What Country (Besides the One You Live In) Do You Respect the Most?

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just goes to show it minimum wages in denmark is 87kr. with the dollar being worth around 5.5kr/dollor and me a student getting 95kr for my silly shop job. i get around 17-18$ pr hour. even after our much higher taxes (50% but i can earn 3600 each months that isn't taxed) i earn more then your states minimum wages on mine and thats after i have paid my taxes. and my health insurance, school money and so forth are paid through the taxes

 

@Faraaz, Im an Aussie by birth, and I know that Australia certainly has had its fair share of genocide. We never learnt about it at school when I was a kid in the mid 80's, but now I think kids do learn about the horrible Australian history. They treated the natives like animals. In Tasmania they white settlers lined up and walked across the island shooting every native person they could find. The government stole native babies and made white couples adopt them. Australia has had a notorious past when it comes to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

And to make things worse, the government wont apologize...they think they did nothing wrong.

 

Hmm, interesting topic. One question though, why does the US have the largest immagration in almost any way you want to measure it, but yet is looked at so disdainfully?

Personally, I wouldn't live anywhere else unless I was kicked out, but if that happened I would probably beg for asylum in Australia. It isn't so much an issue of politics for me, but one of freedom and weather. I just couldn't stand most of the rest of the world for one of those 2 reasons.

 

Why do people think that Australia is a land with freedom? It's nothing more than a little US clone now...

 

Probably for the same reason that many people consider USA the land with great freedom.

I would not mind living in some states in the US as long as I had a nice job with enough income to get by. However there are plenty of countries I would rather choose if I was put in a roulette which determined to which income class I would be born.

 

I guess it would depend on how you define freedom. My definition of freedom is synonymous with liberty. to borrow from Webster

In my opinion socialism is a direct contradiction to freedom as it removes much of my freedoms of choice, with the classic example being medical care, but there are many other freedoms that have to be relinquished in the name of socialism. For this reason I will have more respect for nations that value individualism and freedom over those nations who value cultures of entitlements and engage in direct wealth redistribution via fiat.

 

@BA - I still find it hillarious your use of 'Newfoundland' when referring to the the rebellion of the American colonies and their subsequent secession from the British Empire.

Seeing as it's about 1300km between St. John's and Boston (the closest 'American' population centre involved in the Revolution) a distance akin to that between London and SEVILLE, SPAIN.

No WONDER Cornwallis lost if 6000 men were sent to the migratory fishing grounds of Newfoundland!

Basically Nfld never really had any sort of revolt until 1800; nineteen Irish soldiers mutineed - almost definitely in feeling for the failed uprising in Wexford - and ended up on the run for a period of a few weeks before all but two were rounded up.^1 Doesn't really compare, does it?

(We're a dour, fatalistic lot, to be honest - This tends to explain why...)


Footnote: 1. though it DOES make me wonder about the subsequent fates of the Sgt. Kelly and James Murphy...

 

Haha, sorry, for some reason I had the idea in my head that that's what the European settlers / traders / explorers called the American mainland that they discovered. I don't know why I had that idea my head... !

 

One of the really funny similarities between conservatives and leftists is that they can both quote upon freedom and use the word to define their ideas. The only difference being how that freedom is implemented. Personally I find the word freedom to be irrelevant when comparing democratic states. They all have the freedom of choice to choose its leaders and policy so I really don't get what would make one more free than the other.

 

"Anzacs" also fought against Ottoman Empire in WWI with English.


Edit:

Can you please explain it, especially that medical care part?

 

Sure! In most socialized medicine plans I have seen you are dependent upon the government to determine your level of care. They decide what doctors you see and what procedures you are eligible and when you are eligible to receive them. In the US (for the moment) you have the freedom to see any Dr. you want at any time (though you do have to pay for it), and you do not have the government telling you that you will have to wait 6 months for a critical procedure as can occur in a socialized system. There are many Canadians who come to the US for medical care, especially critical things like heart bypasses or transplants.

As a funny note, if we were under Hillary Clinton's health care plan it would be possible that she would be a widow as President Clinton was given a heart bypass operation within hours of the Dr's deciding he needed one. Of course that might have been her plan!

I prefer to invest for my own retirement and pay for my own medical care rather than have a higher tax rate and have those things taken care of for my by the government...but then I am a paraniod individual who has no trust in the Government.

Sorry, know I am . If anyone wants to travel down this well beaten path feel free to start a thread and I will be happy to participate if you would like!

 

@Darkwolf: Yes, I understand what you are trying to say. Waiting for months for a critical operation is really very nasty. But I think you "assume" everyone has enough money to pay to medical care. What if you don't have enough money? It isn't a problem in socialist approaches to medical care; moreover, I don't think a well-planned socialist medical care would make you wait for it.

 

To answer the original question: none.

 

It's been some time since my last post here. And when I came back, I read this post filled with people that admire country for their military achievements. There're so many things to say about that. Sigh.
Anyways, my vote goes to Japan. I barely know anything about it, but I'm starting Japanese this summer, cause I love the sound of it, so I'd so much like to be there just to learn faster. The downside is the number of people living there, but I guess I can withstand that. Also, I think we know so little about Asia in general, that getting familiar with it would help us (Occidental people) improve a lot (for instance, and this is way off topic, I always wonder in which labor conditions many toys were made. I guess the answer would be really depressing).
That's all.
PD: talking about incomes, I certainly do not want to tell you how much I earn now. Those numbers you guys mention are so astronomic for us here.

 

@Nataraja: Yes, I realise that they did participate in genocide...to be honest, it completely slipped my mind. But honestly?? In today's world, I find it hard to find a country which is as respectable as Australia.

Well, I've lived there for three years while I was doing my Bachelor's degree so I liked it there. And a major point which swung it for me is that they are not as anti-Islam as the US or the UK...atleast, not openly towards Muslims during my time there...

 

yeah,. and i havent heared of islams bombing underground rail stations in australia

 

Your point is??

 

i thought my reply to this had a clear point, the people of aus have no reason to worry about islam, the people of the UK have a healthy reason for anti islamic sentiment - because they kill us

im sure that if there were bombings in aus there would be plenty of anti islamic sentiment

 

Excuse me for being callous, but drink driving has killed way more people than the muslim terrorists in the UK, and I don't see a strong anti-pub sentiment emerging.

Following your reasoning, you should also condone all the killings of British troops by those they were trying to conquer in the years of the Empire, shouldn't you? After all, the British were killing their people too. Or are the British exempt from that simple 'because they kill us' rule of yours?


The people of the UK should have a healthy reason for being anti Al-Qaeda. They planned the bombings in their twisted parody of Jyhad, not Islam. I would say that there are many more muslims living in the UK that are against the bombings than those who are in favour.

The fact that there are people in the world gullible enough to follow blindly the orders of a self-proclaimed religious leader is not the fault of the religion they choose. How many crazed 'holy warriors' do you think would join the Pope, should he cracked up and decided to call a Crusade against the Arab world? Quite a number, I bet.

 

1) Canada!! They put up with USA and are the only country to have defeated us! Besides their precriptions are cheaper then ours.

2) Finland and Norway. Don't hit the news much. Seem pretty stable and stay out of major trouble.

3) From ancient times. Rome. I would pick the Northlanders (Vikings) but they weren't a country.