Countries Ranked by Population: 2007

Rank Country                                  Population--------------------------------------------------------   1 China                                 1,321,851,888   2 India                                 1,129,866,154   3 United States                           301,139,947   4 Indonesia                               234,693,997   5 Brazil                                  190,010,647   6 Pakistan                                169,270,617   7 Bangladesh                              150,448,339   8 Russia                                  141,377,752   9 Nigeria                                 135,031,164  10 Japan                                   127,467,972

PS. 9/11 could have been prevented had the FBI simply done it's job right.

Quote:Original post by Zahlman

Quote:Original post by trzy
It just seems to me that these things should be factored into your analysis of why the US doesn't have social programs as extensive as Europe's. Also consider the problems your systems have and then consider the size of our population.

I don't think you quite understand how much the US is spending on the military.

It is six times as much as any other country in the entire world. (Russia being next after that - apparently there are relatively few people left in Russia after all the republic-breaking-away, but certainly more than 50 million. Meanwhile, next in line is China, with over four times as many people as the US.)

Russia has a population of about 145 million, by the way.

Quote:
This is simply excessive. There is no way around this fact. The money is there. It is not being used for social programs. It is being used to let the US throw its weight around and poke its nose into other countries' business where it does not belong.

US military spending is extremely excessive, yes, but you're failing to realize that social programs aren't built overnight and that the US has played a large role in creating an environment in which Europe's social programs could flower.

European nations lack some of the extremely expensive systems which characterized the Cold War era. There's no way Germany alone or France alone or Sweden alone could have developed ICBMs and retained social programs as generous as they have.

Interestingly, Russia, China, and the US lack excellent social programs but are big military spenders. Sure we could stand to cut some of our military and improve our social programs. I'd be all for a major military slash. Maybe we can withdraw from military superpower status as well and give everyone free healthcare and guaranteed housing. Hurray for us! But then will Europe have to carry the weight of counterbalancing China in the future? Russia probably won't be able to. If Europe picked up the slack, their social programs would probably feel the pinch.

Quote:Besides which, the US really needs *no* military for defense,

Pearl Harbor proved otherwise.

Quote:
possible to manufacture or otherwise acquire a fair number of deadly poisons without surveillance and release them into a city's food and/or water supply.

Now you're just rambling and speculating without any evidence. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are responsible for detecting and pursuing terrorists in our country, not the military.

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The cost to a person who wishes to attack society will always be substantially less than that to the person trying to defend against the first - simple entropy in action: society is a highly ordered state requiring costly maintenance), and the literally, over nine thouuuuuusaaaaaaaaaand nuclear weapons in the US' possession should be more than enough to deter any kind of actual war.

Sure but we'll always have to maintain those weapons and replace them periodically.

Quote:
As for "problems the European systems have", please list some, or indicate why these systems would not scale from a European country (populations ranging up to 80 million or so) to the US (population 300 million). Keeping in mind that the US does have a fairly deep governmental hierarchy.

There are problems with Europe's birth rates. There are social problems related to integration of the Muslim minority. The health services of former Eastern Bloc countries now in the EU are not working as well as they used to -- my family has dealt with this first hand. I remember regularly seeing criticism of the efficiency of Britain's health care system in The Economist. I recall hearing problems keeping certain nations' deficits within the limits required by the EU. I don't think anyone will claim that Europe's social programs are perfect, nor are all of their employment regulations.

And if you want criticism of European politics, there's plenty of that to go around as well.

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Your government can afford, on its current total budget, to take care of its own people. Many times over.

Define "take care."

Quote:
There is no country which poses a real threat to the US. Occasionally losing a few thousand people (a thousandth of a percent of your population) to a terrorist attack is something that (a) wasn't prevented by that spending; (b) realistically couldn't have been prevented by that spending, nor by ten or a thousand times more spending - it can only be prevented by the systematic stripping away of human rights, as your government does now; (c) curiously, tends not to happen in all these other countries that happen to take care of their own people instead of spending ungodly, obscene amounts on guns and bombs. Many of us like to think it's because these countries, unlike the US, are not, you know, actively antagonizing everyone else by poking their nose into others' politics and assuming a might-makes-right attitude.

Middle eastern terrorists from affluent families have unusual criteria for what constitutes "antagonizing." Note that they also despise European nations and have carried out successful attacks in Europe. Much of this was a direct response to the war in Iraq but Europe's Muslim population has long been discontent. Not all of the terrorists' criticisms of the US are valid.

We do have a chance to fight middle eastern terrorism but it can't be done with wars nor does it require massive military spending. In fact, most of our peacetime spending is not geared towards terrorism.

Quote:
Oh, and in case you didn't notice, I'm not from one of the European countries in question. A lot of us up here in Canada think your governmental policies are utter raving lunacy, too. Hell, a lot of *American* citizens think this spending policy is utter raving lunacy. Which is why sites like the one LessBread linked (truemajority.com) exist.

Canada's lovely and all. My aunt lives in Canada and my understanding is that the health care system can be rather sluggish. I'm not knowledgeable enough to debate the finer points of the Canadian health care system or what would be required to implement a similar system in the US, but I'll point out that the US is a significantly larger country, yet the average wait time for a critical procedure is more than 100 times shorter than in Canada (see Wikipedia for some quick statistics.) The same statistics show that the US government spends a higher percentage of its revenue on health care than Canada but covers less patient costs.

