Sorry for the long post, and I know some of this is off-topic. Ignore at will 
Bajo, I agree with pretty much everything you said. Just a comment and one disagreement
First, I have to say that I did misquote the woman. I had mixed up what I'd heard from my 19-year-old so often with what the woman said. I was talking to my wife this afternoon and she corrected me. She had actually said "Paraguaya de mierda." Not much better, I don't think, but it may have some different connotations among friends here at times, like "negrita" or "gorda" among friends. After 8 years here, I'm still trying to figure some of the culture out
I think what Pensador meant when he was talking about me not literally kicking her a$$ was not meant physically by him either.
I have a hard time being rude to a guest even when that guest is rude to me, in my own home. If she had continued her comments I probably would have thrown her out on her ear (so to speak) along with her husband (who was quite polite and didn't make any kind of comments like his wife did, BTW). But I have heard a lot of people making what seem to me to be rude comments (including some of my 19 year-old's friends calling one of their friends "negrita" because she has dark skin, and she doesn't seem to mind at all) where they don't seem to balk at the comment.
I was uncertain that the woman actually meant an insult, even though her comment was quite intolerable. I try to be as tolerant as I can and not sink to the level of others (though I am human and don't always succeed in this).
I don't think most of us would necessarily push Argentinos to do what we consider to be correct in all cases. I don't feel superior in any way to Argentinos. I feel luckier than many because with all its faults, the US (at least in the past) gave more opportunities to more people than many countries in the world, including Argentina.
For people here to say that everything is hunky-dory and everyone has an equal opportunity because (in many cases) severe laws have been enacted to give them rights, I personally believe is not the reality of the situation. I don't see this as racism, I see it as an informed opinion. I know you have a differing opinion on these things, but I don't think you're an idiot for believing these things, and maybe therefore an inferior being. You are a product of your society, just like I am. Both of our countries have a wide range of differences in what kind of people are produced in our respective countries.
There are some commenters on this board who think because there are severe problems in Argentina, that therefore all Argentinos are idiots and I completely disagree with that thought. You are right that those who think like that are being racists, or perhaps elitists or people with loads of prejudices at best.
But the free flow of ideas should be welcomed by either side. If your ideas are strong and work, they should be able to withstand arguments against them. If they are not, you should keep an open mind and consider what the other person is saying (as long as it is presented reasonably respectfully, at least) and weigh that against what you "know" and consider alternatives.
Every country has this problem. And every country has a majority of people who buy into whatever their country does as being "right" without really thinking about that and considering alternatives.
Corruption exists in every government. Some to a lesser extent, others to a greater. You consider lobbies in the US to be a corruption of the system, and I actually agree with you on that (to an extent), but I have a hard time reconciling how to fix it. Lobbies are considered a freedom of speech issue, and it truly is. Outlawing lobbies would be equivalent to telling individuals that you can't band together to make your voice heard. And then, of course, lawmakers tend to make laws that favor themselves - anywhere in the world and the US is no exception.
Putting term limitations on elected officials is very similar - who says that people can't choose who they want to be in office, and who says that an arbitrary limit of time already served on who can serve as an elected official is the way to fix entrenchment and corruption? I despise the idea of people becoming professional politicians, but I feel like the idea of limiting their terms isn't going to change things for the better either.
I don't actually know how you feel about the ability for people to demonstrate (huelgas) to the point where it interferes with the ongoing operation of the people of this country to do their business. Particularly when a lot of these unions have so much power where relatively menial jobs end up with pay greater than more important jobs like police, firemen, teachers and doctors. People who have other jobs, like verduleros don't have a union (that I'm aware of) that can back them up - but a majority of verduleros, to me (or at least their employees) are foreign and aren't really protected in the same manner and really don't earn very well (verduleros are just one small example). To me that is a corruption of the intent to make things fair for everyone and it is something that I repeatedly comment about. I don't think it's racist of me to make these comments. I don't feel superior about it - I feel really bad for the poor who are affected by laws that seem to be passed to help people but in reality are helping some people but hurting a lot of others.
I see Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela and compare to other countries and see the same problems in all of them, just manifested differently and in different sectors, every single government around the world. I rail against what I consider to be idiocies in the US as well, not just here. My conclusion is that government, while a really good invention, like unions (as a small example in my mind at least), is something that the human race should find a way to grow out of because the governments are concentrations of power that people use to get what they want, in a corrupt manner. Of course, it's an idea perhaps a bit early yet, but I think trying to pass memes to others and letting them compete is a good thing.
