EPTHow do foreigners view US politics? - Page 34
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TributeBoxer
United States163 Posts
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Cube
Canada777 Posts
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Treemonkeys
United States2082 Posts
On November 06 2010 04:11 TributeBoxer wrote: Foreigners get most of their trade from US to keep there debt ridden countries afloat. US could bankrupt any socialist country in the world with a quick boycott. These debt ridden countries owe their debt to the IMF which is run by the same people who run the Federal Reserve in the US. In short the debt is a clever method of looting the population wholesale and it works quite well for them, on top of the US economy being dependent on it. | ||
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foeffa
Belgium2115 Posts
On November 04 2010 06:06 KwarK wrote: I find it absurd to the point of amusement until I remember the global position of the US and then I die a little inside. The importance of religion in American politics and a Cold War fear of socialism are rather quaint from a European perspective. This about sums it up. =) Also, things like the Tea Party etc make me vomit in my mouth a bit. On November 06 2010 04:11 TributeBoxer wrote: Foreigners get most of their trade from US to keep there debt ridden countries afloat. US could bankrupt any socialist country in the world with a quick boycott. Statements like this generally make me pray your knowledge of economics is not representative for the average American. | ||
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ScrubS
Netherlands436 Posts
On November 05 2010 05:07 skurj wrote: How the fuck is communism a "great idea"? It ignores everything we know about human nature, history, and economics. It's not a noble idea. It's an idea that is stupid and can be dismissed a priori. This is what causes IMO America to seperate them from EU countries: they still look down at communism and think their way of thinking is better. Although any non-retard person would agree that commuinism is in theory a great system, it is just not practicable due to human faillure: there will be always people who will abuse the system and mess evertyhing up. Most Americans are just too distant from it in order to understand how it could function properly because they've been raised with the general thought that communism is bad. It will take decades before the USA will be able to look back and see that they judged communism incorrect. I am not saying that the Sovjet Union was good, im just saying that America is just still paranoid of communism because that was the system of russia. | ||
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TymerA
Netherlands759 Posts
On November 06 2010 04:11 TributeBoxer wrote: Foreigners get most of their trade from US to keep there debt ridden countries afloat. US could bankrupt any socialist country in the world with a quick boycott. America is gonna bankrupt socialist countries? what a joke. | ||
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plated.rawr
Norway1676 Posts
Oh well, keep on truckin', I suppose. Sorry if you regard this as off-topic, but this thread went far off track a long time ago anyhow. Edit: Ironically, this thread pretty well exemplifies what I wrote earlier about polarization of mindset. | ||
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TributeBoxer
United States163 Posts
[B] Statements like this generally make me pray your knowledge of economics is not representative for the average American. Your genius EU economics and regulations really helped you avoid the worldwide recession right. Right? | ||
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TymerA
Netherlands759 Posts
On November 06 2010 04:29 ScrubS wrote: This is what causes IMO America to seperate them from EU countries: they still look down at communism and think their way of thinking is better. Although any non-retard person would agree that commuinism is in theory a great system, it is just not practicable due to human faillure: there will be always people who will abuse the system and mess evertyhing up. Most Americans are just too distant from it in order to understand how it could function properly because they've been raised with the general thought that communism is bad. It will take decades before the USA will be able to look back and see that they judged communism incorrect. I am not saying that the Sovjet Union was good, im just saying that America is just still paranoid of communism because that was the system of russia. Oh how i love you. You sum up all my thoughts  Humans cause communism to fail. Not the concept itself. Although this is not related to the topic, this might have been why Stalin was so cruel. He used fear to make the system work. | ||
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MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
On November 06 2010 04:38 TymerA wrote: Oh how i love you. You sum up all my thoughts Humans cause socialism to fail. Not the concept itself. Although this is not related to the topic, this might have been why Stalin was so cruel. He used fear to make the system work. Not that I agree or disagree with the premise, but the priority is a little faulty. Concepts in themselves do not exist. They have value only in incarnation. If you have a given that humanity is incompatible with communism, what do you do? Change the idea to suit humanity, or change humanity to suit the idea? | ||
