America - not the greates country in the world? (Page 3)

A constitution is a written document setting forth individual rights that can be enforced.  If there is no constitution, there is no guarantee of rights.

Even statutes don't do that, as they can be overturned.

BTW, not addressing the "having a constitution is better" argument, only "what good is a constitution" question.

Sorry....couldn't resist!!

Say the USA never existed how would the world be different today? How would the world have been different in WWI or WWII? What kind of country would Canada be today if the English had won the war and wanted to fight the French? How would the world be different if micro processors weren’t invented for another 10 year or if the PC was never made for the masses?

I’m not saying the US is currently ‘the best” but I think the US has had global changing events over the past 200 years.

No, I didn't ask for a nice place someone might like to move to... what country had people coming to it's shores by the hundreds of thousands for what they felt they could do here?

What other country could you go from janitor to CEO by the magnitude that has been done in this country?

What country has produced anything close to what America has produced and the technology it has developed in the last 200 years?

What other people in other countries want their government to do is up to them. When the constitution was formulated... it was a first in the sense that it was not a ruling class, or theocracy. There were republics before, and it was not produced in a vacuum. Other forms were discussed and looked at the thinking of what should be existed. But when the Constitution was written, it was the first to hold individuals above the state or the ruling class, or the mob. The Democratic Republic was new. It's cool to look at other countries modeled and modified to what they want... but to look at the Constitution today, in the world of today, and say it isn't that special is disingenuous at best. It was pretty darn special when it was written and people migrated in droves because of it. The fact that "freedom" is sort of "expected" in any developed country today is a tribute to that.

Yes, that one. Which, by the way, has nothing to do with what we were discussing, does it?

Inaccurate. Israel, for example, does not have a constitution. It does, however, have a specific set of laws called "Basic Laws", which say the same things, just as individual laws rather then in one document.

However, end result is the same.

How are we responsible for workers in China?

Stretching your date bracket a little: I would say the Industrial Revolution was a pretty major event......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution

ETA: The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. Most notably, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. In the words of Nobel Prize winner Robert E. Lucas, Jr., "For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has happened before".^[2]

Germany and Spain would be two, with about 600,000 a year each. However, the USA has over a million, a clear winner.

On the other hand, if you judge the number by comparing immigrants to a percentage of the general population, the USA falls to 22nd place worldwide.

Interesting article that addresses this point:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2012/11/18/is-the-u-s-the-most-immigrant-friendly-country-in-the-world/

No idea, actually. But I am very familiar with many cases of people who went to university, started up a company of their own, and became CEO's that way. But this was in Israel, not the USA. NOT to say it doesn't happen in the USA, I am just not as familier with these cases in the USA.

Sweden, Finland, Israel, Taiwan, Germany, Japan.......

Another interesting article:

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2011/10/worlds-leading-nations-innovation-and-technology/224/

The "greatest" is pretty subjective.  I have done plenty of traveling and been to some amazing places.  Some places to things a lot better than us, some do things a lot worse.

As for greatest, it's subject like I said.  But there is NO other place I would like to call home and have my back in a pinch.  First thing I do when I travel and plan to spend time?  Learn were the embassy is.

And every time I get back, I realize some of the things I take for granted.

America's contribution to that was mass production. There were a lot of things that came together. And manufacturing was an integral part of that. People knew about steel, people knew about electricity, and steam power. But as a whole, I'm stand by how it turned out. By the end of WWII, America produced 75% of the worlds goods.

Well... in my original comment, I was talking about how we got to where we are today. The history of the U.S. The last 200 years.

Not arguing your last point, indeed the US took something and went big. Nice job, (by the way Germany was a big driver behind mass production too).  both good contributions to a British lead.  :-)  (developing the technology to drive industrial practices over manual)

your question of what country has come close etc etc, I still maintain the origin of the Industrial revolution counts as technology driving global improvements.  It didn't originate here in the US, in fact it had been in full flow for nearly a century before the US became the power house (see what I did there) in taking the industrial/technological lead.

I can accept that. Never intended to imply the U.S. did everything, and the rest of the world did nothing. But the magnitude we advanced it can't be ignored.

False. That buck can't be passed. Isn't it the senior leaders' job, since they run the intelligence agencies, our armies, and our country, to make sure the information is solid, then make decisions? With stakes like those, world-changing, country-and-life altering decisions, there's no buck-passing. Rumsfeld's in that boat, too, he's culpable. 

I will say this. GWB's problem wasn't necessarily his decisions....it was his attitude. Which will doom him to having a legacy as one of the worst presidents, ever.  Whether he actually listened or not is up for debate. But all outward appearances are that he was incapable of listening - to intelligence, to other world leaders, to the public....his agenda, or the highway.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, wasn't driven by misinformation about the current situation - it was pretty clear what was happening there. It was more influenced by our optimism / overzealousness / confidence in being able to change that reality. Turns out we can change very small parts of that reality, but it's proving much more difficult to make the wholesale changes that I think our leadership expected. Like not possible.  

