Four more years!

Just released survey results from the EIU.
Eleven criteria including - national wealth, life expectancy, crime rates, weather, family ties and political freedom to what today's newborns can hope to earn in 2030

BEST PLACES TO BE BORN

1 Switzerland
2 Australia
3 Norway
4 Sweden
5 Denmark
6 Singapore
7 New Zealand
8 Netherlands
9 Canada
10 Hong Kong
16 United States
27 Britain
34 Greece
66 India
80 Nigeria

Tenshinai wrote:

JimHacker wrote:@Tenshinai

Amerians are optimists? You think practically worshipping an economic system which deliberately appeals to humanity's most basic (and generally bad) instincts is optimistic? Surely it's the socialists (who for some reason think people would work for the good of society even if they didn't have to fear poverty and could have no aspirations to wealth) who are the optimists? I'm not really arguing this btw. I'm just pointing out that designating some cultures as optimists and the others as pessimists and saying 'that's it' is incredibly closed-minded. We all have different cultures and these cultures are drawn from our history.

Lol, nice to see someone not just jumping out with the usual automatic reactions.

First of all, i cant recall having even said they were optimists, that seems to be TTM, not me at least a few pages back that i checked to make sure. But what the heck, you did a good job writing up the above so i´ll give some sort of answer anyway.

Americans ARE (over-)optimistic in that they generally really do believe the myth of "land of the free" and "land of opportunity" and selfmade success. Even if they have obvious evidence of the opposite.

Research have shown that if you take a random, average European, s/he has twice or better chance of improving their socioeconomic status compared to their parents, over their lifetime, than an average random american. My own country rated as 4 times better chance in a 2001 study.
This kind of studies are seriously hated by neocons and some others from the rightwing area of politics, because even if you play the "lies, damn lies and statistics" game with those studies, you still cant end up with better than that USA has slightly worse opportunities than an average European nation, and if you "fix" the numbers the other direction, you get silly high numbers in advantage of the latter.


Personally i would much prefer a system where i´m free to do what i´m good at or want to do and if good enough can get appreciation for that, but where not being the "1 in a million" that has great success does not mean a "troubled" life. Or even just death.

And why is it automatically assumed that socialism must equal "can have no aspirations to wealth"? What it generally means and desires is to achieve "they didn't have to fear poverty".

And of course, before socialism in various forms, few nations could be called democratic. And it was quite normal to have a 60 hours working week... And so on.

To borrow from the famous democracy phrase.

Capitalism is the worst economic system except for all of the others.

That´s actually not at all either true nor realistic. There isn´t even any nation on earth running actual capitalism. And Russia in the 90s is probably one of the better perfect examples of exactly why unrestricted capitalism is a very VERY bad thing.
And also for showing that capitalism does not equal a reduction in corruption.
Of course, i could use my own country under current govt, or Canada under current govt as excellent examples of that as well.

Sorry, just noticed it was thinkstoomuch who said that (and then i think you quoted him). You said pretty much the reverse.

Maybe Americans are over-optimistic, or perhaps they are all delusional (perhaps as a result of all that Cold War propaganda I was discussing earlier).

As to the socialism and aspirations to wealth thing it really depends on what socialism you're talking about. Socialism as defined by Marx, the modern use of socialism in europe, socialism that the socialists fantasise about, the socialism the anarcho-socialists fantasise about, the socialism which is actually communism or the by communism through state-controlled capitalism version of socialism.

And a nation where true, pure capitalism is going on today is Somalia. I keep on pointing this one out to my ultra-libertarian, anarcho-capititalist and anarch-socialist friends. Warlords who succeed (by having more and better guns and better trained men) generally bring stability to their area, improve roads, improve farming conditions (reduce the farmers' chances of getting shot by roving mercenaries), making it more prosperous allowing them more funds to buy more and better guns to bring more stability and expand in an ongoing cycle. Liberterianism at work! Its a sustainable system! You just wouldn't want to live there.

Or, alternatively, it isn't liberterianism at all and what you've got is merely a group of highly authoritarian micro-states competing to fill a vacuum and re-establish the monopoly of government!

If you can't tell I don't really approve of pure ideologies. They tend to go round and round in circles. I'm more of a pragmatist.

But I would be interested to here anything you can come up with about the current politcal status quo in Italy that's good (for the Italians, not just those onlookers with a sense of humour).

Its like the saying: I want to go live in Theory. after all, everything works in Theory.....

Maybe Americans are over-optimistic, or perhaps they are all delusional (perhaps as a result of all that Cold War propaganda I was discussing earlier).

That certainly helped screw things up yeah.

It gets rather odd when "back in the old days"(well mostly at least) there were lots of people that actually believed that "The russkies are coming to invade us!"...

While at that time, i was sitting less than 2 hours away from where USSR kept airborne units specifically active among other things, to be able to invade any of the Nordic countries if the shit hit the fan(or if someone got drunk enough to think it was a magnificent idea).

