Last week, I gave a few good reasons to get the hell out of America. Originally, I’d intended to keep the list down to five, but why stop there? There are almost as many reasons to expatriate as there are awesome facts about Chuck Norris. Here’s a few more:
1. You’ll have longer vacations… in MALLORCA.
One of my friends recently went on a vacation. She drove to Fredericksburg, Texas. You know where Fredericksburg is? Me either, because it sucks. Meanwhile, my friends in Germany get to take kickass vacations to Hungary and Mallorca.
Not only that, but they get to take those kickass vacations for longer. I don’t know about you, but I’d like longer vacations in Mallorca. Or maybe France. Hell, anywhere but Fredericksburg, Texas.
2. Your food will be better, but you won’t be fat.
Let’s face it, American food is terrible. The only reason you can stand the vile taste of a Big Mac is because you probably haven’t had frikadellen, or a delicious doner kebap.
Doner kebap – the most awesome Turkish food that they sell on every damn street corner in Europe.
Not only is the food awesome, but you won’t get fat eating it, either. America is the fattest country in the world, and our food doesn’t even taste very good. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather eat refried camel nuts than a hot dog.
3. You’ll have a much better chance of being on equal footing with your neighbors.
Income is distributed much more evenly in many developed nations than here in the USA. Here, the top one percent of the nation hold nearly 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. Meanwhile, other countries in Europe (as well as Canada) tend to have more even pay – in other words, you won’t drive through some grimy ghetto full of poor people, turn a corner, and run into Al Gore’s mansion. Just check out this list. Now, I realize all you die-hard free market capitalists probably don’t think this is a good thing, but you’re wrong. Get over it.
4. Europe will kick you out for being too damn religious.
Alright, so I realize I already covered the lack of strong religious beliefs in Europe, but just to get the point across, consider the fact that France has actually barred someone from entering their country because she was too damn religious. Meanwhile, my sister’s Darwin fish got her car keyed in the Bible belt. If only we could kick the Baptists out of this country, we might be alright. Added benefit: less incest.
5. You’ll be a happier person!
What better way to judge a country than by how happy its citizens are? The World Map of Happiness is an attempt by British researchers to assess just how happy people are around the world. They’ve found that happiness is contingent on a few things – the level of people below the poverty line, the prevalence of disease, whether healthcare is nationalized and available, etc. Another interesting note is that the study was done as a result of a national sentiment in England that the government should be just as concerned with creating happiness as wealth.
The USA falls farther down the list than most Americans would believe, trailing behind many of the socialized Scandinavian nations, Canada – hell, even the United Arab Emirates. I never thought I’d say this, but boy, I’d love to be as happy as those cats in the UAE.
Conclusion
One should keep in mind that the USA may not be at the bottom of the list on all these items. Sure, we might fare a little better on the Map of Happiness than Germany because of severe immigration problems; yes, we may have lower gas prices than Europe or Canada; absolutely, Denmark has a higher crime rate than we do. But taken altogether, America’s ranking on the ten items discussed in this and last week’s post is pretty dismal. If you live in a crappy house, you move out when you can; why do we treat which country we choose to live in any different?
Does this mean you should just up and ditch America if you truly love the country of your birth? No. But it does mean we should strive as a nation to make it better. Until America stands up and, like Britain’s people did, demand that their government start worrying about Gross Domestic Well-being as well as Gross Domestic Product, the grass truly will always be greener on the other side.
So if you’re patient, and tenacious, and willing to rally the nation behind you, I commend you. Stick it out and make this place suck just a little bit less. Me? I’m not very patient, so I think I might just bail, instead.
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You’re absolutely right about the religion. Nothing has caused more misery and death throughout human history than that mental illness called religion.
“You’re absolutely right about the religion. Nothing has caused more misery and death throughout human history than that mental illness called religion.”
Really? There are these things called uh…diseases and they have killed a lot.
http://www.who.int/features/qa/18/en/index.html
32.7 million people die per year from just the top 12.
not to mention the vast pandemics and plagues of the ancient world killing hundreds of millions. And in just one decade Malaria kills roughly 20 million people…6% of the U.S. population. I have even heard estimates that say that half the people who have ever lived have died of Malaria.
@Andrew Camp,
Religion leads people to demonize and vilify science. Science cures diseases. Ergo, religion is in cahoots with disease.
