God help America

[rgmwa]

Good summary but nobody in America will believe it.

[Jerry_Atrick]

America certainly has its problems - and far more than it should given its wealth and position. But there are a few things I think that need mediation in that video.  

 

On the employment front, "at will" employees don't have security of tenure - that is true. And, yes, some employers exploit it. But my experience of it was very different.  I was recruited to the UK by a San Franciscan company and then ran a dot com's delivery in SF. Most at will employees are professional and the company needs them as much as they need the company. This went to the receptionist, by the way. When times are good for employees, they make hay and when they receive an offer that is significantly better than where they are, they are gone that day. Similarly, when the market isn't so hot, a company has a lot of flexibility to size their workforce accordingly; but even though they let them go that day, they usually pay at least a couple of weeks, but usually a month's pay.

 

Where it was exploited was where a manager took a disliking to an employee - and vice versa. The employee was gone the same day. In some respects, tat is not bad, as it kept the office culture stable. I have not observed the yanks in this area working harder or under more pressure than their Aussie, UK, Canadian, or European colleagues.

 

BTW, it was a bit of a shock that Australian women aren't guaranteed paid maternity leave. It is not what I recall. In Europe and the UK, most women receive 12 months paid maternity leave, and now there is paid paternity leave; with the option for the mother and father to split the maternity leave entitlement even if the parents work at different employers. We have one fella going off for three months paternity leave - fully paid - starting tomorrow. His wife took 9 months; they are overlapping by a month, so will take 11 months off in duration. He will look after bubs for a couple of months as a stay at home dad. It is making me think I will have an affair, have another kid (sadly, 3 month's pay - or even 12 months pay isn't quite enough)

 

I am not too concerned the US has elected to be the international police, when considering the current options. It is wishful thinking that a strong country wouldn't want to take a dominant position in the world, and the current crop of strong countries do not endear themselves (at least to me). His main thrust is that it allowed allied countries - particularly NATO - to spend less on their defence than they were obliged to. He has a point, but for those allied countries, it has mean they can spend more on other useful things - and for those countries, whether they did spend on useful things or not, that is kind of cool. BTW, despite his rather unconventional approach, Trump cajoled other countries to up their defence spending game to 2% of GDP, abetted by Putin invading Ukraine. 

 

I agree with his assertions of the MSM and culture wars. But, he asserts it is symmetric across all MSM - and it isn't. It is predominantly right wing nut-job media; what is characterised in the US (by predominantly right wing nut job media) as woke/left wing media - and in Australia, I hate to say - is usually moderate. When the "left wing" media simply put the facts forward against the rhetoric, it is charged as being woke, cancelling, and refusing to listen. I am not saying the "left wing" media aren't biased, but that most of the media at the national level is actually not too unhinged (the local stuff is so focused on reporting how Todd the sheep ran amok on the local state highway, I am not sure any of their reporters even know there is a war in Ukraine at the moment).

 

On social media,. I think he was click-baiting. He was worried about two things - 1) that due to his criticisms of the US and YooToob, it was likely to be taken down. It is over 4 months old and there are far worse critiques of both the US and YT.. and they seem not to be taken down. Look up Adam Conover.. He makes this fella's criticisms lame. The second is that social media is making the US less competitive because today, was it 39% of kids want to be YT'ers and a handful have traditional aspirations to be scientists and the like. To support this, he quotes the studies that show today, 39% want to be you tubers against..... his own anecdotal observation most kids wanted to be scientists, etc, and being actors and artists were the outliers. Oh, please. Let's look at reality. He may well have been in a year or school where what he observed was accurate, but you only have to look at TV shows from long lost days to work out not too many of the total population want to go on to be Nobel prize winners in physics. 

 

On education, I agree, it is exclusive, but they have, according to this website (of which I have no idea of its authenticity), quite a few universities in the top 10, including MIT (which is world renowned for IT education), Stanford, Harvard, California Institute of Technology, and University of Chicago fits in: https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/choosing-university/worlds-top-100-universities. These are at 1, 3, 5, 6, and 10. Half of the top 10 are US. Using the same logic as his argument for lack of being the land of the free, it makes the US the best country for education, even if it is exclusive. It does preserve the class wars.. of which he did not mention.

 

I can't speak for secondary and primary education as I don't know enough about it. Guns - yeah... tell us something we don't know..

