Are you critical or negative about the United States of America? - Page 10 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Polls on politics, news, current affairs and history.

Are you negative or critical of the United States of America?

Yes, I am negative or critical of the United States of America
27
66%
No, I am not negative or critical of the United States of America
5
12%
I am neither negative nor positive about the United States of America
9
22%
#15191797
Crantag wrote:Rehab fails as many people, at least, as it helps.

I personally can't meld to it.

To me rehab is like having a boss who you are smarter than.

But, I don't want drug users to be in the criminal system, but I do understand both sides, and I don't want kids to be encouraged to use drugs.

But, it is more of a medical issue in my opinion.

And I lost 3 good friends, and I could cry about it.

I have other friends that I am hoping they can stay alive.

And I think this shit could be handled better.

And as a political point I think the American gulag system is awful.


Could it really be treated better?

Honestly, from the perspective of the afflicted person, it's not too different from having an incurable psychiatric condition like (say) schizophrenia. In both, depending on the severity of your condition, you can lose control of both your actions and your perception of reality, be it because your brain is playing you tricks or because of the effects of drugs (or withdrawal). In both, too, fully overcoming the condition is extremely hard at best, impossible at worst and in the latter you can at best hope to keep it in check.

So it's not surprising rehab often fails drug addicts just like psychiatric treatment often fails those with schizophrenia for plenty of reasons (lack of adherence, misdiagnosis, etc). Yet society still needs to deal with both somehow. It's certainly not an easy call.

And what would I know. One reason why I don't do weed or other harder drugs, only sticking to occasional drinking, is because schizophrenia runs in the family, and weed could trigger a disease - which I don't know if I have sleeping in my genes. And I have more distant relatives where treatment failed, with fatal results for bystanders - leading to this guy being locked up in a psychiatric hospital until his death several decades later. In both schizophrenia and drug addiction there are cases and cases, and some just can't truly be healed or dealt with by any other means but constant supervision if one wants to preserve the safety of third parties.
#15191800
wat0n wrote:Could it really be treated better?

Honestly, from the perspective of the afflicted person, it's not too different from having an incurable psychiatric condition like (say) schizophrenia. In both, depending on the severity of your condition, you can lose control of both your actions and your perception of reality, be it because your brain is playing you tricks or because of the effects of drugs (or withdrawal). In both, too, fully overcoming the condition is extremely hard at best, impossible at worst and in the latter you can at best hope to keep it in check.

So it's not surprising rehab often fails drug addicts just like psychiatric treatment often fails those with schizophrenia for plenty of reasons (lack of adherence, misdiagnosis, etc). Yet society still needs to deal with both somehow. It's certainly not an easy call.

And what would I know. One reason why I don't do weed or other harder drugs, only sticking to occasional drinking, is because schizophrenia runs in the family, and weed could trigger a disease - which I don't know if I have sleeping in my genes. And I have more distant relatives where treatment failed, with fatal results for bystanders - leading to this guy being locked up in a psychiatric hospital until his death several decades later. In both schizophrenia and drug addiction there are cases and cases, and some just can't truly be healed or dealt with by any other means but constant supervision if one wants to preserve the safety of third parties.

Yeah, good points, and it is just hard to see people you care about self destruct, even if I am self destructing in my own ways.

I get that point about harm to third parties, especially if someone is really delusional, or maybe they are just out robbing and willing to be violent.

Not easy stuff at all.

There is probably some ability for more of a medical intervention approach I tend to think, at least in a lot of cases.
#15191802
Crantag wrote:Yeah, good points, and it is just hard to see people you care about self destruct, even if I am self destructing in my own ways.

I get that point about harm to third parties, especially if someone is really delusional, or maybe they are just out robbing and willing to be violent.

Not easy stuff at all.

There is probably some ability for more of a medical intervention approach I tend to think, at least in a lot of cases.


I agree, but just like sometimes the schizophrenic person will need to be ordered by court to get treatment (and be declared to be legally insane), something similar would need to be done for more serious, dysfunctional cases of drug addiction. That does involve the legal system and even law enforcement in some capacity.

I do agree though that merely using drugs should not be an offense. Even if it has helped to prevent cases of addiction, I think the costs of the current approach have outweighed the benefits overall. Drugs don't simply impose costs on the addicts or on everyone else through what addicts do. They also drive a good chunk of gang activity in the US, and for instance those represent a substantial percentage of all homicides in the country (up to half in large cities IIRC) - let alone how damaging living in a gang infested neighborhood is in all sorts of ways besides homicides.

