America, the Greatest Nation in the History of the World
The Newsroom’s Speech, likely one of the biggest Manifestos of the the Populist Movement in the United States on both the Left and Right. Has gained massive traction among Populists on the Social Democratic/Sanders-Stein Left. As well as the Paleoconservative/Alternative Right. A Common view of Populists is that America isn’t what it used to be. For the Left their Glory Era was the 1930s-1970s. For the American Paleoconservatives, its Pre World War 2. For the Alternative Right, its pre 1960s. However a Common View they hold is the fact that America is not the Greatest Nation in the world. Left Wing Populists hold favorable views of Canada and Europe while “Right” wing Populists hold favorable views of Putins Russia.
However this is untrue. For Left Wing Populists the Speech Below is their manifesto. Thus I am compelled to Respond. I will respond with Actual Facts and Data unlike Crowder who did a half-assed Response. So…
WILL McAVOY: You know why people don’t like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so f***in’ smart then how come they lose so g**damn always?
Define “Liberal”. Liberal in what sense. Classical Liberal Social Liberal or Neoliberal?.
WILL McAVOY: And with a straight face, you’re gonna sit there and tell students that America is so star-spangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom. Japan has freedom. The U.K. France. Italy. Germany. Spain. Australia. BELGIUM has freedom. (laughs) Two hundred and seven sovereign states in the world, like, a hundred and eighty of them have freedom.
This is wrong on many levels. First off all I have no clue where he got “187” Free Countries from. According to Freedom House 87 Countries (45%) of countries are Free countries. 59 are Party Free ( 30%) and 49 are not Free (25%). Thus forth 55% of the world are in Partly Free or not Free countries in comparison to 45% who are Free. This is not even mentioning the fact Freedom is in Decline Worldwide and has been since the Obama Administrations failed Policy of leading from behind.
No one in the United States tells us were the only ones in the world with Freedom. I never heard such a statement until I heard this show.Not even the most Patriotic of Americans will tell you that. However the United States due to its Constitution/Bill of Rights remains more Free (At Least in terms of Personal/Individual Freedom) then every country mentioned and in the world. And more free then Japan France Italy Germany Spain and Belgium in terms of Economic Freedom.
Are any of these nations as Free as the United States? Well, no.
Using the Latest Data from the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom the Free Existence Gun Rights Index as well as Drug Rights Index. The United States easily is much more free.
The United States using
The United States Gets a score of 75. The Highest Score in the world and rising.
How do these Nations Score?
Canada:68
Japan:60
United Kingdom:63
France:60
Italy:57
Germany:67
Spain:64
Australia:67
Belgium: 63
So yes while they may have freedom. No country has as much freedom as the United States and never has had as much freedom as the United States. Will may be right were not as free as we used to be. But were working on it. The rest of the world isn’t even trying.
WILL McAVOY: There’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy. Twenty-seventh in math. Twenty-second in science. Forty-ninth in life expectancy. A hundred and seventy-eighth in infant mortality. Third in median household income. Number four in labor force and number four in exports.
Education:
We have a much more diverse society than most European and Asian countries. Diversity often come with cultural challenges. Black households, for example, are significantly more likely to have stability problems, while Asian households tend to do much better. Dumping money into education only gets you so far as evinced by the fact that some of our worst school districts spend more money per pupil than any other country in the world.
Here are Pisa scores broken down into more categories, including census races:
2009 PISA Scores by Race:
With the above Graphs White Americans outperform most of the Western World, Asian Americans outperform every Western Nation and are only rivaled by the City State, Singapore as well as city state, Hong Kong and Chinese city Beijing (Mainly because only those cities are rich enough to take the tests). African Americans outperform every African nation and Hispanic Americans outperform every Hispanic nation.
The US Education System remains the world leader in Individual Performance, due to the fact the US is a much more diverse of a nation then say Finland or Japan.
The US is a big country with tremendous diversity. We also have cultural issues. I dont like getting into this because people assume that I’m making some biology-based argument, but I’m not. the truth of the matter is that certain cultures approach and value education differently. asian cultures tend to do the best, and this is reflected in the ethnicity-based test score data in the US.
Again, not about genetics or biology.Nigerians have the highest academic achievement in the US. You just shouldnt take a vast and diverse country of 320 million people, look at average test scores, and reach the conclusion your question is premised on
And the American Education system is the worlds leader in Opportunity. Like I said in terms of Economic Opportunity, the Opportunity for American children to succeed is there as shown with the PISA results of Asian, even if American children and families don’t interact with them. Looking at results is only looking at a glass half empty.
The US has demographic challenges that other countries don’t. When you compare similar populations, such as certain immigrant groups, or descendants of certain populations. For example, Americans of Swedish descent are significantly richer than their counterparts back home, and also have a lower poverty rate. Similarly, only 20% of Somali refugees in Sweden hold jobs, while 50% of those in the US do. Culture matters, and the US system tends to produce the best outcomes for similar populations with similar cultures
Life Expectancy:
The shorter life expectancy in America is due to societal issues. Factor out the violent deaths and premire deaths from teen pregnancy, and America is at the top with the other developed countries in terms of life expectancy.
Forbes did a good article on this here.
US life expectancy data is inflated by fatal injuries, which occur at higher rate in the US. This is not reflective of the quality of healthcare.
If you really want to measure health outcomes, the best way to do it is at the point of medical intervention. If you have a heart attack, how long do you live in the U.S. vs. another country? If you’re diagnosed with breast cancer? In 2008, a group of investigators conducted a worldwide study of cancer survival rates, called CONCORD. They looked at 5-year survival rates for breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, and prostate cancer. I compiled their data for the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, and western Europe. Guess who came out number one?
Car accidents and homicides don’t tell us much about health care quality:
Another point worth making is that people die for other reasons than health. For example, people die because of car accidents and violent crime. A few years back, Robert Ohsfeldt of Texas A&M and John Schneider of the University of Iowa asked the obvious question: what happens if you remove deaths from fatal injuries from the life expectancy tables? Among the 29 members of the OECD, the U.S. vaults from 19th place to…you guessed it…first. Japan, on the same adjustment, drops from first to ninth. It’s great that the Japanese eat more sushi than we do, and that they settle their arguments more peaceably. But these things don’t have anything to do with socialized medicine.
I can go on with this for hours however its clear the United States, at least for now has the most efficient effective healthcare system in the world.As well as the highest Life Expectancy excluding Fatal Injuries.
The above standardization isn’t meant to give an absolute idea of actual life expectancy, but rather produce a relative ranking after accounting for homicides and traffic fatalities. Again, it’s hard to determine exactly where the US sits since there isn’t much data on exactly when such fatal injuries occur in a person’s life on average, but the US does fairly well regardless
We do have plenty of other unhealthy habits though, like a worse diet on average than Europeans and Canadians
Infant Mortality:
The U.S. ranks high on the infant mortality list largely because we actually measure neonatal deaths, notably in premature infant fatalities.
One of the other common arguments you hear from uninformed people outside the USA is the higher infant mortality rates argument.
Here’s an article by Stanford University professor Scott Atlas to explain why the argument fails.
Excerpt:
Virtually every national and international agency involved in statistical assessments of health status, health care, and economic development uses the infant-mortality rate — the number of infants per 1,000 live births who die before reaching the age of one — as a fundamental indicator. America’s high infant-mortality rate has been repeatedly put forth as evidence “proving” the substandard performance of the U.S. health-care system.
[…]n a 2008 study, Joy Lawn estimated that a full three-fourths of the world’s neonatal deaths are counted only through highly unreliable five-yearly retrospective household surveys, instead of being reported at the time by hospitals and health-care professionals, as in the United States. Moreover, the most premature babies — those with the highest likelihood of dying — are the least likely to be recorded in infant and neonatal mortality statistics in other countries. Compounding that difficulty, in other countries the underreporting is greatest for deaths that occur very soon after birth.
[…]The United States strictly adheres to the WHO definition of live birth (any infant “irrespective of the duration of the pregnancy, which . . . breathes or shows any other evidence of life . . . whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached”) and uses a strictly implemented linked birth and infant-death data set. On the contrary, many other nations, including highly developed countries in Western Europe, use far less strict definitions, all of which underreport the live births of more fragile infants who soon die. As a consequence, they falsely report more favorable neonatal- and infant-mortality rates.
[…]Neonatal deaths are mainly associated with prematurity and low birth weight. Therefore the fact that the percentage of preterm births in the U.S. is far higher than that in all other OECD countries — 65 percent higher than in Britain, and more than double the rate in Ireland, Finland, and Greece — further undermines the validity of neonatal-mortality comparisons.
If you want to read more about how American health care compares with health care in socialized systems, read this article by Stanford University professor of medicine Dr. Scott Atlas. And you can get his book “In Excellent Health: Setting the Record Straight on America’s Health Care” from Amazon.
The AEI debunks this on their website as well
Many of the international comparisons of health outcomes are deeply flawed. The U.S. currently ranks 43rd internationally in infant mortality. Unfortunately, no consistent standard exists for reporting infant deaths across countries. Preterm birth (that is, births at less than 37 completed weeks of gestation) is a key risk factor for infant death, yet the United States is one of only eight countries that categorize extremely premature infant births as “live births,” despite these babies’ very low odds of survival. Specifically, “many nations do not report any live births at less than 23 weeks’ gestation, or less than 500 g, despite the presence of vital signs.” This may sound like a minor reporting difference, but a Philadelphia study found that when all deaths of infants delivered at 22 weeks’ gestation were excluded from its birth statistics, that city’s measured infant mortality rate declined by 40 percent.
The aggregate statistics also mask this important reality: if we categorize births by length of gestation, the U.S. ranks second, third or fourth as compared to major European countries, in that it achievesthe lowest infant mortality rates for every birth category examined prior to full-term (22–23 weeks, 24–27 weeks, 28–31 weeks and 32–36 weeks). Only Norway and Sweden (whose populations are much more homogenous and physically fit than America’s) achieve consistently better results.
Income:
According to Will we are 3rd in Median Household Income.
Yes in terms of Median Household Income we are ranked #5. However in terms of Overall Household Income Per Captia the US is ranked #1. And its not even close
In terms of Household Net Adjusted Disposable Income after Taxes the US is also ranked #1.
As well as Mean equivalized disposable household income (PPP) $
And #1 again in Median equivalised disposable household income (PPP) $
So Americans receive the most Overall Income and can do more with their money then any other people from around the Globe. Not bad for “The Country that’s no longer the Greatest in the World”.
It’s a sign of American prosperity that we can afford to buy more from other nations than they can afford to buy from us. It’s also a sign of prosperity that, when they do earn American dollars, foreigners often choose to invest those funds in the American economy (remember, the necessary flip side of a “trade deficit” is a “capital surplus”).
Labor Force.
Yes we are #4 in Labor Force because we are #4 in Population. That’s if we count the EU as a country
WILL McAVOY: We lead the world in only three categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies.
Incarceration:
The U.S. does have the highest incarceration rate in the world (that is, among nations that list these data honestly),aside from Tuvalu but the assertion that most of the people incarcerated are there for non-violent crimes is false. Advocates for de-incarceration often cite the number of federal prisoners who committed non-violent drug offenses. This is highly misleading. Of the 1.6 million inmates in America, only about 200,000 are federal prisoners.
About half of federal inmates are sentenced for drug crimes, but this shouldn’t shock anyone. Nearly all violent crimes are state matters. It’s a federal crime to transport a kidnap victim across state lines, to attempt to assassinate a federal official, and so forth. But robberies, rapes, assaults, and murder are mostly state matters. Among state inmates, only one in six is a drug offender.
Among the 50 percent of “non-violent” federal drug offenders, it’s difficult to know how many were arrested for a violent crime and plea-bargained to a lesser offense. Nor do we have good data on how many were previously convicted of a violent crime. A 2004 Bureau of Justice Statistics study found that 95 percent of those who served time in state prisons for non-violent crimes had a preceding criminal history (typically 9.3 arrests and 4.1 convictions) and 33 percent had a history of arrests for violent crime.
Among state prisoners, 54 percent are there for violent offenses. Perhaps the 46 percent who are incarcerated for non-violent crimes should be punished some other way. But to design good policy on that, we’d have to grapple with a number of issues. What do you do with offenders who are placed on probation or parole but continue to offend? What about the “crime in the streets versus crime in the suites” problem? Should we sentence embezzlers, child-porn dealers, and Medicaid cheats to community service but keep armed robbers behind bars? How will that affect the perception that incarceration is the “new Jim Crow”?
Many on both sides of the political spectrum are eager to leap aboard the “de-incarceration” bandwagon. It’s a way to show sympathy with African Americans and (to a much lesser degree) Hispanics who are disproportionately represented among inmates.
But the primary victims of crime are also African Americans and Hispanics. If “unlock ’em up” becomes the new conventional wisdom, more innocent people will suffer and more businesses will flee.
We’ve become complacent about crime because the crime rate has declined drastically since 1990. According to the FBI, violent crime increased by nearly 83 percent between 1973 and 1991 — a period of criminal-justice leniency. From 1991 to 2001, when incarceration rates increased, violent crime declined by 33.6 percent. The decline has persisted. There are many theories about the cause of the drop in crime (abortion, removing lead from paint, the waning of the crack epidemic, policing strategies), and some or all of those factors may have played a part, but the “incapacitation” argument — criminals who are behind bars cannot be mugging people — seems awfully strong.
It would, of course, be a better world if fewer Americans were growing up in neighborhoods where fatherlessness, intergenerational government dependency, and poor schools contribute to high rates of crime. But it’s hard to see how releasing more criminals to prey upon those very neighborhoods is the answer.
Incarceration is to protect society. The purpose of prisons are to protect the American people from criminals.Prisons also punish the guilty for offensive crimes against victims of such crimes. The amount of punishment
is fit to the crime.