And just because I criticize this government, it doesn't mean I think Argentinos themselves are somehow inferior to anyone else.
If anyone argues their point with respect, I can't see how this is racism. It seems to me it is the free exchange of ideas, and just like people who talk about what they consider to be a better way of doing things, people who refuse to listen to anything other than what they're comfortable with are not racists (unless that's the reason they won't listen) but rather blockheads.
This is a good example. I love the health care I get in Argentina (although I've had nothing serious so far), although I pay for a plan because I don't like the idea of going to public hospitals for a few reasons. Among them the wait time that I've watched a majority of my wife's family deal with.
Also, I saw how a cousin's wife was dealt with in a public hospital when she gave birth to a little girl and that little girl had a hole in her aorta that was causing problems. I was there when the doctor came out and told the father that his little girl was going to die. Flat out, just like that. No sympathy in his voice, no lead-up to letting him know what was going on. My brother-in-law damn near collapsed right then and there. In fact, my wife was with the mother shortly after the birth and saw the baby lying in the bed where they put her (I didn't see this, my wife told me about it). The baby was trembling quite a bit, and coughing and was discolored. The nurse in the area said "oh, it's no problem, it's very normal". My wife has seen her share of newborn babies and knew this wasn't the case. She had to insist to other nurses and doctors to come check the baby and it was then that they discovered the problem with the little girl's heart/aorta. Had it not been for my wife the baby might have died right there. They had to rush the baby to three different hospitals before they could find someone to take care of the issue.
BTW - that didn't count the condition of the hospital (filthy dirty, paint peeling off the walls, lights not working in areas), the fact that none of the 4 elevators was functional, that the one late-night gurney man couldn't be found anywhere and the mother had to climb 5 flights of stairs while in labor to get to the maternity area. i don't remember the name of the hospital, but it was somewhere near Constitution - it's been a couple of years since her birth.
I've seen poor people here treated completely differently than I hear people with money or connections being treated here. Much like in the US...
In the US, there is a completely different reason for inequities. And yes, it has to do a whole lot with very powerful lobbies all the way from insurance companies to pharmacy companies and even the doctors themselves. Obama's plan is not going to fix things because it mandates things that are unfair to some people while making it more fair to other people, which is pretty much how it is now anyway, and ignores the real problems - the government itself and the lobbies that drive government.
For decades now, the US population has come to believe that it is required to have an insurance plan that covers everything. That has caused a lot of problems because the way things are now, it directly ignores supply and demand and causes distorted markets where companies are able to basically rob a whole lot of people in the name of "superb health care" that not everyone gets and those that do often pay an arm and a leg for the privilege.
When I was raising a family in the US, I had a great plan for most of my three different careers, offered through the companies. I thought like everyone else. But even in the 90s (my latest career time), the company I worked for was paying $800 USD a month for our policy!!! (4 of us) That's a lot of money that I would have rather seen go into my pockets. But I thought I had to have an expensive plan. Then I started my own company and couldn't afford a policy like that. I learned that there was a clinic just down the road from my house for things like a runny nose or a sprained ankle that only cost me about $30 USD for a visit. And they accepted Medicaid, Medicare and other insurances through other programs for people who were being helped by the government. I found insurance that cost me around $250 a month for all of us to cover catastrophic conditions that worked quite well the time I cut my finger nearly off and had to have surgeries and physical rehabilitation. It didn't bankrupt us. In fact, I made payment plans with the surgeon, the anesthetist and the hospital itself to pay off the portion ($3000 at the time) of the co-pay that was required by my plan. not perfect, but not completely onerous either. And I can tell you, at the time I was not making very good money at all - we were seriously struggling.
By comparison, my wife has a Paraguayan friend here whose boyfriend went to a public hospital and they took his leg off after an auto accident because they said it couldn't be saved. Of course, there's no way of knowing if that was really the case, on my part, not being a doctor, but he had broken the lower leg and smashed his knee up. They took off his leg above the knee. My father recently destroyed his femur at the age of 78, and they put it back together with pins, had physical therapy (two weeks in the hospital and three weeks in a recovering hospice) and is recovering from that still. I really doubt that the public hospitals my family has had experience with would have gone to the lengths to save his legs that my father's insurance in the US covered.
