Discussion on:

Ignorance? Arrogance? Yep, we're number one in both.

I expect enough out of an American lifestyle. I'm looking for quality, not quantity. I could care less if some goat herders in Georgia Russia live longer than we do. I wouldn't trade my short life for theirs. But that doesn't stop someone like you from citing contextually meaningless statistics.

The rest of the world laughs because they'd cry otherwise.

Then we could judge if your "quality" is subjective.

it was taken offline to the Water Cooler

http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-385570-3738733

He's a typical American with the typically ignorant and jingoist American belief that nothing we have today would exist if it weren't for American ingenuity and business perspicacity. Nothing else explains the sentence, "Enjoy living in the modern world that my great country has so graciously provided the rest of the planet."

You lost me on 'Typical' anything....

As an American, I can state with authority that not only does 'it take all kinds' but 'we got all kinds'.

If an alien being visited only one different individual part of this country then reported back what 'American people were like' their report would be quite different if they landed in:

Los Angeles vs. Portland vs. Boston vs. some places like Ames Iowa, Greenville Mississippi, or Parkersburg West Virginia.

And overlay the wide cultural and language differences based on location with the very broad differences in political/religious/social views.....

Now to be fair, there are some parts of America which I would NOT proudly share with the world, yet other places where the food is great, the crime is low, people are well educated and successful, and people are friendly to boot.

Yeah, that sounds like Canada, but we have some of that here, really....

places as well.....like any corner of the globe.

Melt some American Cheese over it!

I was trying to think of an adjective that would describe the point of view without assuming or attributing political views, and couldn't, so I over-generalized.

Let's just say that the attitude expressed in his posts leads me to believe he's one of those Americans who believes people who don't speak English will understand him if he just speaks loudly and slowly.

But, if you sparate out the socio-economic and ethnic groups within your society, you come much closer to the top for some of those groups and, consequently, even further down for other groups. On AVERAGE, you're not doing so well and some significantly large parts of US society are doing really badly. That difference is much more marked for the US than most Western countries.

So, do we reckon paulfx1 is one of the "haves"?

.

He could be one of those "temporarily inconvenienced millionaires".

He doesn't appear to 'have' any idea what the rest of the world is about, or even his own nation for that matter. He certainly doesn't 'have' a clue if that's what you meant.

"Oh, king eh? Very nice. And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. "

Again, sorry, Monty Pythons has a grip on me, which you already know.

Those "contextually meaningless statistics" are core quality of life measures and make the point that not all Americans are finding it.