Agreed, the US doesn't rank first in virtually any metric that citizens would consider to be desirable (like healthcare, education, safety, freedom of the press etc). And it's no more democratic than say most European states.
Taking into context its size is a whole different matter, though. It's relatively easier to build an awesome small country (say the Netherlands where I'm writing from) than a massive union of states spanning multiple time zones and climates. Perhaps if the US is compared to the entirety of the EU, then Congress and the American system of governing can be said to be one of the most impressive, if not the most impressive, experiment in government in history at that scale (although I'd much prefer Europe to the US even on average). But that's more a function of it being the only 300m+ country in the world that is also rich than it being the best among many of them.
> no more democratic than say most European states
I may get flamed or burned for saying this, but I believe we (in Europe and US) are currently pretty close to the ancient form of Greek democracy.
In the ancient Greece, the vote was a privilege of the free men. The definition of "free man" on the other hand was not quite what we think of in a modern society. To start with, only a few percent of the population actually was eligible to participate. [0] To qualify as a free man, you needed to have position and/or wealth. Usually the two came together.
After all, what good would it do to allow plebs to vote? They could vote against your agenda! Better to control the access to the vote by simply ensuring that at least majority of the voting people already share a certain appreciation for the status quo.
"But, but but... We can vote however we want" you say. Sorry, no you can't. Thanks to the nature of the system, you get to vote between two or three nearly identical alternatives. Outliers will not be even put on the ballot. (I think California is an exception, which introduces its own downsides.)
The choices on the vote are in practice dictated by those with the most power or money. Lawrence Lessig outlined this situation with his only slightly satirical TED talk - a country of Lesters. [1, 2]
But back to terminology. If the power is held by those with wealth, and decisions are made purely among the people who have the most to financially gain from them, what do you call such a system? Is there even a descriptive term for a mix of oligarchy and plutocracy?
The Netherlands has actually way more choice in parties to vote for than just two or three. Smaller parties have pretty decent power to influence policy, as long as they get enough votes for a single seat. The difference between zero (no voice) and one seat is much more important than the difference between one, two or three seats.
And even the larger parties are not at all identical, especially when compared to the US' Democrats vs Republicans (although I am aware that this is in the US largely due to the "gridlock" mentioned in the article). Also, even the larger traditional right-wing party VVD is relatively left-wing when compared to US politics--they even consider themselves "liberals", to the point that the word itself is often associated with right-wing politics (the previous chairwoman Femke Halsema of our Green Party sometimes explicitly referred to herself as "liberal", to mess with this preconception, and try and reclaim the term).
Maybe for the US you have only 2 choices, but Europe actually has quite a few "new" parties recently. UKIP[0], Podemos[1], and SYRIZA[2] (and many others I'm not well acquainted with) have all cropped up in the past few years, and have had quite a lot of success.
To start with - I happen to be European. (Finn, living in UK.) I would say that all three of your examples actually confirm what I sad above.
UKIP, Podemos and SYRIZA are all parties that rose to their position of power only after the status quo was already horribly disturbed.
UKIP - While UK feels a bit xenophobic at times, it was only when the financial stability was shattered that a more-extreme-than-current protest movement gained power
SYRIZA - rose to power after Greece economy was first demolished, and then further abused; again, the calm and nice status quo was disturbed
Podemos - I hear Spain has suffered similarly since the financial crisis and is still in the process of starting their recovery
UKIP, Podemos and SYRIZA are all parties that rose to their position of power only after the status quo was already horribly disturbed
In the U.S., after horrible disturbances, we watch the two parties blame each other on talk radio, Fox News, and MSNBC and then vote the same parties in.
I guess if you omit the civil war, ww1, ww2, the great depression, the financial crisis of 2008, racial strife, 1970s stagflation, and any number of major disruptions from the historical record, youre right.
I meant in recent years, but the 2008 financial crisis was nothing in the US compared to what it was in Europe. The US Dollar was never at major threat of collapse the way the Euro was.
