Why America is not the greatest country in the world

Now, since you're back from the US, I think it's ok to voice some constructive criticism towards the country you spent the last year living in.

Ok, so I started this conversation with you yesterday.

The idea for this (as you already know, but all the other our reader don't) came to me when I saw a picture in facebook. It was a picture of a multiple-(well, two-)choise exam in which the student (probably first or second grader) had to choose whether a statement is a fact or an opinion. The picture was particularly taken of the statement "USA is the greatest country in the world". This is clearly, by every standard, an opinion. However, the student had answered "Fact". Ok, so people there are raised to be super unrationally patriotic, so that's not too bad. The bad was this:
The teacher had marked this answer as correct.

I mean...

I don't even know what to say.

So I thought I'd list some of the reasons why America is NOT the greatest country in the world.

1. America is not a country. America is a combination of two continents, South America and North America. There are almost a billion people living in America. Of those, 560 million are living in North America. Of those only 320 million of those are living in the USA. Which brings you to my second point.

2. I may be wrong about this, but people in the USA seem to often forget all the other almost 7 billion people living on this planet. At the moment I'm annoyed about this because I saw (again on facebook) that there was a contest going on for signed advanced reader's copies for The Providence of Fire (which is one of the books that I'm really looking forwards to getting). The problem was I couldn't get in the contest, because I don't live in the US. Or, well, Canada or UK. Ok, those countries US people do usually remember.

3. The USA seems to think it's the king of the world, and that it has a right to interfere where ever it wants... The point is, who decided they're the ultimate police of the world who decide who's wrong and who's right? Not everything in the world is your business, USA. Also, not everything is about you, and not every internal conflict in every country is an attempt to destroy you, or what ever reason you give for sending your troops everywhere.
3.1 Also, the military budget is insane. No one else in the world uses that much money on military. (This is something you told me yesterday. Had to add it on.) There is a lot of more useful things you could use that money on, but I guess there's no hope to use that money for all that, because US is a country that automatically refuses to do anything that involves the word "socialized".

4. Everyone supposedly is free. They can do what they want. Anyone can become rich if they jsut work hard enough or have a good enough an idea. I have a few points I have to make about this.
4.1 They can't do what they want, because if they don't have money to start off with, then all their money goes to, you know, eating. And the government doesn't care, because it's their own fault they were born poor, and they jsut need to work harder.
4.2 They also can't do what they want because the healthcare system is built in a way that you either have to A) work for a big company that pays your insurance. B) be rich so you can afford to pay for your insurance or C) Die of something that would be simply treated by antibiotics that you just can't get because you don't have insurance. (Ok, I admit that I don't know about the insurance system enough to properly criticise it, but this is how I've understood it goes. Maybe you'll enlighten me, having lived there for a year.) Which means that if you want to do something else, you have to make a decision about if you want to do something you love or chance dying of the flu.
4.3 Everyone being able to get rich with hard work or a good idea isn't true only in the US (in which I'm sceptical whether it's true at all or not). I mean, have you (as in anyone in the world) heard of Angry Birds? Yeah, thought so. That's Finnish. You can get famous and rich with a good idea anywhere, don't have to be from US to do that.
4.4 This is something you told me yesterday: It's the great country of free people where more people per capita are in jail that anywhere else in the world. Maybe they've misunderstood what "free" means...

5. The healthcare system. All of it. It's ridiculous. And expensive. For everyone. And, in general, the government seems to not give a crap about the citizens. See the stuff I said about money in 3.1. Socialized isn't a curse word, people! It just means you want the world to be a little nicer to the people who are not doing so well. You should all be a little more like Patrick Rothfuss, who in a blog post answered the question "How can I support my favourite author when all the money I spend buying your stuff goes to charity?" The answer was "I don't want your money, because I don't need your money. I want you to help me save the world. Ok?" And then he went on about talking about sharing cake. You should read that post if you haven't yet.

6. The education system. Which there costs so incredibly a lot that I don't know how anyone ever can go to a college in the first place. (Also, the colleges are insane. Though this I'm basing purely on TV and movies that I've seen that take place in US colleges. I would not want to go to one of those.) Educated people is good for a country. I'd think it's a good reason to give everyone a realistic chance to get to study without having to pay back the money spent on it for the rest of their lives. Like in Finland, the government pays us so we can go to university, which is free. And the Finnish school system is something that gets respect all over the world (though it may be that it's the elementary-middle school that gets most of it, but still).

7. USA is a country in which almost half the people think 150 years of thorough scientific research is wrong. Yes, I'm talking about evolution. I still can't quite get my head around how it's even possible half of the people living there thing it didn't happen. And apparently the same is true of climate change.

8. USA is found on the idea of separation of the church and state (in fact, people first moved there to get away from other people trying to tell them what to believe), and yet now it says "In God we trust" on some bills (right?) and it's governed like a Christian nation. It is not, according to founding fathers at least, a Christian nation. It is a nation where people from all religions can come together and live in harmony without arguing and without incriminating others for having a different religion. Somehow I'm getting the feeling they've lost this idea somewhere over the years...

9. The measuring system. Seriously, why are you guys holding on so tight to gallons and miles and pounds and fahrenheits, when the rest of the world has come to the conclusion it's a ridiculously stupid way to measure things and moved on to the metric system. So just... let it go, ok guys? (I recently saw a picture of this too. (You may have to be signed in to facebook to see that...))

10. USA says it's a model country of democracy. And yet, it is theoretically possible to win the presidential elections with less than a quarter of the total votes (though I don't think anyone could practically pull that off, but still). Either USA has redefined what democracy means, or forgotten.

11. Statistics disagree with USA being the greatest country. When you look at basically any statistic, the best countries in the world seem to be the Nordic countries, and Canada and maybe the Netherlands and Switzerland or something. I didn't go digging for this info anywhere right now, so I'm not sure. Either way, I know there are many countries that beat USA for the title of the greatest country in the world if we look at the data.

Ok, that's enough, I think. As a positive thing about the US I could say that they have a bunch of really amazing books and movies and TV shows constantly coming out. Then again, maybe there would be those from other countries too, we just don't hear about it because the English-speaking world pretty much dominates that part of our lives, even if we're not from any of them.

There would be a lot more reasons for why USA is not the greatest country on the planet. Maybe if you come up with some more, having lived there for a year, you could share some. These are just the ones I could come up with from the top of my head in the time it took me to write the earlier thoughts down.

Now I'm tired and want to go do something else. I'll hear from you on Friday.
Unless you mix up the weekdays again.
Oh, and you've had two really short things in a row, could we have some content this time? That would be great, thanks! :)
Also, we're still waiting for that punishment post you had to originally have like a month ago...

~matu