Is the U.S.A. #1? Not so fast...

Let's not forget alcohol and drug consumption (legal and otherwise).

I'm mean what was up with that guy posting all that crap - to scare us that we suck and need to change or to just point out how bad we suck. We have the best access to just about every produced good on the planet and can have it on any doorstep in 24 hours. We've got Taco Bell for 24x7 munchie runs, and dope rides and all the best toys. I can eat (and have delivered) just about any cuisine. Not the case in rural USA but not the case in rural EU either.

I wonder if that guy has ever been to the Beijing lowrider clubs meets - "ay-yah homie Dongaa, dope ass wickshaw"!! "Ya, homie Ping, wokin on a chopped donkey caat for the paddies - thin kin about som spinnaas. Woad man, da bom." - jokin people - before anyone gets their panties in a bunch and yes my girlfriend is Chinese (ABC that is)....

Steggyd, yes slave labor. your problem is you believe what's taught in History Classes. You probably still believe Christopher Columbus discovered America. You probaly believe General Custer was a hero, and the atom bomb was meant to save lives.

ten years ago

Carpenters made 15 top 18 dollars an hour, now the white guys are out and the illegal immigrants make 7 710 dollars an hour and every industry is like that. yes our industrial revolution is over and now the white collar jobs are next. We peaked and thanks to you and people like you, your offspring will will suffer.

LOL, I'm talking about the start of the American Revolution in America. It is very real history. For it is only a few generations ago. Read stories about life in New York about 100 years ago. That was a rough life. We are much better off now. And people like me? Why me? Because I have decided to go to college and pursue a career that will be necessary in the post-industrialization of our country? We can't be an industrial nation forever because people keep wanting more and more without working harder for it. Then they want items for a cheap price after they demanded a lot of pay and many work breaks for making it. We do this to ourselves, so it's time to adjust, evolve if you will.

I guess you'd rather I sit at home and cry that noone wants to pay me too much money to do labor work anymore?

I wonder if anyone remembers the JFK vs Nixon debates? It was a great deal about statistics, and JFK improved those statistics. That was too much for some people, and you can imagine who did not relish that the common man would prosper at all. You can leave it to the continuing study of history to decide who benefitted, but after JFK the content of the news, the discussion of statistics took a back seat to irrelevant trivia. It is no wonder that with almost total blindness to statistics as a relevant political feedback mechanism, that all those things went down. Now one can hear that statistics find manipulation, and that is not without merit. However when a sober view of these things and how they relate to the real world is the issue, then you can well envision how you have been conned into ignorance by a kleptocracy.

The consequence of a long term dumbing down process on all fronts through elite sponsorship of "educational standards," is too evident. People have to do their own homework, because education is becoming worthless. You see back in the 1800s the robber barons saw unionization as a great threat, and it was working because people still read the classics, even within all their poverty. They knew the same power of words that the elite knew, and they were winning a better life for most people. We became the most productive people on earth. But years of failed innovations such as see and say,"the new math," and meritless promotions, have brought us to this point of lost reason. Yes you can lie with statistics, but usually the right statistics are what you use to supplant that lie.

[edit on 7-3-2005 by SkipShipman]

Steggy--Ha, decided to go to college. Now I understand. you finally decided to go to college and have the American dream..Whipper snapper.
I went to college already and have spent the last twenty years building the black project aircraft you conspiracy wannabs only dream about. Decided to go to college. You don't have anything to talk about. done nothing, know nothing. Did you just get out of high school or have youbeen layingaround for years trying to establish a philosophy from your mom's couch. Ha.

Originally posted by kazi
Steggy--Ha, decided to go to college. Now I understand. you finally decided to go to college and have the American dream..Whipper snapper.
I went to college already and have spent the last twenty years building the black project aircraft you conspiracy wannabs only dream about. Decided to go to college. You don't have anything to talk about. done nothing, know nothing. Did you just get out of high school or have youbeen layingaround for years trying to establish a philosophy from your mom's couch. Ha.

Never mind. You are just a bitter old man I see. No, I have never had a lazy day since my parents threw me out of my house when I was 18. That was eleven years ago. I have done many things since then, but have never had time to sit on a couch as you say. I feel sorry for you, much like my wife, you tend to find everything so bad and evil, instead of seeing what you can do. If you find yourself too old to evolve with our changing country, then sorry, I'm going to evolve. Go drink some prune juice. Done nothing? You have no idea what I have been through. I've faced street people's guns, sleeping in the cold outdoors, drill instructors, job interviews, applications to some elite colleges, etc.