Agrees, this is one area Europe clearly has us beat, viable n party candidates, where n is greater than 2. Im not quite sure why things evolved that way. Is it a side effect of capitalism?
We've had a significant 3rd party (Lib dems) since the 90s. Sure, FPTP sucks, but British politics has had more than 2 parties (that actually win seats) for quite a while
Size is important. I think everything gets harder with increased size. The more I look at the US, the more I like the EU being more of a confederation than a union, even though all the horse trading makes Brussels a mess. Countries with homogeneous culture and a population less than 10 million just seems optimal. There are positive scaling effects to be had, and I don't think the EU is quite strong enough to capture them all yet, but I think a vision of a USE is misguided.
I wouldn't say the US being rich is a question of government organization, rather of not having been a colony whose sole purpose was to export raw materials.
Higher dimensions also means more tax collection, which could be perfectly invested into making the standard of living of Americans better (it seems absurd to me that you don't have any public universal healthcare). The government prefers to invest 50% of it in Defense though. Consequence (also) of arms industry lobbyists and geopolitical strategy etc. but certainly not of size.
Holding defense spending against the U.S. while comparing it to Europe doesn't make much sense. The U.S. subsidizes defense for Europe. Look, Europe spent the last several hundred years warring with each other, then stopped suddenly with U.S. ascendency. They didn't evolve beyond war. It just became unimaginable when the U.S. has all the guns and will enforce the status quo.
The European Union is widely regarded to be the main reason driving a peaceful Europe. I've not really heard of the argument at all, ever, that the US is what keeps Europe from engaging in war.
It's true that the US-led United Nations and principles of the right of self-determination led to massive post-war decolonization, leading to Europe being much less imperialistic (which accelerated the inevitable independence movements which were already in full force in most countries) but even here the US subsidizing defense doesn't apply, the amount of military power that was used for the colonies was quite slim, almost everywhere they became police-heavy, and the US wouldn't have subsidized colonial powers, on the contrary.
As for Europe warring until US ascendancy... while it's certainly true that the US was never more powerful relatively to everyone else than after the second world war, but they've been the largest economy in the world since the 19th century. They were the superpower before the first world war even started, let alone the second. Hell if anything, since then the US only lost power as Russia became a superpower, Western Europe became united and China rose, none of which were true at the end of the 19th century, and the per-capita wealth gap between the US and everyone else only slimmed since then.
But I'll agree with you on the fact that the US subsidizes defense spending through the NATO in the tug of war for eastern Europe, sure. It's unlikely that the EU could have grown eastward so much, without NATO we would've seen today's Ukraine happen much sooner with say Estonia, Latvia, Romania or Poland 10 years ago.
It's less a question of American economic power and more a question of the tens of thousands of American troops stationed throughout Europe. The U.S. military presence already in Europe is larger than the militaries of many European countries, and there's almost a million more American troops who can be deployed there if need be. If the U.S. was willing to do that in 1918, instead of turning isolationist again, World War II could have been prevented, just as the Pax Americana after World War II successfully prevented World War III.
The US has extensive public healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid are huge programs. I realize there is a fair chance that you mean some baseline universal care, but imprecise terms make the conversation more difficult.
Large corporations are also hilariously micro-socialist in the way health care is provided to workers (partly by government rule, partly because they hire productive workers and can afford to compete with benefits).
Edit: The ACA (Obamacare) was also a big step towards universal care. The funding/payment model is messy, but all someone needs to do in the US to get health coverage now is apply for it and make payments, they don't have to hope they get accepted by the insurance company (and I guess it is also much harder to drop coverage).
My notion of "public healthcare" is being able to walk into a government clinic or hospital and get free treatment or appointments as long as you show you're a citizen -- sorry for not having cleared that up.