Religion:
The United States is not a very religious country by Global Standards. When asked the Importance of Religion 69% of Americans believe Religion is very Important compared to 31% who don’t. The Leader in Belief of Religion is Bangladesh whom has a 99% Very Important Response with a 0% not very important response.
While the United States does have the Largest Christian Population(Due to the Fact its the Third Most Populous Country in the World). It does not per capita have the most Christians as the map below shows.
As the greatest foreign observer of America, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, noted in his Democracy in America, “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.” Or, as the great British historian Paul Johnson has just written: “In George Washington’s eyes, at least, America was in no sense a secular state,” and “the American Revolution was in essence the political and military expression of a religious movement.”
In fact, the Founders regarded America as a Second Israel, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, the “Almost Chosen” People. This self-identification was so deep that Thomas Jefferson, today often described as not even a Christian, wanted the seal of the United States to depict the Jews leaving Egypt at the splitting of the sea. Just as the Jews left Egypt, Americans left Europe.
This country was founded overwhelmingly by men and women steeped in the Bible. Their moral values emanated from the Bible, and they regarded liberty as possible only if understood as given by God. That is why the Liberty Bell’s inscription is from the Old Testament, and why Thomas Jefferson, the allegedly non-religious deist, wrote (as carved into the Jefferson Memorial): “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”
The evidence is overwhelming that the Founders were religious people who wanted a religious country that enshrined liberty for all its citizens, including those of different religions and those of no faith. But our educational institutions, especially the universities, are populated almost exclusively by secular individuals and books who seek to cast America’s past and present in their image.
Are we a Judeo-Christian country with liberty for people of every, and of no, faith? Or are we a secular country that happens to have within it a large number of individuals who hold Judeo-Christian values?
Western Europe has already become a secular society with secular values. If you think Western Europe is a better place than America and that it has a robust future, you should be working to remove Judeo-Christian influence from American life. On the other hand, if you look at Europe and see a continent adrift, with no identity and no strong values beyond economic equality and possessing little capacity to identify evil, let alone a will to fight it, then you need to start fighting against the secularization of America.
Or, if you think that the university, the most secular American institution, is largely a place where wisdom, character and a discerning ability to distinguish between right and wrong prevail, you should be working to remove Judeo-Christian values from American life. But if you believe that the university is largely a place of moral foolishness, then you need to start worrying about the secularization of America.
If America abandons its Judeo-Christian values basis and the central role of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, its founders’ guiding text, we are all in big trouble, including, most especially, America’s non-Christians. Just ask the Jews of secular Europe.
However, what separates America from Islamic Theocracies is the religious Freedom afforded by America.
America founded the principle of religious freedom. Until America was founded, it was the monarch who established a country’s religion. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitutions established the principle of religious freedom. This was a process began with the Pilgrims a group which descended from the established Church of England. The Pilgrims and Puritans, however, did not believe in religious freedom. They just though that this should be the established church. Protestantism by its very nature contained the germ of religious freedom. A core belief in Protestantism is the need to read the Bible as the basic source of religious belief.
The problem with this is that different people reading the Bible are inevitably going to reach different conclusions. This the proliferation of denominations was preordained. And so many denominations formed that there was no real alternstive to religiou freedom. And as there was also a largely Catholic colony, unity required that Catholics be included.
One of the complaints the colonists leveled against the British was efforts to promote an established church. Thus it is no accident that the First Amendment of the Constitution prohibited any effort to restrict the free exercise of religion. There was no real precedent for this anywhere in Europe. The Dutch were perhaps the most tolerant, but even there, religious freedom was not based on any constitutional guarantee. And the french Revolution which began so optimistically developed into a n effort to destroy religion.
Military Spending:
Taken from the National Interest.
Statistically true, but not particularly helpful. The United States also spends more on health care than the next nine countries combined. In 2012, Americans accounted for about one-third of the world’s total spending onentertainment. We’re a big, rich country — with a lot to protect and a host of vital interests around the globe.
More important is the trend in defense spending. The same data set that pegs U.S. spending at more than the next seven countries today shows that we spent more than the next thirteen countries combined in 2011. Our investment in national security compared with the rest of the world has dropped dramatically over the last four years.
Remember, robust defense funding serves a purpose. It allows the United States to preempt threats before they arrive at our shores. No other country is capable of protecting its interests around the world like the United States, and sustaining a military force that can project power worldwide comes at a cost.
The Gross world product is $78 Trillion which means there is a lot of reason for the US tax payer to fund the security of such trade.
The US military provides stability to global markets. So yes, the current size of the US military is justified because it is a very small cost to allow trillion of dollars worth of international trade.
The presence of US military forces in foreign countries (such as South Korea and Japan among others) deters aggression. It limits the amount of saber rattling and in some cases the actual violence that a belligerent nation may want to cause. The same can be argued for the US being party to the NATO alliance which provides protection to the Baltic States. (While they have concerns that the rest of NATO would come to their aid, most nations accept that the US will honor its NATO Article V responsibilities.) So while Russia may be making a lot of noise in Georgia and Ukraine (two non-NATO nations), it does not act overtly aggressive toward Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.
South Korea and Japan are two of the largest and most modern economies on the planet right now. The fact that they don’t have to worry about North Korea (or to some extent China) means they don’t have to invest more of their money in defense and that their stock markets don’t crash every time KJU decides to rattle his saber.
Since North Korea has a nuclear weapon, the ROK might decide they too need one in order to benefit from MAD. Unfortunately, this could lead to a regional arms race which would drive Japan to also developing their own nuclear weapons or at least missile defense (currently provided by the US). Very quickly, these arms races would drive Japan and the ROK out of the top 10 of all economic powers. This in turn would slow the global electronics market and the automobile industry. It is unlikely these nations would decide they did not need some form of defense from North Korea (and eventually from one another given their history). So this doesn’t impact just Japan and Korea, this will have implications for global trade.
Northern Europe plays a significant role in certain internet enterprises. Knowing they are generally safe from Russian intervention, keeps their markets stable as well.
The US Navy’s primary mission is defense of “the global commons” in the form of the world’s waterways. By deterring aggression in the South China Sea, keeping the Straits of Hormuz open, and leading counter-piracy operations off the coast of Africa, the USNavy provides stability to the world’s shipping lanes allowing for global commerce.
If the US Navy doesn’t lead this effort (and I’m not claiming we do this alone), then everybody gets to protect their own waterways. For those nations with major naval forces, their businesses will earn a huge advantage. If a country doesn’t have a strong navy and doesn’t have good treaties with someone who does, then hopefully they’ve got good rail lines that go through friendly countries. Otherwise, they may have to look inward for all of their business dealings.
US protection of the world’s waterways is done without expectation of reciprocation. No matter how strong or weak a nation’s economy or military is, they get to benefit from this protection. No US Navy means those waterways become accessible only to those nations who can afford to defend them. This becomes a tremendous economic burden which must be passed on to consumers. This limits global trade but it will most significantly impact the smaller, developing nations.
The US Air Force has a similar mission with regards to space where the USAF managed, operated, and maintained GPS constellation allows for the more efficient flow of commerce around the world. The communications satellites it also supports keeps the world’s information networks alive and well. The good news is, now everyone has the option to switch over to GLONASS if they so choose. Granted the European experience with natural gas lines from Russia might temper that excitement but there are options. So if the US decided to stop supporting the world’s need for GPS, Russia could step in.
History indicates this could be costly, could lend itself to providing leverage to Russia. The US provides GPS to everyone without cost. Without threat of turning it off if you don’t play nice. Again, this requires someone else to pick up the economic burden of supporting this. The US has the resources to do so without charging anyone else for the service. Not many other countries can claim the same, so eventually there may be costs incurred if the US chooses not to do so. And again, those costs will eventually work their way down to the consumer which means a slowing of global trade, particularly with smaller nations.
Another key aspect of the US military is support to disaster relief. Whether it is an earthquake in Tibet, a hurricane in Haiti, or floods and landslides in Pakistan, the US military provides the significant logistical support required to get aid to those areas. Many countries contribute support to such efforts. They provide money or supplies or forces. But very, very, very few of them can get all of those resources to where they are needed. Very few countries have the ability to open airfields in post-disaster areas. Fewer still have the ability to create airfields in the middle of nowhere, rapidly. And when fresh water is the most important thing you need, there are few resources better than a US warship parked off your coast able to produce an unending source of fresh water.
None of this cheap. All of it MUST be done. There are no options for the above needs to go unmet. So who else is better positioned to pay for this? Yes, the military is very expensive (individual operations, not as much). But what would be the cost if the US military did not do these things? Sure, they would still need to be done. Someone would have to do them, or more likely, band together to do them, but at what costs to each of those individual economies and then on the global market place itself? Given that trade off though, what would the impact then be on the individual American’s ability to make money in his/her chosen profession?
Are these the only Areas in Which America Leads the World in?
No, No. Not even close
The United States is the Freest Nation in the World
The American Constitution also created the idea of constitutional protected civil liberties. This was based on the precedents of the state constitutions. They were not liberties granted at the grace of a monarch and subject to repeal , but guaranteed by law as part of a citizen's natural rights. They had to be respected by the Government. America was the first country to provide constitution guarantees of civil liberties. These became liberties that people countries around the world aspire to and totalitarian governments and theocracies attempt to suppress.
America led the way in the modern world from monarchism to democracy. Here our English traditions led the way, beginning most notably with Magna Carta (1215) and the rise of Parliament. Britain was, however, not a democrcy at the time of the Revolution. There were serious limits on monarchial rule, but that was a far cry from democracy. And many throughout Europe blieved that the average man was not capable of self government.
Even after the Revolution, most Europeans felt that the ametrican experiment would not work. And to decaded adter the american Revolution, the french Revolutoon quickly turned into an orgy of blood letting. At its creation, American democracy was limited, but from its creation there was a steady expansion of democrcy, most notably during the Jacksonin era when all property tests duaappeared (1830s). And then with the abolition of slavery and the extension of citizenship to the freed slaves (1860s). Even at this time, most of Europe was still ruled by kings and emperors. America and its democracy became a beacon to the world. Millions of Europeans flocked to America to enjoy the freedom and opportunity america offered. And this continues to be the case today.
This may Ruffle Some Feathers among Libertarian European and Canadian Circles. But America remains the Freest Nation in the World and has remained so for the past 241 years. Going off the Human Liberty Index. The United States outranks its competitors.
Measuring the Following Aspects:
The United States gets a Cumulative Score of 75. The Second Highest is Estonia with a Cumulative Score of 73. While America may not be as Free as it was 100 years ago. It still leads the World in terms of Freedom.
The United States has been a trailblazer in rights. From the Bill of Rights to Civil Rights and LGBTQA+ rights, Americans are blessed today to have a series of rights that many other foreign citizens could only dream of. In America, we can say essentially whatever we want because of our First Amendment rights. This enables us to call America terrible, burn the American flag, and say that we hate our President without facing any consequence.
We can make fun of our politicians on TV or on Twitter in meme wars without fearing for our lives. Can you even imagine an American media where it would be illegal to criticize Trump / Obama / Bush / Clinton? I cannot! Many other countries don’t grant their citizens this liberty. In Thailand insulting the monarchy can be a crime punishable by 3–15 years in prison. In Turkey criticizing President (or should I say Dictator?) Erdogan will lead to months in jail. Surprisingly, it is also illegal to criticize political leaders in most of Europe. Many Americans (especially with today’s president) take this right for granted.
America has shined as a beacon of freedom in an unfree world for more than two centuries. To this day, for instance, most people living outside our borders reside in countries where the private practice of broadcast journalism is illegal and where the state is the dominant banker. Americans can say anything they want, worship any god they choose, and associate with any motley crew around. Our legacy is not slave chains, Wounded Knee, and the murder of James Byrd, but American GIs liberating a Nazi death camp, an immigrant’s first glance of lady liberty’s torch, and Ronald Reagan exhorting the Soviet’s to tear down the Berlin Wall. If nothing else, America means freedom.
America remains a shining city on the hill because, despite steady erosion in some cases, we are a nation that celebrates individuals-individual freedom, individual initiative, and even individual failure. We tolerate failure more than any country in the world, and everyone learns from failure. We rejoice in cultural differences, but unlike many Euros, we insist that at some point you become “American.” I know many people think this is unravelling, especially with Hispanic immigration. But it’s interesting that in 1910 there were more daily German-language newspapers in the U.S. than there are Spanish-language newspapers today; that in the late 1900s it took about three generations before the majority of the language in the home of an immigrant was English, whereas today it’s closer to two generations.
The United States, among all nations, also remains a beacon of liberty because we are a nation of LAW. We still respect, for the most part, the right to property. Citizens, unlike most places in the world, can be armed. We uphold, in most cases, sanctity of contract. And so on. It isn’t just that we have unfettered liberty in America, but that we have a structure of law that generates a climate of responsibility to go along with it.
The United States has the Highest Amount of Privacy Protections in the World.
Europe does have more comprehensive consumer privacy rules than the United States. It does not make sense to compare European consumer rules for privacy and data protection with the American regime for overseeing national security surveillance. That is comparing apples to oranges. However, instead of simply objecting to the unfairness of this comparison, let’s compare apples to apples. How does American intelligence oversight stack up next to European intelligence oversight?
Here, the record is clear: the United States wins, hands down. A comprehensive analysis of worldwide surveillance laws undertaken by the Center for Democracy and Technology shows just how little is required in most countries around the world, including in Europe, for undertaking national security surveillance. For example, under the UK’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), such surveillance can be obtained with the approval of a Secretary of State. Germany authorizes such surveillance through a parliamentary committee. These safeguards, structurally inferior to the court orders required by FISA, have been determined by European courts to satisfy the fundamental liberties required by the European Convention on Human Rights.
