into being great is for having a ridiculous people-to-land/resources ratio. There is nothing inherently great about how the US does things, it just seems that way because you can do whatever you want if you have essentially infinite resources compared to everyone else.
For millions of United States Americans, the so called "American Dream" is achieved in Mexico. They're often illegal immigrants. They often have mental health problems. They gentrify our cities and are entitled as fuck.
Pot calling kettle and all, but I do wish they'd go back to their own shithole country. They have demonized my country for decades and have weaponized the cartels to feed their own addictions. Most of the problems here can be tied directly to their humongous drug problems.
Yankee go home. The United Mexican States is tired of your shit.
And half of them won't even bother learning Spanish. I'll never give someone who immigrates due to hardship a hard time about learning the language, but privileged fucks who go to exploit a lower cost of living or whatever often just end up in expat bubbles and don't know more than a few words of the local language even after years despite having that privilege of time/money/resources to learn it.
So are there any good ones? Learning Spanish and giving back to the community? Just curious. That’s what I plan to do when I move out of here, learn the language and do volunteer work, etc.
Spot on about the gentrification bit. Entire town populations have shifted from local people to the self called expats and snowbirds. Just look at Chelém, Mérida, San Miguel de Allende, Tulúm, Cancún and many many more including most upitty neighborhoods in México City (Condesa, Roma, San Angel).
A while ago I watched a live stream of CSPAN (I think?) where the House failed to form a government for several consecutive days. The way the entire process started with a prayer, and the many references to religion throughout, is just as disturbing as the personality cult around Stalin. That whole gang is fucked in the head.
Yes, you really need to rewrite that constitution of yours and declaring something "unconstitutional" doesn't win you an argument, it makes you look like a brainwashed idiot. Just saying.
As an American, I'm gonna barge in with my loud opinion, 'cuz that's what we do. Here's something which people living elsewhere might not know that Americans aren't ready to hear:
Automobiles are luxury toys and fashion accessories, and we shouldn't base our entire lives on them. No, the car industry didn't make our economy strong; it took off after we already had a lot of extra wealth to burn after becoming a world economic powerhouse. We can't afford to keep wasting all that wealth on them as the world starts to burn, and half of our citizens sink into poverty.
You wasted your chance as a hyper-power. The Soviet Union had fallen and the world was essentially yours but you did nothing with it. Now India and China are rising powers and you are going back to being a regular super-power.
Honestly right on red is so stupid. So many people don't even slow down and they just go. Sometimes I'll be waiting to turn right at red light and some dickhead in a behemoth truck behind me will start spamming their horn like they think I have the right away and can just mow down whichever pedestrians are in the crosswalk. I bike a lot and I have narrowly avoided being hit by a car turning right on red multiple times. One time I had a car graze my back tire which was really scary but fortunately I ended up okay.
To offer a counter argument.
Right on red the concept isn't stupid, its stupid to just sit there when there's not a car in sight.
The drivers, shitty driver tests and 0 enforcement is all dumb.
It's supposed to be treated like a stop sign, you stop, look, and go when safe. Not roll through at max speed.
People also don't seem to know that a red arrow equals a no-turn on red sign.
I've been seeing electronic no-turn on red signs that can turn on/off with the light cycle. So if the opposite lane has the left green, the sign tells you not to turn on red. One would hope they're integrated into the cross walks too, (not that everyone uses those either).
I think the us has the worse road tests, mine was just some suburbs with 0 merges, no highways, a couple stops signs and maybe a light. Pretty much anyone driving for a day could have passed that thing, and that's how we end up with the bullshit like "the fast cruise lane (pass lane)" "right roll on red" "the merger has right away" "merge on highway 20miles(32kmh) slower than traffic" "blinker optional" "blinker on only when half way through turn or merge" "break before blinker" "wave of death on two lane roads" the list could go on and on....
I know I’m being pedantic but I just thought it’s interesting that you said “there’s not a car in sight” when I thought the primary concern was drivers not paying attention to pedestrians crossing the street.
However, why is it more stupid to sit there when there’s not a car on sight only when turning right but not when going straight or turning left? There’s an argument for larger roads with many lanes, sure, but isn’t it the same when it’s only 1-2 lane roads?
You are correct, I should have said "Not a car, pedestrian or other obstacle in sight".
The problem is absolutely people not paying attention when turning; they'll fixate on the traffic coming from the left, and the moment there's a tiny opening they'll floor it and ram into stopped traffic or pedestrians on the right.
I would say its equally stupid to sit there with no car in sight. I guess this most often happens at night when little traffic. There are some light that seems to have a 60sec cycle and it sucks idling there for no reason. Roundabouts help, and over the last 10? years they've been appearing more.
Telling people to use their judgment to decide if they can just go regardless of red is a bad idea. People barley handle the right-on-red as it is.
Everything you wrote after this sentence told me that people are stupid, not necessarily the right itself. It makes a lot of sense, I'd like to have it in the EU.
Just trying to help where I can through pedantry. Had someone this morning use "all intensive purposes" and he was amazed at how much more sense the actual phrase makes. Recontextualized things for him a bit.
The right lanes are the slow lanes - we overtake/pass on the left, and you are advised to stay out of the left lane unless you are passing. This makes sense because you need to slow down to exit the freeway, or in case of emergency, you are closer to the side of the road to be able to do so.
How else are you supposed to deal with 4-way stops? In my state it's first arrival goes first, however if two cars arrive at the same time the car on the right proceeds first. It's not that complicated, and I'm not sure what's wrong with it?
And I'm not at all sure what you're referring to regarding coming from the right? Coming from the right in relation to where?
How else are you supposed to deal with 4-way stops? In my state it's first arrival goes first, however if two cars arrive at the same time the car on the right proceeds first.
By always respecting the second rule. There are no 4-way stops here. If an intersection does not have signs the vehicle on the right always has priority. No exceptions.
It's not that complicated, and I'm not sure what's wrong with it
The problem is that people have different views on who came first but there are no different views on where right is. If there are any disputes there can be no arguments on who came 20 milliseconds earlier, instead you can just look at who had the right of way.
In a four-way stop, if you arrive at the same time then the one on the right goes first and if you’re across from each other then the one going straight gets the right of way and the one turning goes after otherwise it doesn’t matter if both are going straight.
Otherwise, if you have two people arrive at a four-way stop and one is clearly there before the other then the winner gets the right of way to keep flow of traffic going rather than waiting for the other to stop and go just because they were on the right side.
We don’t have a ton of roundabouts/traffic circles here but it works the same as it would in Europe.
Doesn't matter who got there first, person from the right gets right of way even if he came later. You approach the intersection with caution and make sure you can stop to yield should anyone come from the right.
A note, not all states operate this way, but the concept of 'right of way' is going away. Judges do not like the idea of someone feeling privileged enough to make a situation worse. In general, they want to implement fail-safes and not fail-unsafe situations.
Edit: To add - we've actually had this for a while, it's called 'failure to yield'. The switch is actually being more driven by emergency services making things worse, which is kind of relieving given the general sentiment. Unfortunately it's just another phrase for the same thing, semantics....but if you do go to court, you're better off presenting who failed vs who's entitled.
I think I have seen this and been confused by it. Does it mean that nobody should assume they have right of way? For example, having right of way isn't necessarily an excuse for being in an accident because you didn't give way to someone driving badly.
If a person didn't yield at a sign saying they should, and caused an accident as a result, they are demonstrably at fault.
Pretty much, the only caveat I'd add is the assumption of 'right of way'. You can have situations where road conditions were unusual but drivers are not certain to all the conditions. The involved parties can all assume they have the 'right of way', when in reality the best option would have been for everyone to yield until conditions ARE certain.
I'll give a personal example: I once came upon an accident on a bridge, and the cop cars were already on the scene. It was night, raining hard and the cop cars were facing the oncoming lane with headlights set to high. I couldn't see anything past the cop cars, so I slowed down from 50 to 25. As I passed, I briefly saw a shadow of a person and heard them say "SLOW DOWN". I still have no idea how close I was to hitting them, but they must have been very close to hear them thru the rain and sirens. I should have gone much, much slower, maybe even stopped. Fortunately, nothing bad happened, but I had assumed that since the one lane was open that it was ok to use. I don't know why the cop cars oriented themselves in a way to blind oncoming drivers, but had something happened, the fault would have ultimately been mine regardless.
Another example is parking lots, so many accidents occur at busy locations. People forget how you are not supposed to block ingress (to prevent traffic backing up into the street and making things worse) and get road rage because they can't leave. I've seen people try to "squeeze in" and end up blocking an entire lot because they can't move. One side will say "zipper" (ie: "my turn for RoW") the other will say "right of way", and parking lots are notorious for not having any signs.
Edit: and ofc, old ladies who think blinkers give them RoW
Edit2: an example for cops: blowing thru red lights without making sure intersections are clear. To be fair, everyone should yield to a cop car in the performance of their duties, but this doesn't mean cop cars get a free pass for RoW and can plow thru full speed, damn the consequences. They still have to take safety of others in mind and yield if required.
Edit3: because I've had the discussion before. Yes, it's semantics. RoW and FTY are the same thing. I'm only saying the phrase is being sunsetted, no Judge wants to hear someone say RoW. Some laws even use them together as "Failure to Yield Right of Way". The goal is to prevent the mindset of entitlement, to make sure the clarity of safeguards remain in place.
Interesting and also makes me want to clarify something. "Right of way" as in "I'm allowed to do this" is not what I initially meant. The concept I'm talking about is called "Voorrang van rechts" where voorrang means right of way, but as you can see it only translates half of it. "Van rechts" means "from (the) right". I just looked it up to get a proper full translation or equivalent, but all translations stop at "right of way", which simply is "voorrang". A language barrier if you will.
Grinding all traffic in all directions over multiple lanes to a stop when a school bus stops
This varies by state, but I think I most of them are setup so that you don't have to stop if the road is divided, or if there are more than 4 lanes (so 2 lanes for each direction, plus a turn lane in the middle, you don't have to stop). As always, check your local laws, and when in doubt, signal and stop.
Edit: to clarify, the oncoming lanes don't stop, the lane behind and adjacent to the bus still have to stop.
There are 50 states in the USA. They generally have the same rules of the road but you are being an idiot if you think that all states have the same laws. Does any other coalition in the world work like that?
We get circles in high population areas, but not enough, I agree
No strict right of way when coming from the right
This is actually in our traffic laws, just most are dumb enough not to be able to figure it out :)
Right on red
Varies per state. (which is also stupid) It's like the circles, it's a density_safety/cost thing. If you don't have pedestrians, treating a turn with traffic as a stop sign can keep intersection costs down.
