Rembrandt Q. Einstein
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It's very difficult to say. As far as natural beauty goes, they are fairly even.
The US has size. Although that means it takes a long time to get around, it also gives it a massive military and economic advantage over all the other developed nations. The US takes the points here.
Americans have more spending money because the cost of living is less over there, but English people usually get more time off and have a less competitive attitude towards work. After all, what's the point of having a big house and a big car if you spend all day in a stuffy little office. Overall, I'd say this one is another draw.
England has more equal wealth distribution; there are not as many extremely rich people, but poor people here are much better of than they are in the US. The minimum wage in Britain is twice as high as in most parts of the US, and very few people are so poor that they live in trailer parks and need food stamps. Some parts of the US (such as the area where the Williams sisters grew up) are like third-world countries. So England takes the points there.
England (and I am assuming that you mean England rather than the UK here, they mean two different things, and England is wealthier than the UK as a whole), has a slightly better education system overall, i.e. British people can locate their own country on a map of the world, and don't ask questions like "wow, did you name your country after New England?". But both leave a lot to be desired when compared to schools in other parts of Northern Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region. Except for immigrants, very few people in either country can speak another language, and they have trouble with English.
The US probably has better media and celebrities. Over here we have a lot more celebrities who are famous just for being famous, and we have even more crappy reality and (lack of) talent shows than the US. The English newspapers are without doubt the worst in the world, they lie in order to make everyone miserable, scared or outraged, whilst making a tidy profit. They never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
And on that note, a lot of people here are obsessed with either celebrities or football; even tourist guides talk about it. Americans don't seem quite so obsessed with silly celebrity/royal scandals or other things to do with people they have never met. The fact that I am comparing the US favourably to England shows you just how bad I think the situation is here. Points to America.
The US has better hospitals, but not everyone can use them; ours are free at the point of service. Draw.
Americans tend to have a much more positive attitude to life and are much more ambitious. Here, people are as gloomy as the weather. I often think that the UK., and Europe as a whole, could benefit greatly by adopting a "can do" American attitude at times. The economy doesn't lie. Points to America.
Americans are proud of their country, but often in a bad way. It seems as if many people are indoctrinated from a young age with flag waving and pledges of allegiance every morning to think that, not only is their country the best, but that it is the only country with democracy, free speech and opportunities for a good life. In reality this is not the case; their are many counties with these things, and some of them do a much better job than the US. I have often thought that if any Western country falls to fascism again, it will be the US. Chants of USA, USA! are almost robotic, and remind me of totalitarian regimes, and the end of the two minutes hate in George Orwell's book 1984. So in terms of having a realistic attitude to one's country, England wins; sometimes pessimism is better than too much optimism.
The US has more diversity than any part of England except London, but it also has far more racial and ethnic tensions. I am always amazed at how much importance some Americans attach to race; they seem to think that the colour of one's skin should determine every part of someone's life: whether you should go to university, how you speak and dress, what music you like, who you can go out with. For most English people (not the ones on YA though), skin colour is deemed to be far less important. Points to England.
The US has a lot of fundamentalist Christians trying to turn it into a theocracy. We have some Islamic fundamentalists, but (again, contrary to what the papers say - if you leave the big cities and the former industrial towns nearly everyone you meet will be CofE or atheist/agnostic) there are nowhere near as many of them, and there certainly aren't any in parliament. England wins.
England has more petty crime, but much less serious crime (despite what the newspapers would have you think). A gauge of how low crime is in England (for Americans only) is this: whenever a young man who lives in an inner-city area and is part of a gang is shot dead, it is on the front pages of national newspapers for about a week. Although many English people fear violent crime, there are three times as many murders per head of population in the US, which has amongst the highest murder rates in the Western world.
As for heritage; England again. The US is a young country and can't be expected to put up much of a fight here. We have Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin, British philosophers and politicians were largely responsible for bringing about modern democracy and concepts such as human rights, fair trial by jury, all innocent until proven guilty etc. Many of the inventions which shaped the modern world were English; the steam-engine, film (some French people may argue with this), the computer (some Germans may argue with this), the world wide web the list goes on. Not the television or the telephone though, they were Scottish inventions. Oh how could I forget, the English language! And then there is fighting tyranny. The UK defeated Napoleon and, without wishing to take anything away from the American contribution, was the only country to fight all the way through both wars and be on the winning side (whatever Hollywood movies would have you believe).
So thanks to a very strong finish, England wins overall. Of course I may have cherry picked examples that made my own country look good, and in any case, these are all just gross generalisations so my answer does not actually prove anything.
So, there you go. |
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