What about external surveillance? New rules issued by the Obama administration under Presidential Policy Directive 28 (PPD-28) provide practical protection for the privacy of foreigners in NSA collection. These may make only modest changes to surveillance practices in the short run, but it is a mistake to see them as mere “tweaks” in surveillance policy. They are a major paradigm shift. When I served as a privacy official in the intelligence community, I had no law, executive order, or directive that told me that the privacy rights of foreigners matter. The new rules change that. The mechanisms of intelligence oversight — -privacy officials and boards, inspectors general, and lawyers — -now must pay attention to everyone’s privacy. No other nation has publicly committed its external intelligence services to specific rules designed to respect everyone’s privacy. Germany and many other European nations have protested NSA spying. Will their intelligence services issue oversight rules protecting the privacy not just of their own citizens, but of all of us?
On transparency, the United States wins again. While the United States continues to declassify more and more details of its intelligence operations in the wake of the Snowden revelations, European countries play catch up. Last month, a UK court that oversees UK intelligence services — -the Investigatory Powers Tribunal -found in a case brought by civil liberties groups that, although its information sharing with the NSA was consistent with European human rights law, it needed to be much more transparent about the rules under which it operates.
I’m looking forward to the launch of “GCHQ on the record.”
The United States should not be shy in talking about its record on intelligence oversight, nor should it accept the premise that Europeans care more about privacy than Americans. The United States leads the world when it comes to privacy protection in intelligence activities if only because the rest of the world’s rules are so weak. We should start talking about it.
The United States has the Highest Quality of Life in the World:
The Economist/OECD Better Life Index 2013
America provides an amazingly good life for the ordinary guy. Rich people live well everywhere, but what distinguishes America is that it provides a remarkably high standard of living for the “common man.” A country is not judged by how it treats its most affluent citizens but by how it treats the average citizen.
In much of the world today, the average citizen has a very hard life. In the Third World, people are struggling for their basic existence. It is not that they don’t work hard. On the contrary, they labor incessantly and endure hardships that are almost unimaginable to people in America. In the villages of Asia and Africa, for example, a common sight is a farmer beating a pickaxe into the ground, women wobbling under heavy loads, children carrying stones. These people are performing arduous labor, but they are getting nowhere. The best they can hope for is to survive for another day. Their clothes are tattered, their teeth are rotten, and disease and death constantly loom over the horizon. For most poor people on the planet, life is characterized by squalor, indignity, and brevity.
Even middle-class people in the underdeveloped world endure hardships that make everyday life a strain. One problem is that the basic infrastructure of the Third World is abysmal: The roads are not properly paved, the water is not safe to drink, pollution in the cities has reached hazardous levels, public transportation is overcrowded and unreliable, and there is a two-year waiting period to get a telephone. The poorly paid government officials are inevitably corrupt, which means that you must pay bribes to get things done. Most important, prospects for the children’s future are dim.
In America, the immigrant immediately recognizes that things are different. The newcomer who sees America for the first time typically experiences emotions that alternate between wonder and delight. Here is a country where everything works: The roads are clean and paper-smooth; the highway signs are clear and accurate; the public toilets function properly; when you pick up the telephone, you get a dial tone; you can even buy things from the store and then take them back. For the Third World visitor, the American supermarket is a thing to behold: endless aisles of every imaginable product, 50 different types of cereal, and multiple flavors of ice cream. The place is full of countless unappreciated inventions: quilted toilet paper, fabric softener, cordless telephones, disposable diapers, roll-on luggage, deodorant. Some countries, even today, lack these conveniences.
Critics of America complain about the scandal of persistent poverty in a nation of plenty, but the immigrant cannot help noticing that the United States is a country where the poor live comparatively well. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s when CBS television broadcast “People Like Us,” which was intended to show the miseries of the poor during an American recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, probably with a view to embarrassing the Reagan Administration. But by the testimony of former Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans have television sets and microwave ovens and cars. They arrived at the same perception of America as a friend of mine from Mumbai who has been trying unsuccessfully to move to the United States for nearly a decade. Finally, I asked him, “Why are you so eager to come to America?” His reply: “Because I really want to move to a country where the poor people are fat.”
The moral triumph of America is that it has extended the benefits of comfort and affluence, traditionally enjoyed by a very few, to a large segment of society. Few people in America have to wonder where their next meal is coming from. Emergency medical care is available to everyone, even those without proper insurance. Every child has access to an education, and many have the chance to go to college.
Ordinary Americans enjoy not only security and dignity, but also comforts that other societies reserve for the elite. We live in a country where construction workers regularly pay $4 for a nonfat latte, where maids drive rather nice cars, where plumbers and postal workers take their families on vacation in Europe or the Caribbean. As Irving Kristol once observed, there is virtually no restaurant in America to which a CEO can go to lunch with the absolute assurance that he will not find his secretary also dining there. Given the standard of living of the ordinary American, it is no wonder that socialist or revolutionary schemes have never found a wide constituency in the United States. As sociologist Werner Sombart observed, all socialist utopias have come to grief in America on roast beef and apple pie.
As a result, people live longer, fuller lives in America. Although at trade meetings around the world protesters rail against the American version of technological capitalism, in reality, the American system has given citizens a much longer life expectancy and the means to live more intensely and actively. The average American can expect to live long enough to play with his or her grandchildren.
In 1900, the life expectancy in America was around 50 years; today, it is more than 75 years. Advances in medicine and agriculture are the main reasons. This increased life span is not merely a material gain; it is also a moral gain because it means a few years of leisure after a lifetime of work, more time to devote to a good cause, and more occasions to do things with the grandchildren. In many countries, people who are old seem to have nothing to do; they just wait to die. In America, the old are incredibly vigorous, and people in their seventies pursue the pleasures of life.
“Yes,” the critics carp, “but these benefits are only available to the rich.” Not so. Indeed, America’s system of technological capitalism has over time extended the life span of both rich and poor while narrowing the gap between the two. In 1900, for example, the rich person lived to 60 while the poor person died at 45. Today, the life expectancy of an affluent person in America is 78 years while that of the poor person is around 74. Thus, in one of the most important indicators of human well-being, the rich have advanced in America but the poor have advanced even more.
The numbers below are the numbers that measure the material well-being of households. As you can see, the United States is far ahead of other nations. Indeed, the only three countries that are even close are two admirable tax havens and oil-rich Norway. By the way, since the OECD is a left-leaning bureaucracy that is guilty of periodically rigging numbers against the United States, you can be confident that this AIC data isn’t structured to favor America.
Low inflation and strong purchasing power is why America often ranks high on various ‘cost of living’ indexes, which take into account rent, inflation, cost of basic goods and services, and local wages. For this reason, American tourists in Britain are often taken aback by how small and expensive everything is, as they are not accustomed the sudden downgrade in standard of living despite Britain being a ‘first world nation’.
This is probably why so many people want to immigrate to America, because despite rising wealth inequality and stagnant inflation-adjusted wages, it’s still better than their home country. The trend could also be part of America’s transition to a post-scarcity economy where most citizens have near-zero or negative net-worth but have abundant purchasing power and technological utility, as well as subsidized healthcare (expansion of Medicaid) and housing (expansion of public housing).
Americans have the most material goods in the OECD.
The specific tables above are a little old, but the patterns are much the same today. In the OECD Better Life Index the US ranks 2nd in housing.
America is the Most Genuinely Compassionate Nation On Earth
If you look at rates of “voluntary private social expenditure” among nations, it turns out that Americans are easily the most generous people in the developed world. People in the United States are so generous that their voluntary giving amounts to 10.2 percent of gross domestic product. The only other nations that even crack 5 percent of GDP are the Netherlands, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It’s also worth noting that these numbers actually understate the charity gap between Americans and folks from other nations. Economic output in the United States is about 30 percent higher than it is in the rest of the developed world, so charitable giving by Americans actually represents a much bigger slice of a much bigger pie.
The welfare state has grown in the United States, but much less than it has grown in Europe. And the intellectual climate in the United States is much more supportive of capitalism. The growth of the social democratic parties in Europe and the resulting expansion of the welfare state are reasons why the industrial countries of Europe have not enjoyed the same robust economic growth that has prevailed in the United States.
America is the most charitable nation on the face of the Earth…and I am NOT talking about the trillion-plus dollars in annual federal welfare spending paid for with tax dollars extorted from working Americans. I am talking about the billions of dollars that Americans voluntarily give each year to The Salvation Army, Goodwill, The Red Cross, their churches, and other national and local charities. I am talking about the millions and millions of volunteer hours donated to churches, homeless shelters, battered women’s shelters, children’s homes, and food kitchens, not to mention the private monetary donations made to fund these endeavors.
I am talking about the millions of instances of individual kindness and courtesy shown each and every day by average Americans for whom there will be no accolades, no public commendations, no awards ceremonies…just the warmth and satisfaction that comes from helping our fellow man and knowing (for Christians) that we have followed the admonition and commandments of Jesus Christ. Are these expressions of charity exclusive to America? Of course not. But in America we do charity like we do everything else…BIG!
The United States is the Wealthiest Nation in the History of the World.
America is the sun around which the world economy revolves. The typical creator of wealth in the world is an American. Foreigners benefit from buying better products from American companies and working better jobs manufacturing such products. Take America’s $19 trillion dollar economy out of the picture, and the economic well being of the rest of the world nose-dives.
The United States has more Wealth then the Next 5 Nations Combined
Americans are the Wealthiest People in the World on an Individual Basis as Well
America has the Highest Levels of Economic Opportunity and Absolute Mobility (American Dream)
We hold these truths to be self‐evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” — The Declaration of Independence, 1776.
93% of those in the bottom quintile have incomes greater than their parents’, as do 84% of Americans across all income levels. As Schneider says, “In sum, relative mobility depicts a glass that is half empty, whereas absolute mobility depicts a glass that is half full.” Ideology, of course, will determine which view of the “glass” is more politically useful. But the material amenities and comforts enjoyed by the statistical poor suggest that the visions of Dickensian deprivation conjured by progressives are misleading.
In a Brookings Institution paper, “International Comparisons of Economic Mobility,” Julia Isaacs summarizes longitudinal earnings data contrasting “rags to riches” mobility in Denmark and the United States. The data, for 2004, examine a sample of men whose fathers were in the bottom fifth of the earnings distribution.In Denmark, 14 percent of such men successfully made the climb from bottom to top, whereas only 8 percent of Americans did so.Expanding the scope to encompass the chance to reach the top two fifths yields 33 percent for Danish sons starting in the bottom fifth versus 18 percent for American sons starting in the bottom fifth.
What exactly does this mean? That the opportunity to rise is less available in America? That is not necessarily the case from the data, because it turns out that one has to acquire a lot more riches in the United States to be at the top of the pile. As Isaacs correctly notes, “Americans who climb from bottom to top in one generation are climbing further in absolute dollars than their counterparts in Europe and Canada”.
Exploring this point further, journalist Reihan Salam demonstrated the actual income growth that would be required to replicate the rags-to-riches scenario. Using data from four-person households, Salam found that:
In 2004, Danish households at the 10th percentile earned $25,500, considerably more than the $19,968 income of American households at the 10th percentile. Danish households at the 50th percentile earned around $45,340 against around $53,344 in the U.S. And Danish households at the 90th percentile earned around $70,838 against just under $113,474 in the U.S. Making it from $25,500 to $70,838 is, for obvious reasons, easier than making it from $19,968 to $113,474.
Thus, while “rags to riches” in Denmark required income growth of about $40,000, achieving the same quintile mobility result in the U.S. would have required income growth of about $90,000. Due to the varying widths of the income quintiles, one cannot deduce, based on the 14 percent to 8 percent comparison alone, whether one country yields more upward mobility as we might readily understand the term. Moreover, it is especially important to note that any attempt to compress the distance between quintiles artificially does not create any more economic opportunity or upward mobility, much as redistributing wealth does not create any more of it.
The successful American child is more than twice as rich as the successful Danish child. The competent and motivated Danish child is more likely to want to play in America.
Income distributions are different in different countries. Countries with extended welfare systems tend to have lower median incomes, but less variance in incomes. Countries organized around market principles have higher median incomes, but more variance. This suggests the following question: is there more economic mobility in welfare states than in market-oriented states?
Relative economic mobility is illustrated by the probability children from the bottom 10th of the distribution can move to the top 10th within their working life. Since this trip normally takes multiple generations, the probability is quite low worldwide. The first thing to notice about this comparison is it is a zero-sum process — someone must fall as you rise.
Absolute economic mobility is illustrated by the probability low income children will earn more real income than their parents. This probability remains quite high, around 80 percent. If economic growth shifts the entire income distribution to higher incomes, this is what is meant by “a rising tide lifts all boats”which can only be true if nobody has holes in their boat. We know many people have holes and some appear to be busy putting holes in their boats.
The “American dream” is the promise that children will have more income than their parents, which is an absolute not a relative economic mobility concept. Relative economic mobility also means absolute economic mobility only if the economy is stable or it is growing.
At this point, gentle reader has deduced what is needed for international measures: the probability a child from the bottom 10th percentile can increase his income by a fixed amount (say $30,000) for each country. This would be a direct measure of how difficult absolute mobility is in each country and it is normalized for direct comparisons. Since the U.S. remains the favored destination for the world’s “best and brightest,” I suspect the odds are better here than over there.
Since relative mobility measures are low in the U.S. (due to the wide distribution of income) and are available from multiple studies, they are reported as ample evidence the American dream is dead. The problem is the American dream is an absolute economic mobility dream; relative mobility tells us nothing.
Remarkably, not only do 84 percent of all Americans exceed their parents’ family income, but 93 percent of Americans raised in the bottom quintile do so as well, which gives an important twist on the stickiness concern for those at the bottom of the income spread.In contrast, despite stickiness at the top, only 70 percent of all Americans who were raised in the top quintile were able to surpass their parents’ family income.
It’s possible for a child to experience absolute mobility but decline in relative mobility. This would occur if the grown child has higher family income than his or her parents (i.e. an increase in absolute mobility), but this increase was less than the average change in income across generations for all families.
