The US does NOT have the resources to improve all these issues whilst trying to save the entire world at the same time, especially considering the extreme debt.
Yeah, I meant the US could easily provide for its own citizens, if it cared to. There are like 15x more unused and empty houses in the US than there are homeless people. It would not be difficult at all to have an actual shelter system in place for people to have some baseline needs met. Musk alone could feed every hungry kid in this country and still be the richest guy in the world. Don't get me started on the health insurance companies who produce nothing of value, ripping us off. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that the poverty and scarcity we see in this country isn't completely manufactured to make rich people richer and create fake jobs that waste our time and energy.
I HAVE been to China and they have far more poor and homeless people in far worse conditions. It’s considered a developing country for a reason. I don’t think we have accurate data on China’s suicide or incarceration rates, but I would not be surprised if the US is doing worse in that regard. But probably not by very much. All the West is suffering from a severe lack of identity and meaning, unlike China which still has a collective identity. The Chinese are also much more conformist and thus less likely to use/abuse drugs. China also has much lower in crime because it is a racially homogenous state.
Yeah, well again I didn't say it's the mecca of civilization. But I'm confident it's only still considered a developing country for whatever preferential treatment that affords it. Every country has problems.
But the US having double the suicide rate, of a country that according to you and many others is impoverished and in such dire straits, is not a negligible statistic. In fact, I'd argue that is the most important number regarding national quality of life. What else is more to the point than determining how many people in a country hate their life so much they end it? Why do you think so many people in America kill themselves? Is it because there's too many immigrants and other races? Too many Mexicans and Arabs makes life unbearable for us here? I feel like it probably has a lot to do with lacking access to basic shit that humans need, like housing and healthcare, and having most of our production value gifted to the welfare queens in the investment & insurance offices that didn't produce anything of value or earn it.
China is far more authoritarian and exploitative, though. China has a much longer history of ‘racism and barbarism against immigrants and other minorities’ - that’s why they eradicated virtually all of them and are 92% Han Chinese
Yeah, I mean the US fought a massive war over whether land owners could keep human beings as property or not. Lots of people alive today remember Jim Crow, remember segregation. The klan is responsible for thousands of lynchings, and they are still active and organizing. Things aren't exactly ideal now either. Federal immigration agents just kidnapped a legal resident for organizing protests against a genocide we're complicit in (it's ok because they're Muslim/ Hamas took hostages, etc.) That's indicative of a society in which racism has been normalized for a long time. I mean, yeah there's just too many examples of mistreatment of American citizens by the government to really make that argument. Science experiments, wars, spying, police brutality, whatever on and on.
It's kind of apples and oranges though, they are different countries, different histories, different cultures, and yeah, both have had some fucked up problems and engaged in fucked up behavior and imperialism. There is no numerical metric for authoritarianism or brutality. My original point was simply that China has seen a vast amount of growth from organizing their economy more deliberately.
This doesn't mean China is beyond criticism, or it's perfect, or it doesn't have issues, or even that it's a model the US needs to follow. It also doesn't mean that the US doesn't have shit it does right that has brought growth and success. I try not to engage in black and white thinking.
Things would improve in this country if the economy was motivated by something other than profit. If someone's hungry feed them, if someone has nowhere to live, shelter them. If a road is broken, fix it. If something needs to be done, do it. We literally have the resources, we're just married to profit and know nothing else. But, I understand that watching children starve and die in your neighborhood, just isn't quite as motivating as the possibility of getting a fur coat, muscle car, boner pills, or gaining material control over the people around you.
