Is America in decline?

HensVassal

Inquitus wrote: »

The US is in terminal decline, I spend about a week a month there, and there is almost nothing about the place that is better than what we have in Ireland. I wouldn't live there if you paid me. Half the population don't even earn a living wage, vast swathes of the cities are not safe to walk around, poverty is rife, a country that has decided to leave half the population behind is no country at all.

I have lived in the US, Ireland, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands and I would agree with you.

What you see on MTV generation TV shows or what you might experience on a vaction to Florida/Orlando/Manhattan is a million miles away from what real life is like when you live and work (if you're lucky enough to have a job) there.
The decline has been happening for years but has become dramatically pronounced since 2000 when Bush came to power and eveeryone in government (both Democrat and Republican) just became even more corrupt in gutting the treasury, launching no-win wars that they could get rich from and generally trashing public services so they could pocket the cash ear marked for SS, infrastrucure, healthcare, pensions, etc.

Since 2001 the cost of wars has reached $5 TRILLION (with a T) and accomplished nothing except to accumulate corpses and make corporations involved in the war industry and their shareholders dynastically rich. To spend $1 trillion, you would need to blow $10 million a day, everyday, for the next 273 years.

65% of the jobs created in the last 5 years were minimum wage jobs. A year round, full-time worker would need to earn $12 and hour to keep a family of four above the poverty line. The minimum wage is a pathetic $7.25 an hour. In 1986 on hour of minimum wage work would buy you two bottle of Budweiser in a bar in New York. Today you'd be lucky to get 1 for an hour's labour.

Talking about having a massive military is one thing but this military has proven time and again to be nothing more than a money making gambit for the elite and to impose hegemony on countries who might have their own ideas about to run their affairs. The country itself is a shambles with poverty and pollution and crumbling infrastructure.

HensVassal

Deleted User wrote: »

How can you seriously compare Ireland with America?

You can compare aspects of anywhere to anywhere else. Why do you find this so hard to grasp?

I hate when people come out with this meaningless broad dismissal.

I could legitimately compare, e.g. Joe's handwriting to Mary's.

Would you then come out with the "How can you seriously compare males to females?"

HensVassal

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

1.5 million minimum wage workers is not even half of a drop in the bucket of the total number of minimum wage workers.

Overheal

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Noope.

Again, explain how an army cutting from 53 brigades to 30 isn't weakening?

Again, explain how reducing the USN's combat fleet by 1/7th in the last decade isn't weakening?

Again, Explain how every CAW being 1/8th smaller than it was 5 years ago while also hit by falling availability rates isn't weakening?

I'm giving you concrete examples of capability decline and your retort is 'well, the marching bands are still there, ergo no decline!.

That's weak.

When your military is larger than the economy that sustains it, it is liable to collapse.

If we kept the military at the numbers suggested there wouldn't be much of a country left that needed it.

Size and strength are independent variables.

HensVassal

salonfire wrote: »

Not that far removed I'm afraid. While they may not see violence, they continue to live under the threat of violence.

Mass shootings could pop-up anywhere, schools, middle-class workplaces, churches.

There is often violence in relationships and marriages as well, up to murder (often with the aim of cashing in on Life Assurance of the spouse)

This level of violence, or the threat of it at least, is not comparable to Ireland.


Then, there is the road fatality death rate - 2.5x greater than Ireland's.

You paint the picture of America being perfectly safe for those living away from gangs and hoods.

But it is not, compared to Ireland.

Let's not forget the threat of violence that is ever present if you have to deal with the police there. Any interaction with a cop in the US carries the threat of violence for the most innocuous of things. If you question why the cop is hassling you the chances are you'll be body slammed into the concrete and arrested for "resisting arrest". American cops want you to cower in fear of them.



If you deal with a copy in Ireland or England or Europe in general you don't have to fear being battered for no reason.

PopePalpatine

HensVassal wrote: »

Let's not forget the threat of violence that is ever present if you have to deal with the police there. Any interaction with a cop in the US carries the threat of violence for the most innocuous of things. If you question why the cop is hassling you the chances are you'll be body slammed into the concrete and arrested for "resisting arrest". American cops want you to cower in fear of them.

Do you really think Trump will do anything to alleviate police brutality?

Overheal

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Do you really think Trump will do anything to alleviate police brutality?

I don't, given the endorsement by the National Fraternal Order of Police

http://www.mediaite.com/online/breaking-largest-national-police-union-endorses-trump-for-president/

Sofa Spud

Interesting endorsement, would like to know what drove it - is it because Hillary is somehow seen as a backer of Black Lives Matter, even if she factually isn't, or is it more likely that if the Don gets in, the deportation force he's threatened will mean more jobs for the boys....