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Non-American users, what do you think of the USA?

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Originally posted by Blumiere
Realistically, you're probably good people and it's a great place to live.

Stereotypically and critically, worded in a way bound to anger a few people who don't understand that this isn't necessarily my explicit view of your home but a loose analysis of my peeves:

Your health care system is abysmal and the only thing stopping me from visiting the US is the fear of being hit by a car and having to pay thousands of dollars for just the ride to the hospital. Get free health care already.

The right to bear arms? You don't need such a radical form of self defense. You wouldn't need guns to defend yourselves from other people with guns if they didn't have guns. When guns were legal here in Australia, they were swiftly banned nation wide after one massacre in Port Arthur. It's taken multiple tragedies in the US for states to start limiting gun usage rather than scrapping it completely. I would not want to live in a country where the fear of death is everywhere.

Do it like we do: outline rights through legislation and common law and dispute them in the judicary under an unlawful act rather than an unconsitutional act. We don't need to start a referendum every time we want to progress the wording of our rights.

Politically and economically, you guys are the worst of them all. You are not living in the land of the free, you are living in the land of the corrupt and the land of the puppeteers. I've seen some damn crazy politicians features in the news here that embarrass me so much I need to change the channel. How can such ignorant people be elected into parliaments? What's worse is that these polticians and Americans themselves are controlled by their corporations rather than taking a stand and trying to equalise wages and distribute wealth to better the lower class. Your police forces get away with murder during rampages and receive promotions for their valiant efforts. What's even more frustrating is that you guys try to infect us with your corruption by reaching out to our countries and other countries in attempt to influence them in favour of your laws. The Megaupload debacle comes to mind where he, despite not being a resident of the US, was nearly dragged to the US to be trialled, from what I would guess, unfairly, after doing nothing wrong during the whole process of arrest and denied his rights after the police, again, screwed up the process of detainment.

I hate how influential people think the US can be simply for being the US.

Lastly is your patriotism. If there's one thing I detest in the world it's being patriotic. Loving your country is one thing, but wanting to create an embodiment of it just so you can kiss its feet in love and respect? I hate the group-think mentality Americans have where, say, a soldier dies, and everyone must mourn that soldier for he defended our great country and he died honorably! I saw a Youtube video of an ex-armyman who died minutes after opting to buy some little kid who he didn't even know some lunch at a restaurant. The report was 75% explaining how he fought for the country during times of war and 25% of what actually happened. Has patriotism become such a necessary feature of being American that one cannot respect another without blabbing on about it? As Americans you have the right to be proud of yourselves but it doesn't have to be so damn rampant.

That's what I think of America off the top of my head. I can honestly find no positive of being American in comparison to being Australian. Everything about where I live, from the gap in wages, health care, politics ... I'd say you're a pretty corrupt country and you don't even realise how bad you have it.


I'm glad that you're happy with your home country of Australia, Blumiere. Just keep in mind that comparing American issues to Australian issues is like comparing Apples to Oranges. The problems and conflicts are SO different and involve different solutions. You may not understand why America deals with certain issues just as I won't understand why Australia deals with its problems.
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Just saying:

-When the commercials say #1 or THE BEST, %95 of the time, they are lying.
-Gun control is out of control (South Dakota currently allows Teachers to have guns)
-Our economy. Our politicians. Oh, God.
-Our patriotism is 2/5 ACTUALLY being done.
-Full Blown idiots everyhwere
-1/4 Racist police
-Have freedom to the point where it is possible to get away with killing someone.
-We are paying attention to everyone around us and not looking at ourselves.

To those of you who point out the following:

I AM NOT SURPRISED and was born and raised in California. It's crazy.

Aside from this, we are a good country, just ignore the race jokes. Just pointing this out incase a foreigner travel to America.
They are also people like you and me ;)
Originally posted by Blumiere
Lastly is your patriotism. If there's one thing I detest in the world it's being patriotic. Loving your country is one thing, but wanting to create an embodiment of it just so you can kiss its feet in love and respect? I hate the group-think mentality Americans have where, say, a soldier dies, and everyone must mourn that soldier for he defended our great country and he died honorably! I saw a Youtube video of an ex-armyman who died minutes after opting to buy some little kid who he didn't even know some lunch at a restaurant. The report was 75% explaining how he fought for the country during times of war and 25% of what actually happened. Has patriotism become such a necessary feature of being American that one cannot respect another without blabbing on about it? As Americans you have the right to be proud of yourselves but it doesn't have to be so damn rampant.