I personally do like the single-payer approach, where you get coverage on a no-fee basis purely by showing you're a citizen/resident; and that's how it's done here in Denmark. But it's not the only way of providing universal care, even in Europe. Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands are typically considered to also have universal healthcare, but it's administered via health insurance, not as a single-payer model with direct state provision of services. There are various options for coverage, but having some baseline coverage is mandatory and intended to be universal (with subsidies for people who can't afford it), somewhat closer to the ACA model than to the Scandinavian or Canadian model.
I changed my original comment to "public universal healthcare". I once again apologize for the lack of clarity of the original comment, and I hope you understand what my point was.
Europeans visiting the states are genuinely worried that they will be carjacked, which I always find hilarious. Life is not like the movies or the news.
The USA has the strongest military in the world. Unlike the Netherlands, we can actually defend ourselves against an aggressor. I would rather come from a strong country than one that needs to rely on others when it comes to defense.
Your social programs aren't worth a damn if you don't have the ability to defend yourself.
Don't be so quick to downvote ladytron, there's a core of truth in it. As long as our surrounding countries allow us to be, The Netherlands is the greatest country in the world (to live in), obviously WW2 has shown us that can be taken away from us in an instant.
Arguing that the US wouldn't let it happen is stupid. Last time the US saved us it took 5 years for it to make that decision (for which we are eternally grateful) and in those 5 years the agressor had killed almost an entire subculture of our society in gas chambers and put us through one of the worst food shortages in our history.
I'm not saying we should make an effort to go all Israel and build an army worthy of Mordor, but there's no shame in simply admitting we are weak and depend on our diplomacy to survive.
The social programs really are worth a damn though. From my perspective (easy as a Dutch person) countries like The Netherlands is what we're fighting for. It's simply civilization, a world where we don't have to behave like animals to get what we need. Take away your social structure, and you take away civilization from the less wealthy. And the result is obvious, only the hyenas and vultures make it out, and they'll be the ones perfect for a job as Congress man/woman.
The biggest difference between now and 1940 is that in 1940, the US didn't have more troops already in Germany than the Netherlands had in total. Nor was the US bound by treaty to defend virtually every country in Europe from aggression.
It's funny talking to Europeans about this though, because when we rush to the rescue of other countries, like South Vietnam, you call us warmongers.
It's not an insult. Mordor only lost because they depended on the power of the ring to unite their armies. Only when it was destroyed their armies fell into chaos. If it were up to the military power of Mordor Middle-Earth would surely have fallen.
> Not true. You're an American protectorate.
The whole idea of being a protectorate is that you're weak and are depending on your allies to survive, which is exactly what I'm saying.
>The whole idea of being a protectorate is that you're weak and are depending on your allies to survive, which is exactly what I'm saying.
Fair enough.
>It's not an insult. Mordor only lost because they depended on the power of the ring to unite their armies. Only when it was destroyed their armies fell into chaos. If it were up to the military power of Mordor Middle-Earth would surely have fallen.
The US military has the following missions, by law and treaty:
1. Protect the United States
2. Provide mutual defense to Canada, the entire continent of Europe, and South Korea.
3. Defend counties like Japan and Iceland, which are treaty-bound not to have militaries of their own.
By tradition and policy, but not necessarily binding treaty or law, the US military also has the following missions:
4. Protect the entire Western Hemisphere from foreign aggression (the Monroe Doctrine).
5. Protect the economic supply chain of the developed world, particularly the oil supply.
6. Occasionally intervene, militarily, in humanitarian crises (this goes back and forth; yes in Somalia, no in Rwanda, yes in Yugoslavia).
7. Provide purely humanitarian assistance in case of natural disasters (the military has tons of logistical ability that's occasionally repurposed to provide food and water to e.g. Haiti whenever it gets hit by a hurricane).
8. Keep the world's sea lanes open for shipping (this is kind of a shared responsibility with every major naval power, but we're practically the only one left).