I'd also tac on abysmal public transportation, poorly maintained rail lines and horrible airport candor.
What does "strict right of way when coming from the right" mean? If it's up for debate there's usually either stops or yields, or road size rules (double yellow takes priority over local small roads)
When roads meet, whoever comes out of the street to your right has right of way. Signs can be put up to overrule this basic rule, for example when small side roads connect to a main road, but if for some reason no signs are posted, whoever comes out of that small road has right of way. Clear and simple.
US was founded on Capitalism and is a basket case of rampant Greedy Capitalism, Slavery, War Profiteering and Bullying. It has always been the case and has never stopped. Ever since the British tried stopping George Washington from usurping American Indians' land. The lofty ideals were mere veneer.
The only thing that has changed is that there are many more players in the field and US' shortcomings as a modern society is getting apparent.
All of your sitcoms are crap. The same recycled gags over and over. Unpleasant people who hate each other snarking, saying "oh my god" and then explaining their jokes.
Shopping carts. It's mindblowing to me that the country that sent men to the moon still hasn't figured out that its easier for everyone if they turn on all 4 wheels rather than the 2 front ones.
That way you can slide your cart sideways to make room for other shoppers. And turning it takes no effort.
And even... even if it is some weird cost cutting thing. Why not make them turn on the rear wheels? That would still make it easier than in the front. Since you steer the cart from the rear.
Get your shit together. Put gun controll aside, put your dumb ass two party politics aside and focus on what matters. Your godawful shopping carts.
Here's one from the Middle East: Fuck your veterans. Y'all were right when you were calling Vietnam vets baby killers, and Afghanistan and Iraq weren't much better. And here's a corollary: Get the fuck out of the Middle East.
American here. Lots of us don’t want to be over there either. Seeing our tax dollars literally set on fire on the other side of the world pisses us off.
Another thing you may not be ready to hear is that the world holds you collectively responsible for the actions of your democratically-elected government even if you supported the other guy.
Lots of us don't want bases "over there" or in fact anywhere. The casual nature in which Americans think having bases in other countries all around the globe is normal and fine is highly alarming.
That American exceptionalism is only describing the fact that America continues to have slaves when almost every other nation has banned it completely.
Now, most people would tell you that Gun Control Works and that you should just do that and get less dead kids per month which is a generally good thing.
....... But here's another thing to consider. As long as you're allowed to purchase weapons for cheap and easy.
You do realise you can in fact do something about the assholes in your government and your oligarchies with those guns, right? That they can be used for more than just killing children?
Anybody on this platform already knows all the problems and how it can be better. Anyone preaching here hoping an American will read it and change are just wasting keystrokes.
We know it's bad. Unfortunately there's not much anyone of us here can do besides bitch and moan, or else we wouldn't be on Reddit Ultra.
That being said, German McDonald's have chicken wings and they're pretty amazing.
Credit scores only exist in the US. Everywhere else just compares your income to your debt.
Edit: apparently there are several other countries with credit scoring systems. The more you know... The US system, at least, is still bullshit designed to stratify economic class not only individually but by gender and with generational impact.
To be serious, the sentiment behind Brexit is the exact kind of sentiment you see in US people/politics as well: right-wing propaganda, xenophobia, resistance against any kind of authority, nationalism.
UK is literally the parent of the US. Puritan culture flows through both. A national superiority complex (which you seem to be a slight victim to). Surveillance capitalism. Deregulation.
Yes, the issues in the UK aren't as severe as in the US, they are more aligned with EU/socialist values, but that's why I said it's the "light" version of the US, didn't say they are the same. But out of all European countries, the UK is definitely the most similar to the US by a large margin.
Edit: also, Brexit is basically the same as the thoughts of some Republican states like Texas seceding from the US.
I mean, I don't disagree that there's similarities especially wrt to nationalism etc, but I also think those things are far more widespread than the UK and US.
Germany for example has had the AfD emerge as a major party with a big rise in nationalism, Italy has Brothers of Italy in power, who were an explicitly fascist party until very recently, and Italy has a long history of nationalism. China and Russia are extremely right-wing, propagandised, xenophobic, nationalist, surveillance capitalist and deregulatory (moreso wrt Russia), but it would be very silly to claim that makes them America-like.
I'm just stating how I see it from the perspective of a person actually from Britain - not sure what you're referring to wrt UK/me personally(?) having a superiority complex about it, in fact I'd argue self-deprecating, anti-British attitudes are an integral part of British culture in a way that is a direct inverse of US nationalist fervour.
I just think "the UK is America lite" is a very reductive way to look at a country that is highly culturally and politically distinct from the US. Whether that's the NHS (the first ever single-payer national health system), which the US has no equivalent of, the importance placed on the separation of church and state, or the far stronger regulatory frameworks that have frequently been a preventative factor that have repeatedly caused trade deals with America to fail (eg the whole bleached chicken thing).
Your Schufa Score is only relevant in very few cases, as long as it's not super super bad. Due to data protection laws, the data they're allowed to keep of you is very limited and thus the usefulness is much lower for businesses.
Schufa basically blackmails you into giving you their data: Not giving them access to ALL your data WILL result in the lowest possible score for your business, which has huge implications in regards to any credit.
No, they don't. Businesses just send their negative data to the Schufa.
I worked in that area for years, and unless you're actively trying to tank your score, the Schufa is almost useless for all sides, and maybe businesses only use them to filter the really bad cases.
My brother in law has a business. That's how I know this. But you're just disagreeing out of principle, so you're immune to facts. Do go on and talk out of your ass and be the ignorant person you strive to be.
Informing it is not just a few cases. Not only does it impact things connected to a loan like Buying a house or a car, but also getting a mobile or landline subscription, a credit card and also more and more landlords expect you to show them a Schufaauszug proving a stable financial situation
Again, Schufa only really cares about negative data, they're not allowed to use much more than that.
That means, unless you have unpaid bills stacking up or relevant loans on your name, the Schufa knows hardly anything about you.
I've worked in that business. I personally looked at hundreds of datasets and for most people, the Schufa knows only that they exist and where they live.
There's a lot to criticize about these organizations, but the Schufa is by far not as pervasive as some here like to imagine.
Well, I've got a schufa GDPR data abstract which contains a lot of positive data as well. How many credit cards at which Bank and so on.
Also if schufa incorrectly adds negative entries to your dataset (e.g. due to two persons with the same name having the same date of birth), good luck getting the data straight.
Or if a debt collector enters an unjustified entry...
You obviously did but come in contact with any negative aspects of schufa while working with it, but these cases definitely exist, just check the results on Google...
honestly, this is something I needed to hear. my family has been pretty anti-credit (dad was bad with money) and my own hatred for the system grew once I started working at a retail chain. to know this is just another part of the fucked up system kinda gives me hope I can either escape it or dismantle it
Lately I've heard a lot of Americans talk like their country is the worst place in the world. While you do have problems, being grateful for the positive things is also important.
My situation makes me consider suicide on a daily basis. I am literally incapable of starting a family, or even starting my life. My friends are all in similar situations. I have no security in any form, and a broken bone or something breaking on my car means I just die. If things are worse elsewhere, they wouldnt be alive.
Yes, the quality of life elsewhere may be lower, but they also dont have as many issues as we do. They have a sense of community, less economic disparity, dont live 40+ miles from their job, presumably arent suffering from a lonliness epidemic that is massively spiking suicide rates among men despite being caused by men, etc.
Im not minimizing their issues, i recognise that I have access to clean water and other basic survival tools that they might not have. But we have societal issues that are just as damning. Our issues are different, but theyre just as bad.
Before I get downvoted to oblivion: is it better to have clean water yet freeze to death because your cant pay your electric bill, or not have access to clean water and yet have a community that is willing to help you through your tough times? Id say they both lead to death. Neither fulfills the heirarchy of needs.
I mean, depending on what part of the U.S. you are in, the water you're drinking might not actually be clean.
You shouldn't have to preface your statement with anything, living conditions in some American states are legitimately comparable to third world impoverished nations.
Ok another thing people haven't really touched on is government restrictions on dangerous shit generally. I'm not just talking about guns, but also cars. When I was in the states I saw so many car accidents and bits of car on the road. That doesn't need to happen. It turns out that if you have proper driving tests and mandatory classes, people don't crash as much. Same with guns though. Owning a gun is fine if you learn how to properly use and store it.
The level of uneducation in the US is a threat to the entire species. Most of Ylyour people are uneducated, fat and dangerous. After the last election, I have lost hope in the US as a collectivity, you deserve your unfair system because you chose it. You elected a convict rapist, fellon, racist, fat billionaire who doesn't pay taxes and tried to steal the election, your deserve to be treated the way you will be, you made a choice.
Capitalism in and of itself is a turbo charger for the economy, but like a real turbo charger it need regulations to not destroy itself and the engine.
that's a pretty good metaphor but assumes regulatory capture isn't baked into the cake and pulling up the ladder after consolidating all the wealth isn't the entire point.
You're correct that everything is being held up by capitalism right now so if you remove it then everything collapses.
We need to build alternative structures to hold things up before making any attempt on the current system, which should be as simple as using the alternatives instead but power was never given up without a fight.
I think market systems in general lead to exploitation and democracy is just the tyranny of the majority. We can do better and we should do better.
Democracy doesn't have to be a tyranny of the majority. In its purest form it is. And that is why constitutional republics ensure citizen's rights in their constitutions. We need a similar system for economy.
A sketch of that would a be a system where you'd have constitutional republic with independent legislature, judiciary and executive branches. Separated from the economic players as well as possible. They would provide the the outer bounds of a level playing field.
Economy would a market economy, where ownership of companies would be distributed among the stakeholders of the system workers, customers and the executive. Similar to how governments ideally function. Workers would have "legislative" power in the company. They would be responsible for company policy. Executives would implement those policies. Customers would decide how well the company performs by either buying their products or withholding their patronage. This would need a lot of guard rails in place. But this would prevent centralization of power in the hands of an "owner"-class.
Transitioning to this type of system would not be that difficult. As most of what it has is already there. In western democracies. At least on paper. There would be a lot of resistance to this from the "owner"-class. I have no doubt of that.
There are plenty of viable alternatives; in isolation.
The real problem is that capital will always intervene before an alternative can get a foothold.
And OK maybe it doesn't solve the problem 100%, but it solves it 99%, and that's a lot of schoolkids that aren't dead any more. Look at any first world country for working examples; I'm in the UK, and yes we still have some gun violence, but it's a whole load less than it would have otherwise been.
And it's incredibly short sighted to reject any solution that doesn't solve a problem 100%. Partial solutions are good.