That's why I support the medical approach, honestly, even more so than whatever happens to the drug addict - who I tend to assume is usually a lost cause as it's very hard to ever recover. This is not to say they should not get treatment, just that there are other important concerns in the whole business. If eliminating gangs means having more addicts to deal with, then so be it.

I am optimistic about this issue in the US though, at least as long as the trend towards legalization continues. And law enforcement is large and sophisticated enough that it could stop gangs from switching to other activities.
#15191822
Fasces wrote:Not at all - I've lived and worked in Europe and the casual misogyny and mistreatment of women is much worse than anything I've experienced in the US. Europe has nothing like Title X, either. There's a virtually identical pay gap. There's worse rates of domestic violence. Sex Trafficking is a huge issue compared to the US.

These countries do better on things like maternity leave, maternal health indicators, and overall health care indicators - that's pretty much it, and what games the statistics, pushing them up in rankings. In terms of social equality, I don't see it. Most of Europe, in attitude, is behind the US, a lot of it far behind. I don't see better health care for women in Europe as good evidence of gender equality - healthcare in the US is equally shitty, regardless of gender, compared to European healthcare, regardless of gender.

In terms of LGBT protections, Europe is also behind the US. Only Belgium and the Netherlands recognized gay marriage before any US states, and only 13 European states recognize gay marriage at all - with five of those coming after the US. Most EU states have no such recognition.

Look, I hate to defend the US on anything, but on social issues, the US is relatively progressive even by Western standards, even if they're a regressive force otherwise.


No offense but your anecdotes are hardly relevant. I cannot confirm them personally for example.

The gender gap report I cited specifically looks at the GAP between genders, i.e. how well women do compared to men, not how well they do overall. That's why a country like Namibia can end up in the top 10, which is otherwise made up of the usual suspects.

The US is rather mediocre in all dimensions by the way: Economic participation and opportunity, Educational attainment, Health and survival and Political empowerment.
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2021.pdf

As for LGBT. Acceptance is generally higher, as the data I provided shows, most likely because Europe has fewer religious nutcases.

There's no doubt a large gap between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. So I suppose you could argue the EU as a whole isn't that progressive. But you were saying the US is a world leader. Hence I compare the US (as a whole) to individual European or other countries. In that case the US is clearly not a leader. You could argue individual American states are, because there's obviously a large disparity in the US itself.

As for "worse rates of domestic violence":
Image
#15191854
Rugoz wrote:No offense but your anecdotes are hardly relevant. I cannot confirm them personally for example.


Honestly, I couldn't care less if you can confirm them or not, or you agree or disagree. This is an opinion poll, I stated my opinion based on my experiences.

That is a valid emperical approach just about everywhere outside the arbitrary world of college debate rules. I have no interest in LARPing as Ben Shapiro, personally. As far as I can tell, you're googling a conclusion and picking random studies from random organizations. I have no idea what methodology is used in these studies, whether the study is by a credible source, or what assumptions it makes - and I'm not going to spend the hours you also didn't spend when googling them to appropriately check their validity.

Edit: Hell, the WEF one you linked too doesn't even prove anything. The US is tied for 1st in educational attainment but because of its alphabetical position gets placed at 39th? And it's aggregate score is 30? They have more female managers and CEOs than Canada (42% vs 34%) but because a woman was prime Minister for 0.3 years in the past 50 years, Canadian women are more empowered? Ridiculous.
#15191863
I answered that I wasnt critical or negative of USA and explained why. But this bothers me a lot as a Scandinavian...

Fasces wrote:Not at all - I've lived and worked in Europe and the casual misogyny and mistreatment of women is much worse than anything I've experienced in the US.

..//..

Most of Europe, in attitude, is behind the US, a lot of it far behind. I don't see better health care for women in Europe as good evidence of gender equality - healthcare in the US is equally shitty, regardless of gender, compared to European healthcare, regardless of gender.

..//..

Look, I hate to defend the US on anything, but on social issues, the US is relatively progressive even by Western standards, even if they're a regressive force otherwise.


You have a serious discussion about abortion in USA with 39 % being against legal abortions and a major state recently banning it after 6 weeks into pregnancy, you dont have laws against corporate punishment of children, you seem to have a 29 percentage of stay at home-mums (!) https://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/04/10/percentage-of-stay-at-home-moms-on-the-rise-after-decades-of-decline/. Ive never even heard about anyone being a stay at home mum.

The list could obviously be longer, but do you issues such as these exists even in the fringe of the political debate in the most progressive countries of Europe?

So where in Europe did you live and what exacly happend that made you draw these conclusions?

Either way, its probably better to look at numbers than anecdotal and subjective experiences.

Image
#15191902
boomerintown wrote:The list could obviously be longer, but do you issues such as these exists even in the fringe of the political debate in the most progressive countries of Europe?


