To Make America Great Again, We Need to Leave the Country

You both realize you're only emphasizing one of the main reasons why the US educations system isn't well regarded?

I'm not sure a system where the president gets elected by ignoring Texas, California, New York, New England etc is really a better system than a nationwide popular vote.

Just today I was reading an interview with a Belgian journalist/writer, Bjorn Soenens, who travelled through America and wrote a boook about it's current state, on all levels. His conclusions were pretty much the same as in this article, although I'd also say 'darker'. Some claims he made, which I cannot verify but would love to hear comments about [I have the impression he's rather pessimistic and mainly lifts out the bad things; there's only a couple of good things he has to say about America. But even then, it's not exactly good news]:

- lots of people still believing strongly in the American Dream, thinking 'one day I'll be rich'. Resulting in hardly any complaints when the taxes are lowered for the rich poeple. Resulting in an even bigger gap between poor and rich, and a middle class that is evaporating

- it's a miracle there hasn't been a revolution. Occupy Wall Street came close, but now they went underground

- people living in their cars

- 'Reaganomics': low taxes, low influence of the government, maximum freedom for private initiative. Which basically resulted in the crisis. Another example: New Orleans during Katrina. Since Reagan the government didn't watch the dikes anymore nor built new ones, seems there were also holes in them, in the spirit that everyone would took ther own initiative when things went bad. Resulting in a disaster.

- the media only report loudly on being pro or contra something. Not about the fact that there are always more poor people for instance [this is definitely differen in Europe]

- universities like Harvard will remain good because the elite puts money in them, but the rest of the education system is a mess, resulting in students that can hardly read and write [really?]

- a lot of Americans will either not believe claims like these, or be shocked

- Obama is actually doing very well, but gets the wind ahead from all areas, esp Tea Party, which is a shame

I have never lived abroad, but everything you've said is obvious to me, because I interact with and learn about the World outside my country and have a natural tendency to question anything that politicians or people in power have to say.

People don't need to live abroad to come to these conclusions. I suspect that you're probably mistaken that living abroad did this to you, and that it would have happened anyway. It's what happens to (most) intelligent people as they age and mature.

EDIT: Re vending machines on the street, I visited Connecticut once and where I stayed, there were boxes on the street that you can put money in and take a paper out of. I'm from the UK and if you had that here, it would be fine in a lot of places, but in some places, people would set fire to them for fun. Re car crime, on the same visit I noticed that people were leaving their car windows open in a car park (it was very hot). Like hell would I risk that in this country, but I'm sure there are plenty of places where it would be fine. Every country has their share of good and bad areas. Anecdotes are fairly useless here.

>When it had been broken into Ive been trained to blame myself for leaving something visible or parking too near the wrong neighborhood. But living abroad I learned some countries don't have these issues.

Granted there are definitely some countries with lower crime rates, but for most property theft the US is actually ranked pretty well. For auto theft, which is the closest comparable crime I can find to stereo theft with available data, the US ranks below Sweden, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland. And for residential burglaries we rank below England, Scotland, Canada, the Netherlands, and Australia.

Also, as long as we are using anecdotal evidence, out of everyone I know (well enough to know this), there are maybe half a dozen who have been robbed 4 of those have been while on vacation in Europe.