Is the United States the best country ever?

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PolarGuy said:
There are very significant hurdles with US corporations flooding Cuba.

The first is that it is a tightly controlled communist nation. We didn’t see pizza huts in the USSR either.

The second is that most of the people are dirt poor (because they live in a communist country). Business only goes where people have money.
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Cuba is not impoverished. It has a standard of living comparable to many Latin American countries.

data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

The unadjusted GDP is comparable to that of China. Also look at Libya.

data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

PPP adjustment in 2011.

Regarding Red Army rapes, the abortion statistics are not reliable for several reasons, namely that Germany was poor and that women were likely to say that they have been raped for an abortion.

Since this information is not common in Western literature, the criticism of it is usually from Russian source. This links contain some of that information.

forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=208500
forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2580&start=285
 
Cuba most certainly IS impoverished. If its standard of living is “comparable to other Latin American countries,” that’s because they’re impoverished too. By your own data, Cuban income is 1/3 of, say, Trinidad & Tobago; less than Ecuador (!?) and Mexico, and comparable to Botswana in Africa.

In other words, hardly a nation overflowing with riches. In other words…it’s impoverished.

Further, Latias, although you have always expressed love of all things Russia on other posts, the fact of mass rape by the red army is well documented and only really disputed by Russian deniers who are no more credible than German holocaust deniers. Your own cites admit that a huge number of rapes happened; they merely dispute the exact amount. Hardly a great defense of your “great red army of workers and peasants,” a/k/a an army of rapists.
 
mikekle said:
I would bet my paycheck these new discussions with opening up Cuba are being pushed by US companies, this is an untapped market for them. I assume since it is so close, they are drooling over the thought of filling Cuba with all the stuff we buy in stores here in the US, everything from fashion clothing, cell phones, computers, cars, materials, electronics, various junk, etc.

Im sure once trade restrictions are abolished, Cuba will see many US franchises coming over, everything from Pizza Hut, Dominoes, Walmart, to new Ford dealerships.
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I think the Cubans want what everyone else has. And I’m afraid that they will get it.
 
PolarGuy said:
Cuba most certainly IS impoverished. If its standard of living is “comparable to other Latin American countries,” that’s because they’re impoverished too. By your own data, Cuban income is 1/3 of, say, Trinidad & Tobago; less than Ecuador (!?) and Mexico, and comparable to Botswana in Africa.

In other words, hardly a nation overflowing with riches. In other words…it’s impoverished.
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Botswana is overflowing with riches.

I didn’t link to the PPP data. I know it performs poorly on unadjusted income.

data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.PP.CD/countries

Cuba is still higher than Botswana in 2011. Botswana has has a high gini coefficient of 60.

As for the index of human development: it is ranked higher than Costa Rica (not by much), Colombia, Mexico, China, Turkey, Brazil, Botswana, Ukraine, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (I had to dive down for the last three).

But of course, unadjusted income isn’t everything, and you could contest whether the HDI is a reliable metric. Cuba does certainly outperform on the basis of its non-adjusted income.
Further, Latias, although you have always expressed love of all things Russia on other posts, the fact of mass rape by the red army is well documented and only really disputed by Russian deniers who are no more credible than German holocaust deniers. Your own cites admit that a huge number of rapes happened; they merely dispute the exact amount. Hardly a great defense of your “great red army of workers and peasants,” a/k/a an army of rapists.
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Maybe 100,000 figure, but not the two million figure.

Well-documented means commonly repeated:
The impression I’ve gotten is that someone, somehow, came up with these statistics at some point in time and they’ve just been repeated over and over again by popular authors, who have made no visible effort to verify them. This is apparently what Mr. Beevor has done, judging from Dmitry’s copy of his footnote at viewtopic.php?p=1159262#1159262 :
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If you have no evidence or low-quality for any figure, all you could say is that we have no evidence or low-quality evidence.
 
Latias, take a deep breath and consider what you’re saying.

First, you seem to be alleging that 100,000 rapes aren’t too bad. If that’s really the number of rapes you think occurred, the fact that you’re defending it - and you are - rather says a lot about YOU.

