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A lot of the people who hold these sort of viewpoints in the US would benefit immensely from visiting and even living for a while in literally any other western

A lot of the people who hold these sort of viewpoints in the US would benefit immensely from visiting and even living for a while in literally any other western democracy, or even just the English-speaking ones. I can't think of any country in the western world who has a social welfare system on the same low level as the US - and yet we don't have such a 'decline in social indicators'. Quite the opposite. And we are not perfect: the upcoming NZ election is pointing out all the remaining flaws in our society, along with futile attempts to fix them by empty-promising politicians. But no one would ever say we are not vastly better off than the average US citizen, so clearly 'social welfare' is not the problem. Maybe having a society where a random illness or infection doesn't destroy you economically - unless you are slaved to your employer with health insurance - might help fix things? Or maybe endless foreign wars and an influx of PTSD veterans along with an outflow of patriotically brain washed kids is not healthy? Maybe a political system where a egotistical demagogue can hijack the government is a flaw to correct?

darawk 9y ago
It's hard to compare a country like NZ to the US in a fair and meaningful way. NZ is a small, ethnically (and therefore more importantly culturally) homogenous country. Now, it's not completely homogenous, but it is much more so than the US. Being a democracy, the policies of the country are inseparable from its culture and demographics. You say universal healthcare might stem the tide of cultural breakdown. But we cannot be sure the causality doesn't flow the other way. Unfortunately, it's likely a feedback loop. We have bad policy in part due to the cultural and social decline the author describes, and we have cultural and social decline in part due to bad policy. Simply proposing policy changes neglects the complex interdependencies of these things, and is why national demographics are so important in a democracy. Part of the reason NZ is able to cohere around its policy more than the US is because everyone in NZ (to a greater degree than in the US) shares the same values and cultural identity. This is why you see similarly idyllic societies in the Scandinavian countries. High social cohesion due to shared cultural and ethnic identity. Same in Korea and Japan - although Japanese culture is a good example of some of the downsides of ethnic and cultural homogeneity as well.
- AdeptusAquinas 9y ago
  I'd be careful around claims about cultural identity and homogeneity. A lot of countries, like the scandinavian ones and NZ (and Australia) can look that way from the outside, but I think its a simplistic view. From our perspective, for example, apart from the obvious catastrophic partisan politics that have gripped the US, the US looks like it has a united cultural identity (e.g. a religious devotion to the founding fathers, patriotism, commitment to freedom of speech etc). There was a recent article where a citizen of a Nordic country got upset at this common view, pointing out that perhaps it seems homogeneous to the US because in the US, today, you are white, black, hispanic, asian etc. There are not strong subdivisions in these categories, it seems, and subsequently they apply this view to other countries. But in Europe and Norway, Sweden etc, there are many flavours of 'white' with a long and recent history of animosity. NZ is a country with a large indigenous population (the Maori), a lot of pacific island immigration, and increasing and accelerating immigrant population of Indians and Chinese (among others). These all assert social pressures of their own, and I would argue its partially our social safety net and maybe certain aspects of our culture and economic structure that have allowed it to be (mostly) harmonious, so far. Not saying your entirely wrong, but that it is not (no pun intended) black and white.