Each of these mobility concepts can be related to different elements of the American dream. Absolute mobility measures the extent to which opportunities and living standards for each generation exceed those of the generation before. Relative mobility is more ambitious; it assesses the extent to which the sky is the limit and all opportunities are available to everyone, regardless of where they start in life.
So is the American dream still alive? In terms of absolute mobility, the answer is yes. Between 1968 and 2006, 81% of children had a higher inflation-adjusted family income than their parents did, with intergenerational income growing by an average of 84%. Income increased somewhat more rapidly (92%) for families in the highest income decile, but income increased across generations for families at every income decile by at least 61%. Pew’s computations are also quite conservative and almost certainly understate the amount of absolute mobility in the U.S.
The data on relative mobility are more mixed. Forty-seven percent of children born to parents with bottom-third income levels climbed into the middle or upper thirds, while 53% remained in the bottom third. This is less upward relative mobility than would be expected if capabilities were distributed randomly across the population and there were no barriers to economic advancement.
Thomas Sowell has frequently reiterated the fact that most people who are in the bottom quintile of the income spectrum tend not to stay there, and people in the top quintile of the income spectrum tend not to stay at the top. The following graphs illustrate this point clearly:
Social mobility is measured as probability of getting from lower quartile to top quartile or from lower quintile to top quintile or some such thing.
That probability is higher in countries like Sweden or Canada or Germany than in US because the distance to travel is too damn short in those countries.
Take your favorite profession that require a degree: computer programmer, civil engineer, accountant then go salary comparison sites such as glassdor-dot-com
Glassdoor Job Search | Find the job that fits your life
And compare these salaries.
US would be a clear winner over Canada, Germany, France and even very competitive against Sweden, and that is before we factor in income tax.
So yes it is easy to get from lower quartile to high quartile in France when the distance to travel is so pathetically short.
More-so Economic Mobility is not necessarily economic opportunity.
Scandinavian Americas have higher Earnings in terms of Per Captia GDP then their counterparts back in Scandinavia, indicating more economic oppritunity due to culture in the United States.
According to the 2010 US Census, the median household income in the United States is $51,914. This can be compared with a median household income of $61,920 for Danish Americans, $59,379 for Finish-Americans, $60,935 for Norwegian Americans and $61,549 for Swedish Americans. There is also a group identifying themselves simply as “Scandinavian Americans” in the US Census. The median household income for this group is even higher at $66,219.
The levels of economic opportunity for descendants of Scandinavians living in America is considerably higher than their cousins in Scandinavia. We cannot draw definitive conclusions from these figures, since household composition may differ, but there is prima facie evidence that Scandinavians who move to the US are significantly better off than those who stay at home.
Scandinavian culture coupled with US-style policy translates to low levels of poverty, in the same way that Scandinavian culture coupled with large welfare states translates to low levels of poverty.
Opportunity to move up the Economic Ladder are there. Even if Americans don’t interact with them. The Median Income for Asian Americans is 75,245. Largely because of the culture that Persists with Asian Americans. Every Immigrant has the Opportunity to do well in America, as shown with American Median Incomes by Ethnicity. American Median Incomes outperform everyone in their home nations aside from petro-states like Qatar and Noway.
Education is emphasized more than anything else in the Asian household. Get good grades, go to college, or else be a disappointment. Ever wonder why there are so many Asian dentists, doctors, and lawyers? More education is correlated with higher income and wealth. A 2013 Nielsen Research Report found that Asian American households have a median net worth of $89,300 compared to $68,800 for overall US households, a 30% difference. Meanwhile, roughly 49% of Asian Americans have Bachelor’s degrees vs. 28% of the general US population, a 75% difference. This website describes the cultural factors here.
The United States has the Highest Household Income, and 7th highest Nominal GDP Per Captia with the 11th highest GDP PPP Per Captia. The Average American has the opportunity to to make the same amount of wealth as their fellow Americans, as reflected in their average incomes. More or so than any other nation off of solely Household Income.And only less opportunity in terms of GDP Per Captia then city states and petro states. However in terms of Per Captia GDP immigrants in America outperform those in their birth nations, showing higher levels of Economic Opportunity.
The Founding Fathers created a nation in which every individual was guaranteed an equal opportunity. They did not create a country in which every individual would have the same level of talent, the same intelligence, or the same capacities for certain skills. Because of this, through the Declaration of Independence and the framing documents that followed, the Founding Fathers created a nation in which every individual who desired to achieve the American Dream would have the same opportunities to do so. This does not guarantee that individuals would achieve the same outcomes. That would also be dependent upon an individual’s innate and learned skills.
America is the land of opportunity. In many nations, oligarchs control wealth and inherit success, but in America, rags-to-riches stories are not uncommon with people such as Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and Oprah Winfrey overcoming their poverty and making meaningful contributions to society.
The government of the United States was not created to aid equality of outcome. It was not created to ensure that upon seeking the American Dream, every individual achieves the same goals. Essentially, that is the fundamental principle of a communist society. In a capitalist society as created by the framers, individuals must work to achieve their American dreams. The government’s job is to ensure that the equality of opportunity stays in place and that no individual or group obstructs that right.
Conservatives believe in the American Dream. Not only that. They believe that every individual should have the same opportunity to achieve their own version of the American Dream. This does not mean, though, that every individual will have the same outcome. Not everyone who tries will achieve the American dream and live in pure equality next to their neighbors. That’s where empowerment of the individual comes in. This nation was designed to provide the opportunity for success.
These fundamental principles of the nation have not changed since the Founding Fathers created this country. The government, including Presidents, Congressmen, and local officials, whether Democrat or Republican, make a promise to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. Their job is to ensure the general welfare of the United States. Ensuring equal opportunity and fundamental rights is the purpose of the government, the Constitution, and all of the framing materials of this country. To argue that, because the government does not or should not hand out jobs, money, and others people’s hard earned savings, they “don’t believe in equality” is a faulty argument based on a biased opinion of equality. A level playing field does not mean that every player will make it to home base. The nation provides the equal opportunity. It is up to the individual to create, build, and work for the outcome.
However you measure it Americans have considerably more economic opportunity than any other nation, as reflected by cross-country comparisons of Household incomes.
All-in-all, most average Americans have a lot of money, access to high-quality products at low prices, and unprecedented opportunity to excel (high social mobility). Many economists argue that inequality at the level we’re witnessing in the US is a natural and healthy outcome of a thriving economic system — the very system that has produced a thriving middle-class, the innovation that has improved our lives ten-fold, and coincidentally lifted billions of people out of abject poverty worldwide. Americans are rich, have ample opportunities, and anyone who denies this is in fact in denial of the evidence.
The average American is significantly richer than the average Swede, but furthermore the average American of Swedish descent is significantly richer than the average American. Culture is a very important economic factor, as evidenced by accounting balances in the Eurozone, and folks from cultures the world round seem to do much much better in the US.
In America the only thing that matters is how hard/smart you work, not your skin color, name or class. If you analyze all of the demographics in America, you realize that groups whose values focus on education and family prosper.
In America we don’t believe in equal outcomes.Equal outcomes are NOT an American idealthey are a Communist & Socialist ideal. We in America are rooted in Meritocracy what you do and earn is based on your willingness to do anything within the legal limits to gain more knowledge, learn faster, better and cheaper than your peers and do more to train your mind body and soul for the difficult journey ahead.
All this does not equal your desired outcome either it just prepares you to take advantage of all your efforts when it intersects with the right opportunity! Equal Justice & Equal Opportunity to succeed or fail as you see fit as an individual.
America offers more opportunity and social mobility than any other country. In much of the world, even today, if your father is a bricklayer, you become a bricklayer. Most societies offer limited opportunities for and little chance of true social mobility. Even in Europe, social mobility is relatively restricted. When you meet a rich person, chances are that person comes from a wealthy family. This is not to say that ordinary citizens cannot rise up and become successful in France and Germany, but such cases are atypical. Much more typical is the condescending attitude of the European “old rich” toward the self-made person, who is viewed as a bit of a vulgar interloper. In Europe, as in the rest of the world, the preferred path to wealth is through inheritance.
Not so in America. Success stories of people who have risen up from nothing are so common that they are unremarkable. Nobody bothers to notice that in the same family, one brother is a gas station attendant and the other is a vice president at Oracle. “Old money” carries no prestige in America-it is as likely to mean that a grandparent was a bootlegger or a robber baron. Rather, as the best-selling book The Millionaire Next Door documents, more than 80 percent of American millionaires are self-made.
Indeed, America is the only country that has created a population of “self-made tycoons.” More than 50 percent of the Americans on the Forbes 400 “rich list” got there through their own efforts. Only in America could Pierre Omidyar, whose parents are Iranian and who grew up in Paris, have started a company like eBay. Only in America could Vinod Khosla, the son of an Indian army officer, become a leading venture capitalist, a shaper of the technology industry, and a billionaire to boot.
The critics complain that equal opportunity is a myth in America, but there is more opportunity in this country than anywhere else in the world. European countries may have better mass transit systems and more comprehensive health care coverage, but nowhere does the ordinary citizen have a better chance to climb up the ladder and to achieve success than in the United States.
What this means is that in America, destiny is not given but created. In America, by contrast, you get to write your own script. When American parents ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” the question is not merely rhetorical, for it is you who supplies the answer. The parents offer advice or try to influence your decision: “Have you considered law school?” “Why not become the first doctor in the family?” It would be very improper, however, for them to try to force their decision on you. Indeed, American parents typically send their children away to college, where they can live on their own and learn to be independent. This is part of the process of developing your mind, deciding your field of interest, and forming your identity. What to be, where to live, whom to love, whom to marry, what to believe, what religion to practice-these are decisions that Americans make for themselves.
In America, your destiny is not prescribed; it is constructed. Your life is like a blank sheet of paper, and you are the artist. The freedom to be the architect of your own destiny is the force behind America’s worldwide appeal. Young people, especially, find the prospect of authoring the narrative of their own lives irresistible. So the immigrant, too, soon discovers that America will permit him to break free of the constraints that had held him captive while offering the future as a landscape of his own choosing.
If there is a single phrase that captures this, it is the “pursuit of happiness.” Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul analyses it in this way:
It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. So much is contained in it: the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist; and because of that, other, more rigid, systems in the end blow away.
America built through capitalism and private iniative the most productive economy on earth. By an accident of hitpry, America was founded in the same year Scottish economit Adam Smoth published Wealth of Nations (1776). But it was no accidebt tht no country emvraced capitalism and privaste initive ro the degree that America did. America at the turn of the 19th centurywas a still basically agricultural country. Within only a few decades, America developed not the greatest industrial economy in the world, but was out competing the majoe European powers, Britain, France, and Germany. Of all the indusyrial powers, America had the mot capitalit economy with the fewest governmental restictions and taxes.
Most people understand how American industry exceed not only European production in quantitative terms, but also in efficiency. Less well known is that American wages were the highest in the world. American industrial workers received measurably higher wages. That is a major reason why European emigrants flocked to America. It was capitalist America that offered high ways, nit the more controlled European economies. And this continued in the 20th century as the Europeans adopted socialism and the Russians turned to Communism. In simple fact, the worker’s paradise was in America. While European workers cycled to work and farmers had horse drawn carts, American workers had automobile and farmers had trucks and tractors. The phenomenal growth of American industry would be a major factor in the world war II defeat of the Axis.
The United States Has the Freest Labor Market in the World
According to the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom, the United States has the Freest Labor Market in the world, next to Somalia.
Labor markets that generally link workers and jobs unimpeded by large trade unions, state-owned enterprises, or excessively restrictive labor regulations. In the private sector, less than seven percent of the labor force is unionized. There are virtually no state-owned enterprises. While labor laws and regulations affect working conditions and hiring rules, they are much less onerous than in Europe Canada Australia New Zealand and even Switzerland .State level licensing rules are the probably the most serious barrier to job changing and to interstate mobility.
America has the Most Influential Culture in the world
The movies the world watches, the television shows they tune into, and the music they listen to are, for the most part, produced in the United States. For instance, the U.S. exports more than 25 times the number of movies and television shows than it consumes from abroad, a fact that causes Ben Wattenberg to observe quite correctly that America is “the most culturally potent nation in the world.” Even the virulent America-hater Saddam Hussein reportedly spends a good portion of his time watching American-made movies such as The Godfather and Enemy of the State.
Films, televisions, stories, icons, there has never been a culture to so saturate the world quite like that of America’s. Even if you personally don’t like American culture, this one is undeniable as seen by looking at the top grossing films, albums and most influential modern artists of our time, American dominates the list. Even with many of the exceptions from the UK or Canada, they most of them only found success once they made it in and moved to the United States. It’s why all of these countries that McAvoy praises in his monologue find their top cultural charts filled to the brim with American content, yet we don’t find ours with theirs. See whether you, the self-loathing Americans in the comments section happen to like American art or not is irrelavent to the fact that the world, the entire world has spoken with their dollar. And it’s one of the greatest ironies that America, the country accused by leftist, multiculturalism proponents like McAvoy of having no real culture… is only capable of making it it’s greatest export because the rest of the world so desperately seeks to be included in it.
The United States has the most Affordable and Secure food in the world
The Global Food Security Index ranked the U.S. number one for food affordability and overall food security.
The United States is the Most Individual Innovative Nation Per Captia in the World
It’s true that on the Global Technology index, the United States ranks third behind Finland and Japan overall when a more significant portion of technological advancements come from government, but the United States still leads by a large margin in individual innovations/patents per capita because sure, it’s hard to argue with our global stand-outs like Microsoft, Google, or Apple but more importantly, the United States is still the land of small business owners and innovators, not only a few companies with big government contracts. Our continued scientific, technological and medical innovation is yes, a huge reason that the United States is still arguably the biggest determining factor in global market economic impact, but not the biggest.
Americans have also made huge contributions to the world’s technology from telephones and cars to iPhones and FaceBook. Innovation was enabled by our nation’s foundation. American innovation has increased the world’s standard of living and will continue to do so.
