I can't even begin to comprehend how bad your sources of information are if you think the levels of freedom in the U.S. and China are more closely comparable than those of the U.S. and Australia.
it's more about the perception than actual levels of freedom,
the US is a country that tortures, detains people from all over the world indefinitely without trial in an offshore location, bails out bankers while promoting austerity for everyone else, spies on people worldwide, starts wars all over the world, uses remotely controlled killing machines
and most of that isn't even new, the veil of the american dream has been ripped apart.
what is most depressing is that in the next election cycle, the american people will just run back to the republicans instead of finally giving up on the charade that are political parties
>"bails out bankers while promoting austerity for everyone else"
How does that work exactly? Do banks operate in a vacuum in the economy?
It's my understanding that social program spending (and hence the deficit) over the recession was at all time highs. "Main Street" got its share of the bail out, as it should have.
Social program spending goes up when unemployment goes up, because unemployed/underemployed people are the ones who need unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc. When you suddenly have a lot of unemployed/underemployed people, you'll have a spike in spending for those programs. But that doesn't mean any of those people are getting more than they used to.
Yep. Australia has no interest in conflict w/ the US. Australia even has a poor record of standing up for its own citizens when persecuted abroad. They are a tiny nation with a vast amount of land and a big reliance on sea-trade. Not to mention they are a "western" resource-rich country surrounded by billions of people in surrounding Asian countries.
