There is no way the average well educated American understands what the European or Scandanavian model is. These systems are complicated moving targets and documented in a foreign language.
Americans are arguing over what they imagine the model to be, and have probably gotten it wrong.
And then what does well-educated mean?
I would agree. It's similar to the lack of deep knowledge of public health systems in other countries, which are typically understood as slogans.
There's also the unwritten parts of a 'Scandinavian Model' (or whoever). These are monocultures with their own logic and behavior.
America is a monoculture too, to non-racialists. The differences between Americans can be attributed to sub-region and class/income - not race
I think there's a fallacy at play - not sure which one it is, whereby a person sees a lot of nuance, variation and detail in the minutiae of what they are familiar with, but the unfamiliar is painted in very broad strokes, lacking nuance, and based on surface-level understanding.
> There is no way the average well educated American understands what the European or Scandanavian model is.
Understanding its relative performance is orthogonal to understanding how it generates that performance, so that’s not really even the outline of a rebuttal.
> These systems are complicated moving targets and documented in a foreign language.
There's plenty of documentation of pretty much every significant world politico-economic system in English.
Coincidentally, I haven't ever managed to find anything on how the Chinese actually operate. I'd be very interested to know what they've done - for all that I don't like their approach to freedom they did engineer one of the (if not simply 'the') greatest economic miracles of history.
Love or hate them, there is something to learn from in China. They seem to be fairly tight-lipped on the details of what. Nobody in the western media seems to care.
Seeing reporting from Nordic political issues in US-based media; they often get it wrong. Sometimes a little bit wrong. Often a very skewed incomplete image.
That’s true of US political issues, too. A “well educated American” is both aware of this and is educated on issues beyond transitory immediate events by sources beyond just the news media.
Same with gun violence, which affects mostly black americans. And healthcare. Etc.
Either all of this is an extraordinary coincidence, or there in fact is a significant fraction of americans that are motivated by an antipathy for black people. An interesting start is to see who's funding all of that privatized politics (such as NRA) and what motivates them. If you've never looked into this, hold on to your hat.
And that fraction is probably bigger than you expect. Everyone thinks their side is not racist. Gun control advocates never talk about banning .22 and .25 pistols, even though that is what really kills a lot of people. But most of those people are black. Instead, gun control advocates want to go after AR-15s. It's like they don't want to win.
That makes sense, though? It is far easier to conceal a handgun than any kind of rifle, and [to a close approximation] all guns are semi-automatic at most. A rifle may pack more punch, but I'd be more afraid of someone packing a Glock 17 (especially if they brought along a Glock 18 magazine).
In any case, the point I was trying to make is one of intent. We have stats which tell us where the low-hanging fruit is on the issue, but nobody seems interested in that.
I'd say that a significant part of Americans are simply indifferent. That can be easily confused for ill will.
America is no longer a de jure segregated society. America is generally meritocratic, and with the right combination of intelligence, hard work, and luck, people of all types, races and creeds can succeed and do well. I believe that that is orthogonal to my comment above.
> Ok, not sure why you brought up black people here.
Because while historically racism has taken many forms in this country, against and by many groups, over many shifting definitions of race, and with many political implications, historically, many of the most politically influential racist policies were motivated by racism along the black/white divide. But you are right, it is not, and has never been, just limited to these two "races". Again, please reference the Lee Atwater quote below.
I have no idea why you had to mix race into this, but there are many working-class white americans fscked by american retirement policies. Also many well-off black people. I see a lot of american and canadian race-related stuff in the media (mostly social, eg. reddit), and the current movements remind me of the former racist movements, but with races reversed... so still racist. [0-3].
[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vermont-to-give-m... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v... [2] https://scholar.harvard.edu/bgsa/black-commencement [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/usda-issued-billions-sub...
FWIW: I completely agree with you that racism as a political force is counter-productive and harms all races significantly. I don't believe that changes my point.
I mixed race into it, because this is the historical reason why America has many social policies that appear to be lackluster compared to similar European plans.
