Why Didn’t America Become Part of the Modern World?

https://eand.co/why-didnt-america-become-part-of-the-modern-world-dac6d65e9015

by pyjammas • 8 years ago

19 23 8 years ago

sullyj3• 8 years ago

Americans are weird. America is always exceptional. Exceptionally good, or exceptionally terrible. We have homeless people in Australia too, you know.

pharrington• 8 years ago

The blog's author is British.

mbfg6• 8 years ago

I'm not sure we've been that exceptionally good for awhile now. if ever. It's a story we grow up with, and tend to repeat, But i think the author has a reasonable assertion, and describes america pretty accurately. I look back at all the vitriole we would cast at peoples of foreign countries, and laugh at how beneath us they are. I suppose most countries feel that way about others, it's the age old iron-age in-group/out-group that we need to somehow grow out of. Frankly we, as americans, are now looking up at other peoples.

rfg34te42• 8 years ago

This essay certainly corresponds with the sentiment in this article:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-white-blu...

"You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon, where the American Dream awaits. But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you. Many of these line-cutters are black—beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare. Some are career-driven women pushing into jobs they never had before. Then you see immigrants, Mexicans, Somalis, the Syrian refugees yet to come. As you wait in this unmoving line, you’re being asked to feel sorry for them all. You have a good heart. But who is deciding who you should feel compassion for? Then you see President Barack Hussein Obama waving the line-cutters forward. He’s on their side. In fact, isn’t he a line-cutter too? How did this fatherless black guy pay for Harvard? As you wait your turn, Obama is using the money in your pocket to help the line-cutters. He and his liberal backers have removed the shame from taking. The government has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It’s not your government anymore; it’s theirs."

I think this sentiment explains why so many poor whites are against programs that would ultimately help them. To them, minorities are the competition in a zero sum game.

mbfg6• 8 years ago

The line is so long and non moving not because of these supposed line cutters, but because the people at the front of the line managing it are so slow and stingy processing the people in the line.

bm1362• 8 years ago

I don’t think it’s referring to immigration but rather the economic success associated with the American Dream- owning a house, a car and having a plan for retirement.

rfg34te42• 8 years ago

That could be part of it. If you are convinced by the Picketty idea where the rich have captured a greater part of the economy and rig the game in their favor (I am personally convinced by this) then you can see why things don't seem to be getting better for most Americans. But why do those same American's not focus their rage against the 1%? I think racism plays a role. And certainly, some members of the 1% stoke these flames.

eutropia• 8 years ago

It corresponds, but its interesting to note how they portray rather opposite judgmental tones on the people in question -- TFA betrays the now-popoular left-leaning view of "seeking comfort in irrational things", a.k.a conservatism as a pathology of stupid people. It's not respectful and it's not a good way to really gain an understanding of people; simply writing them off as incapable out-group members.

On the other hand, the motherjones paragraph quoted by parent portrays the people in question as basically being forced to pit their desire to help people against their desire to see proportional rewards for proportional work, the classic "personal responsibility mantra" (ignoring of course the situations those 'line-cutters' were in before they got helped. Two different kinds of "fairness" being pitted against one-another).

The jump that TFA makes between "America has a lot of poverty" and "Therefore, that's the only reason people could choose Trump (a.k.a nazi germany)" doesn't really make any sense. The author just says "people sought comfort in myths". That's pretty weak.

Not really sure what the point of this article was, was it group signaling? Was it trying to convince people of something? Does the author care to hear from people who don't view conservatism as a pathology?

I don't think poor whites think purely with their wallet in Homo-Economicus terms. I think they just have a different set of values, one of which might be worded as "getting what you deserve/earn", which ironically, the author does touch on, but he writes this as a broad-swaths American thing: "You see, in America, poverty was seen — and still is — as a kind of just dessert. A form of deserved punishment, for being lazy, for being foolish, for being slow. For being, above all, weak — because only the strong should survive." He writes it as if brutal social-darwinists designed our economy, but really I think it's less malevolent than that. Self-reliance is a strong tenet of american culture, but it has some predictable outcomes when pushed as the solution to everything.

nwah1• 8 years ago

This piece is very melodramatic, ignores huge pieces of US history, and the US's place in world history. No citations or references. Starts off relying on cherry picked headlines to set a biased tone that doesn't reflect reality for most US citizens.