I know that there are people in the US that would have been in the same boat (as regards my father's leg) as poorer people here seem to be, I'm just presenting that not everything is so black and white when comparing the US health care to Argentina health care. there are plenty of problems with both and I don't consider neither Argentina's nor the US' to be better - just different.
On education - I've seen both the public school systems and I've seen the universities here. I'm not particularly impressed. But then, my public schooling in the US in the 60s and 70s was much better than my kids' in the late 80s and 90s.
The large majority of the graduating class of my 19-year-old's secondaria here did not go on to university. They either couldn't get in to places like UBA (or didn't want to go to a state-run school) or couldn't afford to go to a private university. They got jobs (usually through family connections) or some went to vocational schools to learn a specific trade (many of which have a myriad of problems, BTW). but overall, I think the idea of everyone not going to university after leaving secondaria is a good thing. On the other hand, there is not much choice here, either, because if you can't get into a good state-run school, or don't have the money, you have no choice here either.
When I was younger, I paid for my own university partially with a student loan, but mostly from my own hard work. But in those days, not everyone needed a college-level education to get a decent job. Prices were much much lower, even adjusting for inflation. Things have changed quite a bit as certain lobbies, and politicians in an effort to get elected and promising things, have made everyone think that every person needs a college degree to get a job. Which I find completely ridiculous! I see college for people who want a Classical education and can afford it, or for people like future doctors, lawyers, engineers that really need that level of education. But for the masses to be forced into college because of some kind of myth is just not a good thing.
I was in a hiring position at a Fortune 500 company in the IT department in the 90s. I was manager of software development. The best programmers I hired were self-taught. The worst came from college degrees. Now, I'm not saying that IT doesn't need training, but college is for folks who get into some really serious things like designing logic boards and such, not developing software for a company to use to track purchases and inventory. Vocational schools are a great idea for programmers, but not a whole course of 4 years to learn so many disparate things which really should have been mostly learned in high school anyway.
I guess my whole point is, there are good things in both countries, and there are bad and stupid things in both countries. Arguing about them doesn't make either side racist as long as things are reasonably polite.
Bajo, I agree with pretty much everything you said. Just a comment and one disagreement
First, I have to say that I did misquote the woman. I had mixed up what I'd heard from my 19-year-old so often with what the woman said. I was talking to my wife this afternoon and she corrected me. She had actually said "Paraguaya de mierda." Not much better, I don't think, but it may have some different connotations among friends here at times, like "negrita" or "gorda" among friends. After 8 years here, I'm still trying to figure some of the culture out
I think what Pensador meant when he was talking about me not literally kicking her a$$ was not meant physically by him either.
I have a hard time being rude to a guest even when that guest is rude to me, in my own home. If she had continued her comments I probably would have thrown her out on her ear (so to speak) along with her husband (who was quite polite and didn't make any kind of comments like his wife did, BTW). But I have heard a lot of people making what seem to me to be rude comments (including some of my 19 year-old's friends calling one of their friends "negrita" because she has dark skin, and she doesn't seem to mind at all) where they don't seem to balk at the comment.
I was uncertain that the woman actually meant an insult, even though her comment was quite intolerable. I try to be as tolerant as I can and not sink to the level of others (though I am human and don't always succeed in this).
I don't think most of us would necessarily push Argentinos to do what we consider to be correct in all cases. I don't feel superior in any way to Argentinos. I feel luckier than many because with all its faults, the US (at least in the past) gave more opportunities to more people than many countries in the world, including Argentina.
For people here to say that everything is hunky-dory and everyone has an equal opportunity because (in many cases) severe laws have been enacted to give them rights, I personally believe is not the reality of the situation. I don't see this as racism, I see it as an informed opinion. I know you have a differing opinion on these things, but I don't think you're an idiot for believing these things, and maybe therefore an inferior being. You are a product of your society, just like I am. Both of our countries have a wide range of differences in what kind of people are produced in our respective countries.
There are some commenters on this board who think because there are severe problems in Argentina, that therefore all Argentinos are idiots and I completely disagree with that thought. You are right that those who think like that are being racists, or perhaps elitists or people with loads of prejudices at best.
