Uh… Take what off, now?
Also, if I had my druthers, I’d totally live in Scandinavia. Maybe Finland, maybe Sweden. Maybe I can find a distant cousin’s couch to crash on in Norway…
If you like driving big SUVs and think that parking spaces are just sort of a general guide to where your vehicle might go, Iceland is pretty nice so far.
I’m sure many Romans thought there was something unique about Rome… But did nothing to ensure it remained that way.
There is nothing about America that won’t slip away if we let it.
the cast!
healthcare isn’t that bad in the US yet.
Wasn’t the big deal about American Exceptionalism the idea that people actually had a choice in governance, compared to the rest of the Western World. It may only have been a choice between two parties but that was still 100% more than any other country got. Having a choice was the future. Now that same binary choice that made up American Exceptionalism seems pretty backwards to a lot of other countries. (Yes, I know there’s more to it than that but the other aspects of Exceptionalism such as abundance of land, and immigration opportunities no longer apply.)
Well.
10-15 years ago, I met a few Americans who was visiting here(Norway) from various places, and they actually came thinking this would be the ‘bush’ and that it would be somewhat backwards.
At the exact time, a friend was visiting the states, wondering where the heck the cellphone coverage was, and why his SMS wasn’t working.
That’s nice.
Didn’t Iceland’s economy implode?
Yeah but the parking spaces has weathered the crisis for the most part.
How do you feel it’s doing in terms of honest political discourse?
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/11/the-rights-accuracy-problem.html
My own feeling on “American exceptionalism” is that it is played out most strongly in the attitude of Americans to the abuse of power. The abuse of power is morally bad… except when America does it. America gets to be an exception. So… torture, totally evil, except when Americans do it. Murdering civilians in a warzone, ditto ditto. Fraud, dishonesty, propaganda, belligerence, every moral transgression under the sun… forgiveable oversights, so long as they’re done by Americans to non-Americans. Of course, many Americans find this kind of hypocrisy just as repellent as I do; but very few of them are in any kind of position of political power over there.
As for the question of which country is the greatest, I’m with Samuel Jonhson; “A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization”. By that measure, the winner is doubtless one of the Nordic countries, although there may not be much to pick between them. America - judged not merely by the paltriness of what it actually does but also by the sheer gulf between that and its vast capacity to do much more - is a long, long way behind.
In terms of power, the USA is certainly the greatest state in the world right now. Even once China overtakes America economically, it will be decades before they catch up military-wise. The USA has military bases across much of the world, not to mention ICBMs and carrier groups. That sort of projection capability doesn’t appear overnight.
It’s not obvious that China is actually going to significantly out-GDP the US any time soon, even with way, way more population. Some background. Basically, it’s easy to industrialize, but it’s also easy to stall out way way below US per-capita numbers; sustained productivity growth is hard. China is actually amazingly poor still on a per-capita basis; behind Jamaica, if you can believe it.
There’s also some debate about whether they’re just making up numbers for party leaders. Fun wikileaks angle. The inflation they’re trying to keep on wraps with the currency buying could also explode.
They’re certainly moving in the right direction. They’re expanding education investment ridiculously fast (context: the rest of the world).
Anyway, you can just s/once/if/ in my original comment, if it saves derailment.
Also, fun with unemployment numbers!
They’re doing a great job turning uneducated peasant farmers into factory workers, but I’d recommend reading The Myth of Asia’s Miracle on the limits they’re likely to run into. For example, the reason they’re expanding education investment so fast is that more-or-less nobody has ever had an education before in the country.
Illustrative of the tone of discussion was a 1957 article by Calvin B. Hoover. Like many Western economists, Hoover criticized official Soviet statistics, arguing that they exaggerated the true growth rate. Nonetheless, he concluded that Soviet claims of astonishing achievement were fully justified: their economy was achieving a rate of growth “twice as high as that attained by any important capitalistic country over any considerable number of years [and] three times as high as the average annual rate of increase in the United States.” He concluded that it was probable that “a collectivist, authoritarian state” was inherently better at achieving economic growth than free-market democracies and projected that the Soviet economy might outstrip that of the United States by the early 1970s.
These views were not considered outlandish at the time. On the contrary, the general image of Soviet central planning was that it might be brutal, and might not do a very good job of providing consumer goods, but that it was very effective at promoting industrial growth. In 1960 Wassily Leontief described the Soviet economy as being “directed with determined ruthless skill”–and did so without supporting argument, confident he was expressing a view shared by his readers.
This paper along those lines:
The major outcome of this paper is that massive capital accumulation has been the driving force of the spectacular economic performances in Chinese industry, between 1952 and 2005. Besides, TFP gains contributed positively to economic takeoff during both prereform and post-reform periods. Our empirical results yield no support for the concern of TFP slowdown as expressed in some recent studies. Besides, our TFP estimates exhibit an accelerating growth pattern since 1992, giving consistent evidence about the sustainability of economic growth in the near future.
s/once/even if/, then?
You know, there’s something pretty bloody-minded about your insistence on China being #1.
Mostly just hilarious.
I remember reading Glenn Greenwald’s twitter recently where he was arguing with someone who was insisting he say which country he thought was greatest. Quite sensibly he replied that “greatest” is a meaningless term, and you can only look at different factors. It’s telling that the best you can do is say “in my mind”, making it meaninglessly subjective (I wonder how you know what it’s like to live in every other country).
Of course it’s garbage to say all countries are great, but it’s not at all garbage to say certain countries are better than others in certain ways. And I hate to break it to you but the US isn’t going to come first on most social issues (education, health, prosperity, poverty, etc.).
Personally I think the US is the best when it comes to many aspects of law, such as enforced secularism, press freedoms, individual constitutional freedoms and the like. Which makes it such a tragedy that those get violated so often.
Don’t pick Denmark. We gave the power to the old scared people (ie racists) so we’re going to hell in a handbasket. Iceland is bankrupt, so fortet them. Sweden is fine, but Norway is richer than the Arab Countries without being run like a medieval siefdom, so I’d Pick them.
For a serious answer I agree ith Lh’owon, Greenwald et al. If you don’t answer that question with a “Best at what?” or Can’t see stuff to improve in hour country, there’s something wrong. I wouldn’t Think the US best by Manu factors, but you still got a lot going for you.