CompelTechnic• 8 years ago

Thinkpieces lately have had a trend of reaching harder and harder to link the news de jour to a higher, abstract concepts. They try to give an impression that their words can carve America out of the "modern world" with surgical precision, by contrasting the socialist utopia of... the entirety of Europe.

The result feels hystrionic to me. Claiming that America has no social contract, that there is a proto-fascist movement arising, all this and more, feels like it is just designed to raise the excitement for people in the correct echo chamber. By calling on increasingly abstract concepts the author can reign in an appeal to authority and emotion that has more appeal than actual facts and statistics.

The author, and his inward-looking media peers, are all drinking eachother's Kool-Aid a bit too much. It's like some sort of outrage porn that keeps getting remixed over and over again, and becoming some sort of fractal version of itself.

amriksohata• 8 years ago

Though poverty does cause ruin, the cause of poverty is often a lack of education and I'm not talking academic, I'm talking about the education your parents give you. Europe has been through a lot more bad experiences and doesn't want to do that again whilst America is yet to learn.

aeternus2• 8 years ago

Poorly researched article, no citations and the numbers that are provided are grossly misleading. Ex:

40 million Americans live in poverty, while 50 million Mexicans do

The Mexican poverty rate is $157/month and less in rural areas whereas US is over $1000/month.

Even with that, the US poverty rate is 12.7% below the national poverty line whereas Mexico's is 42%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Mexico

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#R...

Mexico also isn't anywhere near the bottom compared to other countries. Only 2% of Mexican citizens live below the international poverty line.

satherx• 8 years ago

This is one of the dumbest things I've read in a while. America practically created the modern world, in ways good (transportation, electronics, medicine) and bad (modern warfare). But sure, the fact that you dont like the president negates all of that. Still the wealthiest country in human history, and it's not close. Please just look, for one second, at how the poorest Americans compare to the rest of the world. Its a positive story. Always more to be done, but take a step back once in a while and appreciate how amazing the world we live in is.

ojhughes• 8 years ago

“Practically created the modern world” is a vast exaggeration and sad you actually believe that.. European countries especially Britain and France developed many of the things that enabled modernisation of the world.

scotty792• 8 years ago

Funny thing is that USA thinks it's rich because they are doing something well, but the reality is that they are just cutting coupons off of the fact that they didn't have their industry completely wrecked by WWII.

They'll get easily surpassed in raw income by India, China and few developing countries in one generation.

Or faster. When world decides to ditch the dollar as reserve currency it's house of cards.

geoalchimista2• 8 years ago

They'll get easily surpassed in raw income by India, China and few developing countries in one generation.

Ain't gonna happen. Do the math of GDP per capita please.

scotty792• 8 years ago

Hard to predict things over few decades into the future.

Also predictions are accurate only if nothing unpredictable happens. I don't think anyone made 30 year accurate prediction of British economy in 1920.

geoalchimista2• 8 years ago

Now think of America. People dying for a lack of insulin.

I stopped treating this article seriously here. I can confirm you this happens everyday in a third world country and the international English-speaking media don't give a damn about it.

Quickly skimming through the article I can see the author was filled with rage and drowned in a sense of entitlement. True, human existence is suffering, but it is not just the US. You can never eliminate poverty completely.

I'll tell a Soviet joke. - What is the best way to eliminate poverty in a communist country? - Eliminate the people who are in poverty.

That is where the author's blind spot is. The author fails to see the foundations that lead to the rapid expansion of wealth in the past three hundred years: limited government, individual liberty, free market, and capitalism. Before the industrial revolution, everywhere on the planet people live in "poverty" if judged by today's standard. You can rant all day long about your rage against poverty. But you are not providing any better solution than the existing solutions the system has.

Why Didn’t America Become Part of the Modern World?

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