Anyway, nobody's saying the US system doesn't need reform. It obviously does.

Also, I want to point out that it would serve Canada well to boost its military spending at least a little to purchase icebreakers for your navy so as to defend your claims to Arctic islands. Isn't it a wake up call when Denmark can send ships to claim your islands but you have to wait for passable weather to respond?

Quote:Original post by Zahlman

Quote:Original post by LessBread
PS. 9/11 could have been prevented had the FBI simply done it's job right.

I'm not sure I believe that, but regardless, the FBI is not what I'd consider military spending, even if the US federal budget would like to consider them that way (they're categorized under "The Pentagon", yes?).

The more you learn about Ali Mohamed the more you'll come to see that the FBI could have prevented 9/11. See also: Dana Ewell, terror and a question of judgment.

The FBI is a part of the Department of Justice not the Pentagon. The Attorney General is in charge of the Department of Justice.

It's obvious by now that Zahlman is a complete troll. But its so hard to resist...

Quote:Original post by Zahlman
The US? The oppressive capitalist US? The same US who sends troops to Iraq to protect its oil interests but refuses to do anything about (oh god, I can hardly even fathom what the US could accomplish but doesn't in terms of peacekeeping...)?

Stop trolling Zahlman. You're observant enough to have picked up that Iraq was a collossal mistake, which is great, but even with your head apparently stuck in Canadian permafrost it's not surprising that you noticed the sound of a train wreck nearby :P As for the rest of your rant, you fail to make any good points:

Quote:The same US that sold weapons to Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein?
The same US that, through the magic of The Corporation, supports sweatshops in China, Indonesia, Taiwan and god knows how many other countries, which are decades behind in human rights (the sweatshops, if not the countries)? The same US which oppressed Afghanistan, oppresses Iraq and it's anyone's guess who they'll go after next? Ah, yes, and the US which already has a military capable of projecting *overbearing* force around the globe, considers itself to be the center of the world, and is deeply suspicious of, well, everyone else.

Not to say that Canada, or any other country for that matter, is perfect. Just trying to provide some perspective.

You're right. Canada isn't perfect. Hell, you guys are guilty of just about everything you listed earlier. Corporations aren't a US invention. US corporations aren't the only ones abusing foreign labor. So don't try to derail this thread with pointless anti-US bashing that I can easily throw right back at you as well as our European friends. You're all guilty of the same crimes.

Canada has a strong presence in Afghanistan if I'm not mistaken. Way to oppress, you hoser! ;)

Quote:This is rich, considering how hard I laugh almost every time I find out something new about the way you guys run your elections.

Yeah, our elections suck and need reform. But at least we can talk about this stuff. I don't know if you missed that part. Do you see how many posters from the US discuss these issues here? Even our pathetic mainstream media occasionally picks these things up. That's because we're free enough to have these debates in the US, thankfully. Can the same be said for Russia or China?

Quote:
The US is *known* to have tortured its own civilians and blamed it on 'terrorism' to start a war (see: Jose Padilla). That's not even blaming a tangible thing!

We started a war over Jose Padilla? I didn't realize any of his testimony was used as evidence for, well, anything important. Also, if you want to bring up allegations of torture, please use a better example than Jose Padilla. Jose Padilla is an example of the miscarriage of justice but torture isn't really the central issue here. Can't you get any of your facts straight?

Bush and Co. make it so easy to criticize us for our handling of our terror suspects and you can't even get something this simple right? :)

Quote:

Quote:The US lied about Iraq but I'll have you remember that EU member nations went along with us.

Out of fear, perhaps?

(Also, in b4 "you forgot Poland".)

I didn't forget Poland. Or Britain. Or Spain. Or Italy. Even Norway and the Netherlands had troops in Iraq at some point under coalition command.

Fear indeed. I'd rather believe that they wanted a cut of the pie! That delicious oily pie dripping with reconstruction contracts.

Quote:
Eh, and what bad behaviour has Russia exhibited towards the US lately?

Russia's bad behavior towards us directly is thankfully mostly limited to being uncooperative in the UN. But their bad behavior in their region of influence is the real problem. Look at how they behaved in Ukraine during elections. Look at what they've been doing to Chechnya. Their behavior towards Georgia. Now they're blatantly screwing with energy supplies to apply pressure when they want something. They've been acting downright childish towards their Eastern Bloc neighbors. They're attempting to put economic pressure on Poland, refusing to buy meat and other goods, for no defensible reason. They've attempted to make international incidents out of petty scandals, such as an assault on the children of diplomats in Poland, by accusing Poland of stirring anti-Russian hatred and then retaliated by having diplomats in Russia mugged. Then there's the high profile poisoning of Litvinenko in Britain.

All of this pales in comparison to Russia's internal problems -- the clampdown on dissidents. Murdering journalists (these are not isolated incidents and there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of journalists killed.) Fabricating charges against wealthy businessmen in order to confiscate their assets.

And all while supplying weapons and nuclear information to dubious recipients.

At least I know that after College fails because our public education system has left us all without the education necessary to make it outside of their dream world of "USA! USA! Math? Who needs it!" the military will still be accepting recruits to fight the next blood-for-oil campaign.