What's bad about your country, that most people don't realize or don't know? Does it have a government that promises one, but delivers instead a dictatorship? Does the government do nothing about corruption? Is the government itself corrupt? Do they have policies that make no sense?
Please, do share with us, I'm quite interested in learning more of this. If you want to know about my motherland, you just have to check page 3 of this thread, nicho and 314 did a beautiful job at describing the situation in Serbia.
Here in Canada I would love to say how perfect our government is, but it is simply not true. The current Prime Minister is wasting our money on fighting wars in far away places instead of using it where it is needed.On top of that almost every week I'll hear about something new in the the Federal or Provincial government. For example this summer during the London 2012 Olympics the Alberta government spent $518 280 on a trip there. As bad as that is $113 000 of it was spent on UNUSED 5-star hotel rooms. It seams like you can never trust the government anymore.
stupid laws (forcing people to go against their religion) 15 trillion dollars in debt two idiots running for president who will both get us more debt a currency that is losing value fast people avoiding work and just living off the government Occupy movement people trying to get more money people making big deals out of nothing (one cop got sued because he shot a man who was charging him with a knife) Students who don't take schooling seriously, and then join the occupy movement when they aren't rich
And that, my friends, the "life sucks and everyone who try to change it sucks too" attitude. It help you change nothing, but hey, who want to change when you can call everyone stuiped?
stupid laws (forcing people to go against their religion) 15 trillion dollars in debt two idiots running for president who will both get us more debt a currency that is losing value fast people avoiding work and just living off the government Occupy movement people trying to get more money people making big deals out of nothing (one cop got sued because he shot a man who was charging him with a knife) Students who don't take schooling seriously, and then join the occupy movement when they aren't rich
Obama is repairing the damage done to the economy by the Bush administration. He inherited a mess. Yes you can if you persevere with the work you have started.
In one term, Obama increases our debt as much as Bush did in two terms.
source
that source does not give any clue for the statement you made. here is a real source. and as you can see your statement is wrong. also keep in mind that obama in the 1st year had allot of contracts going on that were made by bush. so partly of the increased debt ws still because of bush even tho obama was president. but the most importend indicator is that during obama's presidency the Trend is only improving. it hasn't changed to a lower debt yet. but atleast it is increasing less fast then under bush jr.'s controle.
I live in Canada. I can't think of a lot of bad things, other than the fact that we export too much of our oil, and that their are way too many invasive species in our ecosystems.
The US's problems are a hot topic but there are a few threads where this issue is being explored already, so let's keep them there. This thread seems to have a more international focus, if others would contribute, that is.
Australia's problems:
* Venomous politics in which the incumbents can be trusted as much as a two-headed snake (hostile change of leadership midway through term for one, and a lot of broken policy promises on another), and the opposition is spearheaded by an offensive grunt of a man who doesn't know what his party stands for, what he stands for, or what people stand for in general, so he just defaults to saying no to the government and trying to trip them up. On that note I don't know how people can stand watching Question Time in Parliament, it's worse than a primary school playground. AG's WEPR forum is a model of scholarly discourse compared to that drivel.
And an even bigger problem, as I've mentioned elsewhere, seems to be that the Australian public is going along for the ride, eager to decry a politician and vote on issues that, when one thinks about it, matter far less to Australia and to Australians than those that are being ignored.
* Despite a very active and influential medical union which knows what it's on about, every single government somehow manages to find ways to misunderstand our recommendations and do something that's either not quite right or just plain wrong. It's not all bad by a long shot but the junior doctor training network is seriously under strain because they let waaaay too many medical schools open without even considering what this would do downstream. Now these students are graduating in what we've (somewhat dramatically but erroneously) called the "intern tsunami", there's no guarantee for local, let alone international medical students that they'll get a job in Australia, because, well, there's no funding to increase training places for junior doctors in hospitals to begin with. And no guarantee for international students hurts the University economy because that means less international students applying, and let's face it...
* Grossly underfunded higher education. Universities have been pushed towards a business model that primarily depends on fee-paying international students for the bulk of their income. Don't get me wrong, the Higher Education Commonwealth Support system for local students is a fantastic idea. It cuts tuition fees from 30-50k a year to 3-10k a year (depending on the course), and there's a simple deductions system to pay it off once you graduate. But not enough is being done to protect the integrity of our public higher education system, and for a while tertiary institutions went into a panicked importing overdrive. Whether or not this is related to my next point is controversial, but it is relevant...
* ...racism. This is obviously an issue in many many countries, so this is more a description of the issues of cultural tensions in Australia. Australia is by most standards a multicultural society. It promotes harmony and equality and in most cases we do a pretty good job. However there are demographic slants in the influx of immigrants. Most recently we've had arguably race-based attacks against Indians. Before that, there was a huge race-riot between Caucasian beach-goers and Lebanese mobs at Cronulla, which highlighted a resurgence in Australia's own brand of white supremacists, who have their vociferously ignorant views on...
* A hopelessly big deal being made about our foreign policy, in particular how to manage refugees arriving by boat. Which incidentally make up only a fraction of all refugees that arrive in Australia, and that makes up only a fraction of all immigrants, because Australia, while not being the best for any particular one thing, seems to be the most liveable country in the world right now.
* The main problem with our liveability is our currency. It's monstrously strong right now, and to make matters worse local prices are ridiculously high. Today you'll pay $1.37AUD for 1L of petrol (that's about $4.90USD to the gallon), and that's actually pretty cheap as far as things go. Lunch? You'll struggle to find lunch and a drink for under 12 bucks unless you cheap out and get a Chico roll and a Coke or something. Buying a house? If you're under 30 forget it. Move back in with your parents or beg them to dip into their retirement funds to secure a deposit otherwise you'll be renting until you retire. Buying electronic goods? Buy from the US and ship it across, it's still cheaper than buying anywhere in Australia.
* Obligatory mention of our weird and wonderful wildlife. Reports of its lethality are mildly exaggerated though. Sure we've got more things that can and will kill you if you give it a chance, but they're not hard to manage, and some things that are really dangerous won't actually kill you (getting bitten by a female redback spider, for example, generally won't result in your death because we have antidote. It will however make you feel like killing yourself because it's bloody painful). I have way more problem with Melbourne's 500 varieties of pollen and the hell that is hayfever season.
Otherwise to be honest, there's no place I'd rather be than Australia. I also object to some of its backward relics of laws but things are moving along okay, we're pretty stable, I'm pretty safe, and I reckon I have a great degree of freedom to do most of the things I want and protest against things I think are wrong without some shadowy organisation coming to arrest me/beat me up/harvest my organs for being a deviant/subversive. Also Australians have fairly good karma as far as the rest of the world is concerned. And I do quite like the fact that I can pretty much eat food from just about any country of the world I could think of on any given day. Heck, the suburb I live in has everything from pub chow to Canto to Vietnamese to Japanese to Italian to Indian to Sri Lankan to Ethiopian. I'd have to hop across one suburb if I wanted Korean though.
