Rate Your Country's Future

^ He's gotta be in Germany. France never truly recovered from the 2001-2002 recession at the employment level.

Lord Gacek definitely lives in Poland.

I'll do Riverside, my hometown:

1. Economy - Thank God for the university, or we'd be worse than Detroit. The end of Communism hurt us bad, and the housing bust has made it even worse. We have some of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. But we're turning around, mostly by shifting from making things to transporting things to LA or Utah. That, and arts.

2. Social and Political Stability - Could be worse. The Republicans are pretty reasonable here, even the Tea-Party types, and the Democrats, because they have to pander to Hispanics that occasionally even vote Republican, are basically the national party, circa 1970. Whoever we pick, we still get business-friendly policy, and an antipathy towards Sacramento that boggles the mind.

3. Population Growth and Density Issues - Standard set of problems you get in an urban area - particularly rising rents (no-one wants to buy a house after the bust). The population is going to need better public-transportation options, even if it means we have to buy more buses.

4. Environmental security (arguably the most important) - Climate change doesn't really affect us as much as if it did, say, fifty years ago when a lot of the economy was based on oranges. Of course, summers are intolerable, but that's what you get for living near a fucking desert.

I'd say Holland. If it was Belgium, he'd have talked about the lack of government for a year, which is pretty fun for the country which hosts the capital of Europe. But, there's not the place for Belgian jokes, since my own country isn't in good shape either.

edited 10th May '11 3:04:25 PM by RufusShinra

I think he's from Poland IIRC; also, the description sounds about right, except that I don't know about the politics.

You may stop guessing, you've already got two guesses correct. To those still unsure, I'd say that we've also outdid Brazil at having a giant concrete Jesus.

My analysis of Murphy, NC(my hometown).

1. Economy- Probably the worst thing about the town. A good portion of the local populace was employed by a few factories in the area. All but two are closed down now, and the two remaining are laying off people left and right. Due to tourists migrating into the area(covered more in density and environment later)during the housing boom we saw a huge influx of capital into the local economy, which temporarily offset the job losses at the factories. A lot of fly-by-night businesses(knickknack shops, furniture stores, real-estate brokers, gimmicky restaurants, etc etc) popped up everywhere, but as soon as the bubble burst, almost all of them tanked. According to the head of the chamber of commerce(in a conversation), even though the published unemployment rate is about 14% the actual rate is nearly 25%. Speaking with the agents in the local department of social services, it seems that food stamp and other welfare-related aid requests continue to rise each month. Food prices, especially meat, are going through the roof; expect to pay over $5 per lb for regular ground beef in a good week.

2. Social and Political Stability- Not bad at all. The area is pretty rural, and had a good mix of Republicans and Democrats with the odd crazy survivalist thrown in for flavour. The 9/12 guys are gaining a foothold in some corners, and have attempted to stage their little rallies and such at the local schools, but for the most part they're shunned for their behavior. We have a tiny contingent of KKK hoodlums that serve as a source of unending amusement; their funds ran low last month, so they held a bake sale complete with guys in full uniform selling donuts at the stoplights like girlscouts. Again, almost universally loathed by the general population.

3. Population Growth and Density Issues- We saw a huge population boom with the housing rush, but that has pretty much ended. A lot of the population, mostly native, has moved on to other areas in search of jobs. Due to this, nonnatives represent about 55% of the town. Since the town's infrastructure is so old, a lot of it has had to be replaced lately, draining the town's budget and causing issues with local homeowners. The state is planning on running a highway through here in the future, much to the chagrin of most of the residents. Some, including one fellow who was a nuclear engineer for the government for over thirty years, have suggested that the highway is to more easily transport materials to and from the nuclear power plants in the surrounding areas.

4. Environmental security- Depending on where in the county you are, it's either pristine wilderness or a toxic waste dump. The outlying areas are mostly mixed hardwoods, and are slowly being logged. The economic downturn has made a lot of people consider selling off their wooded areas to loggers so they can keep from being kicked to the curb. The tourist industry has caused the town to consider tourism as a means of income, but this has led to more problems. Most tourists moving here come "for the view" and build their houses right on the mountain tops, destroying the thin layers of soil that has built up for hundreds of years in a matter of months. Silt washing into the rivers has disrupted fish stocks, though thankfully from my personal observations it seems that our endemic species are unaffected for now.

In one area there was a large chemical spill some years ago that contaminated the water supplies for miles around. It's taken them thirty years, but just this year they're finally beginning clean-up procedures, but a lot of residents have already been affected.

In just the last few months, a solar power company has begun buying up farmland and building solar farms on it. It might be considered an overall clean energy source but for the immediate area it's a mess. They have to grade the area perfectly, which means bringing in bulldozers and tilling up acres, which then causes more silt to be deposited into nearby streams. The soil here has a high iron content, so the streams take on a nasty rusty tinge when affected.