No. I didn't say the US was the world leader, just among them. For every Sweden in Europe there's also a Hungary, though.

boomerintown wrote:you seem to have a 29 percentage of stay at home-mums


If a man or woman wants to be a stay at home parent, and they choose to, that's not a sign of inequality. :eh:

boomerintown wrote: Either way, its probably better to look at numbers than anecdotal and subjective experiences.


I've addressed this dumb graph and it's dumb methodology. You lot relying on an appeal to authority using studies you've Googled to prove yourself right but spent less than five minutes looking through doesn't mean shit. Especially when you don't even cite the study, name it, link to its methodology or anything. You literally, and I checked, just Google "gender gap USA Europe" and took the second entry from Google Images.

Here's my issues with the WEF study:

1. The idea that 0.938 vs 0.939 "Employment attainment" is a quantifiable difference of any significant merit in a discussion as vague as "your general view of the US"

2. The idea that an aggregate ranking of four measures, which places the US at rank 30,when the US is ranked 39th in Education, despite being tied for 1st, is meaningful in any sense.

3. The idea that Healthcare access, equally shitty for ALL Americans, especially when weighed against its relative level of development, is a signifier of a gender gap in the US just because the same criminal health system leads to a higher amount of poor maternal and female health signifies for the US level of development compared to other countries.

4. The idea that France, with 30% of its female managers or women in corporate leadership position, Canada, with its 35%, or, iirc, Denmark, with its 38%, have better political empowerment figures for women than the USA (with its 42%, second highest in the OECD) because of a couple extra female parliamentarians or a female president for a few months once, is absurd.

5. The idea that "well ackshually technically the USA is only the 30th best on gender issues" means that the USA isn't a world leader on the issue is also ridiculous.

Image

There, I found a graph too. BBC, so very authoritative.
#15191907
Oh wow. Nice catch @wat0n. Saudi Arabia? That's one of the worst places for inequality between genders. USA is as bad as Saudi Arabia? I think not!

Complete garbage "gender gap index".


@Fasces was right to rip it apart.
#15191915
Fasces wrote:Honestly, I couldn't care less if you can confirm them or not, or you agree or disagree. This is an opinion poll, I stated my opinion based on my experiences.

That is a valid emperical approach just about everywhere outside the arbitrary world of college debate rules. I have no interest in LARPing as Ben Shapiro, personally. As far as I can tell, you're googling a conclusion and picking random studies from random organizations. I have no idea what methodology is used in these studies, whether the study is by a credible source, or what assumptions it makes - and I'm not going to spend the hours you also didn't spend when googling them to appropriately check their validity.


Personal experience is not an empirical approach at all.

I don't google conclusions and don't pick "random studies from random organizations". It's rather the opposite. I've come across that stuff (superficially) in the past and remember it, hence my reaction.

Looking up the methodology is a matter of 5 minutes.

Fasces wrote:Edit: Hell, the WEF one you linked too doesn't even prove anything. The US is tied for 1st in educational attainment but because of its alphabetical position gets placed at 39th? And it's aggregate score is 30? They have more female managers and CEOs than Canada (42% vs 34%) but because a woman was prime Minister for 0.3 years in the past 50 years, Canadian women are more empowered? Ridiculous.


When it comes to "educational attainment" and "health and survival", the top 50 or so all have the same score, because they've pretty much achieved perfect equality, at least according to the indicators used. Hence those scores don't differentiate the highest ranked countries.

It's the categories "Economic Participation and Opportunity" and "Political Empowerment" that differentiate those countries.

Canada actually ranks below the US in "Economic Participation and Opportunity". It has slightly higher scores for labor force participation and wage equality for similar work but a significantly lower score for Senior officials and managers (as you pointed out).

Canada has more women in ministerial positions and in parliament, hence it scores higher in the political empowerment part.

Overall its at 24 while the US is at 30.

2. The idea that an aggregate ranking of four measures, which places the US at rank 30,when the US is ranked 39th in Education, despite being tied for 1st, is meaningful in any sense.

3. The idea that Healthcare access, equally shitty for ALL Americans, especially when weighed against its relative level of development, is a signifier of a gender gap in the US just because the same criminal health system leads to a higher amount of poor maternal and female health signifies for the US level of development compared to other countries.

4. The idea that France, with 30% of its female managers or women in corporate leadership position, Canada, with its 35%, or, iirc, Denmark, with its 38%, have better political empowerment figures for women than the USA (with its 42%, second highest in the OECD) because of a couple extra female parliamentarians or a female president for a few months once, is absurd.