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Krigwin
1130 Posts
On November 06 2010 04:38 plated.rawr wrote: I love how this thread went from "How do foreigners view US politics?" to "Any negative viewpoint MUST BE SUPPRESSED, FOR AMERICA!". It's a bigger statement than anything any American in this thread has said. Just the very fact that you can't even have this thread without a bunch of Americans rushing in to rabidly defend everything America-related to the point of over half the posts being from Americans. | ||
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Deadlyfish
Denmark1980 Posts
On November 06 2010 04:07 Treemonkeys wrote: No, a dictator is someone who has power over you. If you're vote cannot directly alter their dominance over your life, and it can't, then they have absolute power over you. If I told you all car thieves were jokes, would you ask me if I knew them all? According to the interweb, a dictator is: a leader who holds and/or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power, especially the power to make laws without effective restraint by a legislative assembly. (this means no American or European leaders) and: a person exercising absolute power, esp. a ruler who has absolute, unrestricted control in a government without hereditary succession. (again, no American or European leaders) Also, my vote can actually alter the dominance that for example a president has over my life. I vote, so does everyone else, and whoever gets the most, gets to decide. How is that not me deciding? If i said "all dentists are bad people" wouldnt you say that it is a pretty stupid and silly thing to say? | ||
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domovoi
United States1478 Posts
On November 06 2010 03:56 Treemonkeys wrote: The US has military bases in over 170 different countries around the world. That is the cost of American wealth, it requires an empire. They told you it was a democracy in school (or maybe even republic lolz) but don't be fooled, it looks like an empire, it acts like an empire, it's an empire. The money "America" (it's government) gives to "developing nations" (their government) to help out is nothing but bribes to foreign governments to get them to line up with American policy. It almost always hurts the common people of that country. It's basically a "we'll pay you this if you let us screw over your population...and if you say no we'll send in the military so you might as well say yes" type of deal. Oh and American taxpayer's have to pay for it too, so the common people get screwed on both ends while the government grows more powerful as usual. Just look at the situation with Iran. For awhile they had been "offereing" to pay them money and let them run their nuclear power - that way Iran gets some chump change but becomes more and more dependent on the west at the same time. They say no, we want do it ourselves Then the US/Israel threatens with bombs. It's how they do business. It's obvious if you actually pay attention instead of trusting what they say. It's not how economics "works", it's one of the ways it can work, and it's the way America has chosen to do business. They use their world wide prowess to setup "sanctions" and starve their opponents out, and when that doesn't work they send in the military. Story of Iraq for the past 15-20 years. It's how Keynesian economics works and it's what our financial system is based on. This is just the demonizing of America? I just call things as they are, I'm not the one who did it, and the US government has been doing some horrible things nearly unchallenged for awhile now. You are confusing two disparate topics. How America conducts its foreign policy vis a vis Iran and Iraq has little to do with wealth in America and the global economy. Your understanding of economics is apparently quite poor given your assumption that wealth is zero-sum. It is not. I advise you to look at global poverty rates over the last century and tell me how you can honestly believe the tremendous wealth of Western nations has made things worse for the rest of the world. Iraq and Afghanistan have so far been a debacle, I agree. Our posture toward Iran is actually pretty good (Israel's is a different matter); we are generally letting the EU and the UN handle negotiations. But that has nothing to do with American wealth coming at the cost of other countries. 1 billion risen out of poverty over the last 30 years. That is the benefit of American (and European/Asian) wealth. | ||
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gondolin
France332 Posts
- the American institutions, which work great. Everything is not perfect: Fillibusting is silly, the election system with grand electors give too much weight to small states. But here in Europe we tend to forget that the states in the USA can be almost as different as the countries in Europe. So the fact that the federation work pretty well is impressive, we can't get anything done as well with our European Union. And the country is much more democratic than for instance France: they have elections for everything, and it is easier to set up a referendum. - the politicians. Here they seem to be much worse, the guys from the tea party are just insane, and the medias are pretty well controlled by Republican's. Since there are elections for everything, it makes politicians to be much more demagogic, which is just sad. I hate how some of the politicians encourages people not to think at all :/ | ||