  - darawk 9y ago
    Ya, it's definitely a spectrum. NZ is far from the most homogenous, and certainly there are divisions within the Nordic countries. No arguments from me there. But I think its fair to say that the US is more diverse than either of those two places, and that comes with benefits and it comes with problems. My point though is that it does have consequences, which is something that seems unfashionable to point lately.
- manofstick 9y ago
  >> NZ is a small, ethnically (and therefore more importantly culturally) homogenous country Not according to the CIA Factbook it isn't: NZ: European 71.2%, Maori 14.1%, Asian 11.3%, Pacific peoples 7.6%, Middle Eastern, Latin American, African 1.1%, other 1.6%, not stated or unidentified 5.4% USA: white 72.4%, black 12.6%, Asian 4.8%, Amerindian and Alaska native 0.9%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2%, other 6.2%, two or more races 2.9% (2010 estimate) I would say almost quite comparable.
cafard 9y ago
I think that had the Penn students used your first two paragraphs as the gist of their response, there would be less commotion. To be sure, I don't know how well off the average US citizen is or the average NZ citizen; but it is silly to ignore economics and their effect. I think that your third paragraph could use some some work, though.
balance_factor 9y ago
> I can't think of any country in the western world who has a social welfare system on the same low level as the US - and yet we don't have such a 'decline in social indicators'. Quite the opposite. But I thought the paper said "That trend also accelerated the destructive consequences of the growing welfare state, which, by taking over financial support of families, reduced the need for two parents." The US has a welfare state if the banks need a TARP bailout, or if Cheney needs more contracts for Halliburton etc. Not so much for the rest of us. Actually, the inflation-adjusted hourly wage is lower in the US now than it was in the early 1970s. One difference you have to remember about the US is the history of Africans in the US. There was slavery until 1865, then Jim Crow, then in the 1960s there was segregation, lack of voting rights, restriction on those of African background drinking from certain water fountains, sitting in certain bus seats, using certain bathrooms etc. Peaceful demonstrations against this were greeted by police dogs, fire hoses, batons, as well as extra-judicial Ku Klux Klan murders, bombings etc. Any how, some attempt to remedy this started in 1964 but by the 1978 Bakke ruling there was already enormous pushback. In fact Reagan announced his presidential candidacy in an obscure rural town unknown for anything aside from three people registering black people to vote being killed their by the Klan. As has been in the news, a white supremacist killed someone this year because they wanted a Civil War statue in their town taken down. In short, the US from its beginning to now has expended an enormous amount of energy in subjugating people of African background. Google has very few engineers of African background, but fellow engineers like James Damore are incensed even about that due to what he perceives as his biological superiority. Now he's a hero on HN and much of the US. Polls show the majority of Americans are against towns taking down their civil war statues, and state legislatures are forbidding towns from tearing down statues celebrating a slaveholder uprising against the US government. The writer mentioned talks about the "the anti-'acting white' rap culture of inner-city blacks". Even putting aside what I mentioned before, the "rap culture" is marketed by and controlled by the big media corporations. The real indigeneous inner-city black culture can more be seen by books written by and for blacks, which you can see in small stores and sidewalk tables, which the white, bourgeois companies don't sell for some reason. Perhaps it's not lucrative enough. In fact blacks have been saying for years that rap culture is bourgie junk corporations try to foist on black youth.