Here are the number of papers and citations produced by the top 20 countries. China is creeping up but anyone can tell you that the data really isn’t that good. I’ve included the top 20 to allow for nay-sayers to point out that Holland and Switzerland technically have higher citations per document.
Nothing disproves the Leftist mantra that “all cultures are equal” more than technology does. Americans have given the world motion pictures, the telephone, the television, the computer, the Internet, the airplane, the VCR, and a host of other machines and devices that have vastly improved the quality of life on the planet. Ironically, the terrorists who hate the U.S. give America a tacit endorsement every time they turn on a light, escape the heat through air conditioning, monitor their exploits on television or the internet, or communicate via telephone.
Americans have stretched the bounds of the possible. The first transatlantic flight, putting a man on the moon, breaking the speed of sound, constructing the Hoover Dam, and building the Panama Canal serve as testimony to American courage and ingenuity. It wasn’t Danes or Bolivians or Iranians or Koreans who achieved these feats. It was Americans. This is significant.
The United States leads the World in Medical Research
Sure you can say that Oxford and Cambridge are some of the most important medical institutions in the world and that the UK makes some major contributions to the medical world but those two institutions generate no where close to the same volume as all 50 US states.
Here is a map of where all of the registered clinical trials are running. Even when you combine all of Europe, the US still runs more trials.
Most of the hoopla about “The Asians are catching up to the US in medical innovation” or “Those Europeans are more civilized than the fat unhealthy Americans” are actually complaining about how the impact of the US fell from 39% to 37% of the world’s total output. It’s like complaining that the US armed forces are losing ground.
Will Nigerian doctors make the blind see? Will Cambodians cure AIDS? Will Pakistanis eradicate cancer? The answer is probably not. Why? The reason is that non-Westerners have had no discernable impact on modern medicine. This year, like 45 of the last 60, an American won a share of the Nobel Prize in the field of medicine. Americans cured polio and tuberculosis, developed vaccines for hepatitis B and yellow fever, pioneered modern chemotherapy, and produced the CAT scan and MRI. What’s there to hate about that?
Americans are the most individualistic people in the world
The United States has the Most Billionaires in the World
Even though all of Europe as well as China have comparable counterparts the US has 200 million less people then Europe and 700 million less then China. This is not even factoring in Per Captia
The United States has the Most Millionaires in the World
The United States leads the World in Secondary Education
America Dominates Top University Rankings
America has World class research universities. These produce much of the basic research that drives the high-tech entrepreneurial activities. Faculty members and doctoral graduates often spend time in new businesses that are located near these universities. The culture of the universities and of the businesses welcomes these overlapping activities between academia and the private sector. The great research universities attract talented students from around the world, many of whom end up remaining in the United States.
America has the highest per-capita research output of any country:
The United States is a Leader in Space
According to the 2012 Space Competitiveness Index the United States ranks #1 with a score of 99.67. 49.56% higher then Europe as a whole.
The United States is also the world leader in Immigrants receiving 20% of the entire Global Immigrant Population
During the hundred years ending in the 1920s, a majority of the world’s immigrants came to one lone country: the United States. Today, the U.S. takes in more immigrants than at any point in its history. Yet, the Left portrays America as a bastion of xenophobia and bigotry. Alexander Hamilton (the first Secretary of the Treasury), John Jacob Astor (America’s first multimillionaire), Alexander Graham Bell (invented the telephone), Louis B. Mayer (Hollywood pioneer), Selman Waksman (cured tuberculosis), and Ralph Baer (invented the video game) are among the immigrants to America whose lives belie the Left’s premise. Just as those who complain about “oppression” in the U.S. would never entertain the idea of living anywhere else, the people around the world we allegedly oppress flock to come here. This contradiction between leftist theory and real-world practice illustrates just how delusional the central tenets of leftist thought really are.
America has a growing population, reflecting both natural growth and immigration. The growing population means a younger and therefore more flexible and trainable workforce. A high degree of geographic mobility within the United States increases the effectiveness of the labor force. The higher level of real income makes the United States an attractive destination for ambitious and talented young people around the world. Although there are restrictions on immigration to the United States, there are also special rules that provide access to the U.S. economy and a path for citizenship (“green cards”) based on individual talent and industrial sponsorship. A separate special “green card lottery” provides a way for eager people to come to the United States.
No assessment of America would be complete without considering the immigrants that played such an important role in the American saga. All American except for Native Americans have immigrated from other countries. Most of the early immigrants came from the British Isles. Immigrants followed from every European country. Immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, Scandinavia, and Africa played key roles. America provided opportunity for millions of Europeans immigrants seeking to build a better life and now to immigrants from all over the world.
For millennia people had little choice in life. They were born and lived their lives in static communities. Most never moved than 50 miles from where they were born. They had yo accept the world in which they were born with little or no opportunity to change it. There were some like the Vikings or phonecians who traveled but most people were ryral, lndless peasants which lived out their lives in timeless communities which the could not chnge. America played a guge role in changing this. Suddenly Europeans could pic up stakes without money and begin a whole new life where one could ewarn adecent living and their children could obtain a free public education.
Individuals of all backgrounds were offered opportunities inconceivable in Europe. And because of guarantees of religious liberty, these opportunities were often to people of all faiths, including not only Protestants, but Catholics and Jews as well. While not perfect in the 19th century, it was in better than the opportunities available anywhere in Europe. And some Asians (Chinese and Japanese) also found opportunity in America. After World war II, these opportunities become available to people all over the world and of every race.
America has the best healthcare System in the World
It outrages some that conservatives and Republicans claim that the USA’s health care system is the best in the world and that the proper goal of reform is to continue to extend our lead, not “catch up” with more “enlightened” countries that have universal, government-directed health care systems. This assertion has been vigorously challenged by individuals citing anecdotal evidence and presumably scientific studies, such as the World Health Organization’s World Health Report 2000, which served as one of the key justifications for Obamacare. The WHO study specifically ranked the USA 37th of 191 industrial nations.
Yet Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute, Scott Atlas of the Hoover Institution and many others have meticulously gathered and crunched data demonstrating that, at least prior to the current administration, the best country in the world to find yourself diagnosed with cancer or in need of a knee replacement operation or MRI exam, is the USA. This holds equally true for Saudi princes as for individuals without insurance. In fact, the ultimate irony is that patients without insurance undergoing treatment for serious conditions have better outcomes on average than those covered by Medicaid. The government-run medical program with the worst record is being aggressively expanded by force and by bribery to be the default system for the majority of Americans.
Among 16 types of cancer, the U.S. men’s 5-year survival rate is 66% and the U.S. women’s survival rate is 63%, versus 47% and 56% respectively for European men and women. The USA has 81 Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine in the past half century compared to 67 for the rest of the world combined. Your risk of death on the operating table is 4 times higher in Britain that it is in the USA. Canadians wait 9 months on average for orthopedic surgery like knee and hip replacements.
But we’re number 37?
Yes, of course we are, if your criteria for the ranking is how well we conform to a politically-correct ideal of universal, government-run health care. If such hard, scientific and uncorruptible measures as “financial fairness” and “equality” as reported by the “impressions” of WHO staff members are your guide, then the USA falls short of the glory of Eternal Truth. That turns out to be the true nature of the WHO study, as exposed by Pipes, Atlas and others.
But if you’re looking for actual outcomes, with or without insurance, sorry, America is #1.
The WHO believes that we could have done better because we do not have universal coverage. What apparently does not matter is that our population has universal access because most physicians treat indigent patients without charge and accept Medicare and Medicaid payments, which do not even cover overhead expenses. The WHO does rank the U.S. No.1 of 191 countries for “responsiveness to the needs and choices of the individual patient.” Isn’t responsiveness what health care is all about?
Data assembled by Dr. Ronald Wenger and published recently in the Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons indicates that cardiac deaths in the U.S. have fallen by two-thirds over the past 50 years. Polio has been virtually eradicated. Childhood leukemia has a high cure rate. Eight of the top 10 medical advances in the past 20 years were developed or had roots in the U.S.
The Nobel Prizes in medicine and physiology have been awarded to more Americans than to researchers in all other countries combined. Eight of the 10 top-selling drugs in the world were developed by U.S. companies. The U.S. has some of the highest breast, colon and prostate cancer survival rates in the world. And our country ranks first or second in the world in kidney transplants, liver transplants, heart transplants, total knee replacements, coronary artery bypass, and percutaneous coronary interventions.
We have the shortest waiting time for nonemergency surgery in the world; England has one of the longest. In Canada, a country of 35 million citizens, 1 million patients now wait for surgery and another million wait to see specialists.
When my cardiac surgeon Peter Alivizatos, returned to Greece after 10 years heading the heart transplantation program at Baylor University in Dallas, the one-year heart transplant survival rate there was 50% — five-year survival was only 35%. He soon increased those numbers to 94% one-year and 90% five-year survival, which is what we achieve in the U.S. So the next time you hear that the U.S. is №37, remember that Greece is №14. Cuba, by the way, is №39.
But the issue is only partly about quality. As we have all heard, the U.S. spends a higher percentage of its gross domestic product for health care than any other country.
Actually, health-care spending now increases more moderately than it has in previous decades. Food, energy, housing and health care consume the same share of American spending today (55%) that they did in 1960 (53%).
So what does this money buy? Certainly some goes to inefficiencies, corporate profits, and costs that should be lowered by professional liability reform and national, free-market insurance access by allowing for competition across state lines. But the majority goes to a long list of advantages that American citizens now expect: the easiest access, the shortest waiting times the widest choice of physicians and hospitals, and constant availability of health care to elderly Americans. What we need now is insurance and liability reform — not health-care reform.
Who determines how much a nation should pay for its health? Is 17% too much, or too little? What better way could there be to dedicate our national resources than toward the health and productivity of our citizens?
Perhaps it’s not that America spends too much on health care, but that other nations don’t spend enough.
The United States leads the World in terms of Foreign Aid
With great wealth comes great generosity. In 2000, Americans gave more than $200 billion in charity, dwarfing the amount donated elsewhere. Since World War II, the U.S. government has given well in excess of $500 billion (not adjusted for inflation) in foreign aid. Last year, our government distributed more than $31 billion to 130 countries. While American taxpayers have a right to gripe, what are we to make of foreign beneficiaries who return our favor by burning U.S. flags and chanting “death to America”?
In March 1947 our president, outlining what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, told a joint session of Congress: “I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.” It was an eloquent expression of a nation’s willingness to abandon its previous isolationist tendencies, and to commit its considerable military and economic resources to the task of preserving democracy in the world solely for the benefit of the human race.
Three months later the Marshall Plan was unveiled, authorizing some $13 billion of U.S. aid to be channeled into Europe’s crippled economies. Particularly effective in resurrecting the economic lives of France, Italy, and Germany, it was perhaps the most successful undertaking of its kind in human history.
Moreover, the United States was far and away the principal benefactor of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which America had helped organize in 1943. At the time of the War’s end, 90 percent of Americans favored the continued shipment of food to the hungry masses in Europe and Asia. No nation on earth, before or since, had ever demonstrated such a degree of voluntary, unsolicited generosity. By 1947, the UNRRA had shipped abroad more than 23 million tons of food, industrial equipment, clothing, and agricultural supplies. It should be noted that the $2.7 billion aggregate value of these items was augmented by another $6.3 billion in specific sums that America had provided to meet particular emergencies in many countries. Between these emergency expenditures and the resources allocated by the Marshall Plan and the UNRRA, the U.S. gave upwards of $22 billion to the cause of helping the world’s needy. In today’s inflation-adjusted dollars, this amount would be roughly equivalent to $217 billion.
According to Truman, America could not “remain healthy and happy in the same world where millions of human beings are starving.” He pledged “a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.” Encountering very little opposition from Congress, the original appropriation for this purpose was $34.5 million, a figure that by 1952 had grown to $147.9 million not including the massive donations of private American companies that wished to help advance the same noble cause. By the 1970s, the American government had spent more than $150 billion on foreign aid two thirds of it outside of Western Europe spawning pockets of prosperity widely over the globe. As historian Paul Johnson observes, “This effort, in absolute or relative terms, was wholly without precedent in human history, and is likely to remain the biggest single act of generosity on record.”
To this day, America’s remarkable record of aid to other nations continues unabated and of course unappreciated by critics worldwide whose own nations, incidentally, give virtually nothing to anyone. In 1998, U.S. foreign grants and credits to Western Europe totaled $258 million; to Eastern Europe $1.8 billion; to the Near East and South Asia $5 billion; to Africa $1.3 billion; to the Far East $735 million, to Canada and Central and South America $987 million.
When natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods strike other nations, no country on earth responds with greater alacrity or generosity than ours. When famine and disease decimate foreign populations, America is almost always the first and sometimes the only nation in the world to lend assistance. Recall, for instance, that in the 1980s Ethiopia was gripped by a brutal civil war into which almost all its government funds were poured even while the country was ravaged by famine. The U.S. sent enormous amounts of aid, yet was criticized by Ethiopian president Mengistu for not sending more. Presumably Mengistu expected American taxpayers to help defray the cost of the $100 million celebration he had held during the height of the famine to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Ethiopia’s socialist revolution.
When civil war and famine killed at least 300,000 people in Somalia a decade ago, America once again sent large quantities of food and medicine. When it was learned that the war’s combatants were heartlessly stealing most of the relief packages even while the country had become filled with wretched, walking skeletons it was only with U.S. leadership in 1992’s Operation Restore Hope that the situation began to improve. American soldiers, joined by troops from several other countries, were sent to Somalia to ensure the proper distribution of life-saving resources.
In 1994, when Rwanda erupted into ethnic violence that killed at least 800,000 people in twelve weeks, the United States led the world in shipping food, medicine, doctors, technicians, and medical equipment to try to save the dying masses huddled in Rwanda’s filthy refugee camps.
