Those who live outside of the US, what's something Americans aren't ready to hear?

The fuel tax isn't enough to cover the damage to the environment and quality of life, though. That's why taxes are that high in many other places. Same way cigarettes are taxed to help discourage use and to help cover the increased healthcare costs it puts on everyone

In NZ it's roughly $2.50NZD per litre minimum, or $5.31USD per gallon. This is roughly 50% tax (it's how we pay for roads, plus is subject to sales tax), so a bit over $2USD per gallon at the moment excluding tax.

Is it really $3 a gallon plus tax in the US right now?

I compare it to how I thought mobile phone calls in the US were super cheap, then found out people pay to receive calls, which was super weird to me. Where I live, my whole life it has never been the case that a normal residential connection would pay to receive a call, mobile or not.

Differences in how we do things make differences appear more than they are.

Any price lower than that required to compensate for all the negative externalities of both driving and using fossil fuels to do it still counts as subsidized.

Fuel tax in the U.S. doesn't even come close to paying for the road system. The federal fuel tax covers less than half of federal transportation spending. I don't know about all of the states, but Wisconsin's fuel tax covers only about 2/3 of the road spending. And, local streets get built with local property and income taxes.

Roads aren't the only societal cost of cars.

The fuel tax doesn't even cover the damage your car does to the road.

What state do you live in that the road system is funded adequately? I never hear someone comment positively about the general state of road conditions.

The fuel tax in other countries primarily exists to make people use less fuel in order to save the world from global warming.

But without the responsabilities I bet.

I dunno, i understand it pretty well. Lack of education, lead paint/gasoline, nationalism, fascism, racism, sexism, economic disparity, lack of healthcare to deal with neural degeneracy common in trump supporters, and finally lower borth rates among the more educated. America is a shithole, and has been for the past 40 years at least. Until we finally grow a spine and start "adjusting", things are going to continue getting worse until were all dead and the olligarchs own everything. Then theyll move on to fucking the rest of the world (harder than they already are)

I wonder how differently the last US election would have played out if Murdoch had died before campaign season

Going to have a big party when he finally goes and joins Reagan in hell

Less than half apparently..

And Chicago, and New York, and...

The original question was not "what bad thing are Americans guilty of?"

istanbul

That's wild, from Europe Istanbul is quite well known

And us "shithole countries" receive some immigrants from USA that put to shame the worst we could send back, only they call themselves expatriates.

See the last part of the second paragraph for that. Victims of the empire paradoxically tend to want to immigrate to the empire believing they'll be better off there than in the country that empire targeted.

Funny, though, that there have been working methods of reducing the number of guns in civilized countries in the past.

But somehow every gun-toting American is totally convinced that reducing the amount of guns on the road is technically impossible,

Better shoot him too, before he shoots you.

“God bless America”? Imagine what that would look like.

Not America.

Scandinavia.

Oh really? I would like to know which city is that so I can confirm, but I seriously doubt you have most of that list since that's regulated on state or federal level.

Also we have freedom of speech in Europe, but you obviously can't incite violence, the same is true in the US, going online and trying to get people to bomb a building filled with gays or immigrants is hate speech and will get you arrested in most civilized countries.

Have you just come here from 9gag?

The thing is that the US also does not have 100% free speech.

You can absolutely get arrested in the US for shouting "FIRE!" In a crowded area.

Regarding punishment for violent crimes seeming low in Europe, that is mainly due to us focusing on rehabilitation rather than revenge. However change is comming, we are moving to longer punishments.

If I got to decide, we would have a system where we focus on rehab for the first X times a person commits a crime, when it has been shown that the person does not want to change, then they are put in containment prisons, they are less nice, and focus on containment firstly, rehab secondly.

Well at least you're good at....... losing wars, I dunno

Yeah the US only became....

... The US.

Because of the World Wars.

Europe, the then-seat of every worldwide empire, was killing itself and dragging all of Asia and Africa down with them.

The Americas in general were "safe". Isolated from this chaos. Every country in the New World got a boost from the wars.

.... But the US had a nation that was a. Fully Independent b. Relatively Stable and c. Rich in resources -- So they basically got a decade-and-change of time to develop themselves while everyone who had previosly been rich and powerful was getting fucked, and by the time the dust settled, they were the top dogs just because they were lucky.

True, but that isn't really very unique to the US

We've been converting that over to latinos, still shit pay but less chaining people to things.

Yeah, and the right side of our government is now trying to cover up and bury that entire segment of our history. It's absolutely insane what they are doing.

So are there any good ones? Learning Spanish and giving back to the community? Just curious. That’s what I plan to do when I move out of here, learn the language and do volunteer work, etc.

Can you even call our local companies "local", they're all assembled and built in mexico anyways.

To offer a counter argument. Right on red the concept isn't stupid, its stupid to just sit there when there's not a car in sight.

The drivers, shitty driver tests and 0 enforcement is all dumb.

It's supposed to be treated like a stop sign, you stop, look, and go when safe. Not roll through at max speed. People also don't seem to know that a red arrow equals a no-turn on red sign.

I've been seeing electronic no-turn on red signs that can turn on/off with the light cycle. So if the opposite lane has the left green, the sign tells you not to turn on red. One would hope they're integrated into the cross walks too, (not that everyone uses those either).