I'm having a hard time find the quote in google (is it just me, or has google gotten significantly worse the last few years?). But there is a quote I'm going to paraphrase, from what I believe was a chief legislative strategist of Nixon's whitehouse, but I could be wrong on the exact identity of the individual. It goes, roughly, like this:
"So it starts out in the 50s by saying you're going to put the niggers in their place. You can get elected on that platform. But that starts being unacceptable in the 1960s, so you have to change your messaging. So instead of talking about race, you start talking about the inner city and forced busing. By the 70s even that is becoming unacceptable, so you start talking about crime in the inner city, and cutting welfare. Fast forward to today, and what you are having is a completely economic political discussion. There is no discussion of race whatsoever. Its amazing how far removed our discussion has gotten. But make no mistake, the heart of the contention is the discussion of race, and preferential treatment of the races. And everyone involved in the discussion is completely aware of that fact."
> It has become, for liberals and leftists enraged by the way Republicans never suffer the consequences for turning electoral politics into a cesspool, a kind of smoking gun. The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:
> You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...
People are generally happy to tax themselves for the benefit of the in-group, and continue to oppose helping the out-group.
Optimistic me continues to believe that society's notions of in-group continues to expand. By fits and starts, including the cycles of backlash.
FWIW, I highly recommend Robert Wright's book Nonzero. Helped transmute me into an optimist, despite everything.
Citation fucking needed.
Or a 6 minute one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTDGdKaMDhQ
TL; DW: the flip side of the American/Protestant work ethic which says "Work hard and you'll surely succeed" is that then you'd have to logically view that the people who are failing/have failed in life are lazy. The reality is it's mostly luck, good or bad, that make you a billionaire or living in a van at 80. At least this logic is common among people who say "We don't want a welfare state, that's basically state-approved theft of my money by welfare queens.".
On the topic of status, I can see why racists are threatened by a more equal society: it would mean the black family would be just well-off as them, and it would suck to not feel superior to "those lazy people".
I guess this isn't much of a citation...
Such a citation could be a link to a poll or something.
You made countless other claims I disagree with such as "But a significant minority of the population wants a WORSE life for the black population." (where I doubt the "signifant" part) but it's considered poor form to put a citation needed after every sentence so I'm going after what I think is the most objectionable claim that maligns 160+ million people. Even if I do think your black and white (do east asian americans not exist?), oppressor and oppressed viewpoint is demonstrably false (though with more effort than you or I can spare now).
So the idealistic approach is that "sure, everyone should have a better life". The practical approach is that "I have to pay from my own pocket for some lazies have a better life". And when you put it that way it suddenly looks a lot like "the average person doesn't want a better life for all".
Frankly, it's unlikely there is such a citation, but that doesn't mean OP is wrong - just consider whether there's some class of people you feel negatively about (billionaires? homeless? immigrants? republicans? democrats? criminals? violent criminals? etc) and then ask yourself the question "do I want THEIR lives to be better?"
And if your answer is yes, then ask yourself "am I willing to sacrifice any of my own wealth or comfort to make that happen?"
And if your answer is yes again, then ask yourself "do I think the average American would say yes to the first two questions?"
For example, I can say with all honesty that I don't feel the lives of American billionaires need to be "better" in the abstract - they're doing fine, and they'll continue to be fine regardless of what I think or do. In fact, I want their lives to be worse - insofar as I believe they should contribute more of their wealth to the common cause, and I agree with the argument that less wealth is "worse" than more wealth in most ways.
So, while if there was a poll that had asked a representative slice of the American populace "do you want a better life for all?" sure, most people might say yes. But with a more specific question, for example "do you support the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?" fifty-five percent say "yes, the death penalty is acceptable" - which is apparently the LOWEST level in fifty years! So clearly there is at least one class of people (murderers) for whom it is the majority viewpoint that their lives should not only be worse, but ended entirely. No doubt others could be found.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/312929/record-low-say-death-pen...