Seriously though, while religion may not be the number one cause of death, you must admit that religious influences have contributed to overpopulation, interfered with science education, and obstructed scientific and technological progress for thousands of years, thus exacerbating problems with diseases and mitigating attempts to treat and cure them.
@Kavan Wolfe
Canadians have socialized health care. Canadian socialized health care is criticized by U.S. politicians. Ergo, Canada is why the U.S. doesn’t have socialized health care.
I will admit that religious influences have contributed to the problems you listed. However religion was a link between early neolithic peoples that bonded them together to form armies and as a result develop better weapons, which can be lent to tools, better transportation, which can be lent to agriculture and economy, and have launched great advances in engineering such as buildings of temples, churches, and many structures whose sole purpose was spiritual. While during the dark ages the corrupt catholic church condemned any competing ideas did exemplify precisely the kind of set backs to science and technology that you talked about this is not true of religion in general. For example, I have yet to meet a Jainist or Taoist who wanted any of the goals of the Catholic church.
And for that matter, religion alone is not limited to a delay in the development of advanced technologies. Legalism undoubtedly added a layer of bureaucracy to many societies that may have contributed more to the art of knowledge than they already have (i.e. China) and you would have to either condemn all forms of structured thinking or blame specific religions to allow your argument to not be closed minded and scapegoating religion.
In fact religion is responsible for perhaps the most important achievement in human history. Writing! Our modern alphabet was taken from Germanic peoples who got it from the Greeks via the Romans. Greeks got the idea for a simple alphabet, one that has a combination of letters to form words and not one that has a symbol for every word or idea, from the Phoneticians. The Phoneticians had taken the complex ideographic language of cuneiform from religious scribes. These religious scribes collected money or other contributions from the religious followers and needed a way to record that so they invented writing. With a new medium of communication the ability for human knowledge grew exponentially.
Short version:
Religion over all, despite certain groups, has made a positive contribution to society and the real problems arise when people use it as a vessel to gain power. This is true of any system of organization.
@Andrew
I think you should watch Pat Condell’s videos. He feels the same way i do about this cancer called religion.
@poop
Ahh, so I take it that you have decided to cast any arguments that defend religion and make any sense whatsoever in favor of staying a closed-minded bigot. You take the hope for world where people get along and ignore differences in personal beliefs for the greater good of scientific achievement. I have seen Mr. Condell’s videos about angry religious peoples and say that you are just as bad. You are an angry atheist and seem not to understand that since you, atheists, are a minority and by painting the core moral values of billions of people you are making all atheists seem like radicals that hold religious peoples to lower levels much as the ethnocentric Europeans did to Africans, and nearly all non-European culture hundreds of years ago.
I hope that wasn’t too personal. If I wanted it to be personal I would have said ruder things and would have thrown in the phrase
“Do me a favor kid, leave me out of the suicide note.”
@poop, still can’t get over that name! But I agree, I think religion and blind faith have caused a lot of mankind’s big bloopers.
@Andrew, so you don’t have a problem with strong faith in your country. I can understand that. I personally believe religion to be the cause of a lot of the world’s ills – and I think it lends itself more to corruption than other systems, since it is almost always supported by the idea that one should just have faith, rather than reason, which kills critical thought and progress. But more than that, I just find hearing and seeing people’s constant displays of faith annoying. There are eight other reasons to expatriate listed. I never imagined everyone would find all of these things appealing. I used good food as a reason as well, but I imagine there’s a lot of folks out there who would rather have a hot dog than a bratwurst… but would still like to have nationalized healthcare. So, hey, be as faithful as you like, there are churches in Germany, too (but you may have to pay a tax to the church in lieu of a donation in the plate).
@ Riley
I take no offense to what you are saying. In fact in the modern era I think that it is possible for dogmatic religions do more harm than good. I do, however, take offense to phrases like
“cancer called religion” and claims that place religion worse than genocide.
However, if you were to say that there is no god or higher power then you would have to admit that religion formed naturally and that it was corrupted purely from mankind so it is likely that the corruption could have expressed itself through other intermediaries. I do think that the majority or religion is bullshit but I also see that respect should be shown. I think that religion should be personal, however I don’t call it a cancer. I have no qualms with Atheism, just radical anti-religious Atheism. I am sure you, as Atheists, would have problems with someone who said all Atheists are a scourge upon society (as some have). And I think that myself, as an United States citizen, would take offense at somebody calling me stupid and worthless based on stereotypes take from our “President”