I think the us has the worse road tests, mine was just some suburbs with 0 merges, no highways, a couple stops signs and maybe a light. Pretty much anyone driving for a day could have passed that thing, and that's how we end up with the bullshit like "the fast cruise lane (pass lane)" "right roll on red" "the merger has right away" "merge on highway 20miles(32kmh) slower than traffic" "blinker optional" "blinker on only when half way through turn or merge" "break before blinker" "wave of death on two lane roads" the list could go on and on....

Honestly right on red is so stupid.

Everything you wrote after this sentence told me that people are stupid, not necessarily the right itself. It makes a lot of sense, I'd like to have it in the EU.

right away

Maybe it was autocowreckt but the phrase is "right of way".

Not nearly as bad as left on green BUT yielding to oncoming traffic.

In the US I believed it's legal to pass people from the right if they are driving to your left. That's illegal here, you can only pass from the left.

It's also illegal to hog a lane, you must always use the right most lane when it's free, unless you're passing.

How else are you supposed to deal with 4-way stops? In my state it's first arrival goes first, however if two cars arrive at the same time the car on the right proceeds first.

By always respecting the second rule. There are no 4-way stops here. If an intersection does not have signs the vehicle on the right always has priority. No exceptions.

It's not that complicated, and I'm not sure what's wrong with it

The problem is that people have different views on who came first but there are no different views on where right is. If there are any disputes there can be no arguments on who came 20 milliseconds earlier, instead you can just look at who had the right of way.

"check your local laws"

Lol sorry what? It's even worse than I thought 😂

I think I have seen this and been confused by it. Does it mean that nobody should assume they have right of way? For example, having right of way isn't necessarily an excuse for being in an accident because you didn't give way to someone driving badly.

If a person didn't yield at a sign saying they should, and caused an accident as a result, they are demonstrably at fault.

When roads meet, whoever comes out of the street to your right has right of way. Signs can be put up to overrule this basic rule, for example when small side roads connect to a main road, but if for some reason no signs are posted, whoever comes out of that small road has right of way. Clear and simple.

As an American, I can think of a few things we shouldn't have done. The whole debacle in Iraq comes to mind. A few trillion dollars pissed away. Thousands of American lives lost. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead. All for Iraq just to end up a puppet state of Iran. We've also destabilized the international system, particularly the trade system, that we built up in the first place. We've repeatedly violated our own trade agreements so many times it's not even funny anymore. How could we have used this unique historical opportunity for the betterment of the world? Here's one idea.

In an ideal world, the US would have used its hyperpower status to truly advance democracy around the world. We would have taken this opportunity to once and for all finally drive the last nail in the coffin of global authoritarianism and dictatorship. In our timeline, we looked past the CCP's human rights abuses and let China into the global trade system. We did this because our corporations got greedy and wanted to make bank in the Chinese market. We gave in to their greed at the expense of global human rights and our own long term national security. Now we've turned the government of China (which has morphed into some horrible amalgamation of communism and fascism) into the most capable manufacturing power on the planet. It didn't have to be this way. We could have told China, and everyone else. "Democracy first, then trade. We're only interested in trading with and enriching fellow free nations."

After the Cold War ended, the US was ascendant. The economic power of us and our allies was unmatched. The US, Europe, and allies dominated the world economically and militarily. Imagine in a different timeline if we had used that power to peacefully advance democracy worldwide. Imagine if after the Cold War, the US international policy became:

"We allied with dictatorships when necessary during the Cold War to contain the USSR. That is no longer needed. From now on, we're happy to open up markets and trade with anyone, as long as they are a liberal democracy. You want to join the global economy and get rich? Give your people freedom. Petty dictatorships can remain poor and undeveloped, thus limiting the amount of damage they can cause outside their borders. We'll give food and medical supplies to nations in crisis, even those ruled by dictators. But full economic integration will only be done with fellow democracies. We will not trade with tyrants."

That is the kind of visionary approach that a hyperpower like the US could have taken to really make the world better. You don't need to invade countries to have an influence on them. And this really does represent a lost opportunity. The time immediately after the fall of the USSR was the moment when the free and democratic countries were at the absolute peak of their economic power. But since we allowed China into the WTO and opened up trade with them, we have created an industrial juggernaut that is ruled by an absolute dictatorship.

At the end of the Cold War, the democracies could have banded together and used their utter dominance of the global economy to push for further democratization around the world. There just wasn't anyone else to trade with for many advanced consumer and industrial goods. But now? That kind of strategy wouldn't work. If all the democracies tomorrow insisted on trading only with other democracies, the various dictatorships around the world can now just keep trading with China.

TL:DR: After the fall of the USSR, democracy as a global force was at the absolute historic peak of its power, both economically and militarily. If the US and allies had really brought their full economic and cultural power to bear, they could have attempted a last final push to ensure democracy reigned everywhere. Even without invading anyone, we could have used that immense economic power to at least attempt to throw down the last of the dictators and to bring democracy to every man, woman, and child on the planet. Instead, we tried to line our own pockets and ended up creating a monster by turning communist China into the workshop of the world.

Maybe France...

Avoid military action without the expressed endorsement of the UN Security Council, for example, bombing of Yugoslavia.

Well, I mean they are all fucked up super-powers now. My main point was that there was a period of like 20+ years where the USA literally ruled the world but didn't do anything with it.

The main thing Americans need to hear but aren't ready for: you aren't better than India or China as super powers, in fact, you're worse than China.

super powers care about ideology and power,

I think its just power. No one gives a crap what the peasants think. Why should they? Our elections are stage managed so we never have choice. We dont fund winning elections either-- corporations do. What do they have to fear from us?

In either New York or Los Angeles, because those are the only places that exist, clearly

Any day now right.