I’m continuously confused about why they think they are free, or at least uniquely free? What does the moon even have to do with that supposed freedom?
They mean their government is free to do whatever the fuck they want.
That’s very definitely not what they mean at all. American conservatives, the kind of people referenced here, are anti-government except for the military.
it’s not what they mean but I’m saying that’s what it actually comes down to
Anti-government except for one of the biggest aspects of the biggest government there is…
I don’t think they’re trying to make a logically rigorous argument
They’re just getting defensive because someone dared to criticize the U.S., that’s all.
Stop it or they’ll start chanting their country initialism again.
Decades of Red Scare propaganda “just look at how unfree they are”
Propaganda is why they’re deluded to the levels they are.
Americans are by and large poorly traveled and unaware of exactly how badly they have it in America. Something like 1/2 of Americans have a passport, whereas Canada which is right next door is 2/3-3/4.
One of the weirdest things about that is they seem to be proud of it.
This is only true if you look at the country as a whole. Break it down by state or even region and you’ll see that entire parts of the country are more like Canada in terms of international travel, while others are unusually provincial for citizens of an industrialized democracy.
If you live in a middle class neighborhood in a big west coast city, for example, chances are good that you and all of your neighbors have traveled overseas extensively. It’s also very much a class and educational division and of course that plays out in a variety of other ways as well.
It’s mostly because we’re poor and can’t afford to travel. Don’t act like everyone is like that, please.
And we can travel thousands of miles and still be in the USA. I don’t blame US Americans for not traveling outside of the USA, we have a wide range of vacation destinations that people travel from various parts of the world to visit. People could literally teavel only in the USA their entire lives because we have so many places of interest.
However, we could use cultural diversity to fully understand what we’re not being exposed to.
You can have all the cultural diversity that you want, you just have to get the politicians to agree that immigration is actually a good thing.
I don’t currently have a valid passport; I haven’t felt a need for one.
America itself is so big that I can spend my life visiting different parts of it and never run out.
Having a passport and traveling intentionally just feels like an unwanted hassle.
International travel is an amazing education that you cannot receive domestically.
I just don’t see the value versus the effort I guess.
Yes. This is what I’m pointing out. Americans are intentionally ignorant about the world and don’t see a problem with this. They’d rather stay home, sit in the lazy river at the water park stuffing their faces and drinking bud light than going and seeing the great museums of Europe, the history of the middle east, the artwork and dance from Africa or the beauty of somewhere like Bali.
6 flags sounds awesome though. Foot long hotdogs are where it’s at I hear.
Propaganda
What they said is a line from a song we are made to sing as children. They don’t really teach us about life in other countries, we have to do that ourselves if we happen to be curious.
Propaganda plus having the intellectual capacity of a middle schooler while being assumed to be a reasonable person
You were made to sing that song? Gross!
Yep. From kindergarten to 6th grade we had to sing that along with a myriad of other similar songs. By the time I was around 13 I started to realize how weird it is and I began questioning everything I had ever been taught. Growing up, my parents made me go to a Catholic school every Wednesday evening so I had been taught lots of incorrect and distorted information. Eventually I began skipping class and I would walk around town and do whatever and that is the first time I actually felt free.
It’s normal for young children to have a music class, usually this is primarily a ‘fun’ class and includes a lot of chorus singing.
This was one of the songs sung in the class when I was a kid.
It’s a big part of our culture, it’s even in our theme song
And the Rockets’ red glare, the Bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our Flag was still there;
Yep, accurate.
it’s even in our theme song
Which was a drinking song - appropriately.
If Americans knew how good life can be then they wouldn’t settle for such a shitty country. So from birth they are lied to about having good lives
It’s not even healthcare, imagine the poorest country you can and there are places like that there
To conservative Americans the word “freedom” doesn’t mean the same thing that it means to you and I. That’s the simple short explanation for your confusion. It would require a much longer discussion to really unpack why that is and how it intersects with ideology.
It makes me sad because one of the aspects of my country of which I am actually extremely proud is the fact that we landed people on the fucking moon. It’s sad because this feat was accomplished by a bunch of really smart, educated people with a solid grounding in science (and TBF a few literal nazis here and there) not by a bunch of inbred dumbfucks who think driving around with a big flag sticking out of their enormous pickup truck is somehow making a contribution to America’s greatness - and whose whole existence is fundamentally built around rejecting science and education and being smart.
