You are missing a very important point which is that the US is a country of immigration and of different states and the US is a very very very big country.
You can't compare it to Holland or Denmark or even Germany. These solutions won't work here.
America IS the land of opportunity and I would challenge you to find any other country which provides better opportunity and still protect your rights as well.
Edit: The land of opportunity doesn't mean the land of equality and the expression was never intended to be that.
America is not egoistic it's just a very hardcore country because it's built on top of people who with their lives at stake started exploring and setting up local societies.
So the country is build on tough women and men. They aren't more selfish or egoistic than any other person, their reality is just different than a little country like holland or my own (Denmark).
> America IS the land of opportunity and I would challenge you to find any other country which provides better opportunity and still protect your rights as well.
That's pretty easy. The measure you are looking for is social mobility. Most of Europe is more socially mobile than the US. In layman terms, it's easier to climb from the poorest quintile to the richest quintile. It's the result of the free education and social safety net that Europe is famous for. If you really want a country, ironically in Denmark social mobility is double the score of the US' [https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-americ...]
Social mobility measured by movement across quintiles is bullshit.
The top quintile in the US is much higher than the EU. As a result someone in the EU moving from 10,000 EUR to 80,000 EUR might be going from the bottom to the top quintile.
Someone moving from $10,000 to $125,000 in the US might be going from the bottom to the 3rd quintile. Less income mobility, but higher overall incomes.
I disagree. Money stops buying you happiness below $80k/year, or at least gives a very poor ROI. Knowing this, why would any sensible person choose a system which gives a much smaller chance of reaching this level?
It's a very American way of thinking, in which we fixate on being incredibly wealthy, instead of just moderately wealthy. Why else do Powerball sales skyrocket when the jackpot is hundreds of millions, instead of just millions? Statistically, your chances of winning were much better when it were in the mere millions, and now you have a much smaller chance, though to be very elite instead of just elite.
> The study, which analyzed Gallup surveys of 450,000 Americans in 2008 and 2009, suggested that there were two forms of happiness: day-to-day contentment (emotional well-being) and overall “life assessment,” which means broader satisfaction with one’s place in the world. While a higher income didn’t have much impact on day-to-day contentment, it did boost people’s “life assessment.”
Couple huge notes here:
1. Overall life assessments improves; that is a part of happiness.
2. These numbers are 2009.. during the recession. They are way higher now almost certainly.
3. Needs to be COLA adjusted (linked article does that)
4. Is this pre-tax or post-tax?
5. I can't find the study itself, but I can't see how household composition wouldn't affect this number.
$130k single person in SF Bay Area might have well peaked on day-to-day happiness - you are generally making enough to not stress about breaking a budget.
At $130k living in the SF Bay Area with 2 young children, you are still going to need to budget, leading to heavy marital arguments about money that hurt day-to-day happiness. I would venture that $350k (pre-tax) is about the level where such a couple would peak by eliminating budget pressure.
Social mobility is not what "land of opportunity means" it's not meant to be an equal society in the normal sense. It's meant to be a society with opportunities.
With regards to Denmark. When you look a little deeper in the numbers it's not actually true.
I think you misunderstand what Social Mobility is, Wikipedia says it's:
> the movement of individuals, families, households, or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to one's current social location within a given society.
Which would be exactly what people would call opportunities. Social mobility is not at all aimed at fixed equality. It's about being provided equal opportunities, for example by having good, free, public education.
In the US, if your parents can't pay for your university degree, you need to either get lucky and get some kind of scholarship or go a couple 100k into debt. This leads to low social mobility, since the rich have a better chance at getting a degree than the poor do.
You definitely don't have to go into debt like that. I know plenty of people that worked and went to community college for two years, transferred to the state school for the final two years, and graduated with little to no debt. People miss out on the 'college experience' aka drinking and partying, but they graduate with no debt. Also, there is no such thing as free services provided by the government. They are paid for by taxes.