As for the long term prospects for the limnetic systems in the area, I'm not sure how everything will do. We're especially vulnerable to acid rain because 99% of the bedrock is granite, so the lake pH always averages slightly below 7. Areas further up in the mountains have been more affected by acid rain, due to the jet stream carrying junk up from the southern manufacturing centers. A lot of cedar and hemlock have died. We've had a lot of trouble with pine beetles and wooly adelgids, and the situation has been degraded even further due to the policy of logging affected areas rather than letting the forest reclaim itself.

Overall, unless the economy improves I give the area a 3.5/10

Many of the issues outlined have been exacerbated by the downturn, and unless things suddenly turn around, the current trends are only going to continue.

edited 10th May '11 3:46:10 PM by carbon-mantis

I'm gonna do Finland.

1. Economy:

Well, we're losing our industries one by one; we're still making huge ships but Nokia is going and the rest of our metal and electronic industries seem to be going towards providing and designing services rather than hardware; so we're trying to reach the top of a market that can change drastically at any time.

Agriculture is sufficient to feed the country, but only barely and even that only because of subsidies. No immediate remedy in sight. Traditionally, we've relied on our logging and paper industries, and while we still have (IIRC) 2 (partially shared with Sweden) of the top-5 companies on both fields, we're not gonna stay on top forever, even though our companies have expanded to South America.

So we're gonna need lots more industry.

Other than that, we've got a very good, strong economy, though the recession hit us pretty hard in some places. Of course, our ruling parties are pouring billions into various European countries that don't even really need the bailout (or they wouldn't if the banks that caused it to go so bad would be fined for all of their crimes). The amount of money we've agreed to loan to Greece (though not all of it will probably be needed, as Greece can choose to raise as much loan as it needs until it reaches the loan ceiling) is €1.6 billion. For comparison: the annual budget of our defence forces is about €2.7 billion.

The biggest threat to our economy is the trend of governments pushing to get people out of school and into the work force (in low-paying jobs) as fast as possible, which could lead to Finland losing the biggest asset it has (and has ever had), which is a very large highly educated workforce and excellent academic achievement, without which we'd never have developed a good economy or a high standard of living. So the government is trying to improve statistics now and they don't really seem to care about the economy and society one or two decades from now.

2. Social and Political Stability:

Well, I kinda discussed this a bit above. People think that immigration is a problem, though in reality we're not losing a whole lot of money for it and foreign aid compared to the actually big items on our budget. There are some clashes between immigrant and native communities, including some international crime - the major player being the Russian Mafia, though recently it seems to have stopped expanding here. Sure there are some drug rings and stuff like that, but nothing that's big enough to threaten society.

A bigger social problem is the huge gap in - well, everything, be it education, wealth, employment, local economy, etc - between the wealthier, more densely populated South and the less urban and much poorer North of the country. A similar divide exists between the wealthy West and the poor East.

Capitalism is kind of a bitch: corporations making huge profits when the economy is good are constantly kicking people out and outsourcing, and when the economy goes bad, they'll start outsourcing and kicking people out. Still, in the international Ease of Doing Business Index, Finland ranks near the top every year, so new companies and new jobs are emerging all the time, though I wish they were doing so at a better pace and that the new jobs would be spread out more evenly between the entire country.

Social stability is improved greatly by the Nordic welfare model, though class differences are beginning to re-emerge as the Right-wing parties do their best to make sure the poor earn less and pay more taxes and get less services, while expanding corporate welfare and various benefits for the wealthy (including loopholes to apply for national and European benefits and tax cuts). (Note that I'm not exaggerating; I can provide examples of the Right doing each of those things in the last decade.)

So there's a conscious effort to create a class society, but Finns as a people culturally have a very strong sense of justice and equality, so we'll probably put a stop to that during this decade. (For examples of the Finnish sence of equality and justice, we were the first country in Europe and the third in the world (after Australia, which elected their first female MPs in 1913 and New Zealand, which gave women the vote in 1893, but women weren't allowed to stand as candidates until 1919) to allow women to vote, which we did before we were even independent (and the Finnish Parliament governed the Grand Principality of Finland, which was a part of Russia,) in 1906, the year of the first Parliamentary Election, in which, out of the 200 first Finnish MPs, 19 were women.)

3. Population Growth and Density Issues:

Well, it'd be nice to have more people, as Finland has a very small population density, but birth rates are going down and immigration is increasing only slightly. Our population is growing very slowly, so it'll likely remain stable for a while.

One issue that's keeping people awake at night is that we have a huge generation of baby-boomers and no way to replace them once they leave the work force, as well as some difficulty finding the resources to provide them with a high standard of living through the decade or two (or three) that they'll live after they retire.

Finland is seriously considering accepting masses of immigrants just for the sake of having a sufficiently large work force through this; we simply need more people.

