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Comment by Mithaldu | Hacker News Reader

As a german who has spent the past 5 years learning and constantly being surprised by how the USA differ from what i learned to know as "developed nations", i am quite glad to see this kind of article in american main stream media. It's an extremely concise, but still very accurate summary.

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As a brazilian I get the opposite effect. I get constantly surprise about how much americans take for granted.

It makes more sense when you realize a lot of us don't have what you think we take for granted. And those of us that have it try not to pay attention to how easily it could come tumbling down.

Well, your forefathers were busy stuffing people in ovens, so we had to spend a lot of money to defeat your country, rebuild, and then protect it. You can talk about the USA once Germany starts spending 4.2% of its GDP on defence versus the present 1.15%.

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/us-defense-spend...

Umm.. So much wrong with this comment. And the time German defense spending was highest was surely during the time you cite. This was also the period of America ascending rapidly on the world stage and becoming a superpower. Defense spending isn't what makes a country great to live in. The armed forces as a social welfare system isn't really ideal.

And the US didn't commit atrocities in that war? The US also rounded up people based on their ethnicity. The US also dropped not one but two nuclear bombs on Japan killing, by some estimates, a quarter million people the vast majority of which were civilians.

Additionally, half of Germany wasn't rebuilt and protected by the US.

And who cares what percent of the budget is spent on defense. A larger defense percentage means less is going to social services and other services dedicated to the betterment of society, instead of implements of war and destruction.

I'm in agreement with you. I think it should be notes that the US military does have a fairly large social welfare component, education, health etc. Somehow this is ok (its hairy chested military spending!). But social welfare in a more transparent form doesn't get through. I can't find the great thing I read on this recently, but here is the Wikipedia entry on The Hidden Welfare State. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_welfare_state

And the US didn't commit atrocities in that war?

Here we go again! I see this all the time on HN. Insinuating two things are equivalent when they are not even close. Yes the US did bad things like rounding up the Japanese and putting them in internment camps, but no, this comes nowhere close to what the Nazi regime did.

And the Nazi regime is gone ... and the US is basically the same as it was...

Germany is extra super scared about becoming Nazis again, because they were Nazis. The US has no predilections against doing the same thing again.

Can you clarify the "so we had to" part? Why did the US have to do it while other countries didn't have to do it?

(Not to mention your tone is uncalled for).

I guess the question is who else could have done it?

We're wealthy enough as a country to occupy the planet and ensure basic dignity for a few hundred million people at the same time.

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