MANY Americans aren't ready to hear these things. The rest of us are well-aware of them. We're glad that you're sharing your criticisms, and waiting for y'all to share with us how to implement your well-thought-out and practical, abiding solutions.
America was founded by businessmen who fancied themselves as a new aristocracy, and religious zealots who were such assholes they could no longer co-exist with Europeans.
It's basically been 350 250 (edit: correction) years now since US independence, and a decent while now at being a global power (~100-150 years?). These are timelines akin to that from the European Renaissance to the US Revolution (~1400-1800) and the UK emerging from the 1500s to being the "super power" in the war of independence.
Now, with the world's oldest constitution, and probably, depending on who you talk to, an increasingly critical mass of antiquated ideals and systems, the Presidency is more like the Monarchs of past revolutions than what remains of those monarchies, and the US's ideals and cultural influence something which most would rather move on and upgrade from.
Generally, I'd say it's one of the weirder and subtler historical events happening right now: the dissolving of the old lines between the "old" and "new" worlds. For me personally, this was once made clear when visiting Hannover, Germany, and its tourist attraction, the "New Town Hall", where someone who lives in British Columbia, Canada pointed out the similarities with their Parliament Building. The thing is though that the Canadian building is about 15 years older (both being just over 100 years old). Colonialism is long enough ago and Europe (and likely any other "old" culture, such as China) rebuilt enough and recently enough, that like X-genners and Millennials, the whole "young, hip, cool rebel" thing just doesn't mean anything anymore.
In recent times, boomers have had a notable hold on the presidency. Not just boomers, but those born in the summer of 1946. Clinton, Bush Jr and Trump were all born between June and August 1946, a window of 3 months, but spanning over 3 decades of the White House. And the same more or less holds for the losing candidates too, with Harris and Obama being the major exceptions IIRC. Indicates to me some real oligarchical forces beyond what’s normal in the rest of the west.
Ha yes, thanks … though, without knowing, I’d wonder how early you can push the global power part (thus the question mark). Post-war (your 70 years) is clearly a “the global power” status. But how early could you say the US was at least one of the major powers?
That’s an interesting question of which I’m ignorant. Your original comment may have been right though. It might be helpful to say a global power fights wars outside of its border and potentially colonizes. The first time the USA did that was the first Barbary war in 1801. Would you agree?
Yes they seem like reasonable metrics to me. But like you I don’t really know how to answer the question. But relative economic strength and influence are likely factors. So the post civil war gilded age would also been a likely point, which was the origin of my 150 yrs estimate. For 100 years, I figured post WWI was a pretty clear moment of relative strength.
Humanity is doomed because of America. Your anti-environmental capitalism and rapacious foreign policy have altered the world in an entirely negative way, and the only realistic scenario for the US to cut this shit out is by losing a war to a major competitor, such as China. China is hugely flawed itself, but is the less harmful option imo.
Kinda disappointed in this thread, was hoping to find things that Americans on Lemmy aren’t ready to hear. Everything here seems like the usual complains that most Americans on Lemmy and even Reddit already aware of.
This definitely won't be a pile of horseshit from people never been there, believe everything they see on TV, and operate completely on stereotypes from various sources, sprinkled with the dumbest takes you ever heard, and a bunch of blaming capitalism like it's the only nation that employs it.
To some Americans, it is that the US isn't the pinnacle of democracy but far from it. To others, that the EU isn't better policy wise than the US, it just has far more competing interests which mean lobbyists have to hand out more than a lump sum of sucking up to people. To some Americans, that your health care system is really shit, to others, that their public health care is increasingly under attack in some EU countries by an industry pouching and locking down medicine through the profits their greed has allowed them to accumulate in countries like the US to such an extent that there are real tradeoffs now to the for-profit alternative.
I'm gonna go ahead and assume that you are talking about Americans in the sense of the Americans who live in the USA.
God-damnit guys, not everything is about you.
Now, I don't know if USA inhabitants are not ready to hear it, but certainly Lemmy USA residents are not.
Like it or not, you guys have a GREAT COUNTRY in the USA
Worldwide, people envy you. The poorest inhabitant of the USA has rights, possibilities and duties that only the richest in any other country can only dream of.
For God's sake, people are literally willing to kill themselves trying to reach your country, to have an atom of freedom that you guys squander with petty squabbles.
No USA proper citizen has ever been in the need so dire to escape the USA that they need to build a raft to risk their lives to go anywhere from their Homeland.
For that same reason, collectivists worldwide hate you and your country with undying hate. Because you (as in your society) don't need them. And they do need you. And they resent this so much, that they're willing to destroy you all just to stop that from being true.
You guys have lived so cozy and accommodated lives, thanks to the disrespected sacrifices made willingly by millions that you are bored out of your minds.
So much in fact, that with a little nudge from the collectivists worldwide seeking your destruction, you yourselves plunge willingly into the chaos of unmaking by allowing the collectivist mindset to pollute your youngest.
Make no mistake, the USA will keep growing and thriving, like it or not.
But not thanks to your internal or external enemies. That's for sure.
Edit: the upvote to downvote ratio tells me I followed the post premise to a T
The irony of euros unloading in a thread that the people who most need to see it will never see, just to feel better about having unloaded, is peak self-serving uselessness.
Get the fuck off of Lemmy and go unload in conservative and Republican cesspits like the fox news vomment section, xhitter, OANN, not here where the vast fucking majority already fucking agree with you.
But you know you can’t do that because that would actually mean going for a swim in political sewage, which means doing actual work for your personal beliefs, and which also means you’re most definitely going to get backlash that you know you won’t get here.
TL;DR: non-US bitching about the US on Lemmy, where nearly all lemmy Americans already agree with them, are as functionally idiotic as the conservative white Americans they’re bitching about.
I hear this all the time but honestly US healthcare sucks so much. Doctors are pushed by their companies to care about quantity of patients over actual care
I returned to Canada because of the healthcare issue in America.
You may be surprised to learn that people looking for an elective surgery and want to spend to skip the line will go to Tijuana. It's apparently really great for all kinds of complex but not-medically-critical procedures.
Essentially nobody is complaining about the quality of care available here. The problem is that only the rich can really afford it. Most people will avoid going to the doctor if at all possible, just because they can't absorb the cost even if they're just told to take an Aspirin and sleep it off. Long-term care for anything serious is just impossible to recover from financially for most people - it literally bankrupts entire families. With how hard it is to move up a prosperity bracket, that's a devastating blow that is often felt for generations.
I think your view might be slightly skewed because you have free care available, and can go to the US or Mexico for better options if you can afford it. Here, if we can't afford it, we have nothing, or we assume tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
I'm not gonna try and tell you it's perfect. But as someone from Québec who needed an emergency surgery mid-lockdown, I was able to see multiple doctors, spend a night at the hospital, got examined in every way necessary and received said surgery, along with morphine for the following days... And basically didn't see a damn bill. I had to wait a long time in the ER at first. Until it got worse they just told me to be patient. But from the quick estimates I did, this would've cost me maybe 10-15k$ in the US. Best case scenario. Scenario in which I then have to deal with an insurance company that bitches and moans about having to fulfill its part of the deal. And then of course they'd increase my premiums.
Think of it as "worth the price". Canadian healthcare is definitely worth the price, given that the price is zero. American prices are so high that nothing could be worth that, so it's not even worth the price of an ambulance. Oh, yeah, they charge for the ambulance ride.
Almost everywhere in the world they charge for the ambulance ride. Except, some countries have state funded providers with super low subsidized prices or even free. And the private providers have to compete with that which keeps prices affordable. So using an ambulance is not a bankruptcy inducing event.
I will admit, I did not know that. I'm British, I'm used to it being free. But I looked it up and it seems there's a lot of other countries that also didn't know that. Even if it's charged in their country, it's such a minor amount that they barely even notice, and they don't need to pay if it's an emergency.
Meanwhile, Americans are charged over 100 times what Germans are charged, even in an emergency. And they get billed extra based on the distance travelled.
"The cost of an ambulance" is only an issue in America. It's not normal.
Are we grading the system or its current status? Right now, it's sick. After so much defunding and bullying from the all-hat crowd, we've got a professional deficit that's gonna take another decade to fix. So the distinction is important -- and will sway the coming vote.
Many, if not most, of us are jealous of other countries, though. Really, this is only a hard truth for the MAGA crowd, and even that is (I think) largely the fault of the nationalist propaganda that's been shoveled at us since we were kids.
As an American, I agree with you, though - the US is in no way a 'strong democracy', or much of a democracy at all. It may once have been, but it certainly hasn't been the case for a long time.
Back in 1780s the US constitution was an absolute marvel of progressiveness, but today, it is increadibly outdated and keeps the US political system back from making progress.
We're like the 40-year-old still wearing his school jacket and talking about winning state.
But we’re really a used car salesman trying to get you to finance a clapped out Nissan Altima with 128k miles, failing clear coat, and a dented bumper.
Four touchdowns in a single game, go Bundy!
Not most unfortunately, that I learned a couple months ago. Most think their squalor is somehow peak civilization
No shit, what American thinks either are true?
Has been a joke for like 30 years now
You haven't met much of the rural population, have you?
This. Conservatives have poor media literacy. They don't understand that they're the punchline in stuff like that. They miss the point of stuff like RoboCop and Starship Troopers and unironically like those movies for the action and don't even recognize the social commentary. They watched Team America and guffawed into their 24 packs of light beer at every shallow joke without recognizing that the jokes were intentionally shallow to point out what an idiot would think is a good joke. It's like the TV show in Idiocracy. The real joke is below the surface.
I used to watch Colbert Report with my dad and it took him years to realize that it was a parody mocking him often personally. My dad was not a dumb man. The conservative bubble is hard to pop. Its like a Stockholm syndrome victim sympathizing with their attacker.
There are different dimensions of dumb.
It blows my mind that when Colbert got his new job he had people coming up to him for years saying they liked his old show better.
They liked his old show, The Colbert Report, better. When it was clearly satire.
His old show was better. But I can't imagine it working well any more, when reality is already so absurd.
No they were conservative guys who clearly didn’t understand it was satire
Literally the opposite...
Where are you see conservatives talking about how great America has been under Bidnen?
Like, you put zero thinking into your comment, just like you assume the people you're "dunking on" do.
You're a different side of the same coin, that's never meant opposites, you're th same thing.
Just neither sid bis smart enough to figure it out, and both think only the other side is dumb
The irony is rooted in reality, much like the stereotypes.
I've received quite a few hostile reactions when critiquing the US, including idiocy like "FU we have a bigger military" from blowhards.
There are, unfortunately, enough bad apples to spoil the bushel.