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I may be American and live in the US but I was reading through these posts and there is a lot of things that my own opinion would agree with. Now, I've never been to the bigger cities or the suburbs, so I have no valid opinion there. I've always lived in the countryside, near mountains. But in my own opinion, even if we worship our country so much, I think this worship is going to our politicians' heads. It's completely ridiculous how far in debt we are, and our government continues to spend money, mainly on things we don't need.

I honestly believe we have a corrupt government, and eventually, I think our economy will crash completely. Not to mention our second amendment got someone off of murdering a 17 year old teenager with nothing, and part of that was racism, because the 17 year old was BLACK, and this guy got nothing for murder.

It's all crazy. You should look up some trials we had, mainly Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman.
I've never been to the US, but taking from what I see on the News or by other means it seems to be very negative, with numerous accounts of murder provoked by racism or mass shootings in schools.

Americans also seem to be immensely patriotic. I know that they were taught in school to love the US and such and blah blah, but it seems to get to the point where it's actually difficult to see a single picture of video without at least one flag in it, or one mention of 'Murica', et cetera. It's so blatantly obvious it's ridiculous.

Finally, the US seems to want to be the 'Police of the world', thinking that if there's a small irregularity in a single country in the (Middle)East that they can just run in with all guns blazing, not really giving a damn about a single citizen and hoping that will 'fix' it.

This post may have seem negative, but remember this is all I can get from what I've seen or heard. Absolutely none of this is definitely true and I may have been mistaken about absolutely everything.
Originally posted by TheRPGLPer
and part of that was racism, because the 17 year old was BLACK

Are... Are you being sarcastic? Because those are the exact words I would use if I were being sarcastic about this situation.
Killing a nigger is racism no matter what your real motives are!!!!
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Basically my thoughts on the usa boil down to: man I'm glad I don't live there.

Minimum wage for the country is $7.50 per hour. It varies from state to state; some are higher and some are lower, but the federal minimum wage is $7.50. To put that in perspective, minimum wage where I live (i.e., central Canada) is $10.25 per hour, and Canadian dollars are worth about the same amount as american. And I don't need to spend any of that on health insurance. And housing is cheaper here. And university is less than half the cost on average.

In some places you can get a year's tuition for about $3000. McGill has this for residents of Quebec, and it's one of the highest rated universities on earth. You definitely don't need to pay as much as you do in US schools. From MIT's website: "Nine months' tuition and fees for 2012–2013 is $42,050." This will shock and appall anyone not from the USA. I'm paying about that for my entire 4-year degree. I know MIT is probably an extreme, being arguably the best in the country, but the same goes for McGill in Canada, and that's one of our cheapest. Cheap schools mean that smart people, not rich people, have the privilege of being educated. And no, it isn't true that universities actually need that much money. Again, look at Canada. Heck, tuition is even free in places like Germany and Sweden. Even for non-citizens.

Next: healthcare. I can't even imagine how anyone convinced the entire population of the USA that free healthcare would be a detriment to the country. Same for socialism in general. It's literally just the political policy of "sharing is caring". Free health care's not a new thing that's never been tried. It works in so many countries around the world. Again, I refer you to Canada. It has never caused us economic problems. Heck, the money you'd save on health insurance might even be able to go towards helping you consume more brand-name products like big companies want.

Also, there's the issue of prisons. I'll give you a statistic and a quote to show my opinion here. "In 2008 approximately one in every 31 adults (7.3 million) in the United States was behind bars, or being monitored (probation and parole)." (Wikipedia, source) This proportion is higher than any other country in the world. I'm including dictatorships. Here's the quote: "Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jails and prisons, however, they each can generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year." (Chris Hedges, source). Really speaks for itself.