Last time I checked you could still get prison time in the UK for posting rap lyrics on social media.
Interesting. Source?
No prison time, but a fine, and community order (I’m unsure what community order is) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921
Either way, it’s a shitty response by the UK government.
So paint last time you checked you mean you never checked, and you’re talking utter gibberish.
Surprisingly turns out to be true, though it was a fine and not prison. See the link somebody else posted
Not that surprising. The US has free speech rights in its Constitution, and its legal system takes that more seriously than any other country. Unfortunately it doesn’t take all the Constitution so seriously, cough, Commerce Clause, cough.
I’m ashamed to be an American
Where they make me think I’m free
And I’m appalled by all the lives it took
To sell that lie to me
So I’ll proudly stand up to tyranny
And fight it till the day
Cause there ain’t no doubt we’ve fucked this land
Goddamn the USA!
I pledge allegiance to the flag
Of the United Snakes of America
And to the Repugnant for which it stands
One nation, under God (you fucking heard me!)
Easily divisible, with liberty and all for just usGod bless america, and no one else!
till what day ??
Did you write this? Well done, if so.
Yea I did, thanks!
There’s a Chinese flag on the moon
That’s the second part of the joke. The one guy doesn’t even get that there’s more than one flag on the moon.
I bet someone’s gonna be pissed when they find out
edit: on their 3rd mission
Two previous Chinese lunar missions had flags on the crafts’ coatings - so neither could be affixed to the moon.
Why would we care about someone else getting our sloppy seconds?
Cause if planting a flag on the moon somehow relates to being a free country, then China would be considered free as well.
They are free of this planet’s gravitational contrictions :3
To be fair, this image has been reposted around since before 2020
well now they can stfu
edit: meaning the ‘Murican that originally said that, not meme sharers
Sick burn if you are a poor
Or rich, the US is the country that spends the most per capita on healthcare AND they add the necessity of having private insurance over that.
Aren’t the insurance costs included in the total healthcare costs?
Nope, the government pays the most per capita (because it can’t negotiate costs) AND people add private coverage over that.
USA 🇺🇸 USA
Go ahead and pay my $5000-and-growing worth of medical bills this year if you’re so rich, Uncle Moneybags.
Oh, and we supposedly have a good insurance plan.
Ok, send me your bill info and ill be happy to buy the debt from your creditor as long as you are ok with a 10% interest.
Pour in this case apparently meaning doesn’t have potentially 10 grand+ just randomly lying around.
This guy has never heard of deductibles
2 out of 3 americans are obese too. Its like a self fulfilling prophecy
What country are you from, we can compare obesity rates
Guatemala
Edit: where you going to say something about that or you were just curious
Gua… What? I doubt you even have food there lmao. Do you know what the internet is?
Hehehe hohoho
Bruh fuxk you, now i have the song, “I’m proud to be an american” stuck in my head, fuxk you fuxk you fuxk you ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
This is the internet, you’re allowed to type fuck
Fucking agreed. This is indeed the fucking internet, especially fucking lemmy, so no fuckers like Spez is around to fuck with us, so yeah you were fucking serious when you said we are fucking allowed to fucking type fuck.
(Reddit let you say fuck too)
Get the frick out
Flip off
YouTube: imma pretend I didn’t see that
Living in Belgium, I’m happy with the social security that’s available here and the chances for a good education, etc. But I’m confused as to why this all isn’t available for everyone in the USA. The USA is a world leader in so many domains so I would assume that this would benefit its inhabitants first.
Someone else has already said it’s because of Capitalism, and to a point that’s true. The other major reason is because of the economics of scale.
Belgium has a population of 11 million, the US has a population of 331 million.
Belgium has an area of 30,000 km^2, the State of Virginia alone has an area of 110,000 km^2. The metropolitan service area (basically the city and surrounding bedroom communities) of Washington DC is 14,000 km^2 or nearly half the size of all of Belgium.
