Are all Americans retarded?

[gorniksam]

HAHAHAHAHAHAA You think US marines are keeping the peace on European streets? Yes, I am just waiting for the water convoy.

So you guys haven't had perpetual war for 1000s of years amongst each other? Also considering how weak your armed forces armed forces, you should be thanking us we keep the real threats at bay. So your welcome:)

Okay, have to agree, most of americanos are retarded

[Hose]

HAHAHAHAHAHAA You think US marines are keeping the peace on European streets? Yes, I am just waiting for the water convoy.

You, I like you.

[Reviresco]

I'm getting bothered.

MODERATELY bothered.

[Hose]

If murican military is really that powerful then keep those ragheads who run people over out of europe, thank you.

[TotalyMeow]

We're 20th right now in GDP per capita and standard of living. When adjusted so as to remove the top 1% of wage earners our average income falls below almost all of Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea plus all the smaller states with tons of wealth (Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco etc...). We have greater wealth disparity than all of them.

On top of all that our GDP is exaggerated due to 'financial services' dominating large sectors of our economy. If adjusted to include most other indicators such as production, agriculture (which we also dominate), trade in goods, energy and debt BUT NOT FINANCIAL SERVICES we fall into the list around 34th for adjusted GDP.

Why the 'adjustments'? Are you also 'adjusting' out the top 1% of wage earners and the financial services of other countries before you compare? And why do this at all? What's the point? Why not adjust out manufacturing, or agriculture, or educational services? Or the bottom 10% of wage earners? Or anyone on welfare? Seems to me you arbitrarily chose sections of our economy to remove just to make things look worse for us.

More important than that we also have fallen behind most other modern economies in our ability to change income brackets from what we are born into. Currently you have a better chance of becoming wealthy in FRANCE if your parents were middle class or poor than you do in the United States. The American Dream is dead.

Oh, this is a long conversation all its own. We have lost nothing in our ability to change income brackets in the US. What we have 'lost' is our tendency to change brackets. Welfare is a big part of this as it punishes those who try to start earning more to get back on their feet. I could explain with graphs if you like, but you should know this as you claim to have been a welfare worker for a long time. There's also the cultural aspect of things. People in the poorer communities especially have been raised to believe that being a single parent, dropping out of school, etc, are perfectly normal things to do. The truth is, every child, whether poor or middle class (yeah, the rich still have some advantage here,but only some. You still can easily fail if you're lazy), has the same opportunities of education and advancement as every other child. With how ****** things are in a few locales, some might need to work harder than others, but if you want to be moderately successful in life, you can do it if you graduate HS, don't have kids until you're actually able to afford it (and get married BEFORE you do), and get a full-time job. People aren't staying poor because they have to, they're staying poor because they have been taught stupid behaviors.

We still dominate in innovation and new technologies but Total foreign patents passed Total American patents in 2008 and the disparity has increased yearly since. We dominate in software and medical patents but things like renewable energies and battery science are now dominated by Europe and China. China, Japan and Germany now dominate us on Solar and Wind production and these are the techs of the future that will build better economies.

... There are 323 million people in the US and there are 7.5 billion people in the world. We aren't dominating because we aren't doing better than everyone else combined in every field anymore? You have high expectations. The world took some time to recover from WWII, I hardly think we have to keep doing more than EVERYONE else to consider ourselves awesome.

Tourism to America is way down and up elsewhere. Europe passed us for tourism per capita after the Cold War.

What's your source? Does it include originating country? Because I think that would be interesting to see for two reasons. One, it's easy for Europeans to travel around Europe, rather like traveling state to state here. A nice cheap vacation for Europeans who can't afford more. And two, I bet American tourists make up a good percentage of tourism, and Americans traveling within American probably doesn't factor into your numbers.

There's a reason we can't afford a National Healthcare.

The reason we don't have one yet isn't exactly because we can't afford it, it's that no one who has studied the issue WANTS a National Healthcare system. It's a boondoggle. It sounds nice to have 'free' healthcare, but nothing like that is ever free, it's just spread around in taxes. And governments are universally wasteful in anything they manage, it has always ended up costing every country with such a system more than it should and tends to make people leave the medical field besides.

Even simple things such as our VA system, Veteran Political Gropus and Veteran of Foreign Wars community centers have no real comparison in most foreign countries. No other country has anything like the military culture of the United States and it can sometimes be disturbing both to us living here and those abroad.

Disturbing in what way? We try to take care of our veterans and we have respect for those who served in the military, how could that possibly be disturbing?

[Lazun123]

If murican military is really that powerful then keep those ragheads who run people over out of europe, thank you.

