Thread: the us constitution

howdy,
damn! why did you have to bring up foriegn economic policy, just when i thought i was making my point about how great we Americans are at home YOU have to bring up foriegn policy.
percentages can be decieving .08% of the American GDP is A LOT OF $$$.
OK that said we Americans are capitalists and i am sorry to say we dont spend a single penny that we dont expect to get 2 back on.
and as far as Isreal goes "with friends like them who needs enemies"

so again Americans are proven to be imperfect...

M.R.

Name a western nation that is communist?

Don't blame capitalism for your lack of social responsibility.


And can you stop GWB telling us

1. How the US is a bastion of free trade, it annoys us more when, with his next breath, he adds 30% tariff to steel. Our company has made redundant over 10% of our workers in response to these tariffs.

2. To drop our quarantine laws as they are a barrier to free trade (and fire ants, rabbies, foot & mouth, fruit fly, carp ........)

can i say bill maher ought to be shot? (not in the literal sense, but rather, put off the air)

his program sux, & he's saying anything and everything outrageous just for ratings...it gets old fast. all of our lives depend on this administration right now...we are in deep. if maher had children he would understand where the rest of America is coming from. it isn't all about us. we have to protect the children from the beast...and maher's friends...like poundstone.

howdy,

Don't blame capitalism for your lack of social responsibility.

are you confusing "social responsibility" with social equality. if so i would choose the social responsibilit of the United States to social equality with say... the Taliban.

and since tariffs have you miffed let me ask, how much oil did we send to Saudi last year?
how much steel did we sell to Japan last year?
have you ever seen a heard of cattle that has been exposed to foot and mouth?

conceptual politics are fine but eventually reality prevails.

btw what does GWB stand for.

M.R.

GWB would be the initials of the current holder of the office President of the United States of America.

Originally posted by novacain
>>A few crumbs??! We've spent trillions in foreign aid. I'd like to hear your respective country say that.
Nice trolling _KEN_ but try some facts next time.

Actually _KEN_ its under US$20bill a year. Which puts the US LAST on percentage of GDP.

from OneWorld news
"The total U.S. foreign aid bill for 1997 came to about 13.6 billion dollars, the lowest amount in real terms since the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s and less than half of US aid levels just 15 years ago. America ranks last among all developed western nations in the amount of aid it provides foreign nations expressed as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP) about 0.08 percent, according to a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). "

Nearly half (49%) of this aid is military.

Over quater of that in military aid to Egypt and Israel. In Israel, the 19th richest country in the world you give every man, woman and child US$5 in arms/security assistance. Why?

So you spend over 3 times as much on bombing Afghanistan, over 8.5 times as much on subsidising your farmers.



Australia still lags behind the recomended 0.40% of GDP with 0.27%. But we do not give much military aid.

Notice how I said "Have spent". Plus, as was said, percentages mean jack aquat. It'd be nice if we gave more, sure. But we're massively in debt, all the while giving tons of money to foreign nations. I don't get why just bacause we're a superpower we get bashed so many times with silly arguments like "You don't spend enough % of your GDP on other nations!". And that quote would appear to come from 1997...a bit obsolete, don't you think?

I wanted to say more, but have you ever just had your train of thought completely derail?

i think that if you can save somebodies life for $2 etc, then all developed nations should do a little more to help the starving etc.

but most of the suffering is caused by inept government.....
the best thing to do with some countries is to go back in, remove their inept/corrupt regimes by force and run the countries under the UN, until such time as government can be handed back.....

of course this is impossible....

>>are you confusing "social responsibility" with social equality.

No I'm not. I'm saying as the most powerful and one of the richest nations on earth you have a responsibility to help the poorer nations. Or at least not to hinder them for profit.

>>have you ever seen a heard of cattle that has been exposed to foot and mouth?

No. My point. Australia, thanks to strict quarantine laws has no foot & mouth.

You can be the worlds hero or the worlds bully.

Imagine the world market as a poker game. In professional poker there is a rule, 'table stakes'.
This means that no more money can be added to a players 'stake' after a hand has been dealt. This is to stop the player with the most money from out betting everybody else. If you run out of cash the 'pot' is divided and you can only win that lesser 'pot' (termed 'going all in').

The world market has no such rule. So the US is just out bidding the rest of us.

Your farmers now get 60% of their income from your taxes. European farmers are close behind at 45%. Aussie farmers screamed and went bankrupt at 0%.
We believe in fair trade even when it costs us.
That is, if you are not good enough to compete in the world market then you eventually fail. The government should not be responsible for keeping your industry alive.

>>Notice how I said "Have spent".
Semantics -KEN-. And untrue if you re-read the whole post.

Any country can say we have spent trillions over the last century. More my point was WHERE you spend it. I do not consider giving guns equals giving food.
1997 was the latest reliable figure available. Five years is nothing in global economics. I notice you don’t refute the data or offer more up to date info.

>>As far as I'm concerned it isn't our place to supply other nations with financial security

But your OK with exploiting developing nations workers (nike, the gap) or ruining developing nations markets with subsidised crops, sentencing developing nations to poverty.

How do you feel about pushing smaller kids round in the playground?

howdy,
i think this thread should have been named "The Best Thread Ever".
The United States does a couple of things that few other nations do.
We look for people to help before we are asked - Kuwait
We offer assistance financial and/or military - Bosnia(sp)
Then we leave them to self rule - Japan, Germany.

As far as I'm concerned it isn't our place to suplly other nations with financial security. If they screewed things up too bad. As long as their are American citizens starving in the streets and little American children dying due to lack of healthcare and food, I personally don't give a crap about another nations children.

couldn't have said it better myself, even though the thought of starving uneducated kids anywhere bothers me, We as Americans are limited to how much we can do.

M.R.

>>"As far as I'm concerned it isn't our place to suplly other nations with financial security. If they screewed things up too bad. As long as their are American citizens starving in the streets and little American children dying due to lack of healthcare and food, I personally don't give a crap about another nations children."

The US attitude seems to be "if it hurts the rest of the world but benifits the US, too bad. If it is bad for the US but good for the world, we ain't going to do it. If you don't like it, tough, find another planet"

And you wonder why mad men fly planes into your buildings.

Its because of this attitude.

I will remember it when I come across one of the US servicemen currently on R&R here (5 ships just left, one sub just arrived). You can pick them out, they are the ones who can't handle a 5% alchol beer (at half US prices) after six months at sea.

I will treat them with the respect you show us. None, unless I can make a dollar from them.

howdy,
taking advantage of a drunk GI and showing him no respect while you take his money, prostitutes have been doing that since the begining of time.
Disrespecting an individual because of nationality sounds like the definition of bigot, but again in the United States that narrow minded point of view is also tolerated.

M.R.

I treat everybody the same. (Australia is too multicultural not to. I work with Polish, Canadians, Chineese, Ukrainians, Russians and Sri Lankans.)
The way I want to be treated, until they prove unworthy of my respect.

Unfortuneatly I have lost respect for most Americans because of their attitude / lack of compassion to other nations.
The potential that the US shows only serves to increase the disappointment at their selfishness.

I mean, to save a few US workers (who should be forced to live in the real world of the global economy) they are prepared to ruin many smaller nations economies (because the US can afford it).