• Broadfern@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      Yeah this is just seeing the two tiered system and assuming it’s one large group.

      The “haves” and the “have nots” live veeeery different lives.

      • Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
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        18 days ago

        l have seen it described as “The most advanced high tech society and a third world country thrown together into the same nation”.

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
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    18 days ago

    If you go back through history the greatest advancements have always come from the richest countries, they just have the resources to do those things. American athletes are bragging about how they’re the best in the world as they compete with people who lack basic equipment and have proper jobs. I remember some Olympic swimmer who had never even been in an Olympic size swimming pool before he got to the event.

    America got rich because when the rest of the Allies were fighting the Nazis they sat back and loaned resources, then spent the next 5 decades taking repayments.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      17 days ago

      Your first part is fair, but your second part is a bit misleading. We sent troops, just not until people were convinced that it was an “us” problem too. People didn’t want to get tangled up in another one of Europes wars. Much like how most of the allies also didn’t get involved until they got threatened too. Except the soviet’s, who had an alliance with them.
      It’s not like providing the materials needed to actually survive is nothing. Our entire economy was repurposed around doing so. The repayment was because a massive “European problem” contingent thought a budget neutral requirement would keep us from helping. We worked out a system where we bought long term leases on land, and they used that cash to buy weapons from us. It was a shell game.

      We got rich after the war because everyone else was rubble and we still had factories.

      • mkwt@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        We got rich after the war because everyone else was rubble and we still had factories.

        This is it. Most of the wealth* of a nation is real estate (and residential real estate is a very large fraction). Money, including gold or the like, is a very small portion of wealth. Europe’s wealth was literally burned to the ground and blown to smithereens. North America, on the other hand, kept all the wealth it had. So it became wealthier by comparison.

        *I’m talking about wealth here, not income.

      • IronBird@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        read a history book…they had to start a mass propaganda campaign across the US just to convince americans that the germans were the bad guys.

        “whats so bad about wanting to hurt blacks and jews?” - average american wasp

        • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          Whataboutism. I was just lecturing my kid on Japanese internment camps. My eyes have been open for decades. Doesn’t mean every young man didn’t sign up to kill Nazis when we joined the war. I’ve spent my life obsessed with our warts. Glad everyone else has woke up, but some of us aren’t on the extreme pendulum end anymore and can see a single redeeming fucking quality of this country. I just listened to an MLK speech this morning and he calls out the warts and talks about the dream. That’s America. Some of us are old and angry and tired enough to take a breath and love the good half of this country.

  • Baggie@lemmy.zip
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    17 days ago

    I’ve always been suspicious that America is maybe 4 or 5 countries in a trenchcoat. My source is I made it the fuck up.

  • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    cheese and diet coke

    Completely untrue.

    Americans survive on “processed cheese product” and diet coke.

  • Cort@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

    You ever read that tale of two cities?