I’d add that figure seems to be the rapes committed in Berlin alone, by the very links you post.

Second, I’d love to engage you in a debate about Botswana. Really, I would. But it seems as if you’re just trying to attack anything I say about any subject. I seem to recall this started months ago when you wanted to talk about WWII out of nowhere, and you apparently haven’t gotten over the exchange we had then. So until and unless you’re willing to look at facts objectively, rather than follow this “cult of the USSR,” I don’t really think further dialog is going to be helpful.
 
PolarGuy said:
Latias, take a deep breath and consider what you’re saying.

First, you seem to be alleging that 100,000 rapes aren’t too bad. If that’s really the number of rapes you think occurred, the fact that you’re defending it - and you are - rather says a lot about YOU.

I’d add that figure seems to be the rapes committed in Berlin alone, by the very links you post.

Second, I’d love to engage you in a debate about Botswana. Really, I would. But it seems as if you’re just trying to attack anything I say about any subject. I seem to recall this started months ago when you wanted to talk about WWII out of nowhere, and you apparently haven’t gotten over the exchange we had then. So until and unless you’re willing to look at facts objectively, rather than follow this “cult of the USSR,” I don’t really think further dialog is going to be helpful.
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What’s to discuss about Botswana? You are the one who brought it up. It has an economy based on mineral extraction and a high gini efficient.

My tone wasn’t hostile in any way.

It would not be surprising that there were rapes. It definitely is tragic. The two million figure does not have reliable evidence for it.

The figure for the Berlin rapes were derived from extrapolation and several assumptions based on data from one hospital.
 
Kaninchen said:
The US is wonderful, we’ve spent quite a lot of time there.

Wouldn’t want to live there permanently though, I mean, well, not wanting to be prejudiced or anything but it’s absolutely full of, well (looking around nervously), Americans. 😃
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Haha have to agree. I’ve spent a lot of time in the US and love to visit it- but definitely couldn’t live there permanently. I appreciate Canada’s safer streets (homicide rate is half of America’s)…the complete impossibility of massive medical debt…efficient and quick elections that focus on the issues (watching the nearly two year long American presidential campaign where candidates talk about the size of their manhood- see Trump and Rubio- makes me glad that I’m not American). I know Americans put a lot of stock in their Constitution and checks / balances (“best system of government ever devised” according to some on this thread), but I personally much prefer the Westminster system we inherited from Britain.
 
twf said:
Haha have to agree. I’ve spent a lot of time in the US and love to visit it- but definitely couldn’t live there permanently. I appreciate Canada’s safer streets (homicide rate is half of America’s)…the complete impossibility of massive medical debt…efficient and quick elections that focus on the issues (watching the nearly two year long American presidential campaign where candidates talk about the size of their manhood- see Trump and Rubio- makes me glad that I’m not American). I know Americans put a lot of stock in their Constitution and checks / balances (“best system of government ever devised” according to some on this thread), but I personally much prefer the Westminster system we inherited from Britain.
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The ninety years you purchased by remaining in the British Empire arguably did more to modernise governance than the preceding eight-hundred.

Our system is a product of the 1700s, a time when representational-governance was still being hashed out. That it works as well as it does is remarkable.

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
The ninety years you purchased by remaining in the British Empire arguably did more to modernise governance than the preceding eight-hundred.

Our system is a product of the 1700s, a time when representational-governance was still being hashed out. That it works as well as it does is remarkable.

ICXC NIKA
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I can agree with that. The Westminster system is the product of 800 years of organic political evolution. I do personally believe its superior (now), but only because it had so many centuries of trial and error. The office of Prime Minister was only starting to emerge during the time of the American Revolution, and not yet under that title.
 
