America's problem

[GoldenBoy89]

American's have only themselves to blame for the decline. They'll point to the government to blame, but the government is made of Americans. No nation can be great with so much inner competition. We complain we're fat, but yogurt is considered a diet food because one group of Americans found it profitable to tell people. We complain we're falling behind in sciences, but many Americans are holding us back from adopting metric. We complain people are not raising their kids, but then force both parents to work. We complain about gas prices an oil wars, but have incredibly outdated infrastructure based only on cars.

Americans can only blame themselves, but since they're too busy pointing, the decline is inevitable.

Agreed. Not only is everything a competition in America, It's also a business. You can capitalize on just about anything in America. Wars, prisoners, the sick, the unhealthy, the overly-healthy, all profits to an American.

And don't get me started on the metric system!

 

[HalfoffSale]

I agree 100% about us thinking that yogurt is a diet food. I've probably seen the activia commercial a million times by now.

Why shouldn't we expect things like that though? The highest priority we have in America is toward business and capitalism. If the yogurt salesmen have enough ads to convince the population yogurt is a diet food despite being only 30g of sugar and not much else, why shouldn't they? It doesn't matter if it's highly unhealthy or flat out untrue it's a diet food, it's profitable and in line with capitalism, right? We have spent decades encouraging exactly those people to convince us it's a diet food so we buy it, can't complain now. That it harms our "greatest nation" status is irrelevant to our own beliefs.

 

[Jeffwhosoever]

Why shouldn't we expect things like that though? The highest priority we have in America is toward business and capitalism. If the yogurt salesmen have enough ads to convince the population yogurt is a diet food despite being only 30g of sugar and not much else, why shouldn't they? It doesn't matter if it's highly unhealthy or flat out untrue it's a diet food, it's profitable and in line with capitalism, right? We have spent decades encouraging exactly those people to convince us it's a diet food so we buy it, can't complain now. That it harms our "greatest nation" status is irrelevant to our own beliefs.

You don't need a pHD in nuclear physics to read the nutritional information on any food product.

 

[Thunder Peel]

So, you lament that we've turned our back on God, yet wish we could swap out our current form of humanism (faith in big government) with a different form of humanism (faith in the individual)?

Interesting.

I would rather see anyone, Christian or atheist, take responsibility for their own decisions and make their own choices instead of relying on the government to do everything for them.

 

[I Eat Pie]

Why shouldn't we expect things like that though? The highest priority we have in America is toward business and capitalism. If the yogurt salesmen have enough ads to convince the population yogurt is a diet food despite being only 30g of sugar and not much else, why shouldn't they? It doesn't matter if it's highly unhealthy or flat out untrue it's a diet food, it's profitable and in line with capitalism, right? We have spent decades encouraging exactly those people to convince us it's a diet food so we buy it, can't complain now. That it harms our "greatest nation" status is irrelevant to our own beliefs.

Well that's not the problem here. The problem is people not reading labels.

 

[HalfoffSale]

I would rather see anyone, Christian or atheist, take responsibility for their own decisions and make their own choices instead of relying on the government to do everything for them.

I see this all the time, but what choices exactly are being made for people? It's always extremely generalized.

 

[GoldenBoy89]

I would rather see anyone, Christian or atheist, take responsibility for their own decisions and make their own choices instead of relying on the government to do everything for them.

Some people, don't have a choice, they need some kind of safety net to catch them or society isn't going anywhere. The rich keep getting richer while the poor and hungry are left to die in the streets. To me, that's part of the government's job. Just like we expect them to step up and help out in a national emergency like 9/11 or Katrina or Hurricane Sandy, they should also help the scores of poor and starving individuals who call this country their home. This is just as much a part of the welfare of our society as keeping a strong military and productive economy. Social issues don't just vanish because the economy is doing well, you know...
The government has a duty to it's citizens. I ask for nothing more than for them to do their job.
Looks to me like you would prefer anarchy.

 

[HalfoffSale]

Well that's not the problem here. The problem is people not reading labels.