 

Health system.. Yes, it is probably the most weighted to private provision. However, it does have a public system and yours truly survived it. And, to be quite honest with you, the Aussie system is not too different to it.. I can recall having to have a real go at the medical staff at the Monash Medical centre in Clayton, where I was with my father waiting an eternity to be seen, when a teenage girl was carried in by her parents in obvious pain.. the medics response "Here are a couple of painkillers - you will have to wait your turn."  She was moaning in total agony and after about  5 minutes when it was clear she was not making it up, I waltzed up to the reception and asked if they recognised her. "No, why?" .. My response was, "Clearly she has acute abdominal pain - it could be a burst appendix - do you want her to die in the waiting room". Well, that set the cat amongst the pigeons... and this young women, who's parents trusted the system, was seen to quick smart. After that, I bundled my father into the car and took him to Cabrini's emergency department. His private insurance actually covered it, with a $300 excess (back in 2005). I picked up the excess. 

 

The US is far from perfect, and is imploding on itself. But it doesn't take too much to realise, the West, mainly through greed and neo-liberalism, is following suit.

[kgwilson]

The paid parental leave bit threw me so I checked. In both NZ & Australia you can get paid parental leave shared between partners. It is for 18 weeks in Australia & up to 52 weeks in NZ. It is means tested in Australia but not in NZ & there it starts at week 36 of pregnancy.

 

If you have money you can get the very best education in the world in the US, but then that is how everything works in the US. There are some safety nets but often they are hard to find and many fall through the gaps.

 

Australia seemed keen to emulate the US system while the Lib/Nats were in the box seat and the original social welfare process has been eroded steadily for quite a number of years. Things may begin the level out again but cost and demands for so many things that were not issues many years ago will ensure little change. 

[rgmwa]

5 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

BTW, it was a bit of a shock that Australian women aren't guaranteed paid maternity leave. It is not what I recall.

 

That was wrong and the author of the video posted a correction in the comments on the uTube version.

[onetrack]

The problem is, we have a lot of readily accessible information about America and its position in the world, and its great institutions and processes, and education and research efforts - but we have virtually nothing coming out of China, as to what is happening there, as regards all the important things we know about in the U.S.

 

Many things are for sure with regard to China. They are steadily increasing their national wealth and power, and their research and technological gains are far more advanced than we are told.

Of course, some of this is simply due to spying and commercial/industrial theft - but a lot of technology has been given free to China, in the Americans (and Europeans) haste to acquire cheap manufacturing.

 

But the Americans have now suddenly woken up to what has happened in their corporate lemming approach, and Biden and the Democrats are intent on reversing that position.

However, the problem is that China has already garnered a huge level of brain power from the rest of the world, simply because they can offer a lot more renumeration, and possibly, better working facilities - as well as a Govt that bends over backwards, to assist in technological or manufacturing gains.

 

The Chinese play the "long game" and they are making steady incremental gains in wealth, power and technology, that will put them on an even footing with America within 25 years.

And I won't even begin to go into how much of the worlds mineral wealth and extractive ability they have gradually acquired. They have the vast mineral wealth of Africa sewn up, all done while the Americans were asleep.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-02/china-critical-future-technologies-west-aspi-report/102041318

 

 

[kgwilson]

I note that the Chinese have risen from the bottom to almost the top just behind Japan as the worlds largest car exporter and as far as manufacturing goes they are by far the largest. Only 3 or 4 years ago Great Wall and MG were pretty crappy. Now they are joined by a myriad of other Chinese brands & the MG4 electric vehicle has been hailed as the best medium EV in the world by many motoring writers. They still make some shocking crap with stupid claims and heaps of fake stuff especially mobile phones & electronic stuff but pay a reasonable price and you get very good quality.

 

China is now the undisputed world factory for consumer goods. Their efforts to get into the very top echelon of semi conductor production has so far not been able to match silicon valley & US designed chips are produced in Taiwan & South Korea, but they are not far behind and may catch up & surpass the US before we know it. It is all pretty scary but there is one big issue & that is they rely on their income from the West. If the US & Europe stopped buying Chinese made stuff and started making everything again that they now get made in China, the Chinese economy would collapse totally. That of course will never happen but with the now realisation of what is happening with the rise of Chinas political and military might, the mad scramble to reduce the reliance on China is beginning in earnest.

[nomadpete]

It has taken a prolonged war in Ukraine to start europe realising the need to break their reliance in a sole source of energy (Russia). The war has shown up the folly of allowing a sole supplier to control a country.

They have not yet seriously begun to apply that knowledge to all consumer products.

I live in hope, though. Because Australia is very vulnerable to our major supplier who is also our major buyer of raw materials.

