What's It Like To Live In America?

[Alpha]

Siding and helping are two different things.

Do we send troops in, of course. Enough to pose a threat, nope. Enough to create a significant impact in a war, rarely. Sure we take part in and "side" with the Americans, we do it because there is usually benefit for us, for example Afghanistan right now. We're fighting because there has been issues between our countries aswell, but America is technically the major part in the war.

That's also, in part, because Canada's population is much smaller than the United States of America.

 

[billyguy1]

Siding and helping are two different things.

Do we send troops in, of course. Enough to pose a threat, nope. Enough to create a significant impact in a war, rarely. Sure we take part in and "side" with the Americans, we do it because there is usually benefit for us, for example Afghanistan right now. We're fighting because there has been issues between our countries aswell, but America is technically the major part in the war.

if you guys were truly neutral, you wouldn't fight in any wars.

 

[Nephilim]

Guys, can we get back on topic, please. Before anyone would get offended by this... just saying.

 

[Pixelatorx2]

if you guys were truly neutral, you wouldn't fight in any wars.

No where does it say we cannot have conflict ourselves. >.<

Guys, can we get back on topic, please. Before anyone would get offended by this... just saying.

Good idea!

 

[Mamiamato24]

The United States is my first choice of country to live in.
Really, one can't completely summarize what this country is like, seeing as it follows the "melting pot" analogy. The U.S. is full of cultures and peoples from everywhere across the globe, allowing for the most diverse culture on the planet. As such, we have a multitude of different foods to choose from, thanks to the variety of cultures. Our geography is the most diverse, ranging from miles upon miles of beautiful grassland and farms, to towering mountain ranges, to forests, to vast deserts, and finally to bustling cities, with countless skyscrapers standing tall and proud. Our country holds some of the world's greatest sights, such as the Grand Canyon and beautiful national parks (Yosemite, Yellowstone, etc).

American's possess a strong sense of security, knowing the most powerful military in the world is keeping us safe. Despite what some may think, we do indeed have the most powerful and technologically advanced military on the planet. We've also invested the most money compared to anyone else in it, allowing for such a marvel to be amassed.

The positive aspects of this country, as well as living in it, just flow through my mind. I struggle to create a list of negative aspects, equal or greater to in size.

In the perspective of a foreigner:

• Giant Debt
• Not-so-nice relations with other countries
• Obese (for the most part)
• Full of crime (for the most part) cough cough Detroit
• Air Pollution
• Obama
• Natural Disaster Vulnerability
• Expensive Health Care
• Some parts legalizing medial marijuana?

I'm not extremely anti-U.S.A, I just find it silly how people think it's better than any other country,when in fact, it does have its major flaws. Most of which can easily overpower it's sights, landscape and military. And Canada isn't lacking any diversity, in fact, Canada is placed higher on the LDI (Linguistic Diversity Index) at .549, compared to the U.S.A. at .353. So the U.S.A isn't extremely diverse.
This map is a good reference:

 

[arsenal]

LA is the place where it takes 45 minutes to drive 3 miles. You don't want to live there. (and no I don't live there but I've been there several times.)

 

[RC_4777]

In the perspective of a foreigner:

• Giant Debt
• Not-so-nice relations with other countries
• Obese (for the most part)
• Full of crime (for the most part) cough cough Detroit
• Air Pollution
• Obama
• Natural Disaster Vulnerability
• Expensive Health Care
• Some parts legalizing medial marijuana?

I'm not extremely anti-U.S.A, I just find it silly how people think it's better than any other country,when in fact, it does have its major flaws. Most of which can easily overpower it's sights, landscape and military. And Canada isn't lacking any diversity, in fact, Canada is placed higher on the LDI (Linguistic Diversity Index) at .549, compared to the U.S.A. at .353. So the U.S.A isn't extremely diverse.
This map is a good reference:

Here's my perspective on your points:

• Oh yeah, definitely, I don't really like the government too much now...
• True.
• Eh, that's more stereotypical than true. Sure, there are fat people, but there's fat people everywhere in the world. It's not really that bad.
• Once again, only some cities. Not a lot of crime where I live. (Although there was a murder like 2 minutes walking from my house )
• Nothing compared to some places, like China. My dad has a picture when he was there and in the morning it looks like he's in a major fog. It's not really noticeable where I live.
• Agreed.
• I suppose. Although, as I've had to say for a lot of things, that depends on where you live
  
• Yeah, there's lots of health care stuff also mixing with the Obama point. But you have free health care XD
• Only a small few, but they get made fun of for it.

 

[le quack]

I would goto america for good ping >.<

 

[Mamiamato24]

Here's my perspective on your points:

• Oh yeah, definitely, I don't really like the government too much now...
• True.
• Eh, that's more stereotypical than true. Sure, there are fat people, but there's fat people everywhere in the world. It's not really that bad.
• Once again, only some cities. Not a lot of crime where I live. (Although there was a murder like 2 minutes walking from my house )
• Nothing compared to some places, like China. My dad has a picture when he was there and in the morning it looks like he's in a major fog. It's not really noticeable where I live.
• Agreed.
• I suppose. Although, as I've had to say for a lot of things, that depends on where you live
  
• Yeah, there's lots of health care stuff also mixing with the Obama point. But you have free health care XD
• Only a small few, but they get made fun of for it.

