Class-ridden is precisely the thing that holds you back as a society. Americans of English descent (and one side of my own family came here from south of Norwich in the seventeenth century) in considerable measure came to America to escape that restraint. Americans are breakers of restraints. The English will draw a line and stay behind it; for Americans, lines are things to cross. This makes America a bit disorderly, but it is also the key to our successes.

The more you turn towards libertarian ways and away from the welfare state, the more you will succeed, even unto having wealth like you did in the days of empire, and on a better moral basis to boot. In my view, there's nothing here to not like.

I don't look for you to turn into a full-on republic vice a constitutional monarchy because overall you'd rather be a monarchy, being in that habit. (The ones out of the habit moved over here.) Having hit upon a way to have a national symbol in the person of a Sovereign, and a constitution however unwritten it be, you've got a good thing going, really.

"By what right do you and your ilk decide what is right for the world?" Oh, the same right by which you did, for the same reasons, and quite frankly in the identical spirit: you are of our ilk thereby. The just plain English idea that limited government is good government (and that government is best that governs least) is the core idea that we Americans try and spread. It is presently most successful in the lands of English speech, but since all other inhabited lands are peopled by, well, people, we suspect they can do every bit as well, as long as the slavemakers can't spoil things. In too many countries the slavemakers do. What an abomination.

And in my viewthere's plenty to like and plenty to dislike.

The only right we had, was the right borne of power. We had the ships, the guns and the political will. That didn't make it right that we did what we did. Personally, I think we did a lot of damage and stunted a lot of cultures that had their own parallel path of development to follow. We also left behind several power-vacuums, a multitude of civil wars and innumerable grievances which continued to play out long after we retreated back behind our garden hedge:P

Also, whilst we may have spouted about our governance being 'for the good of the world' and whilst we may have claimed that we were 'civilising' the nations we took under our aegis, the reality was very different. In reality, we were acting entirely in self-interest, and didn't really believe the 'natives' could ever truly become civilised....not really proper people you see? What we in fact did, was tramp about the world, rape their resources, install ourselves as rulers and then redraw their maps and borders with gay abandon.

Yes, we used to have that attitude. Then we realised that without some kind of safeguards many of our people were lving in poverty. We also realised that without some kind of proscription against it, many employers were abusing their role and their workers were remaining poor. We also realised that, if left to private enterprise many of the things we needed as a nation were taking second place to the desire to make profit.

In short, we changed our minds and decided that government has a role and a duty to ensure that all our people are provided for at least with the basics of survival.

Hmmm... according statistics your present guvmint is the largest civil government, measured in budgetary terms, in history. Population has doubled since 1930, but government spending is 27 times higher than in 1930.

.......hang on a minute..... This one got past me.
In what way do you consider that we are being held back? I think we do quite well overall. We have our problems (as do you) we have some people out of work (as do you) we have arguments about immigration (as do you).

How's your national debt lookin these days? Lookin forward to the upcoming power struggle with China?

Britain is no longer an empire. Good. We don't need to be an Empire.. We're quite happy being able to more or less provide a reasonable standard of living to most of our citizens.

So, how are we 'held back'?

What I'm wondering is why anyone would think the US is a classless society. Of course, I mean in a socially hierarchical way and not in a way which would suggest that citizens of the US have no class. ;)

Oh, we arn't classless by any stretch of the imagination. The closest thing I would say to that is that we have very good mobility between classes.

That does not mean "be just like us". It is not the same thing.

That's ok. It's only when you start agreeing with UG that we order the electroshock and thorazine.:rolleyes:

The US is class oriented and becoming more so, but only if class is defined by money. There are more and more services being offered to the wealthy starting with the upper middle class, including special handling through airport security. This of course is acceptable in the private sector. It's when public services are affected that I begin to get annoyed.

9th and Rich, you both make very good points. In my country we still have the remnants of 'cultural' class distinctions that were a centuries in the making. That said, those distinctions have evaporated more over the last twenty years than in preivious centuries. What we have now, is something more akin to the American 'class system' which is based more on income than anything else.

There is still a cultural element though and this can be seen in your culture too. It is however a more modern cultural element. You have 'Trailer trash', we have 'Chavs'. These are our culturally lower class icons.

Out of interest, what areas are considered 'public service'?

{Taking time to consider my reply}

It works if you're a human, yes. America is chiefly inhabited by these.

What I'm saying is that we did it, and therefore so can you.


The government bureaucracies in charge of doing something about poverty have been known to redefine poverty upward. Thus they impress the gullible about how necessary they are. American poverty bears a surprising resemblance to Central and South American middle class.

Your thinking, Dana, is being very heavily colored by welfare-statism. The problem with the welfare state, and this is a problem that is sickening the entire EU economy, is that it raises the cost of employment far too much to allow the economic growth the EU's populations could actually accomplish given their head. It's basically the same effect as overtaxing, and often takes that exact form. The welfare state attempts to offer very extensive guarantees of some kind of economic maintenance. I have become suspicious of such guarantees, for guarantees suck the life out of opportunity. Guarantees are the stuff of totalitarianism. A free market, with as little as possible of the parasitic drag of taxation clinging to it, makes for unequal distributions of wealth, but there is a lot more wealth to go around in general, and everyone gets to cut their own piece of the pie, as their ability, fortune, and ethics allow. Bad ethics eventually lead to bad fortune, even in the freest of markets. For a nasty example of such, take drug trafficking: no ethics, and all takeovers are about as hostile as hostile is likely to get -- bang bang bang, bada-bing, bada-boom.

The free marketplace requires you to grow your skills, and it feels very good when you've got it mastered. Little by little if need be, every day that you do something better than you did, you're making yourself a better life. To set Marx on his head: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need -- and money is how the score is kept."

As long a we espouse property rights, their property rights, which I can only assume you can't fathom. The same way you can't fathom that there are a whole lot of people in the world that don't share your view of utopia...don't want you to impose it on them.
That's because the neocons can't make a buck off them. The neocons have several agendas, but concern for other peoples freedoms doesn't even make the list.
We only have classes if you're looking down. We have different levels of wealth, but do you really think poor people feel that wealthier people are an upper class? No, just wealthier. :headshake

You're quite missing my point that we want friendlies, not unfriendlies, owning those resources.

So we'll take it away from them and give it to someone we like. Property rights are only for "friendlies". :rolleyes:

I'd say you're missing a word or two there. How about "everybody deserves a fair opportunity to succeed and live well". Not everyone puts in the effort or is willing to put off gratification in order to succeed down the road. Education is here for those who want it, and every educated, ambitious, and reasonable person enjoys a decent level of success.