cabrera said:
If corruption was properly defined SSR the USA would be near the bottom of the list . Invading countries based on false information and then occupying them whilst killing and maimimg their citizens is for most people the most corrupt act of all . Why have one million iraqis died , 100000 afghanis, thousands of pakistanis and many more due to wars based on false information fed to a mostly gullible public.
And corruption in the medical system in the USA has no equal in the world with medicine bankrupting many families and basic care astronomically expensive.
Corruption within the police force in the USA has no equal as well with the right of arrest and more people jailed per capita than anywhere in the world . The brutality used by the police for minor offences in the USA has no equal in Argentina where the police at times violent do not even come close to the brutality of the USA police with their taser guns and their heavy handed attitude.
Argentina and most of latin America has freedom than only very few USA citizens can dream about . Money does not mean that you are free as most USA citizens are slaves to the financial system and now are being turfed out of their homes in the worlds highest numbers . At the moment there are more 10 times as many homeless in the USA than here in Argentina.
Please don't take this as an attack but I have to take some issues with your statements here, many of which are either unfounded or an incomplete truth.
First, I can't defend Bush and the war he started with Iraq. That was wrong in my opinion, at least the way he went about it. I do believe he lied to the American people about what was actually in place at the time in Iraq and why we "had to go to war". At the same time, no one remembers the thousands of Kurds he killed with chemical weapons of mass destruction (as one example)?
The fact is, the US has not killed even close to the number of innocent combatants that Saddam Hussein routinely slaughtered out of hand when in power. Should we be the world police? No. Is everything we are doing over there without support and morally bankrupt? No. Should nations of the world band together and try to put REAL pressure on regimes who routinely kill and enslave their subjects? That's a matter of debate.
I personally know soldiers who have been to Iraq (many more than once)and have talked to many others, who tell a completely different story about the actual citizens who wanted a chance at a real life over there than what you here in most news outlets around the world. There are many more happy people there than unhappy, related to the changes that have been brought about.
How does Argentina feel about all of the people in the world who live in constant fear of their lives? I don't know. I do know that Peron in the '40s was very pro-fascism and anyone who supported the Allies during World War II was given a VERY hard time in this country. Blacklisted, imprisoned, etc. The current government is Peronist. People in this country keep voting in Peronist governments.
What's right? I don't really know. It's a complex question. But supporting fascist behaviors and turning a blind eye to world problems doesn't feel right to me.
There is no doubt that the American medical system needs to be fixed. However, note that no matter what you think of of the US medical system, somehow we beat Argentina out for life expectancy in every category that I checked at:
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/
To me, life expectancy says something about the overall condition of a health system.
As far as "medicine bankrupting many families," well, what do you mean by that exactly, other than parroting what many news organizations are saying now the the Democrats are trying to push through a horrible version of medical reform in the states? I don't know ANYONE who was ever bankrupted by medical care, but I know for sure they exist. I do, however, know MANY people who have been bankrupted by recessions (and I have been one of them).
Do you understand what bankrupt actually means though, in legal terms? It is a reorganization of debt, plain and simple. One form of it actually allows people to completely discharge the debts that are owed. Another form allows people to work with their creditors, with the government in between, to allow for a longer-term payoff on debts, a reduction or elimination of penalties and interest and many other things that are very favorable to the person in debt. It protects the person's assets from foreclosure or the confiscation of items purchased with credit or guarantees of payment of debt that havent' been paid back.
So, to me, it doesn't wipe someone out. If they have a serious, costly, life-threatening illness of some sort, there is usually recourse. The poor in our country have to be treated whether they have money or not. In a big illness there are situations where they don't receive the best care as well. Do we all in the US want that to change? You bet your ass! We recognize that the system is limping and not serving everyone.
Let's talk about Argentina on that score for a moment. Will you honestly tell me that the poor here will get as good a treatment as those who can afford health plans or have money and don't have to worry about health plans even? Will you tell me that they have access to the same efficiently-run level of care in public hospitals that private hospitals offer through their health plans, or even paying just plain cash? The realty, not what your government tells you.
You can't even begin to compare US police forces with Argentine police forces.
They don't really do the same job, and there are not even close to the same number on the streets even in Capital Federal (much less outside the capital) as there is in an average medium or large city in the States.
Most US citizens don't fear the police.
Maany (most?) US citizens have a distrust of police in general terms, yes. US citizens in general has a distrust of placing too much power in one person's hands. In my opinion, it is a very healthy attitude to have. The press in the US jump all over the slightest thing a cop does nowadays, and what you see is a relatively free press that has access to all the statistics of a police department and give them holy hell whenever they can.
Police in the US are allowed to stop citizens that are breaking minor laws like speeding, driving dangerously, running lights, etc. They are given court dates right on the spot, and have a chance to defend themselves in a court of law. Many people don't like the way that some police act when they are stopped on the road, but it can often be accounted to a feeling of anger or embarrasment that they may have because they have broken the law. Often that is translated into rudeness to the officer, and most officers have a pretty good tolerance of that, but they may act a bit heavy handed when confronted with it all the same. You are more likely to be allowed to go on your way with a warning if you are respectful and courteous, as opposed to the officer finding everything wrong with your car and what you were doing if you were an asshole to him.