Also, there are non-functional requirements to the US military, driven by purely political forces that almost no potential US enemy has:
9. Minimize friendly casualties. Spare no expense to accomplish this.
10. Minimize civilian casualties.
11. Maintain good PR so they don't look like bullies.
In other words, the US has to bear the bulk of the entire world's military requirements, and not just be able to win wars, but win them in absolute routs that are nearly unprecedented in world history. If anything, the US military is undersized for its current requirements. It's oversized if you're looking at requirement #1, but that's a ridiculous understatement of the actual requirements, or any realistic set of requirements, for the US military.
That's mostly a function of size. Several countries have stronger military's per person. Worse we gain
little from a strong military. Sure, there are a few economic benefits but suspending 1/3 as much would be a huge net gain.
And yet in the lead-up to WWII, the US had a very small army. Any aggressor other than Canada or Mexico would have to first cross the twin giant moats of the US. Canada has nowhere near the size to take on the US, and a sufficient military build-up in Mexico would be seen coming a long way away.
If the goal is simply "defend ourselves", a strong navy is all the US needs, plus a few nukes to stay in the nuke club. Any aggressor with a large enough army and navy to take on the US would, again, be seen coming a mile away.
That may have been true 50 years ago, but not now. The future of military defense is the future of technology: genomics, information systems, robotics, self driving and flying vehicles, nanotechnology.
A constant investment in technical capabilities and human capabilities is needed to defend against future threats from aggressive actors.
Yes, one challenge for the military is educating congress and the American people on new emerging threats so new defense products can be researched, developed, and funded.
The global military environment is dynamic and evolving and our defense plans need to reflect that reality.
If Europe comes out ahead partly by defecting in a farmer's dilemma[1], it hardly seems fair to hold it up as an example of what the US should aspire to.
(You might argue that the US doesn't need to spend that much on military. But you didn't argue that. You argued that Europe doesn't need to spend as much on military as the US, because the US does.)
[1] I could have sworn the farmer's dilemma was a standard term, but I can't find it on google. If two farmers have fields next to each other, and one of them irrigates, then both of them benefit. They can split the work, or one can say "I'm not going to bother. What are you going to do, let your crops die, just to spite me?" So the second one irrigates.
Then people look at the first farmer and see that he runs a successful farm without working as hard as the second, and they assume that she must be doing something wrong.
It's not the prisoner's dilemma. In PD, both players are better off defecting, regardless of their opponent's move. In FD, if one defects, then the other gets a better result by cooperating.
So you are content to allow the USA to defend Europe while you spend your money on domestic services? Personally I find it hard to respect those decisions.
We end having to protect Europe because we are the only ones who understand defense of one's liberty should be the first priority.
Who did the US protect Europe against? Last I checked the US came to Europe last 70 years ago, and not to defend Europe but to aid one part of Europe against another part of Europe, years after the war started, in an effort that was puny compared to the sacrifice of say the Russians to whom we're much more indebted, and in doing so the US was heavily involved in every end-of-war and post-war treaty in which the US were rewarded more than anyone else. And hey you nicely rounded off the war with dropping atomic bombs on civilians, the act of killing civilians and terrorizing them for political ends, something we happen to call terrorism these days, LIBERTY!
And since then the US has mostly abused that position of powers with silly wars in Vietnam, or in Iraq fighting the guy twice that they funded and armed, as well as all the support for dictators like Pinochet or the overthrow of democratic secular governments in say Iran, anyway the list goes on and on I'm sure you're familiar.
I'm certainly glad the US came and helped 70 years ago, but this notion that the US is the world's moral police force and we all live in safety because of it good will is bit myopic. It's a much more contextualized story than that.
It's partially true, absolutely, no denying that US hegemony keeps others from employing military opportunism. But that has more to do with US interests in keeping geopolitical control for its own benefit than US sacrifice out of benevolence.