> In the US, if your parents can't pay for your university degree, you need to either get lucky and get some kind of scholarship or go a couple 100k into debt
The average student loan debt is something like $40K, not $200K, and there are quite a few scholarships. I got one for going into STEM--it paid something like $2K/year and I got my degree with only $7K of debt, but I set up my schedule so I could work while I wasn't in class and I didn't lead the lavish lifestyle that my peers did. Of course, the US education system is still unnecessarily expensive--but this falls out from the government's attempt to make it affordable--the government subsidized education by giving students loans and universities responded by competing on things students care most about: manicured campuses and lavish amenities. There are other things as well--additional administrators ("diversity officers" and "bias response teams"), but it mostly falls out from student loan money. Even still, there are lots of great schools that still compete on education and great services to help you find them, so doing better than the average $40K in debt is definitely feasible if not easy even without a scholarship.
> The average student loan debt is something like $40K, not $200K
You are correct, I picked the most extreme cases to make a point. Here in the Netherlands €40k is about the maximum you'd get and that is after taking your time and having a lavish lifestyle. The schools themselves are only €2k a year, currently.
No, I understand very well what it means. The land of opportunity isn't the same as social mobility and isn't meant to be the same either.
You don't come to the US because of social mobility, you come here to improve your current situation and relatively, the US provides in spades compared to going to many European countries where you are stuck in some social welfare system and will never actually be able to move out of it.
The European welfare system is great for equality but it doesn't do much for the opportunity.
The ability to break out of your social heritage isn't better in Denmark in any meaningful way. It's a common misconception but was debunked by ex. the Rockwool Foundation who found that Despite free education people were still ending up doing the same as their parents no matter the US or Denmark.
The bottom one is the one we're discussing and the answer is yes, because that's what it is. Social mobility also isn't equality, because in a truly equal state, social mobility would be virtually non-existent, since everybody would be equal.
Also, like you previously mentioned yourself, there is no 'European welfare system'. There are lots of different countries with lots of different systems and they all work out differently. The common denominator is that most of them work out better than the US does.
I would recommend reading the wikipedia page on social mobility for some more info. It also explains why equality is in fact important for opportunity, unlike what you wrote:
No I am responding the OP who mixed in a lot of different discussions into his analysis of why the US spend much more than other nations.
We are talking about a very specific idea of opportunity (the american dream) which was what I responded to.
When it comes to social mobility again Denmark isn't doing much better than the US. I would recommend you read the Rockwool Foundation report on this matter. I am well aware of social mobility and wha tit means.
The European welfare system is great for equality but it doesn't do much for opportunity.
I'm not sure what your argument is here. Are you saying there's more "opportunity" in the US because their healthcare sucks? What are you trying to say?
"The "American Dream" gives people the impression that working hard solves everything and that their country is the best in the world period"
Which is both wrong and missing what the American Dream is all about. It's very far from any European idea of equality, I say that as an European myself and grew up in one of the most equal countries (Denmark).
But once you get to live in the US you quickly realize why Scandinavia style healthcare can never work in the US. It's simply not structured both geographically, culturally, immigration wise and politically to ever work.
As a country with opportunities, nothing really beat the US when all things are considered. That doesn't mean everyone is making it that's not the goal either.
I think you're saying that you have more opportunity in the US because the risks are higher? Your argument reads like an incomplete thought. I fail to see how immigration and geography are related. Culture is related, but that could easily change if people weren't told what to think by conservative pastors and media.
I happen to think that opportunities are bigger in the US because of less regulation, a bigger market with no language barriers and more venture capital and that the US could do even better if people didn't have to worry about hospital bills. There's a lot more potential.
There is more opportunity because of a lot of different things one of them being culture, another access to capital, access to global markets, another being big English speaking country, another being a much bigger reliance on civil society to take care of many of the things that governments take care of in Europe and of course the military.
The US is actually not doing well on a lot of individual parameters but if you look at everything as a whole it just ends up being a country with more opportunity than any other country and I would challenge you to find any country that's better than the US in those terms.
When it comes to healthcare geography and immigration is related because of the way a single payer social healthcare system works.
The US have to deal with immigration both legal and illegal. You can't just give 11mio illegal immigrants access to to healthcare just as people who immigrate much later haven't been paying to the system their whole lives.