Do we have too many stupid laws in the US? Yeah, we do. We have too many special interest groups trying to make everyone conform to the ways they think people should, whether or not it hurts anyone. I think motorcycle helmet laws are one of the dumbest things ever, for example. If someone chooses to do something stupid like not wear a helmet - they are only hurting themselves.
Here in Argentina the cops are not allowed to stop a speeding car. Why? Because after the dictatorship, and remembering the Dirty War, police were not to be entrusted with such power. There are not nearly enough cops patrolling, except in the higher affluence areas. Laws are often not enforced. Does that allow a greater freedom? Yes, it does, but it also engenders a larger sense that it's ok to break the laws. I see cars upside down on the feeways out here all the time, two or three cars crashed together and twisted, having gone off embankments, etc. People ignoring stop signs and running over pedestrians. The lack of traffic enforcement breeds craziness.
I know a Welsh guy who is actually a retired Argentine cop. He told me he was the only foreigner, at least in recent times, who was ever a foreign cop. He's lived here for more than 20 years. He was a detective. The stories he has to tell about misadventures and downright horrible things are really something, related to the police.
I have another friend who was a cop in Florida. He has different stories to tell. Many funny, a few of corruption, but the officers were fired and a couple of them did prison time. He's a very good guy and was very candid about operations in his precinct and had both good and bad to say. Most of the bad was petty crap. He wasn't a NYC cop, it was a medium sized town in Florida. NYC is going to have more issues than a smaller place of course.
As far as Latin America having more freedom that those of the US, well, that seems like a pretty big statement. In some ways that's true, but in others it's about the opposite.
The average citizen in Latin America is pretty much ignored by the government in general, and robbed of money by it in practice. There is much less percentage of money taken in for taxes that actually makes it to do good in many Latin American countries than in the US. Is there corruption at that level in the US? Sure. Some, but not nearly on the scale of what happens in Argentina and many other Latin American countries.
Tell my wife's family, who lived under a dictatorship for most of their lives, in extreme poverty situations in Paraguay that they are more free than citizens who obey the laws in the US. And work hard too, sure. The US is a more materialistic culture, without a doubt. But most of us live more comfortably too. Ask someone who is pulling water out of a well to splash on themselves to bathe, or carry it to the flimsy outhouse to flush the one luzury they have - an actual pocelain toilet what they think about that. They work their asses off just to survive. They would love to work their asses off to live more comfortably, but there are no oprtunities.
Tell people here and other places in Latin America that have no access to credit, that have very little hope of bettering themselves if they want to, that they are more free than those in the US who can at least choose not to participate in the financial system in the US if they don't want to. Tell them here that it's ok to live in a shitty little pensione because they can't afford to actually buy a piece of property with cash in order to rent a decent place to live.
As far as there being ten times more homeless in the States than here, well, I have to wonder where you got your numbers from.
Even if you assume that the US actually has ten times more homeless people than Argentina, it also has ten times more people. That makes things equal, not off by a factor of ten, if that were true; That is in percentage of people homeless, which is much more germane to the discussion than simply saying the US has ten times more homeless.
However, that ten times as many number-wise is simply not true. A number of sources (US and international) quote the homeless rate in the US as around 3 million. As of the middle of this year, the population of the US was estimated to be 310 million, roughly. That makes the actual percentage of homeless in the US at about 0.9%.
Argentina's population is roughly 36 million. According to INDEC last year, there were 1.24 million homeless last year. That's 3%.
And to tell you the truth, I wouldn't put too much stock in those INDEC figures. I bet they're higher, but I don't know by how much. That's the same people who were telling us that inflation in Argentina was less than 10% while business coalitions here who were comparing prices were telling us upwards of 25% at the same time? I think it was more like upwards of 30% for awhile there.
People who have money in Argentina have a lot more relative freedom than maybe even most in the US. I live here for that reason, but I also am rich compared to most people who live in Argentina. I am far from rich in reality. Sometimes I am barely keeping my head above the water.
I prefer living in Argentina because I feel more free here than I do in the States on some issues. I dread being caught up in any kind of official issues here in Argentina though, because I have seen how many things function here and it is cause for concern.
I think Argentina is for the most part a great place. But if I were poor, having lived in both countries, I would prefer to be poor in the US than in Argentina.
Again, Cabrera, Please don't take this as an attack or a stupid American who is blindly defending his country. That's not the case. I am very critical of many things the US does and we are nowhere near where we should be in terms of taking care of our own citizens. We are falling quickly into a dependency state instead of a state of responsibility and there's nothing any one person can do at this point. I keep hoping people will snap out of it and realize that they just can't keep voting themselves money, that money created by the government is fiat, printed money, while money created by private enterprise is real money created. I am watching the decline of the US morally and financially and it hurts.