Well, the U.S.A. is second on the list of most polluted (Co2) countries.
I'm glad to see most of my points were actually true :3

 

[BitoBain]

In the perspective of a foreigner:

• Giant Debt
• Not-so-nice relations with other countries
• Obese (for the most part)
• Full of crime (for the most part) cough cough Detroit
• Air Pollution
• Obama
• Natural Disaster Vulnerability
• Expensive Health Care
• Some parts legalizing medial marijuana?

I'm not extremely anti-U.S.A, I just find it silly how people think it's better than any other country,when in fact, it does have its major flaws. Most of which can easily overpower it's sights, landscape and military. And Canada isn't lacking any diversity, in fact, Canada is placed higher on the LDI (Linguistic Diversity Index) at .549, compared to the U.S.A. at .353. So the U.S.A isn't extremely diverse.
This map is a good reference:

I'm not trying to be mean or bash on anyone here, just pointing out that America is not as bad of a place to live as you might think. Not all foreigners think like you. It sounds like you just listed off a bunch of bad things you have heard about the U.S., but some of them are not true at all.

The U.S. does indeed have a large debt, but that does not significantly affect the quality of life of a single individual. The U.S. has one of the highest G.D.P. per capitas in the world, with only a couple of countries in northern Europe above the U.S. It is a valid point though, that a large debt does destabilize the economy.

The U.S. does often get involved with things that aren't really their business, but that is not always a bad thing. If a country is starving and killing its people, or if a government is sickeningly corrupted, it is not a bad thing that another country steps in and makes things right. The U.S. has made big mistakes though, and gotten involved in things they shouldn't have. (Vietnam War against communism) Most of the countries that don't like us couldn't match the military or economy of the U.S. or our neighboring countries that would help us out. (Canada, France, Britain, even Russia.)

Yeah, America is pretty obese. That is evidence of a healthy economy, though. We not only feed ourselves, but we overproduce food every year and have to sell to other countries. We also import some, but we sell more food than we buy. Anyways, it's your choice if you want to live an unhealthy lifestyle and become obese.

America is not really bad with crime these days. In the late twentieth century it was one of the worst in the world, though. (Maybe that's why people think America has serious crime issues?) This is partially due to our second amendment. It has changed though, as crime is far less than it used to be. Most of the countries in 2014 that have awful crime rates are second world countries, such as those in Latin America. Even if our crime rate was awful, we have a very good justice system and we are good at catching criminals.

Air pollution and pollution in general are something that practically every country that has industrialized struggles with. Believe it or not, the U.S. has taken major steps to become less of a contributor to global pollution, but it does have 320,000,000 people. Second world countries are starting to contribute more to global pollution than first world countries. (China, Brazil, India, and Egypt) Some countries are lucky, and can use their natural environment to support their small population. (Iceland, who runs its own country on geothermal energy) Anyway, the U.S. is a huge country, and if pollution is a problem where you live, you can always move from Modesto, California, to Kansas.

We are capable of having a black president? That statement said more about you than it did about Obama.

The U.S. may not be as prepared for disasters as Japan, for instance, but being the third largest country in the world for both land area and population makes that difficult. Poland, for instance, doesn't have to worry about volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfire nearly as much because it has little/no volcanoes, it is not on a major fault line, it cannot be struck by a hurricane because of its position in Europe, and it is wetter there. Sure, in the U.S., you are going to have natural disasters wherever you go because you are either by the ocean (hurricanes), in a desert (wildfires), in the Rockies or on the west coast (earthquakes), in the plains (tornadoes) or in the midwest (volcanoes). We try, though. We really do.

Even if your health care is expensive, (It's not as bad as some places) you have to realize that the U.S. is probably one of the best places in the world to have cancer or get in a motorcycle wreck. We have very good medical treatment for any illness you can imagine. Not only that, much of the world's breakthroughs in medical science and science in general, come from the U.S.

If it is being allowed for medical use, that should be fine. If people abuse that, then they were already abusing marijuana in the first place.

I have studied human geography, and I can assure you that that map uses a very strange ethnicity index. The U.S. receives tens of thousands of migrants every year from every continent. The U.S. has also received more immigrants than any other country in all of history. Period. If there is one country in there world that has diverse ethnicity, it is the U.S. Australia also gets a massive amount of migrants because it is highly developed and grants its people many rights, etc... So why are the two of those not high scorers on that map? I see that Africa is supposedly highly ethnically diverse. Indeed if you go to Africa there is a massive variety of language and ethnicity, but most of the ethnicities are similar, and everybody lives agricultural lives, speaks Swahili, and probably adheres to or knows a lot about Islam. It looks like someone went out and found the 10,000 most common ethnicities in the world, (though ethnicity itself is an arbitrary term) then counted how many of each one are in each county, and divided by the population. That is not, however, a good indicator of the diversity of culture in that country.

This may sound off topic, but it's a good discussion, and I think it correlates to the title of the thread.