Furthermore because of the distance if you want to provide equal treatment it's going to be very expensive or you have to spend a lot of money on transportation.
These are just some of the issues which normally gets completetly ignored but are actually crucial to understanding why the US can't be the same as European countries.
> Social mobility is not what "land of opportunity means" it's not meant to be an equal society in the normal sense. It's meant to be a society with opportunities.
Social equality and social mobility are almost opposite ideas. Mobility measures how likely (easy) it is to climb up the ladder, if you're good and/or lucky. Equality measures how steep/long is the ladder - in a totally equal society, there wouldn't be a ladder at all, so there would be zero social mobility.
There are few western countries that are as bad at protecting rights as the US. See:
- Guantanamo Bay, where people are held indefinitely without trial
- Abuse of civil forfeiture
- Mass surveilance
- Cops not being sentenced after needless shootings
- Gerrymandering messing with the will of the people
- Private companies often being more important than the public interest
I could keep going, because there's plenty where that came from. It all depends on which rights you mean though, because the right to bear arms has indeed been well protected in the US (which isn't really considered a right anywhere else in the western world though).
> a country with better opportunity as an immigrant
It's virtually impossible to immigrate to the US without any financial backing, like a stack of cash or an employer wanting to hire you. So yes, the odds of an immigrant succeeding in the US are pretty good, I wouldn't call this an opportunity for people who aren't already well off though.
No it's not. The US system is actually much more liberal than the EU. It also provides opportunities for the 11mil illegal immigrants. How many syrian immigrants are part of the job market in EU?
50% of the non-western refugees in The Netherlands are working at least part-time. With most companies scrambling to find personnel even in low-paying jobs, I think we'll conclude in a few years that those refugees were a net-benefit to society.
That's what I have been trying to explain to you now for several posts. The US general idea of opportunity and the American Dream isn't what you think it is.
So glad you finally got that part.
It's a fundamental difference in how these things are percieved.
> The US system is actually much more liberal than the EU
How so? Here are the options to immigrate to the US for an IT professional:
- be hired by some rich company, try H1B, most likely fail in the lottery and wait for another year;
- be hired by some rich megacorp with presence in multiple countries, move to one of the countries, wait for a year, get L1 and move to the US. Too bad if you have a partner, he/she won't be able to work for a few years
In both cases your position is really precarious until you get your green card, so oftentimes you can't really afford to change employers. How on Earth is it "liberal"?
- Protection (e.g., from abuse, exploitation and harmful substances)
- Provision (e.g., for education, health care and an adequate standard of living)
- Participation (e.g., listening to children’s views and respecting their evolving capacities)
- Specific protections and provisions for vulnerable populations such as Aboriginal children and children with disabilities"
The US is a big country with different states, but so is the EU.
The policies of Holland, Denmark or Germany could definately work in the US, if only the people developed a different stance on criminal behavior, healthcare, guns and taxes,
America is the land of opportunity for some people. There are a lot of other countries with a lot of opportunities and freedom. More than 2 million people are incarcerated in the US right now. Where's the freedom in that?
America is very egoistic and hard country, built on the lives poor people who were left behind by their fellow countrymen.
With their stance on criminal behavior, healthcare, guns and taxes, the people in the US are definately more egoistic than people in more social democracies.
You are confusing things here. Incarceration has nothing to do with what we are talking about. No one ever said the US is perfect. We are talking about whether 1) you can apply scandinavian style healthcare to the us (you can't) and whether the US provides more opportunities than other places (it still does)
It's not equal and it's not trying to be equal either.
EU isn't big geographically compared to the US and it's not as sparsely populated as the US is. That's what I mean with big.
Yes, America is the land of opportunity for some. I don't think we were debating obvious truths here.
The point is that America does, in fact, provide much more opportunities. That doesn't mean everyone is going to make it.
That's never been the point about that expression anyway.
The US isn't more selfish if we actually look at how many volunteer in the US that alone would show that it's not that simple.
Do you know why those people are incarcerated? They broke laws, and they were found guilty by a jury of their peers even upon the presumption of innocence. If charged with a given imprisonable offense, under what other country's court system would you prefer to be tried?