As I stated earlier I support leaving the Europeans to police their own problems.

[Claeyt]

Dear Clay,

The true context of what we are talking about is what country is the greatest i.e. greatest to live in. Which is subjective to the individual which again boils down to opinion. When I say we have the most powerful military that has every existed, that is a fact as you can count the military personal, war machines/arms and years of active combat experience. That is a fact.

Jingoistic opinion does not make a country "The Greatest. Also we don't have the greatest military in History. The Mongol army at one point ruled over 1/4 of the world's population and the largest Empire in history by landmass. The British once ruled over and had controlling trade missions to 60% of the world's population. The Roman Army ruled over 35% of the World's population for 500 years and it's judicial/political system lasted over 1500 years from around 100 bc to 1453 ad. The Chinese Dynasty's ruled over 1/3 of the World's population at one point and the Ancient Persian empires ruled over nearly half of the world's population. We are not even in the top 10 in history for any of those categories you mentioned for military personal, arms or active combat experience (Roman soldiers signed up for 25 years of service).

Everything you have listed i agree with to an extent. This country needs work as dose every nation. That being said we are still the Dominate superpower on earth. So despite the issues we have, and in Groovys words being filled with "retards", we still are the leading power of the world.

We do not lead the world. We do not lead it in politics, science, art, culture (maybe) or per capita GDP. We lead the world in militarism. Get over it. Admit we are not leading and fix the problem instead of spouting rah-rah nationalism over and over.

You are incorrect again in context of the US not leading. We recently intimidated North Korea and gathered the support of super powers to make it happen. The world knows Trump is head of state for 4 years, no country is going to risk relations with the worlds most powerful nation over a 4 year temper tantrum. Only ones that short sided is Antifa and BLM.

Everybody on the planet but Trump and his supporters somehow know that an attack on North Korea is impossible unless you're ready to see Seoul and Tokyo destroyed. You're delusional if you think Trump's ***** convinced anyone but you. Even Bannon saw it for what it was; throwing red meat to people like you. NK and China were laughing at Trump. Seoul and Japan were wondering if he was nuts. Nobody followed him anywhere.

Trump will be gone within a year and a half once the Russian charges start rolling in. Nobody is following him anymore. Watch and read other news instead of only reading whatever nonsense is telling you that stuff.

Here is my idea, i say we pull back support on little country's like Groovys, stop useing our military to be the worlds police. Let them kill each other as they have done for 1000s of years while we enjoy our McDonalds and big screen TVs.

Well... McDonald's has seen the greatest losses in corporate history overseas over the last 5 years. They're closing stores left and right overseas because nobody likes their food. America's not all that liked in other countries, it's best that you learn that now before it surprises you if you ever travel to one of those countries and insult them with your ignorance.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We're 20th right now in GDP per capita and standard of living. When adjusted so as to remove the top 1% of wage earners our average income falls below almost all of Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea plus all the smaller states with tons of wealth (Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco etc...). We have greater wealth disparity than all of them.

On top of all that our GDP is exaggerated due to 'financial services' dominating large sectors of our economy. If adjusted to include most other indicators such as production, agriculture (which we also dominate), trade in goods, energy and debt BUT NOT FINANCIAL SERVICES we fall into the list around 34th for adjusted GDP.

Why the 'adjustments'? Are you also 'adjusting' out the top 1% of wage earners and the financial services of other countries before you compare? And why do this at all? What's the point? Why not adjust out manufacturing, or agriculture, or educational services? Or the bottom 10% of wage earners? Or anyone on welfare? Seems to me you arbitrarily chose sections of our economy to remove just to make things look worse for us.

The adjustments were to show how banking and finances exaggerate our GDP based on wealth instead of production/jobs compared to other countries, especially Nordic and Western European countries. Yes the article adjusted for all countries 1% and Financial services. The research didn't adjust for manufacturing, ag or ed services because it was adjusting for comparison of GDP to jobs/production versus wealth services like finance. Removing financial services and the wealth that flows into and out of this country based on that DOES make our country look bad. It shows that our country is based more on funneling money through it while taking a cut than actually building things and creating jobs.

More important than that we also have fallen behind most other modern economies in our ability to change income brackets from what we are born into. Currently you have a better chance of becoming wealthy in FRANCE if your parents were middle class or poor than you do in the United States. The American Dream is dead.

