Quality Of Life In Usa Vs. Argentina

[rickulivi]

I made two crucial errors on my original post, and I would like to correct these. My errors were:

1. Confusing quality of life with happiness. I now realize these two things are totally separate. Quality of life should refer to such things as access to clean water, housing, medical care, education, jobs, etc. Happiness is a totally different concept. That is, you can have high quality of life and yet be very unhappy, and so on.

2. Quality of life should depend upon your stage in life. For example, if you are in your late twenties or early thirties and have no job, I would say that your quality of life is bad. However, at my age (65) who needs a job? If you need one, then maybe your quality of life is lower than others who don't need to work.

Needless to say, I do feel that in the USA we have gone a bit too far in the importance we attach to materialism. Here's a simple illustration but I think it proves the point. I was invited to play golf yesterday, in BA, at a private and rather expensive country club. I showed up in my nice golf uniform but I noticed other players were dressed down quite a bit and nobody seemed to care. Contrast this to my experience once at a private country club in Southern California. I knew the usual dress code: no jeans, etc. But it was summer, so I put on a pair of bermudas. They were a bit shorter than the typical bermuda, but certainly longer than tennis shorts. As I approached the number one tee, the starter came to see me and apologized about having to enforce their dress code. He then pulled out a measuring tape and actually measured the length of my shorts. I passed by three inches. Maybe dress codes and materialism are not the same thing, but . . . We definitely need to relax a bit more in the USA, in my opinion. In Argentina, of course, we should complain a lot more to try to improve customer service!!!

 

[thorsten]

Regarding working rights, the lack of them didn`t stop American companies to move to China and Mexico. Apple itself moved there because the US lacks ingeniers because the education system they have that was designed for the XIX century when qualified workers were not so necesary.

I don't know where you get your information from, but Apple basically outsourced the labor-intensive manufacturing process to China, not the development of products. And the reason is simply that labor is cheaper there; nothing to do with the education system of the US.
If technology advances such that products like iphones/ipads/ipods can be produced cost-efficiently in a fully automated manner, you might even see a trend to backsourcing this part of the supply chain.

 

[thorsten]

I made two crucial errors on my original post, and I would like to correct these. My errors were:
...
2. Quality of life should depend upon your stage in life. ...

I think your current stage in life affects what's important for your "quality of life", but in the end it's very subjective anyway. Everyone has different needs/priorities and there's not one formula that fits all people.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Republicans boldly confront quality of life issues: http://tinyurl.com/qfklzqx

 

[nikad]

Camberlu,

What are you doing in Arg and on this foro, if you have such a big problem with Argentina.

Please crawl back to the country you came from.

He is in Brazil I think so just trolling? Hey, maybe you should try Peru, since it is so great lol

 

[sleslie23]

As always when I come back to Argentina, I went to the dentist on Friday. I paid 400 pesos cash for a checkup and cleaning. No cavities this time, but when she has fixed them it costs 300 pesos. My friends tell me that is high, but compared to the US ... Actually, I have no clue what dental prices are in the US. I refuse to use them, despite having insurance.

 

[cruizes]

I made two crucial errors on my original post, and I would like to correct these. My errors were:

1. Confusing quality of life with happiness. I now realize these two things are totally separate. Quality of life should refer to such things as access to clean water, housing, medical care, education, jobs, etc. Happiness is a totally different concept. That is, you can have high quality of life and yet be very unhappy, and so on.

2. Quality of life should depend upon your stage in life. For example, if you are in your late twenties or early thirties and have no job, I would say that your quality of life is bad. However, at my age (65) who needs a job? If you need one, then maybe your quality of life is lower than others who don't need to work.

Needless to say, I do feel that in the USA we have gone a bit too far in the importance we attach to materialism. Here's a simple illustration but I think it proves the point. I was invited to play golf yesterday, in BA, at a private and rather expensive country club. I showed up in my nice golf uniform but I noticed other players were dressed down quite a bit and nobody seemed to care. Contrast this to my experience once at a private country club in Southern California. I knew the usual dress code: no jeans, etc. But it was summer, so I put on a pair of bermudas. They were a bit shorter than the typical bermuda, but certainly longer than tennis shorts. As I approached the number one tee, the starter came to see me and apologized about having to enforce their dress code. He then pulled out a measuring tape and actually measured the length of my shorts. I passed by three inches. Maybe dress codes and materialism are not the same thing, but . . . We definitely need to relax a bit more in the USA, in my opinion. In Argentina, of course, we should complain a lot more to try to improve customer service!!!