I ask America’s critics, what other nation today, or during any other epoch of human history, has even come close to matching this country’s record of generosity? Why do these critics feel justified in holding no other nation on earth to the lofty standards of perfection they set for the United States? And finally, why should America’s failure to attain absolute perfection as defined by the critics be cited as a rational explanation for atrocities committed against our country, while those same faultfinders casually dismiss even the most abominable practices abounding in other lands?In March 1947 our president, outlining what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, told a joint session of Congress: “I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.” It was an eloquent expression of a nation’s willingness to abandon its previous isolationist tendencies, and to commit its considerable military and economic resources to the task of preserving democracy in the world solely for the benefit of the human race.
Three months later the Marshall Plan was unveiled, authorizing some $13 billion of U.S. aid to be channeled into Europe’s crippled economies. Particularly effective in resurrecting the economic lives of France, Italy, and Germany, it was perhaps the most successful undertaking of its kind in human history.
Moreover, the United States was far and away the principal benefactor of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which America had helped organize in 1943. At the time of the War’s end, 90 percent of Americans favored the continued shipment of food to the hungry masses in Europe and Asia. No nation on earth, before or since, had ever demonstrated such a degree of voluntary, unsolicited generosity. By 1947, the UNRRA had shipped abroad more than 23 million tons of food, industrial equipment, clothing, and agricultural supplies. It should be noted that the $2.7 billion aggregate value of these items was augmented by another $6.3 billion in specific sums that America had provided to meet particular emergencies in many countries. Between these emergency expenditures and the resources allocated by the Marshall Plan and the UNRRA, the U.S. gave upwards of $22 billion to the cause of helping the world’s needy. In today’s inflation-adjusted dollars, this amount would be roughly equivalent to $217 billion.
According to Truman, America could not “remain healthy and happy in the same world where millions of human beings are starving.” He pledged “a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.” Encountering very little opposition from Congress, the original appropriation for this purpose was $34.5 million, a figure that by 1952 had grown to $147.9 million not including the massive donations of private American companies that wished to help advance the same noble cause. By the 1970s, the American government had spent more than $150 billion on foreign aid two thirds of it outside of Western Europe spawning pockets of prosperity widely over the globe. As historian Paul Johnson observes, “This effort, in absolute or relative terms, was wholly without precedent in human history, and is likely to remain the biggest single act of generosity on record.”
To this day, America’s remarkable record of aid to other nations continues unabated and of course unappreciated by critics worldwide whose own nations, incidentally, give virtually nothing to anyone. In 1998, U.S. foreign grants and credits to Western Europe totaled $258 million; to Eastern Europe $1.8 billion; to the Near East and South Asia $5 billion; to Africa $1.3 billion; to the Far East $735 million, to Canada and Central and South America $987 million.
When natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods strike other nations, no country on earth responds with greater alacrity or generosity than ours. When famine and disease decimate foreign populations, America is almost always the first and sometimes the only nation in the world to lend assistance. Recall, for instance, that in the 1980s Ethiopia was gripped by a brutal civil war into which almost all its government funds were poured even while the country was ravaged by famine. The U.S. sent enormous amounts of aid, yet was criticized by Ethiopian president Mengistu for not sending more. Presumably Mengistu expected American taxpayers to help defray the cost of the $100 million celebration he had held during the height of the famine to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Ethiopia’s socialist revolution.
When civil war and famine killed at least 300,000 people in Somalia two decades ago, America once again sent large quantities of food and medicine. When it was learned that the war’s combatants were heartlessly stealing most of the relief packages even while the country had become filled with wretched, walking skeletons it was only with U.S. leadership in 1992’s Operation Restore Hope that the situation began to improve. American soldiers, joined by troops from several other countries, were sent to Somalia to ensure the proper distribution of life-saving resources.
In 1994, when Rwanda erupted into ethnic violence that killed at least 800,000 people in twelve weeks, the United States led the world in shipping food, medicine, doctors, technicians, and medical equipment to try to save the dying masses huddled in Rwanda’s filthy refugee camps.
I ask America’s critics, what other nation today, or during any other epoch of human history, has even come close to matching this country’s record of generosity? Why do these critics feel justified in holding no other nation on earth to the lofty standards of perfection they set for the United States? And finally, why should America’s failure to attain absolute perfection as defined by the critics be cited as a rational explanation for atrocities committed against our country, while those same faultfinders casually dismiss even the most abominable practices abounding in other lands?
As famine swept through Russia in 1921, claiming five million innocent peasants’ lives, the future President Herbert Hoover (who was then director of the American Relief Administration) sent $24 million of food and medical aid to the recently formed Bolshevik government. When asked why he was helping the Russian Communists, Hoover replied, “Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!”
America has always been more than the nation that liberates enslaved Arabs; it is the nation that bailed Europe out of two world wars, then reconstructed those nations with the Marshall Plan; that aided our sworn enemies to keep them from starving their populations to death in the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and North Korea; that shows up with troops, supplies, and endless grants (often in the form of “loans,” never repaid) every time there is a mud slide, earthquake, or hurricane anywhere in the world, including Iran. When a leftist acquaintance claimed that America “bombs babies in Iraq and Afghanistan,” I corrected him: We regularly bomb Iraqi and Afghan children with food and supplies donated by American children. This America bears no resemblance to the diseased caricature painted by the Left.
The United States leads the World in Disaster Relief
Not only is the US military usually involved with most global conflicts, but they are also present in the time of need for almost every international natural disaster in which aid is needed. I love advertising this fact because so often I hear about all the evils of the United States, but not once have I ever heard the phrase, “Hey America. Thanks a bunch for the assist. Tsunamis really suck.” As well as this the military also makes regular deployments to disenfranchised and impoverished developing nations to provide immediate health and medical support during times of non-violence or disaster. These services are free to the people of those nations and supported entirely by United States taxpayer dollars.
This is the USNS Mercy. She is a massive hospital ship and, along with her sister ship the USNS Comfort, has the proud and distinguished mission to sail around the world to places in desperate need of medical aid and support. Officially, their primary mission is to:
provide rapid, flexible, and mobile acute medical and surgical services to support Marine Corps Air/Ground Task Forces deployed ashore; Army and Air Force units deployed ashore; and naval amphibious task forces and battle forces afloat.
Secondarily, they provide mobile surgical hospital service for use by appropriate US Government agencies in disaster/humanitarian relief or limited humanitarian care incidents to these missions or peacetime military operations.
Looking at the record though, you’ll find that the Mercy and Comfort have been quite busy with “secondary” missions. Here is a list of some of the Mercy and Comfort’s “secondary” missions:
- 1987 — (USNS Mercy) Over 62,000 outpatients and almost 1,000 inpatients were treated at seven Philippine and South Pacific ports during training in 1984 through 1987.
- 1990* — (USNS Mercy) Admitted 690 patients and performed almost 300 surgeries. (USNS Comfort) More than 8,000 outpatients were seen, and 700 inpatients. 337 surgical procedures were performed. Other notable benchmarks include: more than 2,100 safe helicopter evolutions; 7,000 prescriptions filled; 17,000 laboratory tests completed; 1,600 eyeglasses made; 800,000 meals served and 1,340 radiographic studies, including 141 CT scans.
- 2001–9/11 — (USNS Comfort) The ship’s clinic saw 561 guests for cuts, respiratory ailments, fractures and other minor injuries, and Comfort’s team of Navy psychology personnel provided 500 mental health consultations to relief workers.[5] Comfort also hosted a group of volunteer New York area massage therapists who gave 1,359 therapeutic medical massages to ship guests.
- 2003 * — (USNS Comfort) 590 surgical procedures, transfused more than 600 units of blood, developed more than 8,000 radiographic images and treated nearly 700 patients including almost 200 Iraqi civilians and enemy prisoners of war.
- 2005 — Indian Ocean Tsunami — (USNS Mercy) Combined, provided 108,000 patient services, rendered by members of the Department of Defense, Project Hope, and the United States Public Health Service.
- 2005 — (USNS Comfort) Comfort deployed on September 2, 2005, after only a two-day preparation, to assist in Gulf Coast recovery efforts after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Starting in Pascagoula, Mississippi and then sailing to New Orleans, Comfort personnel saw 1,956 patients total.
- 2007 — (USNS Comfort) Central and South America. In all, the civilian and military medical team treated more than 98,000 patients, provided 386,000 patient encounters and performed 1,100 surgeries. Dentists and staff treated 25,000 patients, extracting 300 teeth, and performing 4,000 fillings, 7,000 sealings, and 20,000 fluoride applications. In addition to treating patients, bio-medical professionals fixed about a thousand pieces of medical equipment at local health facilities. The ship’s crew also delivered nearly $200,000 dollars worth of donated humanitarian aid.
- 2008 — (USNS Mercy) Over the course of one deployment, Mercy would treat 91,000 patients, including performing 1,369 surgeries.
- 2010 — (USNS Mercy) Treated 109,754 patients and performed 1,580 surgeries in Southeast Asia.
- 2010 — (USNS Comfort) Haiti Earthquake disaster. Between January 19 and February 28, 2010, the ship’s staff treated 1,000 Haitian patients and performed 850 surgeries. Also, the mission saw the ship’s first on-board delivery, of a 4-pound, 5-ounce premature baby named Esther.
- 2011 — (USNS Comfort) — The ship deployed for five months providing medical services to locations in the Caribbean and Latin America.
It is important to remember that all this is done, by only two ships. Beyond these two ships the United States Navy takes part in many humanitarian service missions each year. Several ships are deployed with missions other than warfare to provide free aid and medical support.
There are also ongoing operations such as the Pacific Partnership. The Pacific Partnership is an annual deployment of forces from the Pacific Fleet of the United States Navy(USN), in cooperation with regional governments and military forces, along with humanitarian and non-government organizations.
The deployment was conceived following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, as a way to improve the interoperability of the region’s military forces, governments, and humanitarian organisations during disaster relief operations, while providing humanitarian, medical, dental, and engineering assistance to nations of the Pacific, and strengthening relationships and security ties between the nations. Between 2006 and 2010, Pacific Partnership has visited 13 countries, treated more than 300,000 patients, and built over 130 engineering projects.
Within the United States Marines there exist elements that specialize in being the first into a war zone. Most of the offensive parts of the Marine Corps are built around this idea, but particularly there is one capability that is most crucial to this. The Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU for short) is capable of deploying troops to virtually any location on Earth within reach of a shoreline within 48 hours. What they also do though, is deploy troops to major disaster areas as well. Being that the MEUs are literally patrolling every ocean in the world for signs of danger and disorder, they are already equipped with a large supply and armament for potentially long-term hostile engagements and specialized in reaching and operating with little to no infrastructure in hard-to-reach places. This sucks for them, but makes them uniquely capable of doing something else pretty special. It makes them adeptly able to address and adapt to the needs of millions of people throughout the world in need of immediate emergency assistance. They are able to move so quickly that they outpace more formal relief organizations by days or weeks.
(Colombo, Sri Lanka (Jan. 10, 2005) — A U.S. Marine Corps amphibious vehicle prepares to bring Marines and Sailors aboard an awaiting Landing Craft Utility (LCU) at the end of the day’s relief efforts in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Helicopters from USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) and Marines and Sailors assigned to 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit are supporting Operation Unified Assistance, the humanitarian operation effort in the wake of the Tsunami that struck South East Asia. The Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group is currently operating in the Indian Ocean off the waters of Indonesia and Thailand. U.S. Navy photo by Lance Cpl. Joseph Ward)
A U.S. Navy doctor treats patients from tsunami-devastated villages in Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia, on Jan. 6, 2005.
3rd FSSG Marines assist with the distribution of humanitarian aid at Palonia Air Field, Medan, Indonesia, as part of Operation Unified Assistance.
More recently, after the devastation from the 2010 Haiti Earthquake disaster, soldiers from the United States Army were deployed to assist in delivering badly needed supplies, such as food, water and other necessities to the region.Here is a Marine preparing Food and Water for Victims of the Earthquake
I’m going to lay it out straight. I am willing to bet almost no one knew before reading this answer about the scale of the United States’ disaster relief history. You probably had no idea of the depth of support that the United States military contributes to the world each time a major disaster strikes somewhere on the planet Earth. You know that help was sent, but did your ever really ask who it was or what form it took? You may have heard of 150 doctors that went, but were you aware of the tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors and Marines that were there before even the news journalists were present?
Sure, many people will rattle off statistics about what monsters we are. They will talk about all the people that the military kills and all the dead people out there that the United States military are responsible for each year, which is odd since such things are essentially what the military, all militaries, are designed to do.
They will cite things that the Americans are responsible for doing wrong, but no one in the history of the world can declare that they have made such great strides in providing aid and relief like the Americans.This should ring especially significant since we have absolutely no real obligation to do so if previous major world powers are to be our example. You could compare us to the Raubwirtschaft (plunder economies) of Germany, Japan and Russia during their time in power.
You could also look at “aid” the European people provided the African colonies during their time as superpowers. Even better… look at what they are doing for the world right now. Where is their great big white boat with doctors and dentists? Where are their Marines after an earthquake or hurricane? At home, on their porch sipping on a cup of self-righteousness as they lecture the world about the virtues of pacifism and the horrors of the American military. It’s hypocritical and it’s ignorant.
While many find that the superstructure that is the US military is a bloated and imperialistic beast, it’s still the largest and most efficient source in the world to get help where help is needed. That help happens whether that be in calming a diplomatic hot spot, giving food to a devastated rural village or providing dental care to children in a part of a country that has never seen a dentist. Would I like to see other, more pacifist organizations do the job? Sure I would, so far the world is more content to complain than do anything.
The US military doesn’t suffer from that handicap. Say what you want about us, but without that aid provided by hundreds of thousands of American service people and hundreds of millions of taxpayers, millions upon millions of people who have been fed, vaccinated, operated on, given shelter, given homes, bathed, birthed, and listened to would now be dead. Many more would not experience the quality of life they now experience. Sure it’s easy to gauge the military on violent metrics, but how do you measure the value of those we have helped? That’s a philosopher’s discussion, not one for the Marines. Yeah, the Americans and their military have their faults, but if you’re one of them you ought to be pretty proud right now.