Believe me there's no shortage of people who know that were not the shining city on the hill, unfortunately we're drowned out by pandering patriotic country music and gunfire from mass shootings.
This clip from the Newsroom sums it up perfectly.
I like the clip, but IMO they basically bailed out in the end by all the nonsense quoted from the ~3:25 mark on.
Jeff basically makes it sound like the US used to be incredibly self-aware, humble, kind, and well-administrated, but I think what most Americans don't choose to understand is that since the very settling of the continent, it's been a highly fraught, contentious situation, much of it characterised by greed, cruelty, violence, intolerance and self-righteousness.
Now yes, from what I understand of history, under FDR we more or less hit a peak of being a well-run, progressive country, on the level of many modern Euro countries more or less, but most of that was specifically in response to the utter disaster of the Great Depression and the need to adjust powerfully, swiftly and accurately. Meanwhile, IIRC during his presidency, there was in fact a right-wing movement intending to remove him by underhanded means.
So I like the hopefulness of the clip, but in the end I also find it pretty typical of Americans being largely unwilling to understand the hows and whys of the nation, going back to the early 1600's.
Eh, sorry for the dang essay. :S
Man I forgot how good that show was
I mean, we generally know the first part. The second isn't really a surprise either.
What? We have two right wing parties to choose from! Is that not enough? Should we make three right wing parties so you feel we are better represented?
Yeah, most of us in the U.S. don't think this way. This is just republicans, and they aren't really here on Lemmy.
Then why do you sound like you are
Because thats what you've been brainwashed to think the world wants, so thats what you hear
lol
Gasoline prices are heavily subsidized in the US, the gas price you complain about is cheap compared to other countries.
The commodity price for gasoline right now looks to be about 2 USD per gallon. Retail gasoline in the USA is at least a dollar more due to taxes and markup.
Subsidies may play a role as well, but the taxes in some countries are extreme by American standards. My take on it is that a fuel tax is effectively neutral if it brings in enough revenue to pay for the road system.
The fuel tax isn't enough to cover the damage to the environment and quality of life, though. That's why taxes are that high in many other places. Same way cigarettes are taxed to help discourage use and to help cover the increased healthcare costs it puts on everyone
Fuel, and other car-related taxes (sometimes based on horsepower or engine displacement) in most countries in Europe were much higher than in the USA long before there was widespread concern about the environmental impact of cars.
Which is why I said "environment and quality of life" - they don't want their cities dominated by cars (making life dangerous for pedestrians) and for cars to become a requirement for living. So taxes are added to discourage (not eliminate) driving and car ownership
But also, the mess of smog from exhaust and other impacts beyond climate change have been known since the first automobiles. Concerns about the 'environment' is more than greenhouse gasses.
In NZ it's roughly $2.50NZD per litre minimum, or $5.31USD per gallon. This is roughly 50% tax (it's how we pay for roads, plus is subject to sales tax), so a bit over $2USD per gallon at the moment excluding tax.
Is it really $3 a gallon plus tax in the US right now?
I compare it to how I thought mobile phone calls in the US were super cheap, then found out people pay to receive calls, which was super weird to me. Where I live, my whole life it has never been the case that a normal residential connection would pay to receive a call, mobile or not.
Differences in how we do things make differences appear more than they are.
It’s $3/gal total including taxes here in Illinois right now.
I was in California last week and it was $4.50/gam total
That is about half of the fuel cost here in Sweden
Taxes throw things out because everyone does it different. What are the sans-tax prices?
I don't know if anyone can really get you that number, because the tax isn't clearly disclosed when you buy gasoline, it's just included in the price; the taxes also vary widely between different states/counties/maybe cities too?
Edit: the federal tax is $0.184 per gallon
I can, Spain only has federal tax and it's 21% for anything premium like gasoline.
1.63€ per litre with taxes.
So 6.169€ per gallon with taxes.
Or 6.29$ per gallon post tax.
Or 5.2$ per gallon without tax.
Literally more than double their price, and they complain so hard LMAO.
Huh, the US gets another layer more confusing. Tax is included in gas prices but not in anything else? How do the arguments for not including that tax in the price stack up when gas stations are already including it?
Tradition.
Gas prices are also the only retail prices that include tenths of a penny - specifically 9/10, as in all gas prices look like $x.xx9 such as $3.059
Even more annoying, the gas price really has 99/100ths tacked on, so the price is a cent more expensive because no one thinks of it.
Ie: $3/gal is really charged as $3.0099/gal
-Stores
That's how
Ok apparently Illinois has a 39c per gallon gasoline tax, another 18c in federal, and another 6% or so on state sales tax, plus any regional sales tax. It's unclear whether the sales tax applies to the gasoline tax (in NZ it does), but let's assume it doesn't. Then that's $3 - 0.39 - 0.18 = $2.43 then remove 6% tax is 2.43/106*100 = $2.29
We can probably knock a bit more off because there is probably some regional/city sales tax but it should be the right ballpark.
It does seem we pay about the same for petrol, though from what I've been searching up, this is wildly different across states because states have much different ways of paying for roads (e.g. Hawai'i is mostly taxed at the pump where as Alaska has big taxes on oil extraction to keep taxes for residents low, including for roading).
Sales tax is either included already or not charged.
The posted price is the posted price, no additional taxes on top of it.
Although they add 99/100ths to the price, so $3.00/gal is really charged at $3.0099/gal.
Of course this gets rounded up 😒
Any price lower than that required to compensate for all the negative externalities of both driving and using fossil fuels to do it still counts as subsidized.
A failure to set an excise tax on a product or service that offsets its externalities is not a subsidy. A lower tax rate than a competing product is arguably a subsidy.
I'm not aware of any modern societies that make a credible attempt to adjust the price of all or most goods and services to include their externalities. That sounds like a good idea in theory, but very difficult to implement in practice.
Roads aren't the only societal cost of cars.
Fuel tax in the U.S. doesn't even come close to paying for the road system. The federal fuel tax covers less than half of federal transportation spending. I don't know about all of the states, but Wisconsin's fuel tax covers only about 2/3 of the road spending. And, local streets get built with local property and income taxes.
The fuel tax doesn't even cover the damage your car does to the road.
That's probably not true, but hard to calculate.
The previous time I looked, which was a while ago, federal fuel tax revenue in the USA and federal highway expenditures were about equal. Since then, fuel tax revenue has fallen behind highway spending; the required increase to even it out would be modest in absolute terms - something like 15 cents per gallon. States each have their own taxes and budgets, of course.
As for the road damage each car causes, it increases (roughly) proportional to the fourth power of vehicle weight. Semi trucks and similar heavy commercial vehicles cause almost all of the traffic-induced road wear, and passenger cars contribute very little. It's likely the fuel taxes paid for a passenger car (even a relatively large one) are several times its marginal impact on road maintenance.
What state do you live in that the road system is funded adequately? I never hear someone comment positively about the general state of road conditions.
Adequately is a difficult determination.
Is it adequate if there are state maintained dirt roads? In some states, the state or county chooses not to pave all of their roads.
Is it adequately funded if they have potholes? Due to weather conditions, some states are notorious for potholes.
Is it adequately funded if the road gets washed out or carried away by flooding? California gets mudslides that take out sections of roads, other states get sinkholes or hurricanes/tornados destroying their roads
How long can one of these issues plague a road before we consider them underfunded?
My opinion is that the US has too many roads. Most roads are maintained by county or municipalities, and are funded through infinite growth model.
When a developer creates a new subdivision, they pave the roads. Once done, they usually relinquish these roads to the county/city who are responsible for maintaining the roads.
Typically maintenance is low until they require replacing. The cities and counties don’t save money or plan well for replacing these roads and rely on new tax revenue to fund replacing them.
It builds a slowly ballooning road maintenance cost that someone will have to pay. I believe someone made a video about this very fact. I don’t have the link handy
Florida, with the tourist money and gas taxes all our roads and highways are solid. The great weather year round means they can maintain and build roads all the time non stop.
The fuel tax in other countries primarily exists to make people use less fuel in order to save the world from global warming.
Your population is essentially being farmed by corporations.
Nothing new to that. In 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the US Supreme Court declared that companies are people too. With the same rights — under the 14th amendment.
Vasectomy safe. No wage slave renters coming from this guy.
Most "third world" or "developing" countries aren't that bad, and there are places in the US far worse than the median developing country.
Also most people in most places do not want to go to the US, even to visit much less immigrate. It's generally either the worst of a particular society or those specifically harmed by the US previously and feel their chances are better off with the abuser instead of in the abused country. It's not a wanted destination.
Trump has a famous line whining about America only getting immigrants from the "shithole countries". Wonder why, dude.
And us "shithole countries" receive some immigrants from USA that put to shame the worst we could send back, only they call themselves expatriates.
Haah. Never thought about it but this is very true.
This was a MASSIVE eye opening shock to me. You watch NCIS or any pro military show and they'll pan to Baghdad or anything middle east and you'll see crumbling buildings or warzone with a sepia filter. I was got smacked when I saw a real skyline photo of Baghdad, and istanbul, and most cities. Our media is dead set on continuing the thought of these empty deserts
That's wild, from Europe Istanbul is quite well known
I honestly had no idea they had electricity. That's how bad the propaganda is
You're kidding me
Wish I was friend, thought it was all single story white stone housing. We were told America is number one, never saw a skyline or how big it was.
Thanks for sharing, in any case!
There is a book called Factfulness where they talk about presenting the UN scientists their own data and surprising them at the standard of living in many third world countries. People's ideas of third world countries is based on what they were like in the 50s, but many are catching up to the developed world in leaps and bounds.
Everyone i've known who wanted to go to the US was interested in making easy money by scamming people. That's the type who admire the US.
I'm not sure where you're from, but at least in the Middle East that's not the case. It's a very desirable immigration destination here (less than Western Europe, though).
See the last part of the second paragraph for that. Victims of the empire paradoxically tend to want to immigrate to the empire believing they'll be better off there than in the country that empire targeted.
That's... not related at all though. And not all of the Middle East was subjected to (overt) American imperialism.
The UN General Assembly Human Rights Council 2018 report on USA's poverty and human rights is a pretty quick and clear overview which makes it clear that parts of the USA are just undeveloped:
http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1
We can't understand how millions can vote for a senile, convicted sexual predator as president....
Dude half of us don't understand it either.
It's amazing what decades of defunding education will do when you mix it with a healthy dose of conservative talk show TV and social media algorithms.
