robzo100 said:
I'll add one small thing to this as an American. Why do we have to be #1 in everything? Why does the world, and our people, always expect us to be the leader in every given situation? It's always felt like an unrealistic burden. If China wants to be the leader on this then go ahead, I wish them luck! They'll create energy-safe/efficient technologies and then can capitalize off it (I just hope they don't cry wolf and respect Karma when people start stealing their technologies with no regard to their patents).
...Some of my fellow "citizens" will says things like "oh my gosh! America is #22 on Math/Science scores worldwide?! Japan and Denmark are head!??!" Good for Japan and Denmark! (ficticious examples) |
America doesn't need to be #1 in everything, but they've always been one of the most modern, civilised and educated countries, so of course people want to keep it like that.
It's not just the US by the way, but in a lot of countries. Here in Belgium, we also want to be at least in the top 10 for a lot of things. For example, last week I read a news article about the global raking of gay rights. It said that we could do more to improve gay rights, since we went from the 2nd to the 4th place.
