Learning from other countries

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With all this talk of completely reexamining our views and ways of doing things, I think we can discuss looking to other countries, how they do things, to determine what is best for us, instead of always trying to reinvent the wheel.

The US has some really bad practices that cause it to stand apart from the rest of at least the developed world. These practices include:

No universal health care - Other developed countries guarantee this, but the US has struggled to do the same. Despite the lack of a universal health care system, costs for medical care in the US are much higher than they are in countries with universal health care, and the quality of our health care is at best not any better than that of those countries. Perhaps we can look at other developed countries and get ideas for our system from them?

Citizenship-based taxation - No other developed country practices this; and outside of that, only Eritrea is the other country to practice this system. This is where U.S. citizens must pay tax on all their income every year, and must file burdensome paperwork every year, no matter how long they've lived abroad. Perhaps we can look at other countries and see how they do taxation, to see if maybe there's a better way?

Lack of metrication - This hurts us more than we know. The use of a welter of measurement units like we do now increases the risk for error and prevents Americans from being able to compete with other countries' workers due to our lack of experience with using metric. Virtually the whole rest of the world has gone metric. Perhaps we can look to other countries and see how they completed the changeover so we can do it as efficiently and effectively as possible?

These are just some ideas, but I think it's time to get off our high horse and realize that maybe, just maybe, somebody else has a better way of doing something.

Trump's slogan was, "Make America great again." That means currently, it isn't. What can we do to improve?

What you said is valid.

Even metrification, since it would then make measurements universal.

But I still, personally, like Fahrenheit and inches-foots-yards-miles. Avoirdupois weights and measures.

Well the American media could certainly learn from other countries, since they seem to have forgotten what their role is and how to perform it. Your role, media, is to keep us informed, and leave it to us to decide what we do with that information, not be a vehicle to push your respective agendas on the masses. You need to be in tune with what interests and concerns the public and reporting on it, not what interests and concerns you. Get back to the basics of impersonal, unemotional, unbias reporting.

Practically impossible.

The act of choosing which stories constitute 'news' is, in itself, a form of bias.

Yes, unbias within the bounds of human beings and what is generally expected of news reporting.

I was taught the metric system in the American public school system, back in Junior High School.
Back then, they claimed going metric was the wave of the future, and that we'd need it to conduct international business.
Fast forward that to now ... in my field of work, I sometimes use both the English and metric systems of measurement.
So I'm glad I learned it,
and am also glad the English measurement system is still around.
Anyways, we in America learned the English system of measurement from England, right?

For example, Trump is obviously the top topic right now, and even if there wasn't such a controversial president, a new president would probably still be the top topic just for being new and the shifts in policy they would be bringing.

This temporary travel ban that Trump rolled out. Just report on the facts of it and then move on if there are no further developments. Don't tell us how we should feel about it. And the same when it got curtailed.

People will be free when they don't watch news or read newspapers.

Until then, it probably doesn't matter what is reported.

There's always a crisis somewhere.

That's the thing. Most conversations consist of people talking about what the news talks about.

And most like to believe they are 'free thinkers'. They'll talk about Trump until the news talks about the next 'topic' (which translates as 'when the audience retention ratings for Trump stories start to drop').

It can be seen on this forum. Most discuss what the news tell them is important.


The majority will be able to tell you what the latest is with Trump.

...just ask them what they thought of the sunset last Tuesday...

Yep...we certainly did learn the Imperial System from England!

Then England went Metric---Traitors! LOL

It's more fun when both systems are used side-by-side.

But if it's something like carpentry or something, I believe it should be one or the other.

I didn't think much of the sunset last Tuesday because there was so much cloud cover. Last Tuesday was a grey, fine drizzly/sleety, overcast day in Northeast Ohio. Today was much the same, only much more rain and a lot warmer.

Honestly, I was more into sunsets years ago when I drove out to a certain spot to take photos of them every day after work and even on weekends. Now that my favorite sunset-watching place has a new owner, I've stopped going. And with the winter weather not providing as much snow and ice as I like these past several years, I've taken up painting.

I can talk about art plenty ... only some might find it boring.

It depends on whether said carpentry project is local or global.

Yep. That's true.

Yes, very good

Perhaps there isn't much entertainment in the old sunsets!

Anybody see filmmaker Michael Moore's film 'Where to Invade Next?' Moore's film was made just before refugees from N. Africa and Syria began migrating to Europe.

The examples presented in 'Where to Invade Next?' are an excellent addition to this discussion thread. A few of the examples are public education in Finland, labor rights in Italy, and Germany, free college education in Slovenia, and Iceland's models for economic stability; partially learned from the 2008 financial crisis.

Mention was made as to how Germany "owned up," by admitting to their horrible history by reminding present, and future generations of the Holocaust. I liked how Moore asked why the United States has not "owned up" to both it's past, and present horrors?

Towards the end of the film, mention was made of how the United States helped Europe recover from WWII; while many viewers of the film were naturally left asking, why, can't the U.S even learn "a fraction" of the examples that Europe has benefitted over the last several decades?

No place is perfect. Everybody finds themselves "jumping through hoops" as a part of everyday life. After seeing enough content on life in other Democratic countries e.g., 'House Hunters International' sometimes offers examples of Americans adapting to "very different" cultural norms, even in the most westernized countries.

Anyways, after seeing all of Moore's films, and features, it's both good (and heartening) to be inspired by a "modern-day Mark Twain" preaching to the choir!

We should learn from the Dutch about flood control and dikes.