Oh, this is a long conversation all its own. We have lost nothing in our ability to change income brackets in the US. What we have 'lost' is our tendency to change brackets. Welfare is a big part of this as it punishes those who try to start earning more to get back on their feet. I could explain with graphs if you like, but you should know this as you claim to have been a welfare worker for a long time. There's also the cultural aspect of things. People in the poorer communities especially have been raised to believe that being a single parent, dropping out of school, etc, are perfectly normal things to do. The truth is, every child, whether poor or middle class (yeah, the rich still have some advantage here,but only some. You still can easily fail if you're lazy), has the same opportunities of education and advancement as every other child. With how ****** things are in a few locales, some might need to work harder than others, but if you want to be moderately successful in life, you can do it if you graduate HS, don't have kids until you're actually able to afford it (and get married BEFORE you do), and get a full-time job. People aren't staying poor because they have to, they're staying poor because they have been taught stupid behaviors.

Are you really going to argue that our welfare as compared to France's is keeping people from wanting to work? Their social services are light years ahead of ours for both income and health.

Take your racist "cultural" argument and go ***** yourself. 'Minorities are lazy' is nonsense reasoning and is beneath arguing for.

We actually have some of the greatest disparities in opportunities in education and advancement of any Democratic Industrial country in the world. I don't know what you're talking about but you're really, really wrong. The entire point of the study and arguments were stating that the effects of poverty in THIS COUNTRY are the reasons behind all those racist "cultural" signs you keep pointing to. Poverty is lessened in other countries like France and because of that they have greater social mobility between classes.

We still dominate in innovation and new technologies but Total foreign patents passed Total American patents in 2008 and the disparity has increased yearly since. We dominate in software and medical patents but things like renewable energies and battery science are now dominated by Europe and China. China, Japan and Germany now dominate us on Solar and Wind production and these are the techs of the future that will build better economies.

... There are 323 million people in the US and there are 7.5 billion people in the world. We aren't dominating because we aren't doing better than everyone else combined in every field anymore? You have high expectations. The world took some time to recover from WWII, I hardly think we have to keep doing more than EVERYONE else to consider ourselves awesome.

Well we used to dominate it and now we're down to around 40%. With patents based off old patents having to be filed where they originated (more old Patents in the U.S.) that probably means it's even lower than 40%.

Tourism to America is way down and up elsewhere. Europe passed us for tourism per capita after the Cold War.

What's your source? Does it include originating country? Because I think that would be interesting to see for two reasons. One, it's easy for Europeans to travel around Europe, rather like traveling state to state here. A nice cheap vacation for Europeans who can't afford more. And two, I bet American tourists make up a good percentage of tourism, and Americans traveling within American probably doesn't factor into your numbers.

Just google it like I did. It's an easy stat to see.

There's a reason we can't afford a National Healthcare.

The reason we don't have one yet isn't exactly because we can't afford it, it's that no one who has studied the issue WANTS a National Healthcare system. It's a boondoggle. It sounds nice to have 'free' healthcare, but nothing like that is ever free, it's just spread around in taxes. And governments are universally wasteful in anything they manage, it has always ended up costing every country with such a system more than it should and tends to make people leave the medical field besides.

You're an idiot. Canadians were just polled at 93% as favoring their health care over the U.S. Australians and all of Europe with nationalized healthcare were in the high 80's in favor of it. Currently we spend almost 3x as much for our healthcare as Canada with worse outcomes in all categories per capita. Who cares if we're paying it through insurance or taxes it's the same money and we're paying much, much more for a worse product with more problems. You're an idiot if you think Americans don't want the nationalized healthcare systems we already have in place in this country (VA, Medicare, Medicaid)

Even simple things such as our VA system, Veteran Political Groups and Veteran of Foreign Wars community centers have no real comparison in most foreign countries. No other country has anything like the military culture of the United States and it can sometimes be disturbing both to us living here and those abroad.

Disturbing in what way? We try to take care of our veterans and we have respect for those who served in the military, how could that possibly be disturbing?

You don't find these things in any other country. Try and describe VFW halls to a foreigner some time or some of the Veteran political lobbying groups. They'll think you're nuts. Like the metric system, we're the only country in the world with institutions like these and they're bizarre.

[Hose]

Hurrr durrr wall of Text didnt Read.

[Lazun123]

Dear Clay,

The true context of what we are talking about is what country is the greatest i.e. greatest to live in. Which is subjective to the individual which again boils down to opinion. When I say we have the most powerful military that has every existed, that is a fact as you can count the military personal, war machines/arms and years of active combat experience. That is a fact.

Jingoistic opinion does not make a country "The Greatest. Also we don't have the greatest military in History. The Mongol army at one point ruled over 1/4 of the world's population and the largest Empire in history by landmass. The British once ruled over and had controlling trade missions to 60% of the world's population. The Roman Army ruled over 35% of the World's population for 500 years and it's judicial/political system lasted over 1500 years from around 100 bc to 1453 ad. The Chinese Dynasty's ruled over 1/3 of the World's population at one point and the Ancient Persian empires ruled over nearly half of the world's population. We are not even in the top 10 in history for any of those categories you mentioned for military personal, arms or active combat experience (Roman soldiers signed up for 25 years of service).

