Democracy in America

That's a great way to spin it. How on earth did we manage to give the bottom 40% of our population a whopping 0.25% of the wealth in this country? That's practically giving away the farm! Back-patting all around, gents, now who is up for a scotch?

U.B. is often neglected, but some good things originate in that cold wasteland.

(Note: I'm not quite ready to say the ideas in this post are good, it was more like yelling "Hey, that's where I went!" if they were to mention it on the television.)

The comparison to other former slaveholding countries is really interesting. It had never occurred to me to make that distinction. I would think that this would be a interesting control for many other areas of comparing the US and Europe: educational attainment, incarcertion rates, and on and on. Should we really be wringing our hands so much about where we trail Europe when we are so far ahead of more similarly situated countries? Really makes me think, great post.

America: Still blaming social problems on slavery after all these years.

Alternatively, We're #1 (for equality relative to Latin America)

One would imagine that 150 years was enough to allow institutions and preferences to change.

Eh, tad self-absorbed, eh? Just go at the problems we face. Comparisons with others are incidental.

One presumes that, if studied carefully, we'd find we're not even exceptional in believing that we're exceptional.

Eric, #1 in vanity?

Let me restate your statistics on freedom:

The only countries as free as America, by any of these measures, are not even one third as large.

That is good reason for America to call itself "the beacon of freedom unto the world".

"But that’s precisely the point—the overriding factor determining inequality in New World countries is the white or mestizo percentage of the population. When you control for that, the U.S. actually has very low inequality."

To rephrase: "White people are really good at taking money from brown people. This is statistical fact. Besides that though, America has very low inequality."

Sure, it has roots in history, and Finland is ethnically homogenous, but that's no excuse. If all new world countries are so institutionally racist that "white people just have a lot more money" is a fundamental constant, we deserve to stay at the bottom, not have our egos assuaged by being "surprisingly tall" out of a group of midgets.

Is Mr. Soren's argument that America is no longer exceptional or is he serious about this?

So...why would freedom and inequality be something valuable to measure?

There are other values a society or the world might want to measure, correct? The Chinese value the "harmonious society." Why is the world so frequently measured and compared by freedom (liberal democracy) and inequality (the "American Dream")???

Because the United States was the first country to break away from colonial oppression and embolden oppressed people around the world to claim their rights to liberal democracy and economic freedom. THAT is what American exceptionalism is. Geez. It's an idea. That's how you get all the illogical extensions that American is "blessed by God" or the "greatest, best nation on Earth" crapola, if I may use a technical term.

If you want to say the statistics prove America hasn't done anything exceptional lately, I can accept it, but its still the same tired, well sure America ended the Cold War, but what has it done LATELY argument.

I always thought that American Exceptionalism referred to our Missionary zeal in spreading "Democracy" and "Freedom" to benighted barbarians.

And, how did Turkey know that I muddled through UB; applied to the place before Rockefeller took it over.

Let me reprase. Some have poor reading comprehension.

Mr. Soren's is using modern economic stats to prove historical events didn't happen. It makes no sense.

Not accounting for cultural differences is one of my greatest annoyances. We see it most often in the health care and education debates. I suspect that if you control for obesity, car accidents, and homicide, Americans may have longer life expectancies than Europeans. Control for immigration and race, and American students actually outperform Europeans.

This doesn't mean we don't have to worry about health care and education but it does mean we may need to look elsewhere for solutions. How do we reduce obesity? How do we improve the academic performance of African Americans?

Soren's point isn't that the U.S. isn't unequal. His point is that a solid proportion of our citizenry was enslaved for many generations. When you rob a family of its rights as human beings for generations, it's really tough for future generations of that family to "catch up" to other families who have accumulated wealth for generations.

How you interpret that fact is up to you. Right wingers will interpret it as stating that being not doing so bad on income inequality, given our history, and liberals should be less whiny.

My interpretation is that the analysis confirms my long-held belief that the effects of slavery are enduring in all societies. THEREFORE, I would argue that this paper argues for continued affirmative action. Even with 40 years of affirmative action ("reverse discrimination" to some) that may seem to some "like forever," this paper illustrates that 200+ years of slavery and oppression are not undone by a *modest* boost in the job and academic prospects of disadvantaged minorities for less than 50 years.

Although, now that there's a larger generation of rich and middle class African-Americans, I'd like to see affirmative action switch from being race-based to income-based (Barack Obama's children don't need a boost when it comes to their future careers).

It'd allow disadvantaged minorities to continue to receive most of the benefits so long as they're worse-off than other groups, but with the advantage of helping poor whites as well (which would remove some of the political opposition I feel).

But we were only half a slave-owning country, so we should only have half the effects.

The problem with the term 'American Exceptionalism' is one of context. It is a historical term and does not (and should not be) transferred to a contemporary narrative.

Just as Manifest Destiny was a particularly American result of the American 'creation story' so too was the case for Exceptionalism (mid you ones doesn't hear the term 'Manifest Destiny' bandied about much outside its historical context anymore).

MD was the divinely instigated plan for a young America to accrue the territories west of the Mississippi and become that 'shining city on the hill', an example to all of western civilisation and to claim the moral leadership of that civilisation, in effect for America to stand apart and above, if not lead the world.

American Exceptionaism was the foundation for Manifest Destiny.

AE is claim that the American Revolution was sui generis and unleashed a correspondingly unique set of forces which resulted in the creation of a United States by a group of Founders who were flawless in their vision and inspired in their work to create a peerless constitution. AE is the precept that due to the times, the confluence of historical forces at work, and the inherent justness of the American purpose, that this process could never be, and can never be repeated or copied...it is thus exceptional in every way.

So efforts to ignore the historicity and transpose the idea of American Exceptionalism as to justify or account for the modern behaviour, intent, and motivations of the United States is entirely disingenuous and fallacious.

American Exeptionalism is to the United States what the virgin birth and Bethlehem are to christianity....

Its the birth story, the inception of the nation.
Its also the mythology, the fairytale, the fable, the imagining that created the self perpetuating American legend of itself.

Why it is still debated today borders on the delusional.

" ...the United States, unlike most other countries in the New World, made it over the hump of  the Kuznets curve."

Err. Dosn't the Kuznets curve illustrate how inequality decreases as average incomes increase?

And hasn't the gini coefficient been climbing over recent decades? Back to where it was at its apex, circa the Great Depression?

Is WW's interpretation that the official Kuznets curve is abbreviated and in actuality is a never-ending sine wave which we're climbing back up? Or that we've been struggling -- exceptionally hard -- to reverse course up the curve of inequality?

Or was the point that at least we made it over the hump once, even though we're in the process of unmaking over the hump currently?

Not sure what to make of it...

Proof that America, while being a great nation, is not inherently exceptional:

www.peopleofwalmart.com