Before covid it had the highest wages in the world. If you have a trade the USA pays better than any country, plumbers, truck drivers, doctors, lawyers, its hard to find a trade that pays better somewhere other than the USA. I dont know what standard you use to claim its a third world country. You should travel.
No I was talking about Sweden. People here seem to live in denial of how great they actually have it. People keep bitching over how crap everything supposedly is, how much they want to leave this place, how much better everyone else is than us at everything, etc. It's irritating, to say the least.
It bothers me and I dont want my kids to complain about their country when their country is literally atleast top 5 in almost everything. Are their things USA could do better? Sure. But you definitely need to have perspective.
Because they have never really seen the comparison.
When I was in the US Navy and our ship visited many countries I was the typical obnoxious American tourist at first. Every issue I saw my answer was: "well in American here is how we solved that."
Then I visited Haiti... for 2 days. I saw poverty and things for which there was no American answer for. I was literally mentally stunned, and I went into automatic operation while I though about it for a week or two.
Thats when I realized that America did not have all the answers - and that any real solution had to fit the culture of the place; and most of my previous "American" solutions would not work where I suggested them because of cultural differences.
Over the next few years I learned a lot more about the countries I visited while in the US Navy. I was also routinely invited to stay with a family because I was seriously interested in their perspective of the world and not trying to apply what worked in America to their country.
Once you really see the difference... by going to other places in the world and dealing with the people who live there - then you understand how special the more advanced countries are.
I'm impressed by your story and how you were open to allowing your perspective of the world to change according to what you saw and experienced. However, I do wonder how common that is for Americans.
Even those Americans who are curious enough about the world outside the borders of the USA to travel abroad are limited to how much they can experience due to the pathetic (by European standards) amount of annual vacation time they're allowed by most employers, as well as the sheer expense of getting anywhere seriously distant. So they often end up rushing around, they get only brief glimpses of touristy places, and they come home with about as much real understanding of the foreign countries they've visited as they would have by going on the It's A Small World ride at Disneyland.
As for US military personnel stationed abroad, even those in countries where there isn't active combat in progress tend to live in an American bubble.
I served a spell in Shore Patrol back when I was in the USN and stationed in Scotland. At that point, I'd been in the country for more than two years, and looking back, I can see that I was in the process of slowly going native. I'd seen a fair bit of the country by that point, I had a flat in a civilian area far from the submarine base, and I believe I'd just met a Scottish woman who would be my girlfriend for several years.
One of the jobs of SP was to run people to and from the nearest airport when there weren't enough people in transit to justify a bus. On day, I was acting as taxi driver for a guy who had finished his two-year tour, and his only real topic of conversation on the nearly two-hour drive was bitching about how horrible Scotland and the Scots were. At some point, I asked him how much he'd seen of the country, and he admitted that the furthest he'd got were a few visits to the little town close to the base which was largely built on catering for the needs of sailors.
Basically, his main complaint was that Scotland was not the USA, and the Scots were not Americans.
I agree with your comments that my perspective is rare for Americans; and as for the comments of other service members stationed overseas... I understand completely. Amazing how few of them actually tried to get out into the countries and meet people who lived there.
Taking my kids to third world country
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America? If you're referring to America, America is a third world country compared to all first world countries out there
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Meatballsandwich
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Before covid it had the highest wages in the world. If you have a trade the USA pays better than any country, plumbers, truck drivers, doctors, lawyers, its hard to find a trade that pays better somewhere other than the USA. I dont know what standard you use to claim its a third world country. You should travel.
No I was talking about Sweden. People here seem to live in denial of how great they actually have it. People keep bitching over how crap everything supposedly is, how much they want to leave this place, how much better everyone else is than us at everything, etc. It's irritating, to say the least.
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It bothers me and I dont want my kids to complain about their country when their country is literally atleast top 5 in almost everything. Are their things USA could do better? Sure. But you definitely need to have perspective.
That's true everywhere in the world with higher standards of living.
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Hmm, wonder why that is the case.
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Because they have never really seen the comparison.
When I was in the US Navy and our ship visited many countries I was the typical obnoxious American tourist at first. Every issue I saw my answer was: "well in American here is how we solved that."
Then I visited Haiti... for 2 days. I saw poverty and things for which there was no American answer for. I was literally mentally stunned, and I went into automatic operation while I though about it for a week or two.
Thats when I realized that America did not have all the answers - and that any real solution had to fit the culture of the place; and most of my previous "American" solutions would not work where I suggested them because of cultural differences.
Over the next few years I learned a lot more about the countries I visited while in the US Navy. I was also routinely invited to stay with a family because I was seriously interested in their perspective of the world and not trying to apply what worked in America to their country.
Once you really see the difference... by going to other places in the world and dealing with the people who live there - then you understand how special the more advanced countries are.
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I'm impressed by your story and how you were open to allowing your perspective of the world to change according to what you saw and experienced. However, I do wonder how common that is for Americans.
Even those Americans who are curious enough about the world outside the borders of the USA to travel abroad are limited to how much they can experience due to the pathetic (by European standards) amount of annual vacation time they're allowed by most employers, as well as the sheer expense of getting anywhere seriously distant. So they often end up rushing around, they get only brief glimpses of touristy places, and they come home with about as much real understanding of the foreign countries they've visited as they would have by going on the It's A Small World ride at Disneyland.
As for US military personnel stationed abroad, even those in countries where there isn't active combat in progress tend to live in an American bubble.
I served a spell in Shore Patrol back when I was in the USN and stationed in Scotland. At that point, I'd been in the country for more than two years, and looking back, I can see that I was in the process of slowly going native. I'd seen a fair bit of the country by that point, I had a flat in a civilian area far from the submarine base, and I believe I'd just met a Scottish woman who would be my girlfriend for several years.
One of the jobs of SP was to run people to and from the nearest airport when there weren't enough people in transit to justify a bus. On day, I was acting as taxi driver for a guy who had finished his two-year tour, and his only real topic of conversation on the nearly two-hour drive was bitching about how horrible Scotland and the Scots were. At some point, I asked him how much he'd seen of the country, and he admitted that the furthest he'd got were a few visits to the little town close to the base which was largely built on catering for the needs of sailors.
Basically, his main complaint was that Scotland was not the USA, and the Scots were not Americans.
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Just by curiousity was it abit hard to fit in in the UK at first because you had straight American teeth?
I agree with your comments that my perspective is rare for Americans; and as for the comments of other service members stationed overseas... I understand completely. Amazing how few of them actually tried to get out into the countries and meet people who lived there.
I was active duty 1975-1980; when were you in?