The scoreboard metric
ok, so that adds vietnam and afghanistan to the list of countries better than us. what else?
The fun thing about liberals playing the “lets call everyone who doesn’t think like me a racist” game is that it leads them increasingly bizarre statements, like the above. It’s adorable.
Who was I calling a racist? If you think (like ww does) that America is simply better than every other country because we win wars, then by that logic we aren't better than Vietnam or Afghanistan.
K. I don't think that's what WW was saying. And if you weren't calling anyone a racist, my apologies.
Anyone can cherry pick one statistic or another but all things considered America is better than every other country in the world. This isn't seriously debatable. We enjoy one of the highest standard of livings overall. The other countries with a GDP per capita even close to (or higher) than us have significantly smaller and less ethnically diverse populations and do not import poverty nearly at our level. Even our "poor" enjoy a standard of living significantly better than the poor in developing (aka shithole) countries.
We are the pinnacle of scientific achievement and are still the only country to have sent men to the moon (we did this 50 years ago, btw). You may recall that we liberated an entire continent from a genocidal maniac a while back. We've got the best music, the best movies, the best indoor plumbing. We enjoy relatively great freedom and tax our citizens at relatively low rates. We drive bigger cars and live in bigger homes and enjoy a far bigger diversity of goods and services to choose from than most countries.
Take it all together, warts and all, it's tough to find anybody who's better than the US of A.
There's a lot of false assumptions here. You assume that people from other parts of the world want the same things that Americans want. Based on an accumulation of a whole bunch of different metrics, the quality of life that America provides it's citizens is 19th-best in the world. This whole mindset is the reason we continue to slide down in terms of infant mortality rate, life-expectancy and education.
Oh good heavens.... the old "infant mortality rate" myth resurfaces. A favorite of liberals. And yes, I do assume people from other parts of the world want what we have, which is why so many are trying to get in. A lot of people also don't know what they're missing out on. I can say, objectively speaking, any sane person would take the size of American cars and homes over what they have to settle for in Europe, if they could. My parents host foreign military officers from these "enlightened" NATO European countries every year. When they arrive, they buy a car. They rent a house. They take road trips. They all buy grills and BBQ sauce by the case to ship home when they leave (not shitting you). They effing love it here. These folks actually have a pretty decent standard of living as military officers, and they all elect to extend their "tours" in the US if they possibly can. One of the families has a special needs child and the wife actually cried when it was time to go home to Denmark with its supposedly superior socialized medicine. The ability for her son to see specialists here was far far better. They're trying to come back.
So you can say "it's all relative." That's one of the most bedrock arguments of liberalisms. Except at the end of the day, it isn't. Not really.