chownah wrote:Tex,
With all due respect to you too I think that your value system is just a bit overly influenced by where you live.
If you mean me personally, I'm no patriot. You don't become a Buddhist, socialist, and vegetarian by being overly influenced by American culture.
chownah wrote:It is true that many Americans have lost their homes but it is also true that a huge percent of them if not the the bulk of them bought just about the most expensive home that they could talk the banks into...
That is an assumption, and likely an erroneous one. Yes, some people bought more house than they could afford and yes that was part of what led to the banking crisis and a lot of those people were foreclosed on. But a lot of regular, blue collar people have lost homes that they'd had for a decade or a generation or more, not because they bought more house than they could afford, but because they got laid off or had to take a pay cut. You assume that the former outnumber the latter. I suspect you're wrong, and by a big margin.
chownah wrote:If Americans started exercising and lost 30 pounds and started eating healthy and reducing their stress levels amd stopped smoking then they mostly wouldn't need health insurance and the population would be so healthy that the cost would plunge.
Sure, Americans should stop eating garbage food and exercise more. But that would not negate the need for health insurance (healthy people still get cancer and get into car accidents) nor would it make medical and pharmaceutical costs go down.
chownah wrote:You say, "The belief that the average American lives some "oppulent lifestyle" is a complete myth." Tex, have you ever been outside Texas?....outside the USA? Maybe you've been to Mexico?....how would you compare the life style of the average American compared to the average Mexican? Oppulent? I would.....but it gets better....I live in Thailand...have you ever been to SE Asia? I would say that the average Mexican lives a somewhat oppulent life style compared to the bulk of the people in SE Asia....and it probably even gets better than that in that what is it like lin Africa?....I've never been there but there are places where tens of thousands of children are dieing every day from starvation....or at least they were a couple of months ago...I'm not sure what the death rate is this month...
I would say that compared to Africa "The suffering in America is a bunch of spoiled rich kids crying because they had to get a cheaper cell phones." I'm sorry that people in America feel the need to work two jobs to make enough money....and even sorrier that maybe one of those jobs is in a place like Mcdonalds but you know there are literally MILLIONS of people in Africa who would gladly take out the garbage at a Mcdonalds for free just so they could eat it!!!!
I never said that Americans didn't have it better than some people. But those Africans you mentioned would gladly trade places with the average person in any other industrialized nation, too.
But it's funny that only Americans are talked about as being greedy and money hungry.
Here's one American's situation... I looked up the median income in America. It's about $31,000. I make about $35,000, so I'm doing better than more than half the people in America. I don't have an I-Phone (and I'm a lot less stressed about that than you assume), I live in a simple one-bedroom apartment, I drive a five year-old Camry (which I'll drive at least five more years), and by the time all the bills are paid every month, I have enough money left to go out for dinner or a movie about once a week. And that's with only a German Shepherd depending on me. Can't imagine how a single-parent gets by on my income, but many have to. And four years ago, I had a major medical issue that put me into the hospital. By the time it was done, I was out just over $5,000, i.e. all of the money I had in the bank. And that's
with health insurance to the tune of about $1,500 a year in premiums. Without health insurance, I would've been bankrupt (and that is a reality facing a lot of people right now).
Now, does my lifestyle sound opulent or greedy to you? Because I make more money than probably about 60% of all the people in America.
The perception by some people internationally that the average American lives some opulent lifestyle is simply incorrect. The average American doesn't have it any better than the average Brit, German, Frenchman, Italian, Swede, Aussie, etc.
If people want to think America is greedy or energy-hogging or whatever
as a whole, that's a fair charge, because of the corruption and greed of the top 1% (the very people these protests are going after). But to act like the average American is to blame for what they're going through in this recession because they brought it on themselves with their own greed is, no offense, extremely ignorant and highly insensitive, as is minimizing what they're going through as if they might have to, gasp, cancel their MTV. It's a lot more serious than that.