4. Environmental security:

Well, there are no large natural disasters in Finland - if a storm tears down trees and causes a 1000 houses to lose electricity for 2 nights, it's pretty much the storm of the century and the worst environmental disaster in living memory. But Global Warming could do horrible things to us; if it fucks with the Golf Stream, it's the end of all human life in Europe; if it doesn't, our weather might actually improve.

One problem that no one seems to care about is nuclear waste, which is a problem shared by almost all industrial nations. We're currently building a nuclear plant that's lauded as the safest in the world, but the construction is already about 4 years behind schedule and parts of it have to be done over all the time 'cause of poor work quality and not meeting safety regulations, which is a result of excessive outsourcing. But anyway, they're building a huge underground bunker near the power plant; it's meant to house all nuclear waste that Finland will ever produce.

Since Finland is so sparsely populated, people living in less urban areas need a car or two per family. No way around that. People who live in cities do perfectly well with public transport, though few of our cities are big enough to be able to support it. So we're gonna need that juice for a while longer; but I think Finns will gladly move to electric or other green cars as soon as they can afford it. Our railway network is great but all of the governments we've had recently keep taking money away from the national railway company, so services are getting poorer. We need a Leftist government to fix that.

What, my region, too? Well, I don't think anyone cares, so I won't do that.

edited 10th May '11 4:09:30 PM by BestOf

Actually, no. That sounds interesting.

Really? Why do people care about Finland? We're tiny!

OK, let's see...

I live in Joensuu, which is in the North Karelia region. It's in Eastern Finland. I was born in a small town near (near by our standards; 100km (or about 60 miles)) Joensuu and moved here because Joensuu has a University and my old town had nothing in my field after High School.

Actually, here's a map. The city is coloured red, North Karelia is outlined in the thin line and the thicker line outlines Eastern Finland.

1. Economy:

As I said in my previous post, the East is much poorer than the West and the South. Distances are large and population is sparse. The city I live in is growing, though, and has a very nice age structure (about 1/3 of the population is less than 25). It's all to do with the University. Without it, the city (which has a population of about 75 000, which is considered a medium-size city in Finland 'cause even Helsinki and the area around it has only 1 million people, which is a 5th of the entire population) would be much smaller.

North Karelia as a whole has a high unemployment rate and there's a constant loss of population, mainly to migration to the South. Urbanisation takes its toll. We do have some industries, though, and some of them are staying (and even growing - the region manufactures paper; there's also logging and related industries as well as some industrial manufacturing jobs - my dad works in a company that makes trains, for instance.)

For the most part, we're losing jobs in all sectors except service. The region as a whole has a huge amount of pensioners and people nearing retirement age, and most young people move South when they graduate 'cause employment prospects are not good. This has been a problem for generations, and one trait that generation after generation of North Karelians moving South have in common is that when they retire, they always return to the town of their birth for the last years of their life, which means that they've spent their entire life here except the parts where they were paying taxes.

One industry that is growing is tourism, for the most part because of our amazing landscapes. (Both pics are from the same place 'cause it provides the best views in the region if you ask me. Oh, and the one that looks small is actually a panorama.)

As for Joensuu, it's doing well, and as I said, it's because of the University - though as of last year, it's no longer University of Joensuu, but the Joensuu unit of the University of Eastern Finland, as the two Universities in the region (the other one being in Kuopio) were combined to save some money by fusing the administrations.

Can't really tell much more about the city 'cause I've only lived here for about 2 years.

The likely fate of the region is that the smaller places will simply die out and the cities will keep growing.

2. Social and Political Stability:

Umm... The countryside usually votes for the Centre party (which used to be the Agrarian League until they changed their name in 1965.) The bigger towns and cities tend to vote for the SDP and the Left Union, with the exception of rednecks (which vote for a party that recently emerged in Finnish Politics called the "True Finns", though the "True" in the name translates better as "Basic" or "Ordinary", so it's not about racial purity or anything like that). The Green Party also has some success, though they've got some policies that are decided in Helsinki (which is the capital of Finland and obviously in the South) that are not in touch with reality.

We don't have too much crime or any other major social issues except the strain that the spread and age structure of the population causes on the infrastructure and resources of our services, both social and commercial. People are upset about rising immigration, though in reality it's not a major issue by any means.

Because of the high unemployment, there's some alcoholism. Social services are a major expense to municipalities.

In case you're thinking that North Karelia sucks because of what I said, let's put some perspective here: the border between Finland and Russia - of which my old home town alone has 100km (60 miles) - is considered to represent the second-largest gap in quality of life between any two neighbouring states in the world, number 1 being the North-South Korea border.