And so the notion then, that the US commands global power and Europe doesn't try to fight it or compete with it by investing in a military that wouldn't make us any safer, but SPENDS MONEY ON THE QUALIFY OF PEOPLES LIVES is hard to respect, while cooperating with the US in NATO and supporting the US in legitimate wars (say when Iraq invaded Kuwait, or say fighting the Taliban (that the US funded and armed in the first place, by the way) in Afghanistan), is ridiculous. Yeah I put that in caps because you didn't seen to grasp how this is basically the best thing you can do, spending money on your own people.
I mean, what do you want, for the EU to pay some kind of tithe to the US for protection? The US military isn't that big because it's so kind, it's big because being the world superpower is extremely beneficial. There's no country that large that's anywhere close as rich. It has little to do with liberty.
And yeah I'm content with the US having that power and wealth, and to spend my tax euros on improving the lives of me and my peers.
> We end having to protect Europe because we are the only ones who understand defense of one's liberty should be the first priority.
That's why Snowden is such a hero in the US right? Especially with the military who just want to bring liberty to all, those guys must love the way he showed of this massive three letter organisation that makes constant attacks on all our liberties. Give me a break with the 'liberty' rhetoric already.
In short, yes we Europeans value liberty, no we're not the world superpower we were in the colonial era and spend more on our citizens than on being a superpower, and yes that has put western europe at the top when it comes to rankings and metrics for standard of life (including metrics of liberty, say freedom of the press? My country ranks 2nd, the US? 46. Have fun with your liberty. Similar story for say civil liberties or corruption, you don't score anywhere near the top 10 on liberty metrics) And we're generally quite content about that.
> It's partially true, absolutely, no denying that US hegemony keeps others from employing military opportunism. But that has more to do with US interests in keeping geopolitical control for its own benefit than US sacrifice out of benevolence.
In the language of my previous post, you largely seem to be saying, "yes Europe gets some benefit by defecting against the US in a farmer's dilemma, but it's not like the US is cooperating out of benevolence!" Of course it isn't. The one farmer doesn't irrigate to help the other, she does so because she wants her crops not to die.
"And the US is doing such a bad job of irrigation! Sometimes it digs ditches that make no sense, and one time it flooded our fields and we had to step in and help fix it!" Sure, that's a valid criticism of the US, but it's hardly a defense of defection.
The fact that that doesn't translate to actual benefits in metrics such as happiness or healthcare or income equality just goes to show how little raw money actually means.
A larger and more heterogeneous country is going to have less equality almost by definition. However, 150 years ago we decided that it was crucially important to keep states like Mississippi[1] in the union; if that went the other way, the metrics would look a lot better.
[1] There's a saying among states that rank 49th out of 50 in these kinds of metrics: "Thank God for Mississippi".
GDP per capita isn't the best measure for citizen's wealth when you don't take equality into account.
It's much better to look at median wages, I think.
As for the HDI, I have my reservations about it. It feels like one giant expression of wealth. That's bad because wealth isn't a direct measure of quality of life, it's indirect. One can be rich in a country where you have no freedom of the press or horrible gender relations or restrictions on sexual or ideological preference, for example.
Of course every metric is a function of wealth in some way, but the HDI more than others. For example, it measures education by years of education, not quality of education. The US does fine on years of education, but it hides the fact that test scores compared to the rest of the world are poor, or that the higher educational system leaves students with mountains of debt that have financial and non-financial consequences.
The second metric is income. Again, income an expression of wealth that's not a direct measure of quality of life, and again one that doesn't take into account wage-equality (and thus skews equal or even better towards countries with a very rich minority and a poor majority versus countries with a middle-class majority, while the latter is generally preferred.
And lastly Life expectancy at birth is a pretty decent metric. But even here there are plenty of more granular metrics. For example, a 22nd century medical system can keep alive much more obese and sick people. This showcases the notion that a sophisticated healthcare system can attain high life expectancy yet hide the fact that general health is in poor condition. While in countries where people die of lack of vaccinations reducing the life expectancy by a few years on average, people are otherwise much healthier.