We are better than most, especially when it comes to free speech alone. Even our next door neighbors to the north are restricted in what they can and cannot say. I’ll take living in this country any day no matter what other problems we may have.
 
twf said:
Haha have to agree. I’ve spent a lot of time in the US and love to visit it- but definitely couldn’t live there permanently. I appreciate Canada’s safer streets (homicide rate is half of America’s)…the complete impossibility of massive medical debt…efficient and quick elections that focus on the issues (watching the nearly two year long American presidential campaign where candidates talk about the size of their manhood- see Trump and Rubio- makes me glad that I’m not American). I know Americans put a lot of stock in their Constitution and checks / balances (“best system of government ever devised” according to some on this thread), but I personally much prefer the Westminster system we inherited from Britain.
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And you people take home less in your paychecks to cover all that “free” medical care too. Not to mention it costs a lot more for just about everything else you need to buy. Canada is at a disadvantage - you have the same standard of living as we do, but less people to pay for it all.

But yes, in a sense I do sort of like the Parliamentary system you have. The blame for when things go wrong can be squarely placed on the party in power and they can be gotten rid of much quicker than in our system. But hey, when men are being ruled by other men it’s all corrupt anyway. One should store up their treasures in heaven, because there is nothing down here that’s for sure.
 
Adonia said:
And you people take home less in your paychecks to cover all that “free” medical care too. Not to mention it costs a lot more for just about everything else you need to buy. Canada is at a disadvantage - you have the same standard of living as we do, but less people to pay for it all.

But yes, in a sense I do sort of like the Parliamentary system you have. The blame for when things go wrong can be squarely placed on the party in power and they can be gotten rid of much quicker than in our system. But hey, when men are being ruled by other men it’s all corrupt anyway. One should store up their treasures in heaven, because there is nothing down here that’s for sure.
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At the same time, Canucks don’t need to fear going into poverty when the law of entropy catches up with their bodies, as USA’ers often do. And fewer people mean there are fewer in need.

The real challenge of .ca is not that there are fewer bodies, it is that despite the enormous land surface, there is too little carrying capacity for a very large population. Else they’d be drinking our milkshake. 🙂

ICXC NIKA
 
Adonia said:
We are better than most, especially when it comes to free speech alone. Even our next door neighbors to the north are restricted in what they can and cannot say. I’ll take living in this country any day no matter what other problems we may have.
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Really? Lets say one of the founding fathers was alive today and started speaking publicly like they did when the nation was founded, how quickly would the Govt be to silence them…many of things Thomas Jefferson is quoted for, could easily be interpreted as domestic terrorism type speech.

I guess that kind of thing was OK and accepted back then (and even celebrated on July 4th), but it would not fly in the US today for sure.
 
Like what, Mikekle? Exactly what was something thomas Jefferson said that would get him branded a domestic terrorist?
 
GEddie said:
At the same time, Canucks don’t need to fear going into poverty when the law of entropy catches up with their bodies, as USA’ers often do. And fewer people mean there are fewer in need.

The real challenge of .ca is not that there are fewer bodies, it is that despite the enormous land surface, there is too little carrying capacity for a very large population. Else they’d be drinking our milkshake. 🙂

ICXC NIKA
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There is a reason why there is a huge chain of hospitals in the USA along the border with Canada. It is called medical tourism. Canadians come here in huge numbers for medical care when they are denied care in Canada or have to get onto a long waiting line.
 
PolarGuy said:
Like what, Mikekle? Exactly what was something thomas Jefferson said that would get him branded a domestic terrorist?
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" When a people fear their government, there is tyranny, when a government fears its people, there is liberty".

This could easily be twisted and the person saying it publicly, could be viewed as trying to cause a rebellion among the people, anti-govt types, etc.

The single act of just trying to get your govt to fear the people, would likely involve some things the authorities would not like too much…agree?

There are others too, from different historical people, this is the one I thought of off the top of my head as it rings so true and is so apparent in the modern world, where most people ‘fear’ the govt or better, fear any consequences, should they do anything to oppose them.
 
There is absolutely nothing about the Jefferson quote that is actionable.

However, you’re relying on “if those words are twisted…” That’s a very, very different thing than saying “those particular words will get one branded a terrorist.” Someone can always “twist words,” AKA “claim you said something you didn’t say.”

So I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll have to completely disagree with your contention.
 
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