The United States leads the World in Gun Rights
In the United States there is a gun for every 112 of 100 Residents giving the United States the most Armed Populace in the World. Due to the Bill of Rights, more specifically the Second Amendment the United States is the only country in the world which affords its citizens such a right.
Americans have a right to own and use guns“Right to bear arms” against “enemies foreign and domestic”. The founding fathers knew the importance of protecting themselves from governments who get out of hand. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms. You only have the rights you are willing to fight for. When you remove the people’s right to bear arms, you create slaves. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.
The United States is the World Leader when it comes to Free Speech
You can read more about Free Speech in Countries here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country
The United States has the most Liberal Free Speech Laws in the Entire World. The New York Times did a Good Article on this Here.
However The First Amendment is Under Attack so that may not be the case much longer.
Most Importantly The United States is the Leader of the Free World
Through Americas series of Military Bases alliances, The United States ensures its Hegemony (Europe East Asia Africa Australia Latin America) prospers and develops as well as remains Free. The United States Of America is the Greatest Defender of Freedom and Liberty in the world.The United States formed the Liberal International Order after World War 2 which has led to unprecedented levels of Prosperity and Freedom never seen before in Human History. Even in Theocratic Regimes under its Hegemony like Saudi Arabia, the United States pushes these Regimes to reform, often behind closed doors.
America has spread democracy throughout the world. Many of our strongest allies today, such as Japan and Germany, were at times our worst enemies. The United States has spread or upheld democracy throughout the world. Not to mention America, along with Great Britain and the former Soviet Union, also stopped the Nazis and the Japanese Empire from winning World War II.
The Soviet Empire ruled over Eastern Europe. The Ottoman Empire claimed dominion over vast stretches of the Islamic world. The Empire of the Sun sought dominion over the Orient. The American Empire rules…only Americans. America is an historical curiosity. It is the most powerful country in the world, yet it eschews imperialism. Instead, it has used its military might to liberate. Nazi Germany, North Korea, Soviet Russia, Hussein’s Iraq, and Communist Vietnam are among the nefarious states we sought to prevent from increasing their totalitarian control over others. The world is a better place because America, and not some other country, is the sole superpower.
America saved the world from powerful, evil totalitarian regimes (the NAZIs, Japanese militarists, and the Soviet Communists). This accomplished no less than saving Western civilization and its great gift of freedom. And this meany not only saving the west, but the people of Africa, Asia, and Latin america as well. Western civilization began in Greece and the Levant with two different threads. First in Greece with the creation of democracy and a primitive form of capitalism. This unsealed the creative capabilities of the citizens of th various city states. This enabled them to not only defeat the seemingly overwhelming power of the mighty Persian Empire and to generate intellectual and artistic cultural outburst unparalleled in human history. At about the same time, the Hebrews in the Levant were developing the basis of modern Judaism which its focus on the value of the individual and individual responsibility. These two traditions were fused by St. Paul during the Roman era into the basis of what we now call Western Civilization.
Over the next two millennium through the cultural decline of the Dark Ages, Western Europe advanced. Its defining formative moments were the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment. Out of this came political (democracy) and economic (capitalism) freedom. The result was an explosion of creative energies that gave Europe the technological capacity to dominate much of the world with both positive and negative consequences. The earth shattering consequences of Western civilization began to transform civilization with the advance of capitalism, the industrial Revolution and the American Republic (18th century). the American Republic. This lead to massive technological advances, increases in productivity, and liberal democracy (19th century). The essence of liberal democracy is that the state is the servant of the individual and responsible to its people. For the first time in human history, large numbers of average people began to lead prosperous comfortable lives. Progress was slow and uneven in Europe, but proceeded and a phenomenal pace in America where the forces of democracy and capitalism were unleashed on an entire virgin continent. Another thread appeared at the same time, Marxist socialism which in various forms mixed with to varying degrees with hyper nationalism and old enemies created the great totalitarian powers of the 20th centuries.
The inifying threat of the totalitarians was that the individual and his interests were subservient to the state, in essence the property of the state. Largely as a result of the horrors of World war I, the great totalitarian powers rose in Europe and Asia in Western Europe (Italy and Germany), Communism in Russia, and Fascist-like militarism in Japan. And by the mid-20th century, these totalitarian powers through massive military spending had amassed military power and the desire to use it to restructure the existing world order and murder hundreds of millions of unwanted people. These totalitarian powers committed atrocities beyond human comprehension. All the achievements of Western civilization were suddenly at risk. Their power exceeded that of the Western liberal democracies. Only two developments prevented the victory of the totalitarians. First the totalitarians broke their united front when the Nazis invaded Soviet Russia. Second, the United States mobilized both democracy and capitalism on unprecedented scales to destroy the Fascist powers through the tidal wave of industrial production.
The Soviet Union was vital in the Allied World War II victory. But the Soviets were part of the totalitarians coalition that launched the War. The totalitarian powers that threatened Western civilization and had committed terrible atrocities of its own on a phenomenal level. The result was the Cold war in which the United States again was the central power in destroying the final World War II totalitarian power the Soviet Union. Not only did America in large measure, because of the internal contradictions of socialism, help engineer the implosion of the Soviet Union, but helped bring about reforms in Communist China that has significantly reduced its more murderous character.
The United State did more than saving Western Civilization by defeating the great totalitarian powers of the 20th century. This lone would have ranked America as one of the great nations in the history of freedom. America took it a step further, not only defeating NAZI Germany and militarist Japan, but overseeing their transfornation into two of the premier liberal democracies of the world. Up until the World War II peace, countries which loss wars were punushed, not transformed. This is what occurred after World War I. President Wilson moderated the vengence of the Allies (Britain, France, and Italy), but could not transform the harsh peace they were determined to inflict on Germany. World war II was different. France was no longer a great power and Italy had been an Axis country. Britain had been part of the all important Anglo-American coalition, but was bankrupt and by the end of the war a junior partner, And America’s policy, after considerable debate, was to transform Germany and Japan.
Defeating the Axis countries was one thing, but to transform them into liberal democracies and allies is something entirely different. No one in 1940 could have thought such a transformation was even possible. But America did it. Of course enemies of freedom still exist. But one should compare Soviet policy as a Nazi ally to Soviet policy as an American ally. Today one of the great issues of freedom’s future is China. America has helped bring economic freedom (capitalism) to China, whether political freedom will follow is an open question. Another unresolved issue is Islam, in part because Americans and Europeans are unsure about religious freedom and how to confront a religious, as opposed to a political, group which suppresses freedom. This is because religious freedom is such an important element in liberal democracy.
We also created a world economic system in which any country adopting effective economic systems (even Communist China) can bring prosperity to its people. This has included both our allies and our adversaries. America attempted to assist Germany after World War I during the Weimar era, but the forces set in motion after the War were to powerful for financial measures to deal with, especially after the disaster of the Great Depression. The outcome was very different after World War II. America played a role in both the German and Japanese Economic Miracles.
Measures like the Currency Reform in Germany and the Marshall Plan had a major impact as well as support for European unification. The situation was different in the de-colonized Third World. Many of the new leaders impressed with the Soviet Union, turned to socialism. The result was abject economic failure and stagnation. Once poor countries by adopting market economics were able to build modern prosperous economies in only a generation. We see this first with the Asian Tigers and then when Brazil, China and India adopted market reforms. America promoted this even though the modernizing economies competed with our industries. and the result is that in only a generation, some one billion people are escaping poverty and entering the middle class. This is more people that have made this transition in all of human history.
Furthermore America ranks very high in other metrics as well but not necessarily first
America is the most Entrepreneurial Country in the World
When Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to America in 1831, he encountered a nation of people who startled and impressed him with their robustness, energy, ambition, and entrepreneurial spirit in a word, their life.The America of today, or at least the America of not very long ago, was still recognizably, at heart, the same America that Tocqueville wrote about in Democracy in America: a country of hard-working, optimistic people who believed ardently in self-reliance, individual enterprise, and above all freedom.
The most dangerous enemies of the tyrant are all the associations and communities of people that lie beyond the power of the state, what Edmund Burke called the “little platoons,” and Alexis de Tocqueville recognized as one of the exceptional characteristic of the United States. Families, churches, PTAs, private schools and universities, clubs, think tanks, political parties, sports teams, businesses, charities any venue in which people voluntarily gather together, interact with one another, and pursue their shared interests and aims, stands as a check on the power of the government. They create a social space in which people exercise their freedom without permission or oversight from government officials, and where their customs, traditions, and habits function as an alternative authority to the power of the state.
America ranks 8th on the World Bank Groups Ease of Doing Business Index. America has a a culture and a tax-transfer system that encourages hard work and long hours.
America has a very entrepreneurial culture. Individuals in the United States demonstrate a desire to start businesses and grow them and a willingness to take risks. There is no penalty in the U.S. culture for failure and for starting again. Even students who have gone to college or to a business school show this entrepreneurial desire. The successes in silicon valley and with such firms as Facebook inspire entrepreneurial activities.
The average employee in the United States works 1800 hours per year, substantially longer than the 1500 hours worked in France and the 1400 hours worked in Germany. Of course workers in some Asian countries work much longer hours, with working hours over 2200 per year in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea.
The American financial system supports entrepreneurial activities. The United States has a more developed system of equity finance than the countries of Europe and a decentralized banking system that helps local entrepreneurs. The equity finance system includes “angel investors” willing to finance start-up firms and a very active venture capital market that helps finance the growth of firms. The national system of small local banks that provide loans to new businesses includes more than 7,000 individual small banks that are important in their local communities.
Although the system of government regulations needs improvement, it is less burdensome on businesses than the regulations imposed by European countries and the European Union as well as other Industrialized Economies
America has more Limited Government then most Developed Nations.
Why the American Government is by no means Small or Limited to its Enumerated Powers. The American Government is of smaller size of than in other industrial countries. According to the OECD, outlays of the U.S. government at the federal, state and local levels totaled 38 percent of GDP while the corresponding figure was 44 percent in Germany, 51 percent in Italy and 57 percent in France. America outperforms the most of the Developed World as a whole in terms of Limited Government with a few outliers such as Ireland Turkey Lithuania Latvia Estonia Australia South Korea Switzerland Chile and Mexico.The higher level of government spending in other countries implies that not only is a higher share of income taken in taxes but also that there are higher transfer payments that reduce incentives to work. … So Americans have a higher pre-tax reward to working and can keep a larger share of their earnings.
After all, I don’t consider the United States to have a “small” government. Same for Japan, Switzerland, and Australia. Those are simply nations where government isn’t as big and bloated as it is in France, Italy, Sweden, and Greece.
America has one of the most efficient Public Sectors in the World
Indicators suggest notable but not extremely large differences in public sector performance across countries… Looking at country groups, small governments (industrialised countries with public spending below 40 % of GDP in 2000) on balance report better economic performance than big governments (public spending above 50 % of GDP) or medium sized governments (spending between 40 and 50 percent of GDP).
These are remarkable findings. Nations with small governments achieve better outcomes.
And that’s including some indicators that I don’t even think are properly defined.
But what’s most amazing if that the above findings are simply based on an examination of outputs.
So what happens if we also look at inputs so we can gauge the degree to which governments are delivering a lot of bang for the buck?
Public expenditure, expressed as a share of GDP, can be assumed to reflect the opportunity costs of achieving the public sector performance estimated in the previous section. …Public expenditures differ considerably across countries. Average total spending in the 1990s ranged from around 35 percent of GDP in the US to 64 percent of GDP in Sweden. The difference is mainly due to more or less extensive welfare programs. …we now compute indicators of Public Sector Efficiency (PSE). We weigh performance (as measured by the PSP indicators) by the amount of relevant public expenditure, PEX, that is used to achieve a given performance level.
And what did the experts discover? The Chart Above speaks for itself
There’s a lot of data, particularly if you’re looking at individual countries. But if you want the bottom-line results, look at the numbers circled in red.
As you can see, countries with small governments are far more productive and efficient.
We find significant differences in public sector efficiency across countries. Japan, Switzerland, Australia, the United States and Luxembourg show the best values for overall efficiency. Looking at country groups, “small” governments post the highest efficiency amongst industrialised countries. Differences are considerable as “small” governments on average post a 40 percent higher scores than “big” governments. …This illustrates that the size of government may be too large in many industrialised countries, with declining marginal products being rather prevalent.
The conclusion of the study makes some very important observations.
Unsurprisingly, countries with small public sectors report the “best” economic performance… Countries with small public sectors report significantly higher PSE indicators than countries with medium-sized or big public sectors. All these findings suggest diminishing marginal products of higher public spending. …Spending in big governments could be, on average, about 35 per cent lower to attain the same public sector performance.
Imagine the results if you could measure public sector performance and public sector efficiency for the United States and other developed nations in the pre-World War I era, back when the burden of government spending averaged less than 10 percent of economic output.
America has a mostly Decentralized Political System with Interstate Competition
America still has some Federalism.The competition among states encourages entrepreneurship and work effort and the legal systems protect the rights of property owners and entrepreneurs. The United States political system assigns many legal rules and taxing power to the fifty individual states. The states then compete for businesses and for individual residents by their legal rules and tax regimes. Some states have no income taxes and have labor laws that limit unionization. States provide high quality universities with low tuition for in-state students. They compete also in their legal liability rules. The legal systems attract both new entrepreneurs and large corporations. The United States is perhaps unique among high-income nations in the degree of decentralization. That is next to Switzerland and Canada to mention who likely have more Federalism as of now.