I dunno, i understand it pretty well. Lack of education, lead paint/gasoline, nationalism, fascism, racism, sexism, economic disparity, lack of healthcare to deal with neural degeneracy common in trump supporters, and finally lower borth rates among the more educated. America is a shithole, and has been for the past 40 years at least. Until we finally grow a spine and start "adjusting", things are going to continue getting worse until were all dead and the olligarchs own everything. Then theyll move on to fucking the rest of the world (harder than they already are)
Was with you to the last bit. What does it mean to "grow a spine and start 'adjusting'"? Why is "adjusting" in quotes?
a metaphor which means "get our shit together"
Great, thanks. I want to know what OP actually wants us to do. I hate the situation we were in and I sure as shit didn't vote for this asshole the first or second time, but other than voting and trying to survive what exactly do you want us to do to "get our shit together".
I wonder how differently the last US election would have played out if Murdoch had died before campaign season
Going to have a big party when he finally goes and joins Reagan in hell
Not very. His shitty propaganda machine is running itself by now.
Less than half apparently..
I guess it's much less than half.
About 1/7 are less than voting age. Another 1/7 or so voted for the oompa loompa, and another 1/7 voted against. So actually, about half of the population just doesn't vote because they're a different type of idiot.
I do hate it here, for what it's worth.
Welcome to every election, not just presidential and not just a Republican or Democrat problem. Trump is disgusting but Seattles former mayor was way worse and didn’t get a peep nationwide.
And Chicago, and New York, and...
I’m just glad our poor congressmen can legally insider trade, think of the children!
And insider trade of children, and if anyone thinks it's just Matt Gaetz, let me sell you my nfts.
How is you not understanding that the fault of the Americans?
The original question was not "what bad thing are Americans guilty of?"
Okay, well, how is it that Americans aren't ready to hear them not understanding something?
Hah! Let's make a list of the countries where leadership of that ilk has never existed. (We'll just ignore that most of them did not allow elections.) Won't take much paper.
Needing two jobs to survive isn't a good thing.
Peace:
"Vision of Humanity 2024 Global Peace Index ranked 132nd out of 162 countries"
...yup. sounds about right. We've been at some kind of war for pretty much the entirety of our existence...
The winning or losing was almost always secondary. The main thing is to spend a load of money on wars. We've never failed at that.
Military skill was a use it or lose it thing. I wouldn't be surprised if all of the wars that the US has been fighting have been intentional, specifically in order to maintain skilled soldiers.
Government spending in the Military Industrial Complex is the point.
An able
militiamilitary is a side effect.Destabilizing other countries and exploitation of natural resources and cheap labor, in order to maintain USD and military hegemony. That's why.
It's n.1 in total wealth though, that's great!
/s
Affordable healthcare
Public transit
Civilian oversight
Prisoner rehabilitation
Universal income
Free education
Separation of religion and state
Wealth taxes
Law enforcement accountability
Environmental regulations…
I cringe every time their president or other politicians are talking about god. It's unbelievable how backward the US are in this regard.
“God bless America”? Imagine what that would look like.
Not America.
Where is this magical place?
Scandinavia.
Was guessing so. Thanks for your reply,
Varies state to state and city to city, but my city has the majority of that list… plus the freedom of speech is nice. When I read the news about people in Europe going to prison for comments online but getting slapped on the wrist for violent crimes I’m baffled.
Oh really? I would like to know which city is that so I can confirm, but I seriously doubt you have most of that list since that's regulated on state or federal level.
Also we have freedom of speech in Europe, but you obviously can't incite violence, the same is true in the US, going online and trying to get people to bomb a building filled with gays or immigrants is hate speech and will get you arrested in most civilized countries.
I gut upvoted you because I want to confirm your point of view, it resonates with me. But you are asking the guy to doxx himself for an internet argument, besides maybe where he lives isn't so bad and he wanted to express his sentiment.
Yes, I don't expect him to answer, even though just naming a city where you lived or have lived before is not doxxing yourself, it is personal information that I understand someone not wanting to share.
That being said, his claim was that his city had most of a list of things, you can't make that claim and not expect to divulge the city, he could have hidden the fact that it was where he lived or had lived before by saying "X city has most of that" which would have allowed him to give verifiable information about his claim without doxxing themselves. But as it is it sounds like the person who swears he has a girlfriend who lives in another country and has natural blue hair, but no one has ever seen her.
Have you just come here from 9gag?
The thing is that the US also does not have 100% free speech.
You can absolutely get arrested in the US for shouting "FIRE!" In a crowded area.
Regarding punishment for violent crimes seeming low in Europe, that is mainly due to us focusing on rehabilitation rather than revenge. However change is comming, we are moving to longer punishments.
If I got to decide, we would have a system where we focus on rehab for the first X times a person commits a crime, when it has been shown that the person does not want to change, then they are put in containment prisons, they are less nice, and focus on containment firstly, rehab secondly.
Free speech doesn't not mean freedom from consequences.
Example. If you tell someone to kill someone else, and they do it, you will be charged with a crime. Free speech means that you can voice your views, and the government (not private corporations btw) is not allowed to restrict it. That's why you can still read Luigi's manifesto, or the Unabomber's. It's why you can still publish and read the Articles of the Confederacy, or the Anarchist's Cookbook.
The small brained “you can’t yell fire in a movie theater” argument so we don’t have free speech is the intellectual equivalent of Jeff Bezos is poor because he drives a ‘93 Honda civic.
Yet that is exactly your argument, that only the US has free speech because Europe puts people in jail for online comments, without regard to what those comments are, it's the equivalent to saying the US jails people for speaking in the movie theaters in the fire example.
Your gun worship is killing you.
For what it's worth, the majority of the nation doesn't worship guns. But the very small minority that does, like... They worship them a lot.
This one is far more complicated than non-americans think. I've spoken to people outside the country, and they tend to only listen to the really dumb democrats when it comes to this issue.
You can't close Pandora's box. There are 393 million guns in the hands of civilians here. If you have a crazy neighbor with a gun, you kind of have to go get one yourself. That, or devise another method of viable self defense. The cops won't help you, not in virtually any situation.
Funny, though, that there have been working methods of reducing the number of guns in civilized countries in the past.
But somehow every gun-toting American is totally convinced that reducing the amount of guns on the road is technically impossible,
Those countries don't have the culty gun fetishism we do.
Better shoot him too, before he shoots you.
The other realistic option is that he shoots me empty handed. No one is going to take his gun and no one is going to save me in time.
Doesn't seem like having more guns fixes that then.
Well I can't go back in time to preemptively stop them from getting a gun in the first place, I'd love to hear any suggestions you have for that situation.
Amend your holy constitution.
Won't happen until you stop worshiping guns and the 2nd amendment.
"Just do something a large portion of the country would kill to stop from happening" isn't a good solution, but you know that. If reason was going to work, we would have used it decades ago.
The main reason US can and could ever delude itself into being great is for having a ridiculous people-to-land/resources ratio. There is nothing inherently great about how the US does things, it just seems that way because you can do whatever you want if you have essentially infinite resources compared to everyone else.
The U.S. is an oligarchy.
American cars suck.
The level of nonsensical nationalist propaganda in the US is maybe only second to North Korea's.
For millions of United States Americans, the so called "American Dream" is achieved in Mexico. They're often illegal immigrants. They often have mental health problems. They gentrify our cities and are entitled as fuck.
Pot calling kettle and all, but I do wish they'd go back to their own shithole country. They have demonized my country for decades and have weaponized the cartels to feed their own addictions. Most of the problems here can be tied directly to their humongous drug problems.
Yankee go home. The United Mexican States is tired of your shit.
And half of them won't even bother learning Spanish. I'll never give someone who immigrates due to hardship a hard time about learning the language, but privileged fucks who go to exploit a lower cost of living or whatever often just end up in expat bubbles and don't know more than a few words of the local language even after years despite having that privilege of time/money/resources to learn it.
So are there any good ones? Learning Spanish and giving back to the community? Just curious. That’s what I plan to do when I move out of here, learn the language and do volunteer work, etc.
Spot on about the gentrification bit. Entire town populations have shifted from local people to the self called expats and snowbirds. Just look at Chelém, Mérida, San Miguel de Allende, Tulúm, Cancún and many many more including most upitty neighborhoods in México City (Condesa, Roma, San Angel).
I had no idea we had people illegally immigrating that much. Bet they're the type to use the word "illegals" pejoratively.
A while ago I watched a live stream of CSPAN (I think?) where the House failed to form a government for several consecutive days. The way the entire process started with a prayer, and the many references to religion throughout, is just as disturbing as the personality cult around Stalin. That whole gang is fucked in the head.
Despite his severe back problems, Luigi mangione is the only one of you who has a backbone.
Yes, you really need to rewrite that constitution of yours and declaring something "unconstitutional" doesn't win you an argument, it makes you look like a brainwashed idiot. Just saying.
The USA is neither the best country nor the worst country. It's just one of the countries.
As an American, I'm gonna barge in with my loud opinion, 'cuz that's what we do. Here's something which people living elsewhere might not know that Americans aren't ready to hear:
Automobiles are luxury toys and fashion accessories, and we shouldn't base our entire lives on them. No, the car industry didn't make our economy strong; it took off after we already had a lot of extra wealth to burn after becoming a world economic powerhouse. We can't afford to keep wasting all that wealth on them as the world starts to burn, and half of our citizens sink into poverty.
We exist as much as you do. You're not the main character.
You wasted your chance as a hyper-power. The Soviet Union had fallen and the world was essentially yours but you did nothing with it. Now India and China are rising powers and you are going back to being a regular super-power.
USA could be, but isn't the greatest country in the world.
Your traffic laws are weird.
Overtaking/passing on the right
4 way stops and whoever comes first can go
No strict right of way when coming from the right
Right on red
Grinding all traffic in all directions over multiple lanes to a stop when a school bus stops
At least the last one I can understand a little with the nearly non-existent pedestrian infrastructure.
Honestly right on red is so stupid. So many people don't even slow down and they just go. Sometimes I'll be waiting to turn right at red light and some dickhead in a behemoth truck behind me will start spamming their horn like they think I have the right away and can just mow down whichever pedestrians are in the crosswalk. I bike a lot and I have narrowly avoided being hit by a car turning right on red multiple times. One time I had a car graze my back tire which was really scary but fortunately I ended up okay.
To offer a counter argument. Right on red the concept isn't stupid, its stupid to just sit there when there's not a car in sight.
The drivers, shitty driver tests and 0 enforcement is all dumb.
It's supposed to be treated like a stop sign, you stop, look, and go when safe. Not roll through at max speed. People also don't seem to know that a red arrow equals a no-turn on red sign.
I've been seeing electronic no-turn on red signs that can turn on/off with the light cycle. So if the opposite lane has the left green, the sign tells you not to turn on red. One would hope they're integrated into the cross walks too, (not that everyone uses those either).