In 2022 Belgium had ~196,000 immigrants while the US had ~45 million.
Coming back to the question; on Education the 2022 census said that 91.1% had at least finished Highschool and 48.4% had finished at least an Associates degree (or higher). https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html
On Social Security 69.8 million people received social security benefits in 2020 (retired, disabled, or other special circumstances).
On Healthcare the US is behind the times in comparison with much of the world, our healthcare is typically tied to employment (your job likely provides your health insurance). While this is the case our taxes are typically lower than most of the countries that are compared to the US, basically instead of paying taxes to get free healthcare we pay for healthcare directly. Even then people can still get access to the ACA (Obamacare), Medicare, or Medicaid. According to the 2022 census 92.1% of the US is insured, though I couldn’t find a good statistic on what percentage are under insured (as in they have insurance but really need more). I did find some less than stellar statistics (so take these with a grain of salt) but on average Europeans spend 12.5% of their income on healthcare in the form of taxes while the median (yeah I know it’s not the same as average but it was a different source) American spends 11.6% of their income on healthcare in the form of healthcare premiums and deductibles.
In summary the US generally does have pretty good living conditions for the vast majority of people. The problem is that if 10% of the population falls through the social welfare cracks in the US, that’s 3x the population of Belgium.
EDIT: I wanted to quickly add, the US gets a lot of flak for being involved in foreign wars, politics, and spending too much on military spending. A lot of people think we should instead pull back that spending and instead fix things in the US. I agree with this sentiment, we do over spend on the military, but the US has also given more money to supporting Ukraine than the next 9 countries combined. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.statista.com/chart/amp/27278/military-aid-to-ukraine-by-country/
Belgium has a population of 11 million, the US has a population of 331 million.
USSR population was 293M in 1991(right before collapse), USA population was 253M in 1991.
Every time I hear something like “but Netherlands is about the size of Ryazanskaya Oblast” I reply “then why the fuck Ryazanskaya Oblast is not better than Netherlands? And 26 other regions that smaller than it are not”.
Do you have a source for the claim Europeans spend more than people in the US per capita on healthcare?
Every source I’ve ever read the US has twice per capital spending and worse health outcomes in many areas.
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023/07/how-does-the-us-healthcare-system-compare-to-other-countries
I didn’t say it was more? I said that a less than stellar source said that the average percentage of a European’s income that goes to taxes for healthcare was roughly the same as the median percentage of an American’s income.
Per Capita would be total expenditure divided by number of people. I’m saying (US) average healthcare costs/average income vs (Europe) amount of taxes for healthcare/average income.
I used this Quora page (https://www.quora.com/What-percent-of-their-income-do-Europeans-for-various-countries-spend-on-the-cost-of-health-care-versus-Americans-Assume-average-cases-Which-is-a-better-deal) for the answers about European healthcare. It’s not an ideal source, but it’s kind of a pain to get the specific answer I’m asking for.
I used this source (https://www.statista.com/statistics/631987/percent-of-income-spent-on-health-plan-by-us-employees/) for a the Percentage of median income spent on premium contribution and deductibles in the US. Again, not a stellar source, but close enough to show it’s not stupidly different for most people.
I made this post at 3 am on my phone, if you have feedback on these articles or better sources I’d be curious to see them.
Thanks for the effort you put in this response. Is it a good summary when I say that Belgium in population and area can be compared with a metropolitan area of any major city in the USA? And best should be compared as such?
I’m very much surprised with the migration figures being as high as you mention. Europe is surrounded with countries in war in Eastern-Europe, Middle-East and Africa. And many of our migrants are refugees.
All the migration towards USA is mainly from south of the USA, correct? There’s no war going on over there, so do these migrants also poor living conditions and are mostly fortune seekers? Or are their lives in danger from the government in these countries?
Is it a good summary when I say that Belgium in population and area can be compared with a metropolitan area of any major city in the USA?
It kinda depends, the US is very diverse in it’s city layout. NYC metro area is 34,400 km^2 with 23 million people. Nashville is 19,000 km^2 with 2 million population.
And best should be compared as such?