Because it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Yoplait for instance spends about $30 million a year in advertising telling people it's a good diet food. For reference, that's about the yearly state spending of Oklahoma. That of course doesn't include all the other yogurt companies, women's magazines, containers boasting "0 fat," etc that are also telling people it's a fantastic health food. How can we say people should "read the label" and know it's not a diet food when the very people making it are spending millions of dollars telling them it is?

 

[I Eat Pie]

Because it takes a few seconds to read a label. It's full of sugar. If people really cared about losing weight, they would eat real healthy food and exercise, not eat yogurt.

 

[dies-l]

Because it takes a few seconds to read a label. It's full of sugar. If people really cared about losing weight, they would eat real healthy food and exercise, not eat yogurt.

Yogurt is a healthy food. The problem with Yoplait-type products is that the sugar-to-yogurt ratio is a bit high. But, real yogurt is a very healthy food.

 

[Loudmouth]

About "American Greatness" -- What exactly are we supposed to be great at?

I think one thing to be proud of is our agriculture. The US is the world's top agricultural exporter. I think agriculture probably ties into our American roots and speaks across generations more than anything else. Feeding the world is something positive that we can be proud of.

 

[TLK Valentine]

I think one thing to be proud of is our agriculture. The US is the world's top agricultural exporter. I think agriculture probably ties into our American roots and speaks across generations more than anything else. Feeding the world is something positive that we can be proud of.

Now that I can agree with.

 

[HalfoffSale]

Because it takes a few seconds to read a label. It's full of sugar. If people really cared about losing weight, they would eat real healthy food and exercise, not eat yogurt.

Let me see if I follow you correctly. You're expecting someone to watch these from the makers themselves saying you'll lose weight eating it.

Andrea Rosen Yoplait Commercial - YouTube

Yoplait commercial - YouTube

Then go to the store and find these that highlight how it's fat free and a food to get fit with.

And to not believe it's a diet food?

 

[contango]

What's with the Metric thing anyway? I recall way back in first grade being told by my teacher that we had to learn both Imperial and Metric- and that we'd be going all Metric very soon. That was over thirty years ago. I'm currently back in school for a career change and I took Organic Chemistry last fall. I recall thinking that all of the chapter one homework on conversions wouldn't have existed for me if I had been taking the class in the UK. It was pointless. Metric is so much easier. The government needs to just make the switch.

As far as I can see metric just makes it easier to multiple and divide amounts by 10. If you start with 1kg and want to divide by 10 you get 100g which is nice and easy whereas if you start with 1lb and divide by 10 you get 45.4g which doesn't work so well. But if you divide 1lb by 16 you get 1oz whereas dividing 1kg by 16 you get 62.5g. So it really comes down to what you're expecting to do.

Adding and subtracting can be easier as well, but since computers do so much of the mathematics even that isn't a huge deal. I switch between metric and imperial as needed whether I'm dealing with metres and yards or fractions of a millimetre. Where tolerances are concerned it is easier to work out that 3mm +/- 0.2mm means I need to be between 2.8mm and 3.2mm, than it is to work out that 1/8" +/- 0.008" means I need to be between 0.117 and 0.133 but once the initial calculation is done it's really no different.

There's also little benefit in "going metric" if you do it the half-baked way like we did in the UK. So now instead of something being "2lb" it's listed as "907g", in other words it's still 2lb but quoted in metric instead.

That line made me giggle

But that was a good post. I used to live in America, and it's a wonderful country, of which you should all be very proud.

Two caveats: (i) it's not the only wonderful country (ii) there's still plenty of room for improvement

Actually, a third point: believing that God favours your country over those of his other children is clearly very silly

I've spent a lot of time in very rural parts of America and really like it there. In the more remote parts of the US I get the impression that the overbearing hand of Nanny State is more likely to leave people alone. Certainly in the more remote parts of the US the impression I get is that people are less likely to have ever left the country (many don't even leave their home state), the notion that the American way is the only valid way isn't as universal as one might think, and people are perfectly willing to accept that things could be done better. Naturally people have different ideas as to what "better" means, but I haven't come across very many people who show any signs of believing that the US is perfect in every way and a role model for other nations in evey way.

I agree that it's silly to assume the American way is God's way and therefore must be right.

 

[FreeinChrist]

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