Is the United States Crazy?

Already there Frank. My son had to have double knee replacement. The company he works for gave him 12 weeks to get it done. Unfortunately he had complacations, a muscle came lose and had to be reattached. Their reaction? We dont care weather the doctor says your not ready or not. Come to work monday or your fired. Barons and Serfs.

It's JTT, no doubt in my mind. The style and tone are identical.

Being Canadian and watching Stephen Harper (and his ilk) do their best to mimic the so-called "US model" saddens me. I read the TomDispatch article by Ann Jones and it's a not-unreasonable set of concerns, most particularly if you ignore the cliché ideologies of left versus right and simply consider things pragmatically.

I like George Carlin's (RIP) take on what happens to people in groups:

“People are wonderful. I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a 'common purpose'. 'Cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they're going to visit at 3am. So, I dislike and despise groups of people but I love individuals. Every person you look at; you can see the universe in their eyes, if you're really looking.”

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

"So maybe it’s not the politicians who suck; maybe it’s something else. Like the public. That would be a nice realistic campaign slogan for somebody: “The public sucks. Elect me.” Put the blame where it belongs: on the people. Because if everything is really the fault of politicians, where are all the bright, honest, intelligent Americans who are ready to step in and replace them? Where are these people hiding? The truth is, we don’t have people like that. Everyone’s at the mall, scratching his balls and buying sneakers with lights in them. And complaining about the politicians."

The view from Korea is a cross between a) Yes, it's crazy and b) I wanna go there.

Milton Friedman's "free-market economics" plan destroyed what America stood for.

Economists recognise this fact now, but the road back seems mired in the corruption of the current system.

The effectiveness of a corporate-controlled media, capable of making black look white, has continued the ruse that America is great.

Ann Jones writes about free schools in Norway - there is no such thing as a free school. It is paid for by the State but the State gets it money from the taxes.
So peopla have paid for the schoolsystem and all the other benefits we do have.
She is retired and lives in one of the most expensive cities in the world. All the Scandinavian capitals are expensive. So she cannot be poor.
She talks about Europe and how much better we are than the USAmericans.
The % of people living under the powerty line is higher within the European Union than in USA.
Once my husbond and I even talked about moving to Madison WI. I really likeWI and I like the people there. But also some of my Norwegian-American relatives have some strange ideas.
They did not wote for George Bush - he was too liberal. Go and figure.
They disliked me -not for being me - but for being Swedish.
I have had some connections to St. Olaf Northfield Minnesota and find it is a college of very high degree bringing out wonderful students.
So I wonder if her dislike of USA has to do with some experiences she still is struggling with regarding her Norwegian background. Could it be she now wants to prove that Norway is so much better.

However, it did take the newbie a little while to figure out how to use the quote feature.

JTT probably would have known how to use that feature, no?

I apologize for the size of this image...





source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/04/15/map-how-35-countries-compare-on-child-poverty-the-u-s-is-ranked-34th/

16.4 % of the population, 80 million people, live below the poverty threshold in the European Union, if fixing the threshold at 60 % of national median income. (2012)

The USA uses two different official measures of poverty. In November 2012 the U.S. Census Bureau said more than 16% of the population lived in poverty, including almost 20% of American children,

I consider capitalism to be the bastard child of feudalism. So, in fact, the overwhelming majority of the baronage would take as good care of their serfs as was then the standard. Capitalists, however, don't give a sh*t if you live or die. If you don't like conditions, hit the road, there's another potential wage slave waiting to take your place. Serfs, for all their near-slavery conditions, had rights in property and had expectations of their treatment by the baronage. If not given the standard minimum of the day, they'd hit the road, and there was almost never a lack of work for them. After the terrible plauges of the 14th century, when labor was a seller's market, royal governments tried to pass laws to keep labor on the estates. It didn't work out because the lord of the manor would try to keep his serfs there, but would gladly hire vagabond serfs from someone else's estate.

The problems we have with capitalism are economies of scale and efficiencies, which means that more can be produced with less labor; and, government is far more in the hands of capitalists than was ever the case in the middle ages.

If it was that great why was it the wish of people to rid of serfs?

Good that you mentioned the situation about 'serfs', set!
Many get confused about it. And that's similar to "peasant".

The word "peasant" brings up the the American mind an image of an oppressed agricultural worker.
The German word "Bauer" is translated to English as 'peasant' - "Bauernaufstand" = 'peasant revolt'.
However, the German "Bauer" was, by definition, a farmer who owned a heritable, salable, lease, a farmer with property rights in his land, even if they weren't exactly like US property rights today.
The farms of the peasants in Westphalia constituted a 'Peasantry' ("Bauernschaft"), which took the name from the oldest and most distinguished farm owner, who in reverse added a "Schulte" ('mayor') in front of the name (thus e.g. "Schulte Hinteler").

There was a fairly well educated Muslim from Andalusia who traveled to Cairo to settle an inheritance, and who then traveled on to Palestine, and finally made a journey all across the Muslim world to the islands of what is now Indonesia. He observed the Franj in Palestine, and was perplexed that the "peasants" would prefer to live under these ignorant, dirty infidels rather than under Muslim masters. It's easy to see why, though. Under the Franj, they had rights in property, they were entitled to a fixed share of their harvest and had housing rights and rights of personal property. Under the Turks, they had nothing--only what the whim of their master left to them.

The United STates is crazy. I saw it put mayonnaise on French fries once. It was eating fries at a State Fair and it walked all the way over to a sammich booth just to get a squeeze bottle of mayonnaise with which it sqoze all that crap over its fries.

Guess what they do in south Mississippi? Salad dressing on pizza. No joke. You order pizza and they ask you what kind of salad dressing you want with it.

they call that dip here

pizza comes with dip ... which is really salad dressing

In France that's called frites accompagnées de mayonnaise, while McD calls it frites avec sauce pommes frites.

Pizza con porchetta e maionese is the Italian original version

not mayonnaise

salad dressing - ranch, blue cheese ... salad dressing used as dip for pizza

Mayo on French fries is a (sadly delicious) German custom. It should be called "cholesterol frites"...