The vitality of American democratic government derives from its institutions, most of them non-governmental, through which individuals cooperate to promote the common good school boards, churches, charities, Boy Scoutsand through the traditionally intense involvement of Americans in their local governments. The concentration of power in America, from the Founding up through the New Deal, was at the local level close to the people, open to private influence. This fact encouraged the development of civic-minded citizens; as immigrants trickled in, they gradually made their way into these local elites or (if excluded) formed their own, bringing their own particularities to bear through local institutions. Thus Catholics who felt their children’s faith imperiled founded their own school system; they generally did not attempt to sabotage or subvert the existing, de facto Protestant public schools.
America Ranks Third on the Global Competitiveness Report The bad news is that we used to be ranked #1 and now we’re #3.
The good news is that being #3 is still pretty good, and it’s hard to beat Switzerland and Singapore because they have such good free-market policies. And that’s where America falls short.
America is one of the most if not the most Socially Equal Society in the World
Critics of America allege that the history of the United States is defined by a series of crimes-slavery, genocide-visited upon African-Americans and American Indians. Even today, they say, America is a racist society. The critics demand apologies for these historical offenses and seek financial reparations for minorities and African-Americans. But the truth is that America has gone further than any society in establishing equality of rights.
Let’s begin by asking whether the white man was guilty of genocide against the native Indians. As a matter of fact, he was not. As William McNeill documents in Plagues and Peoples, great numbers of Indians did perish as a result of their contact with whites, but, for the most part, they died by contracting diseases-smallpox, measles, malaria, tuberculosis-for which they had not developed immunities. This is tragedy on a grand scale, but it is not genocide, which implies an intention to wipe out an entire population. McNeill points out that, a few centuries earlier, Europeans themselves contracted lethal diseases, including the bubonic plague, from Mongol invaders from the Asian steppes. The Europeans didn’t have immunities, and the plague decimated one-third of the population of Europe, and yet, despite the magnitude of deaths and suffering, no one calls this genocide.
So what about slavery? No one will deny that America practiced slavery, but America was hardly unique in this respect. Indeed, slavery is a universal institution that in some form has existed in all cultures. In his study Slavery and Social Death, the West Indian sociologist Orlando Patterson writes, “Slavery has existed from the dawn of human history, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized. There is no region on earth that has not at some time harbored the institution.” The Sumerians and Babylonians practiced slavery, as did the ancient Egyptians. The Chinese, the Indians, and the Arabs all had slaves. Slavery was widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, and American Indians had slaves long before Columbus came to the New World.
What is distinctively Western is not slavery but the movement to end slavery. Abolition is a uniquely Western institution. The historian J. M. Roberts writes, “No civilization once dependent on slavery has ever been able to eradicate it, except the Western.” Of course, slaves in every society don’t want to be slaves. The history of slavery is full of incidents of runaways, slave revolts, and so on. But typically, slaves were captured in warfare, and if they got away, they were perfectly happy to take other people as slaves.
Never in the history of the world, outside of the West, has a group of people eligible to be slave owners mobilized against slavery. This distinctive Western attitude is reflected by Abraham Lincoln: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” Lincoln doesn’t want to be a slave-that’s not surprising. But he doesn’t want to be a master either. He and many other people were willing to expend considerable treasure, and ultimately blood, to get rid of slavery not for themselves but for other people. The campaign to end slavery was much harder in the United States than in Europe for the simple reason that the practice of slavery had become so entrenched in the American South.
The uniqueness of Western abolition is confirmed by the little-known fact that African chiefs, who profited from the slave trade, sent delegations to the West to protest the abolition of slavery. And it is important to realize that the slaves were not in a position to secure their own freedom. The descendants of African slaves owe their freedom to the exertions of white strangers, not to the people in Africa who betrayed and sold them.
Surely, all of this is relevant to the reparations debate. A trenchant observation on the matter was offered years ago by Muhammad Ali shortly after his defeat of George Foreman for the heavyweight title. The fight was held in the African nation of Zaire. Upon returning to the United States, a reporter asked Ali, “Champ, what did you think of Africa?” Ali replied, “Thank God my grand-daddy got on that boat!” There is a mischievous pungency to Ali’s remark, but behind it is an important truth. Ali is saying that although slavery was oppressive for the people who lived under it, their descendants are in many ways better off today. The reason is that slavery proved to be the transmission belt that brought Africans into the orbit of Western prosperity and freedom. Blacks in America have a higher standard of living and more freedom than any comparable group of blacks on the continent of Africa.
But what about racism? Racism continues to exist in America, but it exists in a very different way than it did in the past. Previously, racism was comprehensive or systematic; now it is more episodic. In a recent debate with the Reverend Jesse Jackson at Stanford University, I asked him to show me how racism today is potent enough to prevent his children or mine from achieving the American dream. “Where is that kind of racism?” I said. “Show it to me.” Jackson fired off a few of his famous rhyming sequences-”I may be well-dressed, but I’m still oppressed,” and so on-but conceded that he could not meet my challenge. He noted that just because there was no evidence of systematic racism, he could not conclude that it did not exist. Rather, he insisted, racism has gone underground; it is no longer overt but covert, and it continues to thwart African Americans and other minorities from claiming their share of the American dream.
In my view, this is complete nonsense. As a nonwhite immigrant, I am grateful to the activists of the civil rights movement for their efforts to open up doors that would otherwise have remained closed. But at the same time, I am struck by the ease with which Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement won its victories, and by the magnitude of white goodwill in this country. In a single decade, from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties, America radically overhauled its laws through a series of landmark decisions: Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act. Through such measures, America established equality of rights under the law. Of course, the need to enforce nondiscrimination provisions continues, but for nearly half a century, blacks and other minorities have enjoyed the same legal rights as whites.
Actually, this is not strictly true. For a few decades now, blacks and some minorities have enjoyed more rights and privileges than whites. The reason is that America has implemented affirmative action policies that give legal preference to minority groups in university admissions, jobs, and government contracts. Such policies remain controversial, but the point is that they reflect the great lengths to which this country has gone to eradicate discrimination. It is extremely unlikely that a racist society would grant its minority citizens legal preferences over members of the majority group. Some private discrimination continues to exist in America, but the only form of discrimination that can be legally practiced today benefits blacks more than whites.
The reality is that America has achieved greater social equality than any other society. True, there are large inequalities of income and wealth in America. In purely economic terms, Europe is more egalitarian. But Americans are socially more equal than any other people, and this is unaffected by economic disparities. Alexis de Tocqueville noticed this egalitarianism a century and a half ago, but it is, if anything, more prevalent today.
In other countries, if you are rich, you enjoy the pleasure of aristocracy, which is the pleasure of being a superior person. In India, for example, the rich enjoy the gratification of subservience, of seeing innumerable servants and toadies grovel before them and attend to their every need. In America, however, no amount of money can buy you the same kind of superiority.
Consider, for example, Bill Gates. If Gates were to walk the streets of America and stop people at random and say, “Here’s a $100 bill. I’ll give it to you if you kiss both my feet,” what would the typical American response be? Even the homeless guy would tell Gates to go to hell. The American view is that the rich guy may have more money, but he isn’t fundamentally better than anyone else.
The American janitor or waiter sees himself as performing a service, but he doesn’t see himself as inferior to those he serves. And neither do his customers see him that way: They are generally happy to show him respect and appreciation on a plane of equality. America is the only country in the world where we call the waiter “Sir,” as if he were a knight.
America are amongst the Smartest People in the world
IQ By Race in America(1997 Scores Likely Increased)
Jewish American:113
Asian American:106
White American:103
American IQ;98
Latino American:89
African American:85
Around the world, studies find the same general pattern: whites 100, East Asians 106, sub-Sarahan Africans 70. One IQ table shows 113 in Hong Kong, 110 in Japan, and 100 in Britain. White populations in Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States score closer to one another than to the worldwide black average. It’s been that way for at least a century.
If Jewish Americans were a country, they would be by far the smartest country on Earth eclipsing Hong Kong by 5 points. Asian Americans would be ranked 2nd as their own country, tied with South Korea and trailing Hong Kong and Singapore. White Americans would outperform every European country and Tail Taiwan and China. Latino Americans would come in 3rd out of all Hispanic countries, only trailing Chile and Uruguay. Black Americans would as well outperform pretty much every African country.
So while Americans as a collective may not score well in IQ tests, when you break it down to Individual Groups by factoring in cultural differences America makes the average person of every ethnicity either as equal as their Ethnic average or better in some cases. So no, the stereotype that Americans are “Stupid” is stupid itself
America has the Second GDP PPP(It had the Highest Until Recently)
America is 5th in Median Equivalent Adult income
America is second in Average Wage
America is 6th in Nominal GDP Per Captia. #1 if we exclude micro nations and petrostates
America is #11 in GDP PPP Per Captia. #1 again if we exclude petrostates micornations and City States.
WILL McAVOY: Sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reasons.
So whats his solution? Big Government. More Investment into Education. Despite the Fact we spend the 2nd most Per Student in the OECD. A Nationalized Healthcare System. Freeing Violent Criminals, thus spiking the Crime Rate. Ending the Liberal International Order which has ensured Peace and Prosperity for all nations under Her Hegemony.More or so nothing that holds any basis in Facts nor reality.
Conclusion:
None of this suggests that policy in America is ideal (it isn’t) or that European nations are failures (they still rank among the wealthiest places on the planet).I’m simply making the modest yet important argument that Europeans would be more prosperous if the fiscal burden of government wasn’t so onerous. And I’m debunking the argument that we should copy nations such as Denmark by allowing a larger government in the United States.
Will America maintain these advantages? In his 1942 book, Socialism, Capitalism, and Democracy, Joseph Schumpeter warned that capitalism would decline and fail because the political and intellectual environment needed for capitalism to flourish would be undermined by the success of capitalism and by the critique of intellectuals. He argued that popularly elected social democratic parties would create a welfare state that would restrict entrepreneurship.
Although Schumpeter’s book was published more than 20 years after he had moved from Europe to the United States, his warning seems more appropriate to Europe today than to the United States. The welfare state has grown in the United States, but much less than it has grown in Europe. And the intellectual climate in the United States is much more supportive of capitalism.
If Schumpeter were with us today, he might point to the growth of the social democratic parties in Europe and the resulting expansion of the welfare state as reasons why the industrial countries of Europe have not enjoyed the same robust economic growth that has prevailed in the United States.
America has many faults and that Americans have made many mistakes in the past and are likely to do so in the future. But that doesn’t make the United States the equivalent of Norway, Germany, Canada, or Japan.Instead I look to to President Reagan, for whom exceptionalism meant that America remained “the last best hope for a mankind plagued by tyranny and deprivation.”
“The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, “and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.” The notion that America has its own way of doing things separate and distinct from Europe’s has been one of the greatest impediments to Europeanizing America’s political and economic institutions.
The ideas on which this nation is based were revolutionary in the 18th century and still are today. All men are created equal? Governments derive their powers only from the consent of the governed? We are endowed by our Creator with rights and freedoms that no one can take away? China is nowhere close to embracing such principles. Nor is most of the Middle East, the “Arab Spring” notwithstanding. Latin America and Africa have a long way to go. And in Europe Canada etc all have long ways to go
Americans and Europeans alike sometimes forget how unique is the United States of America. No other nation has been built upon an idea, the idea of liberty.” Margaret Thatcher’s 1991 words perfectly reflect the essence of American exceptionalism: that uniquely among the countries of the world, the United States was founded not on bonds of blood or race or religion or tribe, but on the ideals of freedom, equality, and self-government. From that heritage flowed an array of unique characteristics and traditions that shaped how Americans see themselves and their country’s place in the world.
The American identity and national bond are based not just on a common history or culture or language but, more important, on a set of common ideals and principles, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence: the equality of all individuals, the inviolability of human rights, and the dependence of government’s legitimacy on the consent of the governed.
What has been unique in American political discourse for 240 years is that our ideals have given a higher purpose to our common mission to govern ourselves at home and champion our values abroad. Americans, Jefferson wrote, are “trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth, if other regions of the earth shall ever become susceptible of its benign influence.” It fills me with pride to belong to the one country in history to have built its foundation and forged its bonds of citizenship on these magnificent ideals. It has given me a deep love for my country a patriotism I feel in my bones.
Without a shared belief in liberty, democracy, and equal opportunity, we would cease to be Americans in any meaningful sense. Our patriotic displays express a shared pride and dedication to those ideals far beyond any brittle bond of race, ethnicity, or narrow sense of nationality.
What country in the history of the world boasts such an impressive record of bettering the lot of all of humanity? The answer is no country.
America is the greatest, freest, and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world. By making sacrifices for America and by our willingness to die for her, we bind ourselves by invisible cords to those great patriots who fought at Yorktown, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima, and we prove ourselves worthy of the blessings of freedom. By defeating the terrorist threat posed by Islamic radicalism, we can protect the American way of life while once again redeeming humanity from a global menace. American life as it is lived today is the best life that our world has to offer.History will view America as a great gift to the world, a gift that Americans today must preserve and cherish.
America is a new kind of society that produces a new kind of human being. That human being confidant, self-reliant, tolerant, generous, future oriented is a vast improvement over the wretched, servile, fatalistic, and intolerant human being that traditional societies have always produced, and that Islamic societies produce now.
While it is proper to have a discussion of our national sins (slavery comes to mind, first and foremost), it is not just intellectually dishonest, but downright suicidal to breed such contempt for the very nation which, for the first time in history, declared that all men are created equal in the eyes of God and the law, and which declared our rights come not from man, but from God Himself. No longer would we live under the idea of a Divine Right of Kings, but instead would propose that government is the servant of the people, not the master.
The bottom line for objective observers is that the American ideal and form of government is indeed superior to every other form of government tried in the history of mankind, even with its flaws. When individuals are given great freedom, all will at some point make a bad decision worthy of criticism, and a smaller number will use their free will to engage in immoral, misanthropic activities that demean, cheat, and harm others, for which there will be a negative impact on society. That is how we end up with such painful manifestations of the shortcomings of free will as theft, burglary, gang violence, rape, murder, the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, reality TV, and the popularity of Justin Bieber.