darawk 9y ago

It's hard to compare a country like NZ to the US in a fair and meaningful way. NZ is a small, ethnically (and therefore more importantly culturally) homogenous country. Now, it's not completely homogenous, but it is much more so than the US. Being a democracy, the policies of the country are inseparable from its culture and demographics. You say universal healthcare might stem the tide of cultural breakdown. But we cannot be sure the causality doesn't flow the other way. Unfortunately, it's likely a feedback loop. We have bad policy in part due to the cultural and social decline the author describes, and we have cultural and social decline in part due to bad policy. Simply proposing policy changes neglects the complex interdependencies of these things, and is why national demographics are so important in a democracy. Part of the reason NZ is able to cohere around its policy more than the US is because everyone in NZ (to a greater degree than in the US) shares the same values and cultural identity. This is why you see similarly idyllic societies in the Scandinavian countries. High social cohesion due to shared cultural and ethnic identity. Same in Korea and Japan - although Japanese culture is a good example of some of the downsides of ethnic and cultural homogeneity as well.

AdeptusAquinas 9y ago
I'd be careful around claims about cultural identity and homogeneity. A lot of countries, like the scandinavian ones and NZ (and Australia) can look that way from the outside, but I think its a simplistic view. From our perspective, for example, apart from the obvious catastrophic partisan politics that have gripped the US, the US looks like it has a united cultural identity (e.g. a religious devotion to the founding fathers, patriotism, commitment to freedom of speech etc). There was a recent article where a citizen of a Nordic country got upset at this common view, pointing out that perhaps it seems homogeneous to the US because in the US, today, you are white, black, hispanic, asian etc. There are not strong subdivisions in these categories, it seems, and subsequently they apply this view to other countries. But in Europe and Norway, Sweden etc, there are many flavours of 'white' with a long and recent history of animosity. NZ is a country with a large indigenous population (the Maori), a lot of pacific island immigration, and increasing and accelerating immigrant population of Indians and Chinese (among others). These all assert social pressures of their own, and I would argue its partially our social safety net and maybe certain aspects of our culture and economic structure that have allowed it to be (mostly) harmonious, so far. Not saying your entirely wrong, but that it is not (no pun intended) black and white.
- darawk 9y ago
  Ya, it's definitely a spectrum. NZ is far from the most homogenous, and certainly there are divisions within the Nordic countries. No arguments from me there. But I think its fair to say that the US is more diverse than either of those two places, and that comes with benefits and it comes with problems. My point though is that it does have consequences, which is something that seems unfashionable to point lately.
manofstick 9y ago
>> NZ is a small, ethnically (and therefore more importantly culturally) homogenous country Not according to the CIA Factbook it isn't: NZ: European 71.2%, Maori 14.1%, Asian 11.3%, Pacific peoples 7.6%, Middle Eastern, Latin American, African 1.1%, other 1.6%, not stated or unidentified 5.4% USA: white 72.4%, black 12.6%, Asian 4.8%, Amerindian and Alaska native 0.9%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2%, other 6.2%, two or more races 2.9% (2010 estimate) I would say almost quite comparable.

cafard 9y ago

I think that had the Penn students used your first two paragraphs as the gist of their response, there would be less commotion. To be sure, I don't know how well off the average US citizen is or the average NZ citizen; but it is silly to ignore economics and their effect. I think that your third paragraph could use some some work, though.

balance_factor 9y ago

> I can't think of any country in the western world who has a social welfare system on the same low level as the US - and yet we don't have such a 'decline in social indicators'. Quite the opposite. But I thought the paper said "That trend also accelerated the destructive consequences of the growing welfare state, which, by taking over financial support of families, reduced the need for two parents." The US has a welfare state if the banks need a TARP bailout, or if Cheney needs more contracts for Halliburton etc. Not so much for the rest of us. Actually, the inflation-adjusted hourly wage is lower in the US now than it was in the early 1970s. One difference you have to remember about the US is the history of Africans in the US. There was slavery until 1865, then Jim Crow, then in the 1960s there was segregation, lack of voting rights, restriction on those of African background drinking from certain water fountains, sitting in certain bus seats, using certain bathrooms etc. Peaceful demonstrations against this were greeted by police dogs, fire hoses, batons, as well as extra-judicial Ku Klux Klan murders, bombings etc. Any how, some attempt to remedy this started in 1964 but by the 1978 Bakke ruling there was already enormous pushback. In fact Reagan announced his presidential candidacy in an obscure rural town unknown for anything aside from three people registering black people to vote being killed their by the Klan. As has been in the news, a white supremacist killed someone this year because they wanted a Civil War statue in their town taken down. In short, the US from its beginning to now has expended an enormous amount of energy in subjugating people of African background. Google has very few engineers of African background, but fellow engineers like James Damore are incensed even about that due to what he perceives as his biological superiority. Now he's a hero on HN and much of the US. Polls show the majority of Americans are against towns taking down their civil war statues, and state legislatures are forbidding towns from tearing down statues celebrating a slaveholder uprising against the US government. The writer mentioned talks about the "the anti-'acting white' rap culture of inner-city blacks". Even putting aside what I mentioned before, the "rap culture" is marketed by and controlled by the big media corporations. The real indigeneous inner-city black culture can more be seen by books written by and for blacks, which you can see in small stores and sidewalk tables, which the white, bourgeois companies don't sell for some reason. Perhaps it's not lucrative enough. In fact blacks have been saying for years that rap culture is bourgie junk corporations try to foist on black youth.