I know the bad of America and I know that it is not perfect, but some people don't take the opportunity to change.

This article doesn't seem to show both sides - it doesn't show what the U.S. IS #1 at. I know the U.S. is #1 at quite a few things, but this article makes it sound like it's not number 1 at anything.

Could someone pull up a list of things the U.S. is good at? Then we can compare it to this article.

Yeah good point, EliteElixir. Anyways, off topic, but you really think Mozilla is faster than IE? I use both but I find IE faster. I do find Mozilla more secure, but not faster.

Ahh, steggy, you should Google MOOX. Download the MOOX version of Firefox, then install these speed tweaks:
www.junkieznat.com...

Under the speed up Firefox section.

Anyways, let's get back on topic, shall we?

Steggy--No wonder your folks threw your worthless a-- out of the house. You need to respect your elders. When I was your age I'd already accomplished more than you ever will. Military paratroopers, top secret clearance, 20 years working on defense projects. I don't like to talk down to any one, but arrogance like yours usually comes from someone like you.

Kosmo


I saw this thread yesterday - and then wrote my news article. ...When I searched for it this am to credit my source, I could NOT find you again. I am very sorry. Will edit and make sure you're credited.


Thanks, and keep up the good work.

sofi

[edit on 8-3-2005 by soficrow]

Originally posted by ADVISOR
If one of us is chained...

Makes sure your sound on, and not too loud.

[edit on 7-3-2005 by ADVISOR]

Nice video (Scary images), but it really delivers the point. The point of this thread wasn't to "incite rhetoric" as one put it, or to bash America (Hell, I'm a proud American), but to try to get people to look at the failing of the leading Democracy in the world and THINK about it! WHY are we as a nation moving backwards? WHY are we as a nation losing our edge. Time was when America was the envy of the world. People envied our freedom, our education, our industry, our politics and overall, our achievements and what those achievements meant for the entire free world. Today? What does any of it mean?

So many people responded to this post with "Well, I'm doing better than I was a decade ago." Big Deal! If you kill the head, the body is soon to follow. Do those of you who are doing better today than yesterday understand how we are all interconnected? How we NEED each other to survive and prosper? This nation wasn't built on the sweat of one man. Hell, this nation wasn't built on the sweat of the government. Until the struggle of ALL of this nation's men gave birth to a government, this was nothing more than a land of people who worked TOGETHER to create a better place to live and be free.

Sadly, many here have missed the point. If America, the bastion of hope and freedom is crumbling and we, as Americans, can only muster the courage to point out how we, individually, are prospering then perhaps we are doomed to become another failed empire

There is more to life than personal wealth. There is more than personal freedom. This government was founded on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for ALL. Our founding fathers wanted this nation to be a beacon of hope in a dark world. We are failing and based on a number of responses to this thread, it is not difficult to understand why.

Originally posted by kozmo

There is more to life than personal wealth. There is more than personal freedom. This government was founded on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for ALL. Our founding fathers wanted this nation to be a beacon of hope in a dark world. We are failing and based on a number of responses to this thread, it is not difficult to understand why.

There is hope Kozmo. Please, keep thinking and writing and trying. What we're doing is planting seeds, or playing dominoes. It works. It makes a difference - and so do you.




.

No it doesn't. In twenty years, you'll be a conservative and the next generation of college students will have taken up the liberal yoke.

The more things change, the more they say the same... take a look at the past century. This country has come so much closer to revolution, collapse, and destruction than we are right now that it is ridiculous to think anything is going to come of the current global political situation.

The order has been established, and it will persist until a better one is found. For now, this is the best we're going to do without the government micromanaging us.

Accept it, and move on. And, if you refuse to so so (which I am sure you will), give it a couple of decades. Look back on the past in twenty years, and see how many of your seeds have germinated.

And when you do, please think of ol' Odd, and how much you used to piss him off.

Originally posted by edsinger
Well I laughed a bit and some where not surprising, if it is so bad how come so many want to come here? Geez, you would think they would be beating down the doors to get out....

The opportunity is here that’s why they keep coming because they know what hard life is and they see the chance to better themselves so they come here. Americans are the ones who take this opportunity for granted and they are the ones that will bring this country down while the immigrants are the ones who will bring it back up. Look at the history of the United States it was built on slave labor and immigration labor that was almost like slave labor.