My point was more that it’s hard to make Federal government comparisons between small European countries and the US. A topic like healthcare or education varies greatly municipality to municipality and state to state. A city like Washington DC or NYC might be a better comparison to Belgium, but Butte Montana isn’t. If you’re trying to compare the US average to the Belgium average you have to average Butte in with NYC.
A good example might be infrastructure. People commonly say that the US shouldn’t do XYZ and instead invest in our poor/old infrastructure, but it’s hard to do since we have so much more to cover. There’s definitely mismanagement throughout, but a big portion of it is also just providing for more people in a larger area.
I’m very much surprised with the migration figures being as high as you mention. Europe is surrounded with countries in war in Eastern-Europe, Middle-East and Africa. And many of our migrants are refugees.
All the migration towards USA is mainly from south of the USA, correct? There’s no war going on over there, so do these migrants also poor living conditions and are mostly fortune seekers? Or are their lives in danger from the government in these countries?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/
From what I can tell, only around 25% of immigrants are from Mexico. A lot of people view the US as a desirable place to live despite what some people say.
Mexico, Central and South America have issues like anywhere else. From my understanding some parts of Mexico are somewhat dangerous due to the drug cartels, but other areas are exceptionally safe. The economies have a large divide in income, the median income of Tijuana is $16.6k annually while the median income of Chula Vista California is $35k annually; they are 21 kilometers apart if not for the border.
People love to bring up our vast expanses of land in these infrastructure comparisons, but that wasn’t an insurmountable problem when we wanted transcontinental railroad, telegraph, telephone, etc…
wasn’t an insurmountable problem when we wanted transcontinental railroad, telegraph, telephone
It’s worth noting that those were all massive handouts to private corporations. Some of the beneficiaries of those handouts are still on top of their industries today.
I think we can agree that there is a significant difference in building the railroad or telegraph/gram lines the first time and maintaining it in perpetuity. Also, it’s a lot easier to build and maintain something when it isn’t actively being used and depended on by people. Also, the government doesn’t own infrastructure like railroads, power lines, or telephone lines in most cases. The Federal government paid to have it built the first time, but continued maintenance was supposed to fall on other entities which the government allowed to have a limited monopoly.
Building the railroad the first time so a regulated private monopoly can maintain it is a whole lot different from continually funding and enticing a private company to do best management practices. I’ll totally agree that we shouldn’t have let these monopolies exist in the first place, they should have been publicly run utilities, but that’s in the past and we can’t really change that now.
The USA is first and foremost a global leader in making money for corporations. That’s really all it is, not much more.
Edit: That person who posted the long comment about how America is “totally fine” for “most people” is pretty dumb for it. Oh they don’t have a single clue…
Our limitless freedom belongs to the corporations, not the people.
The US has a gigantic health insurance industry worth trillions, employs over 4 million people, and manages ~25% of the US economy.
As a fellow Jesus-ordained, Trump-blessed freedom-loving American, can someone explain to me what the fuck having a flag on the moon has to do with freedom?
The atmosphere cannot constrain my American freedoms. My nations eagle flies where it damn well pleases, including into space. God bless a merka.
For some obscure reason, my brain echoed that paragraph in a mid-west accent.
And I am not american.
Amen
Seems rather triumphalist for a UK community to upvote since the health service has been sold off (to the US) for profit. Maybe the other Europeans joined in?
Stop joking about him returning at all. He will be shot the moment he goes off his phone.
the American dream isn’t a dream, it’s a delusion
The American dream is to become rich and then do the exploiting yourself.
They may as well just give up with the American dream and rename it the rules of acquisition. At least then they’d be being honest with themselves.
except you can only become rich when you already are
No it is a dream.
It can only be achieved when you are asleep.
“It’s called The American Dream because you’d have to be asleep to believe in it.”
-George Carlin
It’s a delusion that workers can work hard and become rich, used by those in power to extract worker skill and dedication.
You’re welcome, USA, for getting you to the Moon.
~Germany, Britain, Canada.Song reference into political argument combo? Certified Reddit Moment.
The song is literally American propaganda they make us sing as children…
Don’t have to tell me, that damn song’s burned into my memory from summer camp!
lmao id rather go to the moon without a spacesuit than pay 5000$ for a 30-minute ambulance ride
