Quote:
Originally Posted by wil318466
The problem is that people don't understand that it doesn't matter.
I am truly mystified how you can so easily dismiss these.
Unemployment rate doesn't matter? Maybe you should tell that to all the people struggling to find work to feed their family. Are they just desperate for atttention and nothing else?
Healthcare doesn't matter? I'd imagine that the people in the U.S. who had a serious accident and who have the added immense stress and pressure to come up with the money to pair their crippling bills thanks to a healthcare system that is on average twice as expensive (and has worse health outcomes) as that of other developed countries - they might disagree with you.
Freedom / civil liberties don't matter? Really? PATRIOT act, NDAA, torture... no? Blank stare? You would be happy living under a dictator?
Quote:
Originally Posted by wil318466
America is a world-wide draw. People want to come here for higher education, business opportunities, etc. There are a lot of opportunities that just aren't available in other countries.
No-one is saying that there aren't great opportunities available in America. But that is the case for many other countries too (e.g. lots of highly-paid positions in Hong Kong, Singapore etc). What about all the countries with lower unemployment rates and higher per capita GDP? And many other countries (e.g. in Europe) offer their residents quality university education that is far more affordable than in the U.S.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wil318466
And, once again, something like quality of life would change dramatically depending on what demographic you fall into.
What are you saying here exactly, that quality of life measures have no validity across countries? There are many smart people especially university professors of psychology who are very interested in studying cultural differences and there has been a lot of interesting research. Hofstede's cultural dimensions is the obvious example here.
It's almost as if your thinking goes as follows:
"Yes, sure many of the above points in the list are important. In fact, I would use several when evaluating
other countries. However, they don't confirm what I really want to believe. Accordingly, they can be dismissed."
More or less?
Last edited by PokerIMO; 05-31-2012 at 10:59 PM.