 

[AlgerWaterlow]

We Americans are mostly oblivious. Slaves to the technology we mastered. The rest of the world, third-world countires especially, have a better, more familial style in their townships and cities. You really don't see many "villages" in America unless you're in West Virginia.

 

[Mamiamato24]

I'm not trying to be mean or bash on anyone here, just pointing out that America is not as bad of a place to live as you might think. Not all foreigners think like you. It sounds like you just listed off a bunch of bad things you have heard about the U.S., but some of them are not true at all.

The U.S. does indeed have a large debt, but that does not significantly affect the quality of life of a single individual. The U.S. has one of the highest G.D.P. per capitas in the world, with only a couple of countries in northern Europe above the U.S. It is a valid point though, that a large debt does destabilize the economy.

The U.S. does often get involved with things that aren't really their business, but that is not always a bad thing. If a country is starving and killing its people, or if a government is sickeningly corrupted, it is not a bad thing that another country steps in and makes things right. The U.S. has made big mistakes though, and gotten involved in things they shouldn't have. (Vietnam War against communism) Most of the countries that don't like us couldn't match the military or economy of the U.S. or our neighboring countries that would help us out. (Canada, France, Britain, even Russia.)

Yeah, America is pretty obese. That is evidence of a healthy economy, though. We not only feed ourselves, but we overproduce food every year and have to sell to other countries. We also import some, but we sell more food than we buy. Anyways, it's your choice if you want to live an unhealthy lifestyle and become obese.

America is not really bad with crime these days. In the late twentieth century it was one of the worst in the world, though. (Maybe that's why people think America has serious crime issues?) This is partially due to our second amendment. It has changed though, as crime is far less than it used to be. Most of the countries in 2014 that have awful crime rates are second world countries, such as those in Latin America. Even if our crime rate was awful, we have a very good justice system and we are good at catching criminals.

Air pollution and pollution in general are something that practically every country that has industrialized struggles with. Believe it or not, the U.S. has taken major steps to become less of a contributor to global pollution, but it does have 320,000,000 people. Second world countries are starting to contribute more to global pollution than first world countries. (China, Brazil, India, and Egypt) Some countries are lucky, and can use their natural environment to support their small population. (Iceland, who runs its own country on geothermal energy) Anyway, the U.S. is a huge country, and if pollution is a problem where you live, you can always move from Modesto, California, to Kansas.

We are capable of having a black president? That statement said more about you than it did about Obama.

The U.S. may not be as prepared for disasters as Japan, for instance, but being the third largest country in the world for both land area and population makes that difficult. Poland, for instance, doesn't have to worry about volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfire nearly as much because it has little/no volcanoes, it is not on a major fault line, it cannot be struck by a hurricane because of its position in Europe, and it is wetter there. Sure, in the U.S., you are going to have natural disasters wherever you go because you are either by the ocean (hurricanes), in a desert (wildfires), in the Rockies or on the west coast (earthquakes), in the plains (tornadoes) or in the midwest (volcanoes). We try, though. We really do.

Even if your health care is expensive, (It's not as bad as some places) you have to realize that the U.S. is probably one of the best places in the world to have cancer or get in a motorcycle wreck. We have very good medical treatment for any illness you can imagine. Not only that, much of the world's breakthroughs in medical science and science in general, come from the U.S.

If it is being allowed for medical use, that should be fine. If people abuse that, then they were already abusing marijuana in the first place.

I have studied human geography, and I can assure you that that map uses a very strange ethnicity index. The U.S. receives tens of thousands of migrants every year from every continent. If there is one country in there world that has diverse ethnicity, it is the U.S. Australia also gets a massive amount of migrants because it is highly developed and grants its people many rights, etc... So why are the two of those not high scorers on that map? I see that Africa is supposedly highly ethnically diverse. Indeed if you go to Africa there is a massive variety of language and ethnicity, but most of the ethnicities are similar, and everybody lives agricultural lives, speaks Swahili, and probably adheres to or knows a lot about Islam. It looks like someone went out and found the 10,000 most common ethnicities in the world, (though ethnicity itself is an arbitrary term) then counted how many of each one are in each county, and divided by the population. That is not, however, a good indicator of the diversity of culture in that country.

This may sound off topic, but it's a good discussion, and I think it correlates to the title of the thread.

I assumed my points weren't completely accurate, since I don't actually live there and I've only been to the U.S.A. a few times in my life. A lot of my points were influenced by media or stereotypes, so I'm glad you went into further detail explaining each one.

By the way, in my "expensive healthcare" point, I wasn't talking about the quality of it, but generally how costly it was and that some people cannot afford to pay for it (I know the quality of the healthcare there is excellent).

I searched the internet for a bit, and it seems linguistic diversity the most popular way of determining how culturally diverse a country is (usually, more languages = more cultures). I know that, in Canada, a lot of the aboriginal languages are very similar to each other. There are also many obscure and very isolated languages (like Inuktitut in northern Quebec) that also contribute to that number. It would be interesting if there was another way of determining a country's cultural diversity, other than linguistically and by how many immigrants it receives.