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

On 06/03/2023 at 9:01 PM, nomadpete said:

Because Australia is very vulnerable to our major supplier who is also our major buyer of raw materials.

Indeed.. and because the rest of the western world still see China as a lucrative market and cheap good maker for their domestic markets, I can't see anything changing until China is ready to go for Taiwan if they don't lose patience with the west sooner: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-07/china-us-surely-be-conflict-qin-gang/102064108

[facthunter]

China has some problems within China. IF people get disillusioned there's a LOT of them.   Nev

[old man emu]

We hear a lot of sabre rattling from the Chinese Government, but they are pretty mute about their internal economic troubles. Not much is reported about the vast amounts of money "mum & dad" investors have lost by speculative investment in residential tower blocks. There have been some massive financial collapses in that section of the economy that have really hurt the common people who were investing in those buildings as their form of superannuation.

 

You have to remember that empires and emperors rise and fall, but the commoner simply carries on from generation to generation, slowly progressing the welfare of their society.

[Old Koreelah]

America leads the world in lots of areas: insanity, violence, greed, etc. but that nation also throws up the odd Prophet we might learn from.

 

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/america-built-by-religious-fanatics-who-promoted-armed-struggle-paul-auster-20230306-p5cpqm.html?dicbo=v2-f4ckwsr

[onetrack]

Nothing will ever change in America, because their fundamentalist nutter mentality sees every attempt to reduce access to firearms as a personal assault on their "freedoms". 

The gun lobby is the most powerful force in their Nation and they have even managed to ensure that laws are changed to stop any attempt to disarm the Nation.

They will continue their descent into paranoiac, foamy-mouthed hatred and anger, nursing and waving their firearms, until all the peace-loving Americans leave for safer countries with sensible gun laws.

[facthunter]

Why are the White Supremacists so obese and dumb looking?    Don't they have mirrors? Nev

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

Don't they have mirrors?

I'll look into it.

[facthunter]

On reflection, of course. It will be a "mirror Image", only. Nev

[old man emu]

You mean that the far Right would appear to be the Far Left?

[facthunter]

Doesn't have to be far. 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Yep I agree....  for example. kim jong un is the king by hereditary , just like the kings of old. The far left has become the far right in North Korea.

[Bruce Tuncks]

And Onetrack has it right too....  what gets me is that their medical system is union-driven, and yet they think it is in accord with their "freedoms". Just try and start a medical school over there and you will soon find it is the opposite of free.

[old man emu]

48 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Just try and start a medical school over there and you will soon find it is the opposite of free.

And the difference in Australia is????

[Old Koreelah]

Our little town, like most rural areas, is lucky to have a couple of GPs. They tend to be from south Asia or West Africa and don’t stay long.  

Meanwhile, there seem to be lots of Doctors in coastal areas and big cities. 

Perhaps it’s about time to break the union stranglehold of the Australian Medical Association, and allow a few more Aussie kids into Medical School. Also, our government should show some backbone and allocate those lucrative Medicare Numbers a bit more fairly.

[octave]

34 minutes ago, Old Koreelah said:

Perhaps it’s about time to break the union stranglehold of the Australian Medical Association, and allow a few more Aussie kids into Medical School.

 

The fact is that Asian students (generally) do achieve the higher ATAR scores. 

[old man emu]

21 minutes ago, octave said:

 

The fact is that Asian students (generally) do achieve the higher ATAR scores. 

They might get higher ATAR scores, but that's because they are swots. They have tunnel vision. One of those tunnel-visioned Australian-born Asian shits killed my wife. Wouldn't even carry out an external examination of the site of my wife's pain. Kept insisting that nothing could be done about the pain until my wife's Type II diabetes was under control.

 

The shit can't be sued because my wife is dead and can't sue from the grave.

 

[octave]

1 minute ago, old man emu said:

hey have tunnel vision. One of those tunnel-visioned Australian-born Asian shits killed my wife.

 

Not because they were Asian.  Asians are not a one amorphas group.   The worst doctor I had was Danish but this means nothing in prediction what the next Danish doctor will be like.   

[Bruce Tuncks]

The cards were stacked in their favor. They got 3 points for "english not being their mother tongue" and so the first-year med classes looked very chinese.

Also, you could ( if you knew how to play the system ) get to do your year 12 in 2 years!

I was actually on a no -account committee when this was happening at the U of Adelaide. It got so bad that even the politically correct lot had to notice there was something wrong. They have corrected things a bit now I think.