I think the us has the worse road tests, mine was just some suburbs with 0 merges, no highways, a couple stops signs and maybe a light. Pretty much anyone driving for a day could have passed that thing, and that's how we end up with the bullshit like "the fast cruise lane (pass lane)" "right roll on red" "the merger has right away" "merge on highway 20miles(32kmh) slower than traffic" "blinker optional" "blinker on only when half way through turn or merge" "break before blinker" "wave of death on two lane roads" the list could go on and on....
I know I’m being pedantic but I just thought it’s interesting that you said “there’s not a car in sight” when I thought the primary concern was drivers not paying attention to pedestrians crossing the street.
However, why is it more stupid to sit there when there’s not a car on sight only when turning right but not when going straight or turning left? There’s an argument for larger roads with many lanes, sure, but isn’t it the same when it’s only 1-2 lane roads?
You are correct, I should have said "Not a car, pedestrian or other obstacle in sight".
The problem is absolutely people not paying attention when turning; they'll fixate on the traffic coming from the left, and the moment there's a tiny opening they'll floor it and ram into stopped traffic or pedestrians on the right.
I would say its equally stupid to sit there with no car in sight. I guess this most often happens at night when little traffic. There are some light that seems to have a 60sec cycle and it sucks idling there for no reason. Roundabouts help, and over the last 10? years they've been appearing more.
Telling people to use their judgment to decide if they can just go regardless of red is a bad idea. People barley handle the right-on-red as it is.
Everything you wrote after this sentence told me that people are stupid, not necessarily the right itself. It makes a lot of sense, I'd like to have it in the EU.
You are correct in my opinion. I don't like how many people assume it's a green arrow or that you must go if able, but I wouldn't give it up.
Maybe it was autocowreckt but the phrase is "right of way".
You're correct. I wrote that at around 4 am and I had a variety of other errors as well on my first draft, that one happened to slip through.
Just trying to help where I can through pedantry. Had someone this morning use "all intensive purposes" and he was amazed at how much more sense the actual phrase makes. Recontextualized things for him a bit.
Not nearly as bad as left on green BUT yielding to oncoming traffic.
I'm so confused here.
The right lanes are the slow lanes - we overtake/pass on the left, and you are advised to stay out of the left lane unless you are passing. This makes sense because you need to slow down to exit the freeway, or in case of emergency, you are closer to the side of the road to be able to do so.
How else are you supposed to deal with 4-way stops? In my state it's first arrival goes first, however if two cars arrive at the same time the car on the right proceeds first. It's not that complicated, and I'm not sure what's wrong with it?
And I'm not at all sure what you're referring to regarding coming from the right? Coming from the right in relation to where?
In the US I believed it's legal to pass people from the right if they are driving to your left. That's illegal here, you can only pass from the left.
It's also illegal to hog a lane, you must always use the right most lane when it's free, unless you're passing.
Yeah, that's a HUGE problem here.
By always respecting the second rule. There are no 4-way stops here. If an intersection does not have signs the vehicle on the right always has priority. No exceptions.
The problem is that people have different views on who came first but there are no different views on where right is. If there are any disputes there can be no arguments on who came 20 milliseconds earlier, instead you can just look at who had the right of way.
Uh, we do have a rule about right goes first...
In a four-way stop, if you arrive at the same time then the one on the right goes first and if you’re across from each other then the one going straight gets the right of way and the one turning goes after otherwise it doesn’t matter if both are going straight.
Otherwise, if you have two people arrive at a four-way stop and one is clearly there before the other then the winner gets the right of way to keep flow of traffic going rather than waiting for the other to stop and go just because they were on the right side.
We don’t have a ton of roundabouts/traffic circles here but it works the same as it would in Europe.
Doesn't matter who got there first, person from the right gets right of way even if he came later. You approach the intersection with caution and make sure you can stop to yield should anyone come from the right.
You should see us a roundabout! 😉
A note, not all states operate this way, but the concept of 'right of way' is going away. Judges do not like the idea of someone feeling privileged enough to make a situation worse. In general, they want to implement fail-safes and not fail-unsafe situations.
Edit: To add - we've actually had this for a while, it's called 'failure to yield'. The switch is actually being more driven by emergency services making things worse, which is kind of relieving given the general sentiment. Unfortunately it's just another phrase for the same thing, semantics....but if you do go to court, you're better off presenting who failed vs who's entitled.
I think I have seen this and been confused by it. Does it mean that nobody should assume they have right of way? For example, having right of way isn't necessarily an excuse for being in an accident because you didn't give way to someone driving badly.
If a person didn't yield at a sign saying they should, and caused an accident as a result, they are demonstrably at fault.
Pretty much, the only caveat I'd add is the assumption of 'right of way'. You can have situations where road conditions were unusual but drivers are not certain to all the conditions. The involved parties can all assume they have the 'right of way', when in reality the best option would have been for everyone to yield until conditions ARE certain.
I'll give a personal example: I once came upon an accident on a bridge, and the cop cars were already on the scene. It was night, raining hard and the cop cars were facing the oncoming lane with headlights set to high. I couldn't see anything past the cop cars, so I slowed down from 50 to 25. As I passed, I briefly saw a shadow of a person and heard them say "SLOW DOWN". I still have no idea how close I was to hitting them, but they must have been very close to hear them thru the rain and sirens. I should have gone much, much slower, maybe even stopped. Fortunately, nothing bad happened, but I had assumed that since the one lane was open that it was ok to use. I don't know why the cop cars oriented themselves in a way to blind oncoming drivers, but had something happened, the fault would have ultimately been mine regardless.
Another example is parking lots, so many accidents occur at busy locations. People forget how you are not supposed to block ingress (to prevent traffic backing up into the street and making things worse) and get road rage because they can't leave. I've seen people try to "squeeze in" and end up blocking an entire lot because they can't move. One side will say "zipper" (ie: "my turn for RoW") the other will say "right of way", and parking lots are notorious for not having any signs.
Edit: and ofc, old ladies who think blinkers give them RoW
Edit2: an example for cops: blowing thru red lights without making sure intersections are clear. To be fair, everyone should yield to a cop car in the performance of their duties, but this doesn't mean cop cars get a free pass for RoW and can plow thru full speed, damn the consequences. They still have to take safety of others in mind and yield if required.
Edit3: because I've had the discussion before. Yes, it's semantics. RoW and FTY are the same thing. I'm only saying the phrase is being sunsetted, no Judge wants to hear someone say RoW. Some laws even use them together as "Failure to Yield Right of Way". The goal is to prevent the mindset of entitlement, to make sure the clarity of safeguards remain in place.
Interesting and also makes me want to clarify something. "Right of way" as in "I'm allowed to do this" is not what I initially meant. The concept I'm talking about is called "Voorrang van rechts" where voorrang means right of way, but as you can see it only translates half of it. "Van rechts" means "from (the) right". I just looked it up to get a proper full translation or equivalent, but all translations stop at "right of way", which simply is "voorrang". A language barrier if you will.
This varies by state, but I think I most of them are setup so that you don't have to stop if the road is divided, or if there are more than 4 lanes (so 2 lanes for each direction, plus a turn lane in the middle, you don't have to stop). As always, check your local laws, and when in doubt, signal and stop.
Edit: to clarify, the oncoming lanes don't stop, the lane behind and adjacent to the bus still have to stop.
Lol sorry what? It's even worse than I thought 😂
There are 50 states in the USA. They generally have the same rules of the road but you are being an idiot if you think that all states have the same laws. Does any other coalition in the world work like that?
No, even in Europe there are small differences in rules and signs even.
Generally illegal, some people do it still.
We get circles in high population areas, but not enough, I agree
This is actually in our traffic laws, just most are dumb enough not to be able to figure it out :)
Varies per state. (which is also stupid) It's like the circles, it's a density_safety/cost thing. If you don't have pedestrians, treating a turn with traffic as a stop sign can keep intersection costs down.
I'd also tac on abysmal public transportation, poorly maintained rail lines and horrible airport candor.
What does "strict right of way when coming from the right" mean? If it's up for debate there's usually either stops or yields, or road size rules (double yellow takes priority over local small roads)
When roads meet, whoever comes out of the street to your right has right of way. Signs can be put up to overrule this basic rule, for example when small side roads connect to a main road, but if for some reason no signs are posted, whoever comes out of that small road has right of way. Clear and simple.
Donald Trump is the new US President, and you're responsible.
Stop polluting up all our shit. Fuck you.
Your bi-Party system sux big d and I toxic to a real democracy
Gun control works
Not everything on Lemmy is US specific.
![email protected] shouldn't be limited to US politics. Same for ![email protected]
Edit: from the sidebar
Please make US specific communities like [email protected] more active instead of bringing your local issues to every community
US was founded on Capitalism and is a basket case of rampant Greedy Capitalism, Slavery, War Profiteering and Bullying. It has always been the case and has never stopped. Ever since the British tried stopping George Washington from usurping American Indians' land. The lofty ideals were mere veneer.
The only thing that has changed is that there are many more players in the field and US' shortcomings as a modern society is getting apparent.
All of your sitcoms are crap. The same recycled gags over and over. Unpleasant people who hate each other snarking, saying "oh my god" and then explaining their jokes.
You have a massive obesity problem that is killing you and it is not normal.
Where to begin...
But I'll touch on something no one else has here.
Shopping carts. It's mindblowing to me that the country that sent men to the moon still hasn't figured out that its easier for everyone if they turn on all 4 wheels rather than the 2 front ones.
That way you can slide your cart sideways to make room for other shoppers. And turning it takes no effort.
And even... even if it is some weird cost cutting thing. Why not make them turn on the rear wheels? That would still make it easier than in the front. Since you steer the cart from the rear.
Get your shit together. Put gun controll aside, put your dumb ass two party politics aside and focus on what matters. Your godawful shopping carts.
Here's one from the Middle East: Fuck your veterans. Y'all were right when you were calling Vietnam vets baby killers, and Afghanistan and Iraq weren't much better. And here's a corollary: Get the fuck out of the Middle East.
American here. Lots of us don’t want to be over there either. Seeing our tax dollars literally set on fire on the other side of the world pisses us off.
Another thing you may not be ready to hear is that the world holds you collectively responsible for the actions of your democratically-elected government even if you supported the other guy.
(Padme meme)
Lots of us don't want bases "over there" or in fact anywhere. The casual nature in which Americans think having bases in other countries all around the globe is normal and fine is highly alarming.
Seinfeld isn't funny.
ITT: As per usual, Lemmy thinks living in conditions and condoning them are the same thing
America is not the World.
