Land of the Free, not really though

[Bughouse]

Some consider Switzerland a conservative's freedom-loving paradise, yet it's one of six countries in the world that has a wealth tax.

how the hell do you define freedom

As to this, probably the best go-to real-world answer I could give is rankings from Freedom House. You'll indeed find that the US is at the highest level of freedom... but so are Cape Verde, Chile, Slovenia, Cyprus, and many other countries. It doesn't mean a ton and is also at least incidentally driven by biases of the researchers and possibly the funders too. That of course is also ignoring what your question was getting at, which is... why are the metrics that Freedom House uses better than some other set of metrics? I know in the case of Freedom House, they focus on liberties as they are codified in the law, rather than the actual things that people do/say. Is that right? Who knows?

 

[Chou Toshio]

So, you are telling me that trying to push your theory that this has everything to do with economics and nothing to do with mass manipulation of public opinion is not the spewing of politics?

You clearly disagree with me and that is fine, but you cannot say that the statement you make defending your opinion is not informal politics. Well you can say it-but that wouldn't make it true.

When it comes to this one, rink-a-dink article in the internet's armpit, I this I've got this.

I'm not saying your concerns aren't real things on a larger systemic scale.

 

[Harlot]

5% of the worlds population but 25% of the worlds prison population. sounds super free, man

 

[capefeather]

unfitting title is unfitting

Seriously, though, if you label a single small news story as "propaganda" then you can basically call anything propaganda, even your posts. Maybe one could argue that this might be worrying for the opposite reason: that it's rare enough to be news. Even then, it's police doing a specific activity that one might expect to be rare, anyway.

 

[Disaster Area]

#freedom

http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/united-states?page=1

In 2012, Human Rights Watch reported that of 500 youth offenders serving life without parole, nearly every one reported physical violence or sexual abuse by inmates or corrections officers.

Hundreds of thousands of children work on American farms. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act exempts child farmworkers from the minimum age and maximum hour requirements that apply to other working children. As a result, child farmworkers often work 10 or more hours a day and risk pesticide exposure, nicotine poisoning, heat illness, injuries, life-long disabilities, and death. Seventy-five percent of children under 16 who died from work-related injuries in 2012 worked in agriculture. Federal protections that do exist are often not enforced.

Whites, African Americans, and Latinos have comparable rates of drug use but are arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated for drug offenses at vastly different rates. For example, African Americans are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites, even though their rates of marijuana use are roughly equivalent. While only 13 percent of the US population, African Americans represent 41 percent of state prisoners, and 44 percent of federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses.

Because they are disproportionately likely to have criminal records, members of racial and ethnic minorities are more likely than whites to experience stigma and legal discrimination in employment, housing, education, public benefits, jury service, and the right to vote.