webdiplomacy.net

@Octavious: I live in The Netherlands.

Maybe not third world, but definitely underworld.

Lol. I live at a river, so still above sea level. But many of us do indeed live below see level. Surely not third world.

sea level that is.

Was he talking about his own backyard there? I cannot imagine why anyone would like to move to a country ruled by clowns and where people choose to put clowns in charge.

Funny peterlund but there are ten million alleged persons desperate to stay. If only they thought of the US as you do. That would solve the illegal immigration problem.

Only two countries scored top of all the 2017 freedom indices for political rights, civil liberties, economic freedom, and press freedom. They were New Zealand and Switzerland.

Tell me again how I want to move to the US because I prefer freedom.

The US is a free nation, which is a fact backed up by a great number of these indices. That a handful of countries may rank a slightly freer (for want of a better word" doesn't change that fact. Amusingly enough, Trump's "shithole" countries rank rather badly on these indices. Almost as if Trump was right about them.

Nebraska checking in.

INterestingly, the Democracy Index has US at 20th as a "flawed democracy" behind every western European country and all of Scandinavia but Italy, Belgium and Portugal. The US also ranks 21 in the Cato index behind mostly European countries.

This notion that the US is a particularly free country is dependent on not actually knowing anythign about other countries

The US ranks 43 in press freedom per Reporters without borders, also behind much of Europe

Pennsylvania here.

Only beating Western countries like Portugal, Italy, and the infamous quasi dictatorship of Belgium? You'd better behave yourselves, mothers tell their children across the globe, or we'll send you on a city break to Brussels!

All that proves is that the US falls happily within the category of civilised modern nations. Room for improvement, certainly, but clearly free.

You seem free enough to run your mouth Ogion.

Of course the real oppression in the US comes from the left who is trying to stage a political coup and overturn an American election. Something that even the US Civil War could not do. The left has no ideas just peddles fear and loathing.

And I repeat. If the US is so bad, why do millions risk death and deprivation to come here.

Perhaps we should keep the undocumented and deport all of the leftists.

Capt Brad, nobody says US is bad. And you may have noticed that millions try to go to Europe too, risking their lives. US is not bad, it is even very good.
But Northern Europe is, according to all kinds of measures, better.
Life expectancy, happiness, availability and affordability of healthcare, freedom, lower diffences in wealth and income, financial protection against bad luck etc. are all better.

That comes at the price of higher taxes, but most Europeans are fine with that. Universal health care for example is supported by even the conservative and even more rightwing parties.

I agree with Octavious that most differences between many countries are relatively small. If you score #1 or #25 in a world ranking of all of the measures I menioned, you are lucky to live in there. It would be refreshing though when people could recognize that their own country is not always number one or even in the top five of the world and that other countries do things better.
Noone of them should call the less fortunate countries s***holes.

don't scandinavian countries lead the world in suicides?

Look to Denmark, the country that routinely leads the world in happiness surveys per-capita income is also a leader in categories like alcoholism, murder (highest rate in Western Europe), suicide and antidepressant usage.
Finland ranks third in global gun ownership behind only America and Yemen; has the highest murder rate in western Europe, and by far the highest suicide rate in the Nordic countries. The Finns are epic Friday-night bingers and alcohol is now the leading cause of death.

Worldwide surveys have consistently ranked the Scandinavian countries — with their generous family-leave policies, low crime, free health care, rich economies and, yes, high income taxes — as the happiest places on earth. But this happiness has always been accompanied by a paradox: the happiest countries also seem to have the highest suicide rates.