Everything you have listed i agree with to an extent. This country needs work as dose every nation. That being said we are still the Dominate superpower on earth. So despite the issues we have, and in Groovys words being filled with "retards", we still are the leading power of the world.

We do not lead the world. We do not lead it in politics, science, art, culture (maybe) or per capita GDP. We lead the world in militarism. Get over it. Admit we are not leading and fix the problem instead of spouting rah-rah nationalism over and over.

You are incorrect again in context of the US not leading. We recently intimidated North Korea and gathered the support of super powers to make it happen. The world knows Trump is head of state for 4 years, no country is going to risk relations with the worlds most powerful nation over a 4 year temper tantrum. Only ones that short sided is Antifa and BLM.

Everybody on the planet but Trump and his supporters somehow know that an attack on North Korea is impossible unless you're ready to see Seoul and Tokyo destroyed. You're delusional if you think Trump's ***** convinced anyone but you. Even Bannon saw it for what it was; throwing red meat to people like you. NK and China were laughing at Trump. Seoul and Japan were wondering if he was nuts. Nobody followed him anywhere.

Trump will be gone within a year and a half once the Russian charges start rolling in. Nobody is following him anymore. Watch and read other news instead of only reading whatever nonsense is telling you that stuff.

Here is my idea, i say we pull back support on little country's like Groovys, stop useing our military to be the worlds police. Let them kill each other as they have done for 1000s of years while we enjoy our McDonalds and big screen TVs.

Well... McDonald's has seen the greatest losses in corporate history overseas over the last 5 years. They're closing stores left and right overseas because nobody likes their food. America's not all that liked in other countries, it's best that you learn that now before it surprises you if you ever travel to one of those countries and insult them with your ignorance.

I didn't say we have the most conquered land ever in history 0_o I said we have the strongest military that has ever existed. If your Mongals and Romans fought the US using bows and arrows, they would be totally annihilated:/ So again, our military is the most powerful that has ever existed. The original poster was stating that Americans are retarded, to which i replied that a bunch of retards dominate over his tiny and weak country. His country may have better social policies which is the result of not spending a 1/3 of their GDP keeping the rest of the world safe. Which is what the US is doing for the world, including his tiny small armed country. For that reason i argue the fact America is the Greatest Nation that has ever existed, and seeing how that is my opinion I find it laughable you get so riled up about it. Here is an example of the laughable thoughts of you and Groovy. I dont follow a shred of his country's politics, quit frankly due to how insignificant his people or country are. Yet we have so much influence that he is being actively engaged in our government and ruling body This is true with Obama, and as much as you hate it, with Trump as well.

The $19.42 trillion U.S. economy is 25% of the gross world product.

"Everybody on the planet but Trump and his supporters somehow know that an attack on North Korea is impossible unless you're ready to see Seoul and Tokyo destroyed." Another example of the US keeping another meek country safe from harm. Hmm they are prospering pretty well under our protection too. Here is the fact, NK threatened the US and Guam, we threatened him, NK backed down. If you want to give credit to china, great, we pressured them too, hard to do that when you dont have any influence:/ I mean really think about what you are saying, the US has no influence? What has Putin's Antifa done to you Caly?:(

I still have not seen any real evidence, still waiting. What i do know is right now a faction called the Anarchist Communists, re-branded as Antifa is fighting Trump supporters while showing off their hammers and sickles, trying to destabilize our country to create Russian Communism. So please, who is really in bed with Russians? The left are the ones supporting Putin, its painfully Ironic.

Are you trying to say McDonald is going to go out of business? O_o What are you smoking?? Lol this is how brainwashed you have become, some ungrateful Euro calls you a retard, I remind said Euro he should be thankful we protect him with facts, and you call me ignorant for providing him with facts and defending you. HAHAHA jesus the Communist Russians have full on indoctrinated you.

[TotalyMeow]

The adjustments were to show how banking and finances exaggerate our GDP based on wealth instead of production/jobs compared to other countries, especially Nordic and Western European countries. Yes the article adjusted for all countries 1% and Financial services. The research didn't adjust for manufacturing, ag or ed services because it was adjusting for comparison of GDP to jobs/production versus wealth services like finance. Removing financial services and the wealth that flows into and out of this country based on that DOES make our country look bad. It shows that our country is based more on funneling money through it while taking a cut than actually building things and creating jobs.

