Despite what Canada’s nation hating extreme right would have you believe.

      • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        100%, otherwise it would be #1.

        I mean, just yesterday there was an article from a French media company about how the US economy and GDP is now 80% larger than Europe’s. Link

        The US is really high on this list though specifically due to economic reasons. Not social ones. Although strangely enough there is a bit of an odd section about the US being more adaptable to change than Canada or any other country, which I find kind of strange. Also, the US always ranks high because of the advanced medicine, technology and education. Whether it’s accessible to all or not is really mostly irrelevant to these surveys.

          • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Historically what made a country great was its gold reserves and its military might… so like… 90% there? That said I agree that corporations are not what we want and that economic growth should be made to grow at a maintained level rather than unrealistic growth.

            • PaganDude@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              Historically, what made countries great was their ability to provide rising standards of living to its citizens. That often results in large gold reserves and military might, but plenty of places with gold and bullets were bad places to live.

              But the rich wasn’t us to believe those metrics, so we can ignore how living standards are dropping, indicating that Capitalism has failed to provide a better lifestyle.

            • Victor Villas@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              what made a country great was its gold reserves and its military might

              So by that logic, Russia and China are right there with USA as the greatest countries? Interesting.

              • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Oh man, that was a good laugh! I’d consider Ukraine more with us on the military might considering the ass they’re kicking. Switzerland can match us on the gold/economic, but I’m not sure how confident I’d be it isn’t stolen, nazi, or Russian (but I can’t say the same about the US’ either). China will probably come close to matching our military might if only because of their population advantage. India is going to be a massive player here shortly (militarily speaking), if not already.

                The problem, and I know it’s what people don’t like to hear, is that the US quite literally cannot be beaten economically or militarily. Seriously, read that article I linked, it’s incredible the economic output the US generates. France has the same economy size as Idaho, a state famous for its potatoes and nothing else.

                The best military logistics in the world and logistics is what wins wars. The biggest and most powerful economy in the world, even China and Germany have a stuttering economy (and pre-covid I would have pegged them as being on par). The biggest influence regarding culture, the next closest would maybe be Britain, but when it’s English media the US will still dominate. China has some cultural sway, but only within their own borders and even they consume American media like crazy.

                It’s hard to say who out there could play a role in being as powerful as the US, and an empire decline is bound to happen. It’s not immune.

                I would however put the early Soviet Union for sure up there with the US. They had some amazing technological innovations. The only problem was that a communist government got into an economic war with a capitalist government and that was never going to work well. Slow and steady growth like the Cubans is more the way to do it.