They broke laws, and they were found guilty by a jury of their peers even upon the presumption of innocence.
Do you know why people committed these crimes? I prefer a justice system that takes their background into account and takes steps to improve the lives of these people. A justice system that only punishes without addressing the underlying issues is not a good system.
The fact that you are arguing that the US' system is unrivaled only shows your prejudice and arrogance.
Sentencing takes into account the background. The law itself is blind, under which all are equal. You're saying you'd let off a murderer because he had a rough childhood or what now? I am not saying our system os unrivaled, I am saying I am content, even happy, to be subject to it over any other I know of. It is not incumbent on me to find a preferable one if I like it. It is on you as the critic to do so. I will consider it if you make a good case.
Okay let's take Norway as an example. It's a smaller country ofcourse, but there's no reason this can't scale.
In Norway, fewer than 4,000 of the country's 5 million people were behind bars as of August 2014.
That makes Norway's incarceration rate just 75 per 100,000 people, compared to 707 people for every 100,000 people in the US.
On top of that, when criminals in Norway leave prison, they stay out. It has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%. The US has one of the highest: 76.6% of prisoners are re-arrested within five years.
Norway also has a relatively low level of crime compared to the US, according to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. The majority of crimes reported to police there are theft-related incidents, and violent crime is mostly confined to areas with drug trafficking and gang problems.
Based on that information, it's safe to assume Norway's criminal justice system is doing something right. Few citizens there go to prison, and those who do usually go only once. So how does Norway accomplish this feat? The country relies on a concept called "restorative justice," which aims to repair the harm caused by crime rather than punish people. This system focuses on rehabilitating prisoners.
Norway isn't a great example because Norway is also far, far more culturally and economically homogeneous than the US, though that is changing.
Bangladesh has an even lower incarceration rate, but its prisons are apparently horrifying places of routine human right abuse. Should that be the guide? Perhaps that can scale - half of the bottom 15 countries in terms of incarceration rate have histories of extreme human rights abuse but according to the crime information, their criminal justice system is doing something right - few citizens go to prison and most only go once.
That doesn't at all convey to me what I'm trying to find out: would I wish to be tried in the Norwegian system if I were charged with a given crime rather than in the United States? Neither where would I prefer to carry out my sentence, nor where I think the socioeconomic factors that lead to crime are best prevented. Those are all worthwhile questions, to be clear, but not what I was getting at.
I'm ignoring your arguments because we're on a sub-tangent that I started on just one point of your comment - that our prison population is somehow evidence of our lack of freedom, and I would like to limit it to that in order to get some clarity on it. I have nothing to say on the other points. I may even totally agree with you on them. If you don't want to engage this specific point anymore, fine.
Your preference for a justice system is your rebuttal. You are discussing whether it's ok or not and you have rules for what you think is ok. That is exactly your rebuttal.
Have you watched the documentary the 13th? It covers severe issues with the incarceration rate in the United States, for example, the high proportion of black people incarcerated for the same crimes white people are completely let go of or otherwise not charges. How the justice system is very selective on what laws to enforce along racial lines. Stop and frisk turned out to mean “stop all the black people exclusively and search them”. How people are pressured to take plea deals even though they may indeed be innocent. How the police have been known to literally plant evidence or incite violence within communities or protests to force arrests.
> You are missing a very important point which is that the US is a country of immigration and of different states the US is a very very very big country.
And yet not even the biggest country in North America, an entire continent of immigration; the only difference between the people in what is now the USA and what is now Canada was the degree of loyalism to the British.
> America IS the land of opportunity and I would challenge you to find any other country which provides better opportunity and still protect your rights as well.
For that not to be just an empty slogan you'd have to explain what you mean by "opportunity" and "rights", to which races and genders those opportunities and rights have historically applied to in actuality, and how you think every other country suppresses or represses those rights or opportunities.
> So the country is build on tough women and men.
The USA was "built" (leaving aside how) by, among others, Danes, Dutch and Germans. I don't understand how they suddenly became tougher, just by stepping on a boat.