Seriously... we went to war where 100,000 of people lost their lives and we paid nearly a trillion dollars on "misinformation"? There's the truth, and then there is history. Everyone has a different take. But that is certainly a interesting take. I guess it is easier to swallow if you think it was just pure incompetence.

So I just got through watching Oliver Stone's "History of the U.S."... I tend to take him with a bucket of salt. He basically lays out America is a military imperialist and has hand it's hand in every single fracas around the world since WWI. If you enjoy that thing, you will like this.

It is 10 parts/hours, quite a bit to get through. At the start it was very interesting. I just like history... and like I said.. it isn't necessarily right or wrong, just one's view. The WWII stuff seemed quite fact driven, but not up to Bush II, it seems very opinion driven. One episode left... Bush and Obama.

I will give one thing away... ths isn't a (R) (D) thing... he pretty much paints every single president the same way... including Carter and Clinton.

Sounds like you're basically agreeing with me that "best" is a value judgement and depends on priorities. But if maternity leave is important to you, I suggest you look outside the U.S. Only three countries in the world have no laws mandating paid maternity leave: Liberia, Swaziland, and the U.S. If you or your wife enjoyed paid leave it was out of the generosity of your company or because you live somewhere like California where the state mandates it.

As to another commentator's assertion that only in the U.S. can a janitor become a CEO, it is actually a myth that the U.S. has the highest social mobility (i.e. moving from one class to another). Most of Europe is more mobile. There are, of course, plenty of powerful anecdotes (see Obama), but statistically a Norwegian janitor is more likely to eventually be rich than an American one.

Nope, never said only... and I was talking about the history of the U.S. over time... not stats picked from todays headlines.

And isn't it amazing how we are only 3 countries in the world that do not pay people to be pregnant... and yet we still manage to keep breeding.

OK, if your assertion is that the U.S. was the greatest place to be a janitor in 1950, then I misunderstood. I thought the discussion was about America today, where social mobility is relatively stagnant compared to other developed countries, looking at generational data.

And, discounting for a minute the right-wing freakout over falling fertility rates in America, maternity leave isn't paying people to be pregnant, but rather not punishing women for wanting a career and a family. If you want to look at statistics that correlate to maternity leave, check out how it relates to gaps in pay between women and men, gender equality in high demand jobs, etc. Or, look at how it relates to childhood development problems, the decline of breastfeeding and its relationship to juvenile delinquency, etc. Or just look at productivity of companies who offer generous maternity leave policies to see that they retain workers better, have happier more productive workforces, etc.

(Sarc) Ah yes, Scandanavia, that land of opportunity and multiculturalism... (/sarc)

I think your Obama anecdote is a poor one. He grew up with and was raised mostly by his wealthy grandparents, not by a poor family.

A few better examples would have been:

Clarence Thomas who lived in a log cabin with 1 lightbulb growing up and was not allowed into the law library at Savannah College so he had to get a sympathetic white classmate to go get books for him. He's now a Supreme Court Justice.

Ben Carson who we posted a thread about a few days ago. He grew up the son of a janitor and became one of the world's greatest pediatric neurosurgeons.

And of course my buddy's father who literally floated to Miami from Cuba in a makeshift boat, then he got a job as a janitor at Florida Power and Light and put himself through law school and rose to be General Counsel of our Fortune 150 company.

I'd have to dig into the metrics further on the study referenced in the economist to see what they did, but I do agree that if you're born poor in the welfare state in this country your upward mobility is difficult and made harder by the very social programs put in place to help you. Ben Carson's mom said shell never go on welfare because once you go on, you never come off.

I think an accurate comparison to Scandanavia would have to include only those states where you die if you are homeless I.e. North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Maine, Alaska because let's face it, it's virtually impossible to live in those countries in the winter if you don't have money to pay for heat.

The thread is now, but you would have to look at the context of what I was replying to and what I was talking about.

As far as maternity leave... it if is so gosh darn awesome... and it is so darn great for companies and employees... then let them sort it out.

I'm was unaware of any freak out over birth rate... I think it's good news they are declining... we have enough people already. But it does speak to a greater difference in philosophy... personal responsibility vs. government mandates. If a family wants to have a child, why can they not plan for it, save for it, arrange time for it? If it is so important to families, employers will have to provide for it. There isn't a mandate that I take out my trash, but I do it because it is very beneficial to me to do so for a whole host of reasons. Everyone in a America has trash to dispose of... how in the heck does that happen without federal legislation?

Yes, every bit as human as the rest of us... greedy, power hungry, narcissistic, and arrogant. I'm not into conspiracies theories, and none are needed for Iraq. We had 10 years of watching Iraq very closely to know exactly what was going on. We had more time before the first Gulf War to know exactly what they were doing. Give them a pass all you want because "they are only human" and "they didn't know"... but it does not wash. We had all the intelligence we needed, and we went to war for the same reasons we and others have always gone to war... greed, money, and power. It isn't rocket science... we have had thousands of years and 100s of wars to figure it out. Iraq was never a threat to our national security, and we did not need to go to war... oh ya, that's right... we never declared war on Iraq.