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You say you're immune to bullshit media, yet you link zerohedge, and your entire view of things here (at least culturally) seems to be based off of sensationali

You say you're immune to bullshit media, yet you link zerohedge, and your entire view of things here (at least culturally) seems to be based off of sensationalist media and things said on reddit etc. I've never heard the term 'soyboy' in real life, most religious people are pretty nice, in fact most people aren't even religious to begin with, most conservatives are reasonable, 99.99% of gun owners are responsible. I think you're wrong about America's 'relationship with religion' being pathological. In fact, Utah (the most religious state probably, and pretty advanced) has almost no homelessness. Contrast that with the most liberal/atheist states and it's pretty much the opposite. So, the church can play a positive role. That said, religion isn't actually relevant in many parts of modern US society. As for guns, I think its a mental health epidemic with a bunch of columbine copycats, rather than a strictly gun issue. I could say that Europe has bad relationship with trucks. The war on drugs is a disaster yes. The prison system is a disaster. The fat epidemic is a disaster (I blame corn syrup aka corn subsidies and car culture), but there are some pretty dang fat people in Europe too. Education quality depends on the state, but the northeast (MA, CT, NJ) has some great public schools. The political divide is a disaster. Healthcare "policy" is a disaster. The US is so large and diverse that states act more like european countries, each with their own stereotypes and policies. For example, gun culture is non-existant in the northeast, yet in the west and south it is very prevalent. I mean, in NYC carrying even a folding knife is illegal, yet you're probably considered weird if you don't have one on you at all times in other parts of the country. In the EU, you have Greece and Switzerland, but they couldn't be more far apart culturally and even financially. Europe does a lot of things better than the US, especially with infrastructure (new infrastructure - our old infrastructure is awesome we just haven't been investing in it for the last 30 years due to the small government conservitard meme). Overall QOL is probably higher. As for what you do worse, a lot of EU states are nanny states with very high taxes. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of upward mobility. Salaries are low, but there is still inequality. You don't pioneer much.

lostcolony 8y ago
Just as a fun aside, the 'housing first' model that UTah adopted...was done first by LA and NY back in the late 80s/early 90s. Also, Utah has plenty of homeless. What they've reduced (to 1/10th of what it was) is -chronic- homelessness. They still have 14k people per year spending one or more nights in an emergency shelter each year ( https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2017.pdf https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201... , page #35), which is essentially unchanged since before the 'housing first' model was adopted. What is especially interesting is that due to the inter-state differences...raw homeless numbers aren't really that telling. That is, places that are friendly to the homeless tend to have more homeless. Which...makes sense. Even Utah despite its housing policy, is not considered particularly friendly to homeless people, and there is some evidence that people leave the state when homeless ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/salt-lake-city-homeless-people-missing https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/salt-lake-ci... ). I basically mention this to point out that UTah isn't quite the shining beacon on how to 'solve' the homeless situation as they were touted a few years ago..and that at best their religiosity is irrelevant to that.
wutbrodo 8y ago
> our old infrastructure is awesome we just haven't been investing in it for the last 30 years due to the small government conservitard meme I agree with the majority of your comment, but the reality of this part is actually considerably more complicated. I used to think the same way, but it turns out that we are incredibly horribly bad at efficiently doing infrastructure projects, with costs/mi tending to be some multiple of similar projects in other developed countries. This holds even when controlling for all sorts of things; my understanding is that economists in the relevant field aren't really 100% sure what the cause is. From this perspective, the small govt argument becomes a lot more grounded in real complaints about govt's incompetency at this task, on top of their baseline ideological complaint about government not being an appropriate way to allocate capital in the first place. FWIW, I'm pretty irritated at the horrendous inefficiency of American infrastructure projects but also think that they often are economically worthwhile despite it. But it's unfair to cast this complaint as a thoughtless "conservitard meme" in the case of infrastructure, given that the complaints are to some degree grounded in reality.
ksec 8y ago
>As for guns, I think its a mental health epidemic with a bunch of columbine copycats, rather than a strictly gun issue. Which is precisely the issues most( not just EU ) don't understand America.

lostcolony 8y ago

Just as a fun aside, the 'housing first' model that UTah adopted...was done first by LA and NY back in the late 80s/early 90s. Also, Utah has plenty of homeless. What they've reduced (to 1/10th of what it was) is -chronic- homelessness. They still have 14k people per year spending one or more nights in an emergency shelter each year ( https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2017.pdf https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201... , page #35), which is essentially unchanged since before the 'housing first' model was adopted. What is especially interesting is that due to the inter-state differences...raw homeless numbers aren't really that telling. That is, places that are friendly to the homeless tend to have more homeless. Which...makes sense. Even Utah despite its housing policy, is not considered particularly friendly to homeless people, and there is some evidence that people leave the state when homeless ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/salt-lake-city-homeless-people-missing https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/salt-lake-ci... ). I basically mention this to point out that UTah isn't quite the shining beacon on how to 'solve' the homeless situation as they were touted a few years ago..and that at best their religiosity is irrelevant to that.

wutbrodo 8y ago

> our old infrastructure is awesome we just haven't been investing in it for the last 30 years due to the small government conservitard meme I agree with the majority of your comment, but the reality of this part is actually considerably more complicated. I used to think the same way, but it turns out that we are incredibly horribly bad at efficiently doing infrastructure projects, with costs/mi tending to be some multiple of similar projects in other developed countries. This holds even when controlling for all sorts of things; my understanding is that economists in the relevant field aren't really 100% sure what the cause is. From this perspective, the small govt argument becomes a lot more grounded in real complaints about govt's incompetency at this task, on top of their baseline ideological complaint about government not being an appropriate way to allocate capital in the first place. FWIW, I'm pretty irritated at the horrendous inefficiency of American infrastructure projects but also think that they often are economically worthwhile despite it. But it's unfair to cast this complaint as a thoughtless "conservitard meme" in the case of infrastructure, given that the complaints are to some degree grounded in reality.

ksec 8y ago

>As for guns, I think its a mental health epidemic with a bunch of columbine copycats, rather than a strictly gun issue. Which is precisely the issues most( not just EU ) don't understand America.