re: Are Americans delusional about the quality and conditions of things in our country?

Take a drive across the country and stop in some small towns in rural America, you’ll quickly realize about 90% of it is shite hole.

This country is great at some things and shitty at others.

To act like it’s terrible here is absurd

Also, to act like the price of college and healthcare isn’t astronomical, is absurd

That’s pretty F*cking
Ugly.

quote:

---

You don’t see buildings like this in the US.

---

Looks a lot like my dick, just a couple stories shorter.

Quality and conditions are so varied as to almost be meaningless-- if you want to talk about architecture, are you quantifying a 17th century palace versus a skyscraper?


Overall, Americans really don't appreciate the implicit level of limitation that even our greatest 'peers' in the world really have. We take for absolute granted things that simply aren't even on the table somewhere else, even if someone had unlimited resources.

A fantastic example of this is health care; I had two children born abroad in a Western European health care system; even with spending for private care, to ensure the highest standard of maternal care available, my wife spent the night after giving birth in a maternity ward with 6 other women-- no real privacy at all-- and it included women who had lost their babies, in and among new mothers. She did get moved to a private room, on a 2nd day-- one that we had pre-paid extra for, because we had that option, but the entire national maternity hospital had a whopping 2 private rooms, and you only got use of it if one was vacant and you had pre-paid.

I mentioned to the doctor at the time, how difficult it must be for mothers who lost their children, to have to be surrounded by happy mothers and infants, and he simply shrugged it off as 'Nothing we can do about it'.

We take so much shite like that for granted, that its absolutely staggering. Quality and variety of life, its still the US, and an extremely large gap, then everyone else. Travel the world and do something that isn't touristy, if you don't believe it.

Yes

quote:

---

Watch the Tour de France, beautiful countryside. America is an endless strip mall. Cracker Barrel, Holiday In Express, Taco Bell, Wal Mart

---

Rural France is beautiful but its productivity, innovation, and income levels make the rural South look like San Francisco. Much of rural Europe is very poor, especially once you get south of the Massif Central.

quote:

---

Not having electronics, SUVs, and wasted square footage doesn’t make someone poor

---

By any objective measure, yes, it does. One man’s wasted square footage is another man’s extra bedroom for kids or office space or recreational area. By the English language definition of “poor”, that is how it is defined - in comparative economic terms.

Oh yea, a fair chunk of those places even in wealthier European countries don’t have centralized HVAC or modern appliances or any number of things we consider de rigeur even in lower middle class areas. That is the very definition of comparatively poor.

Ignoring skyscrapers and architecture and answering the question you asked,

Yes americans are delusional as frick. The unbelievable prevalence of drugs and drug addicts alone is pretty unreal and god fricking awful. We're lucky the country is as huge as it is and its still relatively easy to get away from that shite.