Edit: and there goes the autodownvote bot, within not even enough time to read this post.
>I don't understand how they suddenly became tougher, just by stepping on a boat.
Stepping on that boat was risk taking. I think they'd teach their children those same values.
But I think the bigger difference in US v. European culture is that inside America there was no landed gentry. The Northeast had some "society," but for long streches of American history anyone could go buy land for cheap and farm.
Without an intrenched gentry and an intrenched lower class, American class has always been more mobile. There were certainly rich and poor, but poor enterprising people could get land much cheaper by moving west.
Industrialization changed that, but by that time American culture was already distinct. Plus, America was richer than than Europe during the 20th century. Our middle class had it pretty good.
Canada is more like American culture than British.
Besides there living like 10x the amount of people than in the US and besides Canada actually has a very strict immigration politics compared to the US then sure.
I was responding to the "American Dream" by the OP. You find any other country where immigrants are running many of the countries most successful companies and where you have so much opportunity to establish a company in a great market. I am not talking about how fast you can set up an LLC or a C-Corp I am talking about how big your opportunity to create something in the US is no matter who you are and where you are from compared to other places.
The US is far ahead.
The tough people were the ones who endured what it meant to live in the US in the beginning. There weren't tough when they went on a boat but they soon became just as their children and their children.
> I am talking about how big your opportunity to create something in the US is no matter who you are and where you are from compared to other places.
What does this even mean?
Please give a specific, concrete explanation of how and why it's easier for someone to "create something" (create what?) in the USA than in the EU or Canada.
> Canada actually has a very strict immigration politics compared to the US then sure.
And yet apparently accepts around three times as many new immigrants per year than the USA, as a percentage of population.
> The tough people were the ones who endured what it meant to live in the US in the beginning. There weren't tough when they went on a boat but they soon became just as their children and their children.
So is the USA the land of opportunity or the land of greater hardship and toughness?
People don't typically leave the country they know and love for another land, unless enduring hardship already. OTOH, while they may believe (at least in part due to propaganda[1]) another land will provide greater opportunity, that doesn't mean it does.
[1] The UK government notoriously considered an ad campaign a few years back about how bad life was in the UK, to deter immigration.
It means that if you come to the US from more or less any country you can get started working and building up a good business and end up on the top in fact you are expected to. There is no social welfare system for you. You go to Europe and you point to how many places that happens.
In the US almost half of all Fortune 500 companies are founded by foreigners. Let me know where that happens in Europe.
And yet apparently accepts around three times as many new immigrants per year than the USA, as a percentage of population.
But a fraction of what the US have of illegal immigrants (approx 100K vs. 11mio). Furthermore the IRS and Immigration actually doesn't communicate about illegal immigrants because of the US Privacy Act which means you can actually pay taxes even though you are here illegally.
The US is many times more flexible for anyone who wants to stay here.
Even the fact that Dreamers are even discussed shows how different the US is form Europe.
So is the USA the land of opportunity or the land of greater hardship and toughness?
What part is it you don't understand?
The US is the land of opportunity, the US sentiment isn't like the european where equality is a goal in itself because of the US history and how it was founded.
With regards to your [1] Denmark did that, it helped but what does that have to do with anything?
11mio illegal immigrants in the US plus all the legal immigration and add to that the last 200 years and it's pretty obvious that the US is based on very very different principles than EU.
> I don't understand how they suddenly became tougher, just by stepping on a boat.
I don't understand the OP's point, but "selection bias" is why many immigrant populations out-perform their counterparts back home. The folks who are willing to strike out are necessarily more intrepid.
You can't compare it to Holland or Denmark or even Germany. These solutions won't work here.
America IS the land of opportunity and I would challenge you to find any other country which provides better opportunity and still protect your rights as well.
Edit: The land of opportunity doesn't mean the land of equality and the expression was never intended to be that.
America is not egoistic it's just a very hardcore country because it's built on top of people who with their lives at stake started exploring and setting up local societies.
So the country is build on tough women and men. They aren't more selfish or egoistic than any other person, their reality is just different than a little country like holland or my own (Denmark).