And yet, while the threat here was 100% real, there was no propaganda shouting about how it would happen, and there was very little serious worry. People didn´t run around building shelters or play with guns because of it. USA, where the threat of invasion was just ridiculous, people seriously worried, people even panicked or went nuts over it...

So yeah, the propaganda crap really messed USA up badly.

As to the socialism and aspirations to wealth thing it really depends on what socialism you're talking about.

But of course. I generally define it as the rough amalgamation of what the most popular and realistic socialist leaning parties around the world would prefer.
Yes, a very flimsy definition, but it usually means you get a rather nice political combination.

And there are just about no parties or "true believers" in regards to any theoretical, strictly defined "socialism" anyway.

And a nation where true, pure capitalism is going on today is Somalia. I keep on pointing this one out to my ultra-libertarian, anarcho-capititalist and anarch-socialist friends. Warlords who succeed (by having more and better guns and better trained men) generally bring stability to their area, improve roads, improve farming conditions (reduce the farmers' chances of getting shot by roving mercenaries), making it more prosperous allowing them more funds to buy more and better guns to bring more stability and expand in an ongoing cycle. Liberterianism at work! Its a sustainable system! You just wouldn't want to live there.

Or, alternatively, it isn't liberterianism at all and what you've got is merely a group of highly authoritarian micro-states competing to fill a vacuum and re-establish the monopoly of government!

Mmm, the case can certainly be made either way. Or even both ways at the same time.

If you can't tell I don't really approve of pure ideologies. They tend to go round and round in circles. I'm more of a pragmatist.

Good choice.
Pragmatic idealist i think i can call myself, or perhaps an idealistic pragmatic. First you make sure things run well, then you go about making things better, as much as you can.

But I would be interested to here anything you can come up with about the current politcal status quo in Italy that's good (for the Italians, not just those onlookers with a sense of humour).

I´m not a miracle worker you know?

Actually, on second thought, there is one very simple answer for Italy. Go back to a national currency.
The euro is horribly overvalued for Italy, not as bad as for Greece, but it hurts their economy waaay too much.

Aside from that, shredding the mafia influence might be the single biggest difference that could be made.

I wrote:

KNick wrote:Could it be that Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo are raising such a stink about gun control to cover the fact that the New York state penal system is broken? Three New York City policemen were shot on the third of January. two of them were shot by a five time convicted felon. Mind you, that is not the number of times he was arrested. That is the number of times he was convicted of a felony. That is a major felony, including assault with a deadly weapon every 31 months. In that 31 months are included jail time before trial, time of trial and service of sentence. What was he doing out on the street? He should have been in prison with a lot of time left to serve.

To me, the fact that he had a gun, while not irrelevant, is not part of the issue. Due to the lack of funding, prisons are releasing unreformed, dangerous felons back out on the street to continue to victomize law-abiding citizens. In other words, the justice system is falling down on the its main job, protecting the citizens of the state. The fact that this is in an attempt to lower the costs to the tax-payers is not an excuse.

I have been unable to find out anything about the criminal who shot the third officer, an off duty cop moonlighting at the family business. All I do know is that he was shot during a hold-up attempt by an armed assailent. If he had had his service weapon with him, purhaps he would not even have been shot.

The fact that existing laws and punishments are not being enforced, IMHO, has more to do with gun violence than the availability of guns.

For the poster who said that US citizens are afraid of their own government, there is more than a grain of truth in that. The possibility of corruption of or an outright attempt to suppress the Bill of Rights has long been on the minds of US citizens. Current attempts to silence critisism, remove our guns and otherwise violate our rights under the Constitution are validating the need for the right to bear arms.

I'm about to go to bed so don't have time now to respond to this as i'd like. But I will go ahead and quote this into the 'four more years' thread like I did before with someone else's post. Whilst obviously there's a connection between criminal sentencing and gun control/crime I suspect any engangement on that here will sidetrack us into a political debate on law and order, the US prison system, etc.

I've moved Knick's post here as I said I would. I hope people don't mind me doing this, but as I said before I think it's important that in a mod-lite section of the forums we should try to avoid derailing threads.

JimHacker wrote:[quote="I]I'm about to go to bed so don't have time now to respond to this as i'd like. But I will go ahead and quote this into the 'four more years' thread like I did before with someone else's post. Whilst obviously there's a connection between criminal sentencing and gun control/crime I suspect any engangement on that here will sidetrack us into a political debate on law and order, the US prison system, etc. [/quote]

I've moved Knick's post here as I said I would. I hope people don't mind me doing this, but as I said before I think it's important that in a mod-lite section of the forums we should try to avoid derailing threads.[/quote]

I put that post in the Guns, guns, Guns thread (which I started) because the people cited are trying to use these two incidents in New York as a platform to tighten gun control laws. The fact that neither incident would have been prevented by stricter laws is part of my point. I am sorry that was unclear. When politicians attempt to use incidents to take away the rights of law abiding citizens while ignoring the causes of those incidents, it is shameful. If Mayor Bloomberg was advocating longer prison sentences for a crime where a gun was used and there was a chance that they would actually be enforced, I would have no beef with him.