I guess I should mention politics too. People tend not to realize that the Democrats and the Republicans are essentially the same party. The political spectrum in the USA is as follows: right, and even farther right. People voted for Obama and the democrats because of the promise of change, and then it turned out that nothing changed at all. Obama is worse than Bush with civil liberties. We've all heard the famous quote, "you can't have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience." (Obama, source) More drone strikes have occurred under Obama than Bush as well. His trick is distracting people with social issues like gay marriage to stay popular. Gay marriage, by the way, has been legal in Canada since 2005 (1999 in some places) and is legal in lots of developed countries. The whole being behind on social policy thing isn't new. Slavery anyone? The USA was one of the last of its era with that as well. Even Russia abolished serfdom before the USA abolished slavery.

So yeah. I don't like your country. It's not good.

Late edit: I reread this and it's really choppy and the sentences are all really short. I guess that's what you get when you try to write something like this while talking to people on skype. Either way, these are my real opinions, even if they could be phrased a little better here and there.
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Being from Canada, you probably are thinking my intentions are that I dislike America, right? Well no..but yes. I have only been to one part of America, Florida. Visually it is beautifully, but when I heard rumors and such that I believe arent even rumors, they are truths, about crocodiles living in the ditches, I was terrified. Sure, Orlando, Florida, beautiful place and Disney Land is fun, specifically Space Mountain.. but that is just me, and that is just one part of America.. I can't state for anything else because I have no visualizations, all I could do is judge. And so, the news gives me reasons to.

All this yip-yap about America being the fattest country, and blah blah.. Apparently from what I hear you also claim the biggest oil guzzlers and that you are a partial reason to the oil price skyrocketing. I don't know, maybe it was Saudi Arabia..

My point is, I love people, though I am shy..I love Americans, and your country is pretty beautiful..large cities.. I would love to live there, but the non-free health care, and the deeper debt kills everything..

That's just my opinion..
Originally posted by HuFlungDu
Originally posted by TheRPGLPer
and part of that was racism, because the 17 year old was BLACK

Are... Are you being sarcastic? Because those are the exact words I would use if I were being sarcastic about this situation.

No, I'm being dead serious. He was killed because he was a 17-year old black kid and this country is extremely racist. It was sparked purely by racism and the fact that he had a hoodie on and that automatically made him a dangerous person...
Originally posted by TheRPGLPer
No, I'm being dead serious. He was killed because he was a 17-year old black kid and this country is extremely racist.
It was sparked purely by racism and the fact that he had a hoodie on and that automatically made him a dangerous person...

THIS IS WHAT AMERICANS ACTUALLY BELIEVE
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Originally posted by TheRPGLPer
No, I'm being dead serious. He was killed because he was a 17-year old black kid and this country is extremely racist. It was sparked purely by racism and the fact that he had a hoodie on and that automatically made him a dangerous person...

Please educate yourself. I recommend not watching Fox News or listening to what the masses say. Form your own opinion of widely available cases like the Zimmerman case instead of taking what you see in the news as gospel truth.
A point that no one seem to have mentioned is the culture of greed that seem to have appear in the recent years, where people will screw other in their quest to make more money. Somehow, those guy (which mostly got there because their parent were rich) are worshiped as "job creator" and "captain of the industry" despise all the blatant abuse of corporations (seriously, some of them being cartoonishly evil, like deregulating dietary supplement (the Dietary Supplement Health And Education Act of 1994) so they can get away with selling pretty much anything and have it marketed as anything else or that private prison that teamed up with two judges to send kid to prison for low cost labor). What is even stranger is that, somehow, deregulating more and giving those guys more power is supposed to make it all better because of the "magic hand of the free market". I am aware that in certain case, the having a free market can lead to a better product, the video game market is an excellent example of that (like recently, Microsoft removing their intrusive DRM on the Xbox one). The big problem is that it won't work if:

- The clients are pretty much forced to consume the product
- The clients have no good way of judging the quality of the product
- The CEOs are working with each others instead of against each others

Since, in those cases, profits will be optimized by screwing the consumer as much as possible and the latter will have no tools to deal with it. This is why state regulation and state-owned corporations are necessary to prevent such abuses.

Probably not one of the biggest problem of the USA right now, but it's what annoy me the most, mostly because that belief seem to be spreading in Quebec and I don't want it to ruin our current situation.
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