That American exceptionalism is only describing the fact that America continues to have slaves when almost every other nation has banned it completely.
The gun rights y'all have?
Now, most people would tell you that Gun Control Works and that you should just do that and get less dead kids per month which is a generally good thing.
....... But here's another thing to consider. As long as you're allowed to purchase weapons for cheap and easy.
You do realise you can in fact do something about the assholes in your government and your oligarchies with those guns, right? That they can be used for more than just killing children?
Luigi Mangione seemed to get it.
Anybody on this platform already knows all the problems and how it can be better. Anyone preaching here hoping an American will read it and change are just wasting keystrokes.
We know it's bad. Unfortunately there's not much anyone of us here can do besides bitch and moan, or else we wouldn't be on Reddit Ultra.
That being said, German McDonald's have chicken wings and they're pretty amazing.
Americans are some of the most unintelligent people on earth
Credit scores only exist in the US. Everywhere else just compares your income to your debt.
Edit: apparently there are several other countries with credit scoring systems. The more you know... The US system, at least, is still bullshit designed to stratify economic class not only individually but by gender and with generational impact.
What? We have credit scores in the UK. Used for getting mobile phone contracts, housing, bank accounts, credit cards, loans, etc.
Huh... Well assumptions and monoliths make fools of us all
The UK is just the "light" version of the US
Uh, no, not really.
The British attitudes to work, social systems and regulatory standards are more closely aligned with the EU than the US, even post-brexit.
We are very diplomatically aligned with the US as a result of our historical/cultural overlap and trading relationship, though.
True, doesn't sound to me like anything the US would do xD
I don't think the US would leave the EU given they're not in it xD
To be serious, the sentiment behind Brexit is the exact kind of sentiment you see in US people/politics as well: right-wing propaganda, xenophobia, resistance against any kind of authority, nationalism.
UK is literally the parent of the US. Puritan culture flows through both. A national superiority complex (which you seem to be a slight victim to). Surveillance capitalism. Deregulation.
Yes, the issues in the UK aren't as severe as in the US, they are more aligned with EU/socialist values, but that's why I said it's the "light" version of the US, didn't say they are the same. But out of all European countries, the UK is definitely the most similar to the US by a large margin.
Edit: also, Brexit is basically the same as the thoughts of some Republican states like Texas seceding from the US.
I mean, I don't disagree that there's similarities especially wrt to nationalism etc, but I also think those things are far more widespread than the UK and US.
Germany for example has had the AfD emerge as a major party with a big rise in nationalism, Italy has Brothers of Italy in power, who were an explicitly fascist party until very recently, and Italy has a long history of nationalism. China and Russia are extremely right-wing, propagandised, xenophobic, nationalist, surveillance capitalist and deregulatory (moreso wrt Russia), but it would be very silly to claim that makes them America-like.
I'm just stating how I see it from the perspective of a person actually from Britain - not sure what you're referring to wrt UK/me personally(?) having a superiority complex about it, in fact I'd argue self-deprecating, anti-British attitudes are an integral part of British culture in a way that is a direct inverse of US nationalist fervour.
I just think "the UK is America lite" is a very reductive way to look at a country that is highly culturally and politically distinct from the US. Whether that's the NHS (the first ever single-payer national health system), which the US has no equivalent of, the importance placed on the separation of church and state, or the far stronger regulatory frameworks that have frequently been a preventative factor that have repeatedly caused trade deals with America to fail (eg the whole bleached chicken thing).
Wrong, it exists in Europe as well (e.g. Germany)
I guess germans aren't ready to hear it either RIP
That's a completely different thing.
Your Schufa Score is only relevant in very few cases, as long as it's not super super bad. Due to data protection laws, the data they're allowed to keep of you is very limited and thus the usefulness is much lower for businesses.
Schufa basically blackmails you into giving you their data: Not giving them access to ALL your data WILL result in the lowest possible score for your business, which has huge implications in regards to any credit.
No, they don't. Businesses just send their negative data to the Schufa.
I worked in that area for years, and unless you're actively trying to tank your score, the Schufa is almost useless for all sides, and maybe businesses only use them to filter the really bad cases.
You have not read my comment at all, have you? Not giving them your business data reaults in the lowest score. That's blackmail.
You have no business data unless you're a business.
Are you a business? Thought so.
My brother in law has a business. That's how I know this. But you're just disagreeing out of principle, so you're immune to facts. Do go on and talk out of your ass and be the ignorant person you strive to be.
Informing it is not just a few cases. Not only does it impact things connected to a loan like Buying a house or a car, but also getting a mobile or landline subscription, a credit card and also more and more landlords expect you to show them a Schufaauszug proving a stable financial situation
Again, Schufa only really cares about negative data, they're not allowed to use much more than that.
That means, unless you have unpaid bills stacking up or relevant loans on your name, the Schufa knows hardly anything about you.
I've worked in that business. I personally looked at hundreds of datasets and for most people, the Schufa knows only that they exist and where they live.
There's a lot to criticize about these organizations, but the Schufa is by far not as pervasive as some here like to imagine.
Well, I've got a schufa GDPR data abstract which contains a lot of positive data as well. How many credit cards at which Bank and so on.
Also if schufa incorrectly adds negative entries to your dataset (e.g. due to two persons with the same name having the same date of birth), good luck getting the data straight.
Or if a debt collector enters an unjustified entry...
You obviously did but come in contact with any negative aspects of schufa while working with it, but these cases definitely exist, just check the results on Google...
Credit cards are - as the name implies - credit. That is, loans.
That's the same as having outstanding debt, and thus negative.
The Schufa isn't perfect, far from it, but don't act like it's the financial Stasi.
honestly, this is something I needed to hear. my family has been pretty anti-credit (dad was bad with money) and my own hatred for the system grew once I started working at a retail chain. to know this is just another part of the fucked up system kinda gives me hope I can either escape it or dismantle it
Hell yeah!!!
Canada too, but half the country wants to be the US so it doesn't really count.
Australia is trying to bring it in though.
Literally all of south and central America use credit scores, the fuck You are talking about?
Not everything is awful in the US.
Lately I've heard a lot of Americans talk like their country is the worst place in the world. While you do have problems, being grateful for the positive things is also important.
The very existence of this thread is proof.
"I feel bad for you."
"I don't think about you at all"
My situation makes me consider suicide on a daily basis. I am literally incapable of starting a family, or even starting my life. My friends are all in similar situations. I have no security in any form, and a broken bone or something breaking on my car means I just die. If things are worse elsewhere, they wouldnt be alive.
Yes, the quality of life elsewhere may be lower, but they also dont have as many issues as we do. They have a sense of community, less economic disparity, dont live 40+ miles from their job, presumably arent suffering from a lonliness epidemic that is massively spiking suicide rates among men despite being caused by men, etc.
Im not minimizing their issues, i recognise that I have access to clean water and other basic survival tools that they might not have. But we have societal issues that are just as damning. Our issues are different, but theyre just as bad.
Before I get downvoted to oblivion: is it better to have clean water yet freeze to death because your cant pay your electric bill, or not have access to clean water and yet have a community that is willing to help you through your tough times? Id say they both lead to death. Neither fulfills the heirarchy of needs.
I mean, depending on what part of the U.S. you are in, the water you're drinking might not actually be clean.
You shouldn't have to preface your statement with anything, living conditions in some American states are legitimately comparable to third world impoverished nations.
Don't let your dreams be dreams. Become a hero
*an hero
We aren't in your timezones, so we're not going to join your Discords.
This post:
Ok another thing people haven't really touched on is government restrictions on dangerous shit generally. I'm not just talking about guns, but also cars. When I was in the states I saw so many car accidents and bits of car on the road. That doesn't need to happen. It turns out that if you have proper driving tests and mandatory classes, people don't crash as much. Same with guns though. Owning a gun is fine if you learn how to properly use and store it.
Does “a foreign language” count?
That Europeans have running water
The level of uneducation in the US is a threat to the entire species. Most of Ylyour people are uneducated, fat and dangerous. After the last election, I have lost hope in the US as a collectivity, you deserve your unfair system because you chose it. You elected a convict rapist, fellon, racist, fat billionaire who doesn't pay taxes and tried to steal the election, your deserve to be treated the way you will be, you made a choice.
capitalism is actually the worst possible system
Unregulated capitalism*
Capitalism in and of itself is a turbo charger for the economy, but like a real turbo charger it need regulations to not destroy itself and the engine.
that's a pretty good metaphor but assumes regulatory capture isn't baked into the cake and pulling up the ladder after consolidating all the wealth isn't the entire point.
You are absolutely right, my comment assumed regulation and acting in good faith.
I am mainly just so tired of everyone just going "capitalism bad", when that is not the single answer.
Eradicating capitalism would be terrible and idiotic.
I am a firm believer in a social democratic system with a well regulated free market.
You're correct that everything is being held up by capitalism right now so if you remove it then everything collapses. We need to build alternative structures to hold things up before making any attempt on the current system, which should be as simple as using the alternatives instead but power was never given up without a fight.
I think market systems in general lead to exploitation and democracy is just the tyranny of the majority. We can do better and we should do better.
Democracy doesn't have to be a tyranny of the majority. In its purest form it is. And that is why constitutional republics ensure citizen's rights in their constitutions. We need a similar system for economy.
A sketch of that would a be a system where you'd have constitutional republic with independent legislature, judiciary and executive branches. Separated from the economic players as well as possible. They would provide the the outer bounds of a level playing field. Economy would a market economy, where ownership of companies would be distributed among the stakeholders of the system workers, customers and the executive. Similar to how governments ideally function. Workers would have "legislative" power in the company. They would be responsible for company policy. Executives would implement those policies. Customers would decide how well the company performs by either buying their products or withholding their patronage. This would need a lot of guard rails in place. But this would prevent centralization of power in the hands of an "owner"-class.
Transitioning to this type of system would not be that difficult. As most of what it has is already there. In western democracies. At least on paper. There would be a lot of resistance to this from the "owner"-class. I have no doubt of that.
as always any system is only as good as the people perpetuating it.
For a growing economy with an excess of people and resources it's pretty good.
Our current world, not so much.
The problem is that there isn't a currently viable alternative.
Capitalist realism is a bitch.
There are plenty of viable alternatives; in isolation. The real problem is that capital will always intervene before an alternative can get a foothold.
Gun control works.
And OK maybe it doesn't solve the problem 100%, but it solves it 99%, and that's a lot of schoolkids that aren't dead any more. Look at any first world country for working examples; I'm in the UK, and yes we still have some gun violence, but it's a whole load less than it would have otherwise been.
And it's incredibly short sighted to reject any solution that doesn't solve a problem 100%. Partial solutions are good.