But the free flow of ideas should be welcomed by either side. If your ideas are strong and work, they should be able to withstand arguments against them. If they are not, you should keep an open mind and consider what the other person is saying (as long as it is presented reasonably respectfully, at least) and weigh that against what you "know" and consider alternatives.
Every country has this problem. And every country has a majority of people who buy into whatever their country does as being "right" without really thinking about that and considering alternatives.
Corruption exists in every government. Some to a lesser extent, others to a greater. You consider lobbies in the US to be a corruption of the system, and I actually agree with you on that (to an extent), but I have a hard time reconciling how to fix it. Lobbies are considered a freedom of speech issue, and it truly is. Outlawing lobbies would be equivalent to telling individuals that you can't band together to make your voice heard. And then, of course, lawmakers tend to make laws that favor themselves - anywhere in the world and the US is no exception.
Putting term limitations on elected officials is very similar - who says that people can't choose who they want to be in office, and who says that an arbitrary limit of time already served on who can serve as an elected official is the way to fix entrenchment and corruption? I despise the idea of people becoming professional politicians, but I feel like the idea of limiting their terms isn't going to change things for the better either.
I don't actually know how you feel about the ability for people to demonstrate (huelgas) to the point where it interferes with the ongoing operation of the people of this country to do their business. Particularly when a lot of these unions have so much power where relatively menial jobs end up with pay greater than more important jobs like police, firemen, teachers and doctors. People who have other jobs, like verduleros don't have a union (that I'm aware of) that can back them up - but a majority of verduleros, to me (or at least their employees) are foreign and aren't really protected in the same manner and really don't earn very well (verduleros are just one small example). To me that is a corruption of the intent to make things fair for everyone and it is something that I repeatedly comment about. I don't think it's racist of me to make these comments. I don't feel superior about it - I feel really bad for the poor who are affected by laws that seem to be passed to help people but in reality are helping some people but hurting a lot of others.
I see Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela and compare to other countries and see the same problems in all of them, just manifested differently and in different sectors, every single government around the world. I rail against what I consider to be idiocies in the US as well, not just here. My conclusion is that government, while a really good invention, like unions (as a small example in my mind at least), is something that the human race should find a way to grow out of because the governments are concentrations of power that people use to get what they want, in a corrupt manner. Of course, it's an idea perhaps a bit early yet, but I think trying to pass memes to others and letting them compete is a good thing.
And just because I criticize this government, it doesn't mean I think Argentinos themselves are somehow inferior to anyone else.
If anyone argues their point with respect, I can't see how this is racism. It seems to me it is the free exchange of ideas, and just like people who talk about what they consider to be a better way of doing things, people who refuse to listen to anything other than what they're comfortable with are not racists (unless that's the reason they won't listen) but rather blockheads.
This is a good example. I love the health care I get in Argentina (although I've had nothing serious so far), although I pay for a plan because I don't like the idea of going to public hospitals for a few reasons. Among them the wait time that I've watched a majority of my wife's family deal with.
Also, I saw how a cousin's wife was dealt with in a public hospital when she gave birth to a little girl and that little girl had a hole in her aorta that was causing problems. I was there when the doctor came out and told the father that his little girl was going to die. Flat out, just like that. No sympathy in his voice, no lead-up to letting him know what was going on. My brother-in-law damn near collapsed right then and there. In fact, my wife was with the mother shortly after the birth and saw the baby lying in the bed where they put her (I didn't see this, my wife told me about it). The baby was trembling quite a bit, and coughing and was discolored. The nurse in the area said "oh, it's no problem, it's very normal". My wife has seen her share of newborn babies and knew this wasn't the case. She had to insist to other nurses and doctors to come check the baby and it was then that they discovered the problem with the little girl's heart/aorta. Had it not been for my wife the baby might have died right there. They had to rush the baby to three different hospitals before they could find someone to take care of the issue.
BTW - that didn't count the condition of the hospital (filthy dirty, paint peeling off the walls, lights not working in areas), the fact that none of the 4 elevators was functional, that the one late-night gurney man couldn't be found anywhere and the mother had to climb 5 flights of stairs while in labor to get to the maternity area. i don't remember the name of the hospital, but it was somewhere near Constitution - it's been a couple of years since her birth.
I've seen poor people here treated completely differently than I hear people with money or connections being treated here. Much like in the US...
