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How americans view the US (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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[–] 34 points 11 months ago (1 child)

I remember 20 years ago an adult friend of mine (I'm getting old) told me "you can only start a business in the US", and that's why she wanted to stay here. Showing her businesses based from elsewhere was not persuasive.

People believe weird things about the US.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    A year and some time ago, I knew of an Argentinian guy who was so psyched about moving to the US. He had been waiting years here in Mexico to get his papers in order so he could migrate up to the US. It was literally the last week before he packed, so he started getting excited and half-started to brag.

    I told him I had lived there for many years and that it wasn't what it's cracked up to be. There are many political issues to be aware of that he wouldn't be able to understand yet, but that would surface once he's there.

    He got so pissed. He started telling me that only people who immigrated illegally would have those problems. That he had family there and they were all doing fine, and that I was being ridiculous. Like, alright, dude, my bad for giving unsolicited advice. Best of luck with ICE.

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    • [–] 41 points 11 months ago

    The US today is reminiscent of the late Qing dynasty. Extremely corrupt, falling apart at the seams, and yet so prideful and set in its ways that it's utterly unwilling to adapt or learn from other countries or cultures, even moderate reforms are regarded as borderline treasonous.

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    [–] 17 points 11 months ago

    Is this recent? Didn't see a date. Also, it would be interesting to see the upper income level higher, 100k in a major city isn't what it used to be.

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    [–] 45 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Proof that the vast majority of Americans are seriously delusional. Or at least exist in a propaganda bubble (which I guess is kinda the same thing).

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  • [+] 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago

    No. What are you on about. These figures quite clearly shows a majority of Americans, over 50 percent, belives the US either stands above or is equal to civilised countries. The majority of Americans aren't "rich, old, conservative republican men". You are as delusional as the rest of Americans.

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    • [+] 23 points 11 months ago (2 children)
    [deleted]
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    • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    So basically the majority seems reasonable on paper, so why Usa end up with such a government every single time (albeit with better or worse puppet masters)

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  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago

    Because under the current system the major parties pick candidates based on 'first past the post' primaries. This means that the small percent of the population that votes in primaries has an outsized effect on the outcome. In areas the GOP controls, the usual winning candidate is the most extreme Right winger, because the older folks who vote in every election tend to be more conservative.

    Similarly, in Dem areas, the older folks tend to vote more, but they'll pick a bland middle of the roader who they think will be 'safe.'

    Any Dem Presidential candidate since 1960 could swap programs with Jimmy Carter, while the GOP has gone from 'peace candidate' Richard Nixon to Donald Trump.

    The solution is to get more young people involved in the primaries, but the problem is that young people today have less time and money to devote to politics. In 1960, someone could live well with just one part time job; today it take three incomes to keep two people comfortable.

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    • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Further confirming that Republicans/conservatives are living in their own delusional version of the world.

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    More like "Americans are living in their own delusional world".

    It would be interesting to analyze those numbers by "has never left the north american continent" and "has experienced countries on other continents".

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Eh, I disagree. I'm an American that has never had the resources to visit another country. I know many people like me that would agree with what I'm about to say. My lack of physical travel is maybe a small roadblock to understanding how other places operate, but we still live in an age of absurdly high access to information.

    The issue isn't that Americans aren't traveling and experiencing other places to learn about alternative ways of thinking and governance. The issue is that many Americans (conservatives being overrepresented) have no drive to question American exceptionalist propaganda or their own worldviews. The information is there, but it doesn't do any good if a person intentionally avoids learning it.

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    • [–] -3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Oh yeah, I remember being asked about this! /s

    They didn't ask me, and I'm guessing they didn't ask you, either. So, who DID they ask? Was it random, or was it "random"? Was it readers of a particular magazine or website, or consumers of a particular product?

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  • [–] 33 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I'm assuming you know how surveys work? If you're genuinely interested in their data sampling methodology, you can easily find it on the website of the company that conducted the survey (who are named on the infographic).

    I'm not making any big claims about YouGov and their reliability or freedom from bias, but this isn't just some random unsourced poll, so props to whoever made the infographic for bothering to include a source.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I know how surveys work. They ask a few people and make it sound like they asked everyone. I understand there's a science to it, but if everyone wasn't asked, it's a guess at best.

    Let me put it another way: my opinion didn't count enough to ask me. Yours didn't either. So how do they decide who isn't worth asking, and how would the data change if they did ask those people?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    A survey or poll is different from a vote. You're right that unless we ask every single person in a group we don't know precisely how that entire group would answer. But this irrelevant, being able to establish patterns in smaller sample groups and extended them to larger population is one of the the cornerstone of science and knowledge.

    An engineer needs to know how much weight a specific size and shape of lumber can safely take. They can't test the indvidual beam to breaking point and still use it. So they test other similar sized pieces of wood, under similar conditions, and generalise. This can be done well, or done poorly, depending on how well they can isolate confounding effects.

    So with a survey, if I just ask 100 people I know, it's would be a decent survey of the beliefs of my social circle, but it would be a poor survey of national beliefs, because my friends are not a balanced representative sample of the wider population. That's why most polling / surveying uses methods to try and achieve a sample that is actually representative. When done well, these ensure the survey respondents correspond to the demographics of a population (gender, education, religion, location, health, etc).

    Obviously this approach has its limitations, and can be done poorly, but there's a bunch of research and evidence for what methods help achieve more accurate results. Saying "this poll can't be accurate because they didn't ask me" is like saying "I don't know if the sun will rise tomorrow". You're right, we won't know for sure until we actually see it rise, but we can infer from past events and confidently predict the likely outcome.

    If you want to say "this survey isn't accurate because it uses an older demographic model that has been shown to be ineffective at representing contemporary attitudal choices" or "this survey is inaccurate because it only controls for age, race and gender, but didn't account for patterns of social media usage which are highly relevant" that's fine, that's engaging with the methodology. But if the problem is "they didn't ask everyone so it's wrong" it really seems like you don't know how surveys works.

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