A thing which pisses me off about Americans, even liberal ones: whenever an impartial and respected organisation publishes a report which suggests the US may not be the leading global temple of human rights-y love, an awful lot of people (even the non-wingnuts) instantly dive in to slag off the report’s authors and criticise the countries ranked above the US.
I take it you’ve seen this then?
Yes. I like to point it out to Rethuglican idiots whenever they claim we’re living under quasi-commie economic repression…
Ha, I’d like to see us much further down that list!
Shit, I mean the economic freedom list, not the press freedom one!
Yeah, in fact, I’m pissed off that the report singles out the US for complaint, and doesn’t mention the UK. Why are we lower that the US?
By the way, I’m disturbed that we’re ranked lower than Hong Kong.
Re: the Heritage Report. Is there any reason to take seriously a league table of economic freedom (either the league table or the concept of economic freedom) if it finds that Botswana is higher than France?
"Britain’s privatized pension system, which allows workers to invest their own Social Security taxes, is in sharp contrast to the underfunded retirement systems of other European countries"
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/country.cfm?id=UnitedKingdom
Erm, where did they get that from? Oi Inland Revenue can I get all my NI contributions moved over to my personal pension plan? Hello? Anyone there?
I think that what they’re referring to here is SERPS; you can contract out of it and move some of your NI contributions into either a company scheme or a personal pension plan. It was this innovation of the Thatcher years that set the scene for "Ye Great Pension Mis-selling Scandal of Merrie England" which was such a fucking great millstone round the neck of the industry for most of the last decade.
hangon, SERPS is called the "State Second Pension" these days but the broad historical sweep is right.
ffs a bunch of blog commentators have griped about a report, and raised some (fairly relevant looking) questions. Like that would only happen in the arrogant US.
No the SERPS rebate is 0.5-1% of the 11% I currently pay, the implication is that I could have the whole 11% paid into a pension of my choosing which is not the case…
" an awful lot of people (even the non-wingnuts) instantly dive in to slag off the report’s authors and criticise the countries ranked above the US"
"An awful lot"? How many, exactly? If you actually analyse the comments, only one person (of unspecified nationality) does that. Two others non-abusively raise legitimate questions about the organisation conducting the study – hardly "slagging it off."
I’m sure that there are many examples of the kind of behaviour en masse that you describe; unfortunately, this isn’t one of them. In your haste to "slag off" Americans, you’ve overplayed your hand here – better luck next time.
Incidentally, with regard to this:
"<I>Yes. I like to point it out to Rethuglican idiots whenever they claim we’re living under quasi-commie economic repression…</I>"
It seems not to have occurred to John that one could, with equal validity, point out the survey’s implication that the US is hardly the stereotypical bastion of unregulated capitalist greed, at least as compared to the UK. Or perhaps it has, but he prefers not to mention it.