On all these metrics the US skews more positively, I think. Income for one - the US is richer than most, but its middle class isn't. US kids get plenty of years in school, but test worse on virtually all subjects compared to their peers in other developed economies. And the US has good life expectancy, yet its healthcare system doesn't rank in the top 10, is more expensive by a wide margin and less accessible, and insane statistics like 2 out of every 3 people being overweight or obese are well known.
Actually reading further, my suspicion seems valid as they did an inequality-adjusted ranking too, one that looks at the average (median) level of development (i.e. loosely what you'd call middle class standard of living). US is at Nr 28.
But again the HDI is extremely thin in its metrics, it's only used well because it's a global UN effort and it's so easy to get metrics from every country as opposed to comparing more granular metrics for which data may not exist in tens of countries around the world. But if you compare OECD countries on granular metrics (e.g. something specific like a math test score, or teenage pregnancies), you'll find the US also ranks quite poorly.
Your last link ranks the US around nr. 20. That was kind of my point, US not on top, top 5 or even top 10, usually in the 20-30 range, but does very well given its size.
If you really believe Americans don't desire proper healthcare, education, safety, domestic violence, low teenage pregnancy, freedom of the press etc then you're beyond ignorant. That's just silly.
And guess what, the US generally doesn't rank anywhere near the top on any of these, except teenage pregnancies, you're number 1 by a very wide margin. But take Freedom of the Press for example, Freedom House puts the US at place 30, and Reporters without Borders at place 46 for 2014. For healthcare you pay a multiple of everyone else, yet don't rank in the top 10.
I'm not saying this is an exclusive list by the way. There'll surely be a whole bunch of things Americans prefer more than the rest of the world, it's completely besides the point and I'm not arguing against that at all. You may disagree with the rest of the world on how things like healthcare or domestic violence should be handled in terms of policy, but you can't argue that people don't care about having good healthcare or having little domestic violence. Any poll would show this.
If you really believe Americans don't desire proper healthcare, education, safety, domestic violence, low teenage pregnancy, freedom of the press etc then you're beyond ignorant. That's just silly.
Except you don't define proper and the means to achieve better.
And guess what, the US generally doesn't rank anywhere near the top on any of these, except teenage pregnancies, you're number 1 by a very wide margin. But take Freedom of the Press for example, Freedom House puts the US at place 30, and Reporters without Borders at place 46 for 2014. For healthcare you pay a multiple of everyone else, yet don't rank in the top 10
Again, those rankings don't really mean anything because they're completely subjective.
I'm not saying this is an exclusive list by the way. There'll surely be a whole bunch of things Americans prefer more than the rest of the world, it's completely besides the point and I'm not arguing against that at all. You may disagree with the rest of the world on how things like healthcare or domestic violence should be handled in terms of policy
"The rest of the world"? Really? You have no clue what "rest of the world" is thinking.
but you can't argue that people don't care about having good healthcare or having little domestic violence. Any poll would show this.
Yes, everybody wants that utopia...duhhhh. The means to getting there is the problem.
I'm not from Switzerland, but over here most people consider them to be the best example of government there is, so this statement seems a little weird.
Absolutely, but I think it has a lot to do with culture. My girlfriend is American and I've considered moving, but purely on the basis of cultural interest, much like say my position towards living in Japan or France, it'd be an awesome experience from a cultural point of view. But I've got absolutely no interest in moving to the US because the middle-class standard of living is so much better than the Netherlands, in fact it's the prime reason that's holding me back.
I don't think this line was important to the central points of the article, so it's kind of sad that this reddit-style "zinger" is the top comment in this discussion. I expect better here.
It's a synonym to democracy, and yes, I agree to some extent. Still, self-control with regards to any system is a widely accepted term, and a comparable metaphor.
I'd like to know what metric they are judging that by.