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domovoi
United States1478 Posts
On November 06 2010 04:50 Krigwin wrote: It's a bigger statement than anything any American in this thread has said. Just the very fact that you can't even have this thread without a bunch of Americans rushing in to rabidly defend everything America-related to the point of over half the posts being from Americans. My posts have been attempts to correct misconceptions and biases Europeans have toward Americans. Not sure why you would think that's a bad thing. What happened to respect for the "scientific method"? One of the core philosophies is the elimination of bias, and you can't have that if it's only Europeans creating an echo chamber. If an American created a thread about how Europeans are spineless, Communist pinkos, I would hope there'd be Europeans in there to correct him. | ||
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domovoi
United States1478 Posts
and the medias are pretty well controlled by Republican's. Most media members donate to Democratic candidates, because journalists in general support Democrats. The general leanings of Cable news is: Fox is very much in the camp of the Republicans, MSNBC is very much in the camp of the Democrats, and CNN is centrist/leaning toward the D's. The biggest newspaper in the US (The New York Times) endorsed Obama. In general, I don't think any politician or political party "controls" the media. The media's biases reflect its viewers' biases, as viewers prefer to consume news that are consistent with their world view. | ||
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zeyRay
Austria1 Post
On November 06 2010 04:11 TributeBoxer wrote: Foreigners get most of their trade from US to keep there debt ridden countries afloat. US could bankrupt any socialist country in the world with a quick boycott. hahaha just had to register to laugh at this post http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ guiness book entry awaiting? aaah baah, they prob have to change it every day to an even bigger number | ||
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TymerA
Netherlands759 Posts
On November 06 2010 04:42 MoltkeWarding wrote: Not that I agree or disagree with the premise, but the priority is a little faulty. Concepts in themselves do not exist. They have value only in incarnation. If you have a given that humanity is incompatible with communism, what do you do? Change the idea to suit humanity, or change humanity to suit the idea? Humanity doesn't have a general consensus on what is good for itself. Obviously the growth of knowledge and equal supplies (Food, Shelter, Education, Healthcare) for us all would be the perfect situation to live in. No one can be jealous of another. Communism would be a good thing for Humanity. An Individuals greed, however destabilizes the society and the concept. | ||
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Imhotep
Sweden267 Posts
On November 06 2010 05:05 zeyRay wrote: hahaha just had to register to laugh at this post http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ guiness book entry awaiting? aaah baah, they prob have to change it every day to an even bigger number It's increasing with about 5 million a minute XD | ||
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teekesselchen
Germany886 Posts
If we take a group of 500 people, some of them will fall seriously ill at some point and this will include that some will be overwhelmed with medical bills which they cannot pay - without having done anything wrong, just bad luck can severely damage a persons life and financials this way. Thus even in medieval times there were insurance systems in Germany and probably some other countries, as far as I know the first one was around 14th or 15th century amongst miners as their job is pretty risky. So everyone's paying a small proportion of their loans and the collected money is used to help those who have bad luck and get injured, disabled or sick. I totally don't get how people can be actually against this, it takes alot of hatred within a society against each other to refuse such a system in my opinion... Ok, the following text by Volker Pispers is a bit more radical, I like his kind of humor though  I think it reflects a part of the perplexity on US conditions. "Socialism... socialistic mismanagement... nobody wants that! We know exactly how that looks like! You remember, when the (Berlin/German) wall opened! These terrible images! Tent cities, loads of homeless without health care, without teeth! People queueing in front of soup kitchens for a single meal a day! ... I think I'm in the wrong country now. That wasn't GDR, that's USA. These are the fortunate conditions in the U.S.. GDR was the country without bananas, a terrible fate compared to the "Land of the Free"." | ||
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