Your (as in Americans) Imperial system of Units & measurements is a big joke & you are a British colony & you have bad cars
Americans invented neither the car not the computer.
In foreign countries, the people don't always speak English or "American" and shouldn't be expected to bow down to you.
Drastically reduction of guns WILL save your kids lives at school. But not "muh outdated rights from centuries ago".
Btw I'm not against guns, military and officers should have "easy" access to them.
MANY Americans aren't ready to hear these things. The rest of us are well-aware of them. We're glad that you're sharing your criticisms, and waiting for y'all to share with us how to implement your well-thought-out and practical, abiding solutions.
The root of their problems is not political or politicians it's greedy capitalism. Arguably it's also the root of their morally ambiguous success.
That most of the world would be better off with the collapse of US hegemony.
Usa was once founded by a bunch of outlaws and runaways and has never fundamentally changed since.
This is almost way too nice.
America was founded by businessmen who fancied themselves as a new aristocracy, and religious zealots who were such assholes they could no longer co-exist with Europeans.
You need gun control. Your country isn’t that great. Youre loud and can come across as false.
Socialist policies are based (Hey I tried Okay)
You're the "Old World" now.
It's basically been
350250 (edit: correction) years now since US independence, and a decent while now at being a global power (~100-150 years?). These are timelines akin to that from the European Renaissance to the US Revolution (~1400-1800) and the UK emerging from the 1500s to being the "super power" in the war of independence.Now, with the world's oldest constitution, and probably, depending on who you talk to, an increasingly critical mass of antiquated ideals and systems, the Presidency is more like the Monarchs of past revolutions than what remains of those monarchies, and the US's ideals and cultural influence something which most would rather move on and upgrade from.
Generally, I'd say it's one of the weirder and subtler historical events happening right now: the dissolving of the old lines between the "old" and "new" worlds. For me personally, this was once made clear when visiting Hannover, Germany, and its tourist attraction, the "New Town Hall", where someone who lives in British Columbia, Canada pointed out the similarities with their Parliament Building. The thing is though that the Canadian building is about 15 years older (both being just over 100 years old). Colonialism is long enough ago and Europe (and likely any other "old" culture, such as China) rebuilt enough and recently enough, that like X-genners and Millennials, the whole "young, hip, cool rebel" thing just doesn't mean anything anymore.
It's ironically like they have a small set of royal families that swap the throne every four years.
And the equivalent of dukes and earls traveling to Mar-a-lago to pledge fealty.
Wait a minute, that's just monarchy with extra steps
In recent times, boomers have had a notable hold on the presidency. Not just boomers, but those born in the summer of 1946. Clinton, Bush Jr and Trump were all born between June and August 1946, a window of 3 months, but spanning over 3 decades of the White House. And the same more or less holds for the losing candidates too, with Harris and Obama being the major exceptions IIRC. Indicates to me some real oligarchical forces beyond what’s normal in the rest of the west.
Just correcting small typos. US has been independent for almost 250 not 350 years. Global power for 150ish but the global power for 70ish years :)
Ha yes, thanks … though, without knowing, I’d wonder how early you can push the global power part (thus the question mark). Post-war (your 70 years) is clearly a “the global power” status. But how early could you say the US was at least one of the major powers?
That’s an interesting question of which I’m ignorant. Your original comment may have been right though. It might be helpful to say a global power fights wars outside of its border and potentially colonizes. The first time the USA did that was the first Barbary war in 1801. Would you agree?
Yes they seem like reasonable metrics to me. But like you I don’t really know how to answer the question. But relative economic strength and influence are likely factors. So the post civil war gilded age would also been a likely point, which was the origin of my 150 yrs estimate. For 100 years, I figured post WWI was a pretty clear moment of relative strength.
Then I apologize for my wrong correction but I learned something with you through it :D
No worries at all!
Also, I didn’t know at all about the Barbary Wars (and was quite surprised to hear of such a far flung US military engagement so early)
They were sick of paying pirate taxes!
You need a second civil war
They’re wrong.
Humanity is doomed because of America. Your anti-environmental capitalism and rapacious foreign policy have altered the world in an entirely negative way, and the only realistic scenario for the US to cut this shit out is by losing a war to a major competitor, such as China. China is hugely flawed itself, but is the less harmful option imo.
You should do this for other countries too. America isn't the only country with an idealised view of what other people think of them.
Kinda disappointed in this thread, was hoping to find things that Americans on Lemmy aren’t ready to hear. Everything here seems like the usual complains that most Americans on Lemmy and even Reddit already aware of.
Mumbled Scottish
ITT Europeans tell us shit we already know about changes most of us want because they don't understand gerrymandering and the electoral college
Ok, so I'm going to do one that's actually likely to be downvoted by the Americans here.
Sometimes censorship is necessary for a safer society.
Americans in general, or Americans on Lemmy?
Americans on Lemmy be like:
This definitely won't be a pile of horseshit from people never been there, believe everything they see on TV, and operate completely on stereotypes from various sources, sprinkled with the dumbest takes you ever heard, and a bunch of blaming capitalism like it's the only nation that employs it.
Mom says I get to post the "shit on the US" thread tomorrow!
America is the whole continent. You guys just fenced the worst part of it.
That place is called World
[email protected] for US discussions
To some Americans, it is that the US isn't the pinnacle of democracy but far from it. To others, that the EU isn't better policy wise than the US, it just has far more competing interests which mean lobbyists have to hand out more than a lump sum of sucking up to people. To some Americans, that your health care system is really shit, to others, that their public health care is increasingly under attack in some EU countries by an industry pouching and locking down medicine through the profits their greed has allowed them to accumulate in countries like the US to such an extent that there are real tradeoffs now to the for-profit alternative.
so hear me out: the earth is not flat, toast is not bread.
South Central and Caribbean duh
You may have heard about North America but that's a hoax. Who would be gullible to believe there's people who behave like USA'ians?
Canada is another hoax, it's just the part of Greenland where people live.
Even if someone you don't like asks you not to draw Muhammad, you still have the option of not drawing Muhammad.
Americans have it better then most countries in the world. Stop acting like you aren't rich or more privileged than others.
I'm gonna go ahead and assume that you are talking about Americans in the sense of the Americans who live in the USA.
God-damnit guys, not everything is about you.
Now, I don't know if USA inhabitants are not ready to hear it, but certainly Lemmy USA residents are not.
Like it or not, you guys have a GREAT COUNTRY in the USA
Worldwide, people envy you. The poorest inhabitant of the USA has rights, possibilities and duties that only the richest in any other country can only dream of.
For God's sake, people are literally willing to kill themselves trying to reach your country, to have an atom of freedom that you guys squander with petty squabbles.
No USA proper citizen has ever been in the need so dire to escape the USA that they need to build a raft to risk their lives to go anywhere from their Homeland.
For that same reason, collectivists worldwide hate you and your country with undying hate. Because you (as in your society) don't need them. And they do need you. And they resent this so much, that they're willing to destroy you all just to stop that from being true.
You guys have lived so cozy and accommodated lives, thanks to the disrespected sacrifices made willingly by millions that you are bored out of your minds.
So much in fact, that with a little nudge from the collectivists worldwide seeking your destruction, you yourselves plunge willingly into the chaos of unmaking by allowing the collectivist mindset to pollute your youngest.
Make no mistake, the USA will keep growing and thriving, like it or not.
But not thanks to your internal or external enemies. That's for sure.
Edit: the upvote to downvote ratio tells me I followed the post premise to a T
The irony of euros unloading in a thread that the people who most need to see it will never see, just to feel better about having unloaded, is peak self-serving uselessness.
Get the fuck off of Lemmy and go unload in conservative and Republican cesspits like the fox news vomment section, xhitter, OANN, not here where the vast fucking majority already fucking agree with you.
But you know you can’t do that because that would actually mean going for a swim in political sewage, which means doing actual work for your personal beliefs, and which also means you’re most definitely going to get backlash that you know you won’t get here.
TL;DR: non-US bitching about the US on Lemmy, where nearly all lemmy Americans already agree with them, are as functionally idiotic as the conservative white Americans they’re bitching about.
I hear this all the time but honestly US healthcare sucks so much. Doctors are pushed by their companies to care about quantity of patients over actual care
I returned to Canada because of the healthcare issue in America.
You may be surprised to learn that people looking for an elective surgery and want to spend to skip the line will go to Tijuana. It's apparently really great for all kinds of complex but not-medically-critical procedures.
Essentially nobody is complaining about the quality of care available here. The problem is that only the rich can really afford it. Most people will avoid going to the doctor if at all possible, just because they can't absorb the cost even if they're just told to take an Aspirin and sleep it off. Long-term care for anything serious is just impossible to recover from financially for most people - it literally bankrupts entire families. With how hard it is to move up a prosperity bracket, that's a devastating blow that is often felt for generations.
I think your view might be slightly skewed because you have free care available, and can go to the US or Mexico for better options if you can afford it. Here, if we can't afford it, we have nothing, or we assume tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
I'm not gonna try and tell you it's perfect. But as someone from Québec who needed an emergency surgery mid-lockdown, I was able to see multiple doctors, spend a night at the hospital, got examined in every way necessary and received said surgery, along with morphine for the following days... And basically didn't see a damn bill. I had to wait a long time in the ER at first. Until it got worse they just told me to be patient. But from the quick estimates I did, this would've cost me maybe 10-15k$ in the US. Best case scenario. Scenario in which I then have to deal with an insurance company that bitches and moans about having to fulfill its part of the deal. And then of course they'd increase my premiums.
Think of it as "worth the price". Canadian healthcare is definitely worth the price, given that the price is zero. American prices are so high that nothing could be worth that, so it's not even worth the price of an ambulance. Oh, yeah, they charge for the ambulance ride.
Almost everywhere in the world they charge for the ambulance ride. Except, some countries have state funded providers with super low subsidized prices or even free. And the private providers have to compete with that which keeps prices affordable. So using an ambulance is not a bankruptcy inducing event.
I will admit, I did not know that. I'm British, I'm used to it being free. But I looked it up and it seems there's a lot of other countries that also didn't know that. Even if it's charged in their country, it's such a minor amount that they barely even notice, and they don't need to pay if it's an emergency.
Meanwhile, Americans are charged over 100 times what Germans are charged, even in an emergency. And they get billed extra based on the distance travelled.
"The cost of an ambulance" is only an issue in America. It's not normal.
Are we grading the system or its current status? Right now, it's sick. After so much defunding and bullying from the all-hat crowd, we've got a professional deficit that's gonna take another decade to fix. So the distinction is important -- and will sway the coming vote.