KNick, another way to illustrate your point is to look at road fatalities and speeding. On a good road posted at a low 100kms per hr there will be an accident that kills five drunk teenagers driving at 200kms per hr at 3am. The authorities will then reduce the speed limit to 80kms per hr as it has been proven on that road that speed kills, even though those who died paid no attention to any posted speed and it will have no effect.

Daryl wrote:KNick, another way to illustrate your point is to look at road fatalities and speeding. On a good road posted at a low 100kms per hr there will be an accident that kills five drunk teenagers driving at 200kms per hr at 3am. The authorities will then reduce the speed limit to 80kms per hr as it has been proven on that road that speed kills, even though those who died paid no attention to any posted speed and it will have no effect.

What's the political quote, "Bad examples make for bad laws," or some such. Can't remember who said it.

Poker

@Tenshinai

I don't know, perhaps shedding the Berlusconi influence is the biggest practical difference they could make. Italy's corruption problem is very bad: Italy currently wouldn't qualify to join the EU due to its corruption and Berlusconi's influence.

@Knick, yes your post was on topic. I anticipated that my response to it and some others however would not. Which is why I pre-emptively (i may have been getting ahead of myself )copied it here, to give context to my off topic response:

America does have a crime problem. But can that be solved with more police spending, building more prisons and increasing sentences even more?

Something to consider is that, in first world countries, the shorter and more lenient sentences are (and incidentally, the more spent per prisoner) the lower the crime rate. Now it could be argued that instead of cause and effect this is simply effect and cause (ie, naturally lower crime rates due to culture lead to less popular demand for higher sentences, punishment etc) but I think it is a mixture of both.

If I might list the 5 widely given reasons for incarceration: punishment, protection of the community, rehabilitation, deterrence and definition (society making a stand and saying 'we define this as wrong'). The USA certainly takes care of the punishment aspect with the longest sentences and lowest quality of life in prisons in the first world. But does this protect the community or deter others from committing crimes? And what about rehabilitation? And what effect does all this have on culture?

Long sentences look like a good deterrent against people committing an offence. Unfortunately, they normally aren't. First of all, a very significant number of crimes (esepcially homicides) are committed on the spur of the moment with no forethought whatsoever so deterrence doesn't enter the equation. On the face of it though people should be deterred from committing crimes considered in advance. However, crimnal psychology has pretty well estalished that crimes planned in advance can be placed into two categories: those where the person has on the surface considered being caught but subconciously assumes all along that they're too clever/sneaky/lucky to be caught and those who feel they're in such a hole anyway that they've got nothing to loose. The concept of deterrence does seem to prevent people from committing some crimes (especially fraud) but even then the deterrence effect comes from the thought of loosing their job, going to prison, social judgement etc rather than the length of sentence itself.

Protection of the community (ie, putting criminals in prison prevents them from committing other crimes because they are not at large) is more complicated. Obviously a person in prison is not committing crimes against society whilst they are in prison so it works to that extent. But here it crosses over with rehabilitation, as it has been found that generally the longer you imprison someone (beyond a certain point), they more likely they are to commit a crime upon being released. This is especially true when prison conditions are poor as rather than scaring a criminal into reforming it hardens them and submerges them in criminal culture. It will also make it harder to find a job upon release, potentially leading them back to crime whatever their original intent. So while giving a life sentence obviously prevents a person from commting more crimes against society, imposing a harsher sentence (ie 3 years instead of 1) may simply increase the liklihood of reoffending. While a solution to that might be to give everyone who ever commits a crime a life sentence, this would be impractical (let alone immoral) and give rise to 'might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb'.

While the chances of rehabilitation ca be harmed by longer sentences, the chances of rehabilitation can be improved spending on programmes such as vocational traning, drug addiction treatment etc. Something the USA seems to loathe to do.

Currently 0.75% of the American population is in prison at any one time (or 1.7% of the adult male population). Slightly over 10% of males will be incarcerated in a state or federal penitentiary at some point in their lives (and incidentally, 10% of those will be raped, which means that a minimum of 1% of american males will be raped during their lifetime!). When you combine all this with the difficulty to get a job with a criminal record and the criminalisation of social problems (yes europe has the 'war on drugs too', just not as bad as in the USA) it's no surprise that a criminal subculture has emerged and it's also no surprise that harsh sentences to prisons with poor conditions immerse offenders in that subculture, hardening them and causing that culture to take hold and spread even more.

Longer sentences are not the solution to the USA's crime problem.

If people really want to move this back to the guns thread, feel free.

Ugh,

JimHacker wrote:[SNIP]
Protection of the community (ie, putting criminals in prison prevents them from committing other crimes because they are not at large) is more complicated. Obviously a person in prison is not committing crimes against society whilst they are in prison so it works to that extent. [SNIP]

There is a lot of criminal on criminal crime in prison, murder, assaults, rapes (yep same sex rape), and even internet crime on the public at large. Prison computers should be read only, but NO thanks to liberal courts.

Poker