Originally posted by kazi
Steggyd, yes slave labor. your problem is you believe what's taught in History Classes. You probably still believe Christopher Columbus discovered America. You probaly believe General Custer was a hero, and the atom bomb was meant to save lives.

ten years ago

Carpenters made 15 top 18 dollars an hour, now the white guys are out and the illegal immigrants make 7 710 dollars an hour and every industry is like that. yes our industrial revolution is over and now the white collar jobs are next. We peaked and thanks to you and people like you, your offspring will will suffer.

No, kazi, you started the arrogance, as you can see in your post here. I was responding without any insulting language pointed at anyone. Now you want to go and compare who's life was worth more? Respect my elders? Ha, maybe only elders that are worth respecting. And from this response and all others that follow, you get no R E S P E C T from me. You can respond to me tomorrow, because I am sure its already past your bedtime.

Once more, yes America has problems, but what country doesn't? What country has no room for improvement? What person has no room for improvement, besides kazi? While we are not number one in all those categories mentioned (mostly European sources), we are not headed towards being some third world country, which some of you tend to believe.

Its nice to always attempt to make things better but I think everyone is giving too much credit to the original article, has anyone other than myself double checked the sources? Yes america is like 49th in literacy at a wopping 97% LOL
www.mrdowling.com...
go ahead and check it out, also look at the population of the countries ahead of us in comparison major kudos too italy tho... anyhow i double checked "The week" and found nothing in their archives about americans think the sun orbits the earth, this is an absurd lie. Also using a book with a clear political agenda, (do some research) is usually a really bad idea. It would be like citing michael moore as fact(also a bad idea). However, i do agree that we should look at the state of the union constantly and devise ways to better our country and living conditions on an ongoing basis.

In 1968 Ferdinand Lundberg, a Columbia U. economist, published The Rich and the Super-Rich, which became the #1 national bestseller. This is how it starts:

"Most Americans --citizens of the wealthiest, most powerful (...) country in the world-- by a very wide margin own nothing more than their household goods, a few glittering gadgets such as automobiles and television sets (usually purchased on the installment plan, many at second hand) and the clothes on their backs. A horde if not a majority of Americans live in shacks, cabins, hovels, shanties, hand-me-down Victorian eyesores, rickety tenements and flaky apartment buildings --as the newspapers from time to time chortle that new Russian apartment-house construction is falling apart. (...)

"At the same time, a relative handful of Americans are extravagantly endowed, like princes in the Arabian Nights tales. (...)

"It would be difficult in the 1960's [now, a third of a century later, the rich have gotten richer, the poor, poorer] for a large majority of Americans to show fewer significant possessions if the country had long labored under a grasping dictatorship. How has this process been contrived of stripping threadbare most of the populace, which once at least owned small patches of virgin land? (...)"

Then, also in Chapter 1, which is titled "The Elected and the Damned", in a section called "Poverty Defined"...

"For my part, I would say that anyone who does not own a fairly substantial amount of income-producing property or does not receive an earned income sufficiently large to make substantial regular savings or does not hold a well-paid securely tenured job is poor. He may be healthy, handsome and a delight to his friends --but he is poor. By this standard at least 70 percent of Americans are certainly poor, although not all of these by any means are are destitute or poverty-stricken. But, as was shown in the 1930's, Americans can become destitute overnight if deprived of their jobs, a strong support to mindless conformity. As a matter of fact, many persons in rather well-paid jobs, even executives, from time to time find themselves jobless owing to job discontinuance by reason of mergers, technical innovation or plant removal. Unable to get new jobs, they suddenly discover, to their amazement, that they are really poor, and they also discover by harsh experience, to what specific conditions the word 'poverty' refers. And even many of those who never lose their jobs often discover in medical and similar emergencies that they are as helpless as wandering beggars. They are, in fact, poor. In such eventualities the man of property is evidently in a different position. He is definitely not poor. And this is all I say."

Now compare that to man-in-the-street remarks like...

(posted by UofCinLA)
* Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)

Got to keep natural selection going somehow - gene pool is getting severely watered down....

(posted by UofCinLA)
* Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).

Get out of Arkansas now....

(posted by UofCinLA)
* "Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.

What - did they miss the tech boom that made millions of people millionaires overnight..??

[edit on 10-3-2005 by Macrento]

'Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).'

I think that makes perfect sense, I've been looking for the one of the key factors how Bush got re-elected. Just couldn't pass that one up!

Originally posted by QuietRenegade
'Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).'

I think that makes perfect sense, I've been looking for the one of the key factors how Bush got re-elected.

Just couldn't pass that one up!

Yep, only 20 % plus the 17 % to vote for Kerry. That makes 37 % for Kerry, and that's not including some of those 20 and 17 % might be the same people. How he got the rest, I'm not sure.