In the US, there is a completely different reason for inequities. And yes, it has to do a whole lot with very powerful lobbies all the way from insurance companies to pharmacy companies and even the doctors themselves. Obama's plan is not going to fix things because it mandates things that are unfair to some people while making it more fair to other people, which is pretty much how it is now anyway, and ignores the real problems - the government itself and the lobbies that drive government.
For decades now, the US population has come to believe that it is required to have an insurance plan that covers everything. That has caused a lot of problems because the way things are now, it directly ignores supply and demand and causes distorted markets where companies are able to basically rob a whole lot of people in the name of "superb health care" that not everyone gets and those that do often pay an arm and a leg for the privilege.
When I was raising a family in the US, I had a great plan for most of my three different careers, offered through the companies. I thought like everyone else. But even in the 90s (my latest career time), the company I worked for was paying $800 USD a month for our policy!!! (4 of us) That's a lot of money that I would have rather seen go into my pockets. But I thought I had to have an expensive plan. Then I started my own company and couldn't afford a policy like that. I learned that there was a clinic just down the road from my house for things like a runny nose or a sprained ankle that only cost me about $30 USD for a visit. And they accepted Medicaid, Medicare and other insurances through other programs for people who were being helped by the government. I found insurance that cost me around $250 a month for all of us to cover catastrophic conditions that worked quite well the time I cut my finger nearly off and had to have surgeries and physical rehabilitation. It didn't bankrupt us. In fact, I made payment plans with the surgeon, the anesthetist and the hospital itself to pay off the portion ($3000 at the time) of the co-pay that was required by my plan. not perfect, but not completely onerous either. And I can tell you, at the time I was not making very good money at all - we were seriously struggling.
By comparison, my wife has a Paraguayan friend here whose boyfriend went to a public hospital and they took his leg off after an auto accident because they said it couldn't be saved. Of course, there's no way of knowing if that was really the case, on my part, not being a doctor, but he had broken the lower leg and smashed his knee up. They took off his leg above the knee. My father recently destroyed his femur at the age of 78, and they put it back together with pins, had physical therapy (two weeks in the hospital and three weeks in a recovering hospice) and is recovering from that still. I really doubt that the public hospitals my family has had experience with would have gone to the lengths to save his legs that my father's insurance in the US covered.
I know that there are people in the US that would have been in the same boat (as regards my father's leg) as poorer people here seem to be, I'm just presenting that not everything is so black and white when comparing the US health care to Argentina health care. there are plenty of problems with both and I don't consider neither Argentina's nor the US' to be better - just different.
On education - I've seen both the public school systems and I've seen the universities here. I'm not particularly impressed. But then, my public schooling in the US in the 60s and 70s was much better than my kids' in the late 80s and 90s.
The large majority of the graduating class of my 19-year-old's secondaria here did not go on to university. They either couldn't get in to places like UBA (or didn't want to go to a state-run school) or couldn't afford to go to a private university. They got jobs (usually through family connections) or some went to vocational schools to learn a specific trade (many of which have a myriad of problems, BTW). but overall, I think the idea of everyone not going to university after leaving secondaria is a good thing. On the other hand, there is not much choice here, either, because if you can't get into a good state-run school, or don't have the money, you have no choice here either.
When I was younger, I paid for my own university partially with a student loan, but mostly from my own hard work. But in those days, not everyone needed a college-level education to get a decent job. Prices were much much lower, even adjusting for inflation. Things have changed quite a bit as certain lobbies, and politicians in an effort to get elected and promising things, have made everyone think that every person needs a college degree to get a job. Which I find completely ridiculous! I see college for people who want a Classical education and can afford it, or for people like future doctors, lawyers, engineers that really need that level of education. But for the masses to be forced into college because of some kind of myth is just not a good thing.
I was in a hiring position at a Fortune 500 company in the IT department in the 90s. I was manager of software development. The best programmers I hired were self-taught. The worst came from college degrees. Now, I'm not saying that IT doesn't need training, but college is for folks who get into some really serious things like designing logic boards and such, not developing software for a company to use to track purchases and inventory. Vocational schools are a great idea for programmers, but not a whole course of 4 years to learn so many disparate things which really should have been mostly learned in high school anyway.
I guess my whole point is, there are good things in both countries, and there are bad and stupid things in both countries. Arguing about them doesn't make either side racist as long as things are reasonably polite.