2. The aggregate ranking is a weighting of those scores, hence the ranking within the education part is irrelevant for the overall score or the score of the other categories.
3. The indicators are relative life expectancy and sex ratio at birth. The US actually has an almost perfect score there (0.97).
4. Senior officials and managers is one indicator. Others are labor force participation, wage equality for similar work, earned income and professional workers. All ratios.

Godstud wrote:Saudi Arabia? That's one of the worst places for inequality between genders. USA is as bad as Saudi Arabia? I think not!

Complete garbage "gender gap index".


I don't know where that picture comes from, but it has nothing to do with the WEF report, where Saudi Arabia is ranked 147 of 156.


Rankings are always a question of weighting. If your criteria is only (equality of) managerial positions, Bahamas, Belize, Botswana, Honduras, Colombia, Jordan etc. are actually the top ranked countries. I guess gender equality is more complex than most people think, or it makes one wonder what qualifies as "senior officials and managers".
#15191918
Rugoz wrote:I guess gender equality is more complex than most people think, or it makes one wonder what qualifies as "senior officials and managers".


Not so complex to prevent you from reducing it to one number in an internet argument. :roll:

The fact that you are left "wondering" what certain terms mean or don't mean in your "empirical study" is exactly my point.
#15191964
Fasces wrote:Not so complex to prevent you from reducing it to one number in an internet argument. :roll:

The fact that you are left "wondering" what certain terms mean or don't mean in your "empirical study" is exactly my point.


At worst its a starting point from which any serious discussion can follow.

It's also fair to make an appeal to authority. The people who put together this index obviously have put a lot more thought into it than we did.

To give an example, Jordan has a record high share of women in managerial positions (62%). The ILO warns not to misinterpret the data however:

Data published recently by the media and other outlets, indicating that women’s share of managerial positions in Jordan stands at 62 per cent, should be understood in the context of other statistics regarding women’s labour force participation in the country, the ILO has cautioned. This data, on its own, should not be the foundation for national gender policies amid a very low female labour force participation rate that stands at only 14 per cent.

The 62 per cent figure is derived from estimations compiled from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) managed by the Department of Statistics (DOS) in which a majority of female respondents were from the education sector in Jordan, and only a minority were from other sectors. With education being a highly feminised sector, the likelihood of managers in this sector being women was high, as the majority of principals in schools and kindergartens are women.

DOS classifies managers of establishments according to their duties, regardless of the establishment’s economic size or the number of employees.

“Removing female school and kindergarten principals from the sample reveals that only 2.7 per cent of women work in non-education sectors as junior and senior managers,” said Frida Khan, the ILO’s Senior Gender Equality Specialist and Coordinator of the Jordan Decent Work Country Programme.


https://www.ilo.org/beirut/media-centre ... /index.htm

In the WEF index women's labor force participation is used as an additional indicator (among others).
#15191966
Fasces wrote:No. I didn't say the US was the world leader, just among them. For every Sweden in Europe there's also a Hungary, though.


Sure, but if you make claims of being a leader in west in some area I dont think countries from the former eastern block are especially relevant?

Scandinavia, Finland, Iceland and NL would be my guess if you want to look at leaders, although I am not sure exacly what the situation in NL is like.

But there are tons of candidates and I really dont understand why USA would stand out here?

Fasces wrote:If a man or woman wants to be a stay at home parent, and they choose to, that's not a sign of inequality. :eh:


I disagree. I think it says a lot about gender equality in societies. American women are not genetically coded to be stay at home mums, so obviously the reasons are cultural and material. Stay at home mums is a rest from pre-industrial agricultural societies. This is a pretty brief period in human history, but the period that created most of the differences between many and women because physical strenght was so important. The "women equality movement" is not some random phenomenom out of the blue, but a product of new means of production where women are as important as men.

So when norms from a pre-industrial, deeply unequal society, still shape gender roles in a significant way, how is this not a very strong indicator of the progressive nature of that society?

So why are these norms well and alive? My guess would be the lack of support for women with children for instance in terms of quality child care. But perhaps also in how the social security system is designed. Does the maternity leave make it possible for ordinary mothers and fathers to take turns in staying home with their child without impact on careers and income?
#15191980
When looking at gender pay gap, it is usually done by comparing a man and a woman who have worked the same job for the same number of years.

Unfortunately, this does not take into account any years taken away from the career to stay at home and be a caregiver for another family member.

Because of sexism and other factors, it is almost always the woman who stays home.

This then means that women tend to work less years and this get less money, while still scoring as if they get paid the same.

Now, this effect of staying home happens far more in countries that do not have subsidised daycare or paid parental leave.

The USA has neither of these.
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