Trump is trying to reverse that, actually. I agree the crash in our manufacturing that happened about 14 years ago now was pretty bad and we've been mostly failing to recover ever since. Obama's policies didn't help at all and in fact encouraged instead the financial services expansion you're referring to. Our economy grew slower under him than at almost any other time in our history, but we can do better. We ARE doing better, actually, if the recent trends continue. So, I guess we're in agreement here in all aspects except the one where you think we're screwed and I think we're not quite yet screwed. And you forgot to cite the source, might be interesting to read it myself.

Oh, this is a long conversation all its own. We have lost nothing in our ability to change income brackets in the US. What we have 'lost' is our tendency to change brackets. Welfare is a big part of this as it punishes those who try to start earning more to get back on their feet. I could explain with graphs if you like, but you should know this as you claim to have been a welfare worker for a long time. There's also the cultural aspect of things. People in the poorer communities especially have been raised to believe that being a single parent, dropping out of school, etc, are perfectly normal things to do. The truth is, every child, whether poor or middle class (yeah, the rich still have some advantage here,but only some. You still can easily fail if you're lazy), has the same opportunities of education and advancement as every other child. With how ****** things are in a few locales, some might need to work harder than others, but if you want to be moderately successful in life, you can do it if you graduate HS, don't have kids until you're actually able to afford it (and get married BEFORE you do), and get a full-time job. People aren't staying poor because they have to, they're staying poor because they have been taught stupid behaviors.

Take your racist "cultural" argument and go ***** yourself. 'Minorities are lazy' is nonsense reasoning and is beneath arguing for.

We actually have some of the greatest disparities in opportunities in education and advancement of any Democratic Industrial country in the world. The entire point of the study and arguments were stating that the effects of poverty in THIS COUNTRY are the reasons behind all those racist "cultural" signs you keep pointing to.

I would argue that the reason behind the culture is leftist propaganda, but that's an even longer conversation. Go back and read what I said again. I've left the whole long quote in there so you can do it easily. Then, realize that I was talking entirely about poor communities, which include all races (I grew up in a poor, mostly white, if it matters, community myself and am speaking of the culture from personal experience). Realize that I only mentioned laziness in reference to rich kids becoming poor. And then go reexamine your evidently extremely racist attitudes. I am well-off now mainly because of following the steps I outlined above and am proof that it IS quite possible to move up. Though of course, anecdotes make poor proof but I'm pretty sure I'm not an edge case.

As for educational opportunities, EVERY child has access to a K-12 education. But yes, we DO need to change policy such that any child can go to school in any school district they want, no matter where they live. That would likely help a great deal as some poor districts do tend to have lower standards for that education. I just didn't want to throw too many arguments into the mix at once.

Now, if you want to have a civil conversation about welfare and its detrimental effects on the poor and/or about the similar detrimental effects of the culture that has been fostered in those communities, I'd be happy to, but let's please leave the racism and unwarranted profanity and/or name calling out of it, okay?

I don't know what you're talking about but you're really, really wrong.

It's comments like these that make the rest of it worth reading. This is gold right here.

it's easy for Europeans to travel around Europe, rather like traveling state to state here. A nice cheap vacation for Europeans who can't afford more. And two, I bet American tourists make up a good percentage of tourism, and Americans traveling within American probably doesn't factor into your numbers.

Just google it like I did. It's an easy stat to see.

Okay, it's not such an easy stat, not sure what you searched for. I did find a few bits of info that DO indicate that Europeans are responsible for most European tourism and North Americans similarly stay within North America.

Currently we spend almost 3x as much for our healthcare as Canada with worse outcomes in all categories per capita. Who cares if we're paying it through insurance or taxes it's the same money and we're paying much, much more for a worse product with more problems. You're an idiot if you think Americans don't want the nationalized healthcare systems we already have in place in this country (VA, Medicare, Medicaid)

Oh, we absolutely have health cost issues. The system is in pretty bad shape at present and costs have risen dramatically in the last few years that I've noticed. The prices I've had to pay for medication lately have been obscene, $180 for a tiny bottle of some ear drops, for example, and that's WITH insurance. But again, that is because we currently have too much government interference in our healthcare system, more will only make things worse. And I'm sure most Americans DO want Medicare, etc. Once those things get entrenched, people come to rely on them and can't imagine an alternative. I'm not saying they have to go away, I think it would be pretty difficult at this point to remove them. I'm saying let's try not to make it worse.

You don't find these things in any other country. Try and describe VFW halls to a foreigner some time or some of the Veteran political lobbying groups. They'll think you're nuts. Like the metric system, we're the only country in the world with institutions like these and they're bizarre.

This makes me sad.