Customer service in Argentina? Are we being punkd?

 

[ajoknoblauch]

As always when I come back to Argentina, I went to the dentist on Friday. I paid 400 pesos cash for a checkup and cleaning. No cavities this time, but when she has fixed them it costs 300 pesos. My friends tell me that is high, but compared to the US ... Actually, I have no clue what dental prices are in the US. I refuse to use them, despite having insurance.

In California, the cleaning and checkup costs a little less than US$200 in theory but, since my wife works for Kaiser, we pay nothing out of pocket. However, that's the limit of insurance coverage, and she's recently needed dental work - including bridges and gums - that has cost us roughly US$10,000.

 

[steveinbsas]

Republicans boldly confront quality of life issues: http://tinyurl.com/qfklzqx

Why does it come as no surprise that someone who intentionally misquotes others (thinking he's being funny) would provide a link to someone who intentionally misquotes others (thinking he is being funny)?


It's ironic that Andy Borowitz used the word "disingenuously" in this piece. Although he is known as a satirist, he uses both genuine quotes as well as quotes that are fictional his hits on the Republicans. He must be aware of the fact that some of his readers won't know the difference. If he isn't, he isn't being very smart. If he is, he's being disingenuous.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—With its landmark decisions this week, the United States Supreme Court has sent the Republican Party scrambling to find entirely new bogus issues to pound away at during the 2016 campaign.

With gay marriage and Obamacare effectively taken off the table, the Republicans now find themselves without a signature phony issue to disingenuously flog for the next sixteen months.

But according to the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, the Party is already conducting an exhaustive search to find “fresh new spurious positions” to shamelessly distract voters during the upcoming campaign.

“Twenty-foot border fence, national voter I.D. cards, abolition of the I.R.S., mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds,” Priebus said. “Back at R.N.C. headquarters, we’ve got a wall of three-by-five cards filled with crap like that.”

Priebus acknowledged that the loss of Obamacare and gay marriage as issues had dealt a serious blow to the G.O.P.’s supply of meaningless talking points, but he claimed that the Party would come back with even more insincere rhetoric than before. “Anyone who thinks we’ve run out of b.s. is sorely mistaken,” he said."

PS: If you google the "quote" attributed to Priebus in the last paragraph above and you will see that it has already been "shared" by Tim Elkins (who has over 37,000 "followers") as if it was real.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

It's ironic that Andy Borowitz used the word "disingenuously" in this piece. Although he is known as a satirist, he uses both genuine quotes as well as quotes that are fictional his hits on the Republicans. He must be aware of the fact that some of his readers won't know the difference. If he isn't, he isn't being very smart. If he is, he's being disingenuous.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—With its landmark decisions this week, the United States Supreme Court has sent the Republican Party scrambling to find entirely new bogus issues to pound away at during the 2016 campaign.

With gay marriage and Obamacare effectively taken off the table, the Republicans now find themselves without a signature phony issue to disingenuously flog for the next sixteen months.

But according to the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, the Party is already conducting an exhaustive search to find “fresh new spurious positions” to shamelessly distract voters during the upcoming campaign.

“Twenty-foot border fence, national voter I.D. cards, abolition of the I.R.S., mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds,” Priebus said. “Back at R.N.C. headquarters, we’ve got a wall of three-by-five cards filled with crap like that.”

Priebus acknowledged that the loss of Obamacare and gay marriage as issues had dealt a serious blow to the G.O.P.’s supply of meaningless talking points, but he claimed that the Party would come back with even more insincere rhetoric than before. “Anyone who thinks we’ve run out of b.s. is sorely mistaken,” he said."

Why do right-wing zealots prefer to avoid confronting the truth? It is sadly amusing, though, that these humorless drones can't distinguish between reporting and satire.

Well, at least you've got bold leadership to fall back on: http://tinyurl.com/otzwlyy