So even though we're poor by Finnish standards, it doesn't mean that people would be without a home or starving or that anyone could go bankrupt from medical bills. I'm pretty sure that every single person here between the ages 10-60 has at least one cell phone. And I don't mean everyone on average: every person, except maybe people who have been in a coma for a decade or other special circumstances like that. Oh, and it's not possible to be too poor to get to University; the only thing that can stop you is that you get poor grades in High School and you fail the entrance exam. No one pays for education, except that High School makes you buy your own books and there are some other similar expenses. There are no significant differences between regions in quality of education.

3. Population Growth and Density Issues:

I actually covered that already. The region as a whole is declining, while the cities with a University or an Ammattikoulu grow. (Wikipedia: "An ammattikorkeakoulu ... is a Finnish institution of higher education. The term literally means "school of higher vocational education". Although the Finnish Ministry of Education recommends the English term "polytechnic", the Rectors' Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences has decided to use the term "university of applied sciences") (I used the Finnish term because I couldn't decide on a translation.)

4. Environmental security:

Finland has always been very reliant on its environment, with the forest industry being our main source of income for most of out history. So there are pretty strict laws about forest preservation: for example, while there's plenty of logging, it's illegal to harvest a forest without planting new trees to cover the area.

So at least we're not destroying our nature, though I don't think it's possible to have cities and the surrounding industries and power plants and water facilities and all that without causing some environmental damage.

As for natural hazards, the previous post applies.

edited 10th May '11 6:18:14 PM by BestOf

Interesting... thanks for this.

Whoop-de-doo. Let me try.

(The Republic of) the Philippines.

1. Economy: The Philippine Peso has been getting stronger (mostly because of the weakening US Dollar).

A lot of Filipinos live in poverty. A lot are jobless, or have jobs that can't support their families. Our situation actually depends on the foreign currencies sent in by OFW's (Overseas Filipino Workers), and that's where we're strong. We've also got a strong tourism industry. :)

A minimum-wage worker gets really low funds. Besides that, gas, oil, food and other prices are shooting up. Who doesn't hate that?

A lot of students go into Nursing, Engineering or Law. (Dunno if it fits under Economy) We export most of our nurses and engineers, actually. That means less nurses and doctors are left in the country.

I'm also going to jab at the corrupt government officials(but not all are) who pocket a portion of the taxpayers' money and the national fund.

2. Social and Political Stability: I'm not really happy with our politics. We've had a couple of terrible presidents, and the last one was accused of cheating during the elections. Filipinos are [[strikethrough: ignorant]] happy people, though, so they stay idealistic for the years ahead. I'm not commenting more. I don't know enough about this to write more.

3. Population Growth and Density Issues: We've got lots of people. Young and old. The Philippines has a very large population. However, most people assume that it is overcrowded. It is not. Metro Manila, the capital, is overcrowded, but the other provinces and cities aren't. So, if everyone were just spread a little bit more evenly, we would have lots more space. (Mindanao, for example, the second biggest island, has the population of Manila. It's a really big island, so you can see that there really is lots of space in other areas.)

4. Environmental Security: We're an archipelago. Lemme see, so far, last summer was terribly hot (even worse than the past years) and the rainy season was extended. It was very cool during that rainy season. I think a number of the islands would sink, portions of Metro Manila would sink, summer would be hell and the rainy season would be very cool or cause worse floods. (2009: Ondoy, oh god, Ondoy...)

We're not doing very well, but I believe that we're improving little by little. A lot of Filipinos just end up migrating to other better countries, but I believe that if a large number of people give a push and keep that pose (while pushing a little harder every now and then), we'd be rising from our Third World State.

There's also the lack of jobs that needs to be solved, and our airports need to be improved. I know there will always be corruption, but I hope it lessens.

Seems I actually forgot to rate my country and region...

I give Finland 9/10 and North Karelia 7/10.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

1. Economy: The country is basically living on life support from the EU since its industrial capacity is miniscule and was destroyed by the war. There are almost no domestic products and everything is imported either from Serbia, Croatia, Germany or to a certain degree Hungary and Turkey. Food costs just as much if not more than in Germany. Corruption is widespread and well organized. Lets face it, it's a Third World country, period.

2. Social and Political Stability: Almost nonexistent. The UN and EU are the only things that keep Bi H together that is divided in two parts (the Republika Srpska and Federacija). Having no united government and a high reprensentative who seems to have no clue what the hell he is doing, Bi H is basically two entities loosely held together. Most Serbs want to split off and as it seems Dodik is making some interesting noises recently. So in the near future the RS will declare itself independent or Bi H will become the next Cyprus. The law enforcement is incompent at best and suffers widespread corruption.

3. Population Growth and Density Issues: Bi H isn't densly populated and the population growth is very modest.

4. Environmental security (arguably the most important): Environmental issues are of no concern as there are other things to worry about.

Overall: Bosnia and Herzegovina is like a dysfunctional and very unhappy marriage where both parties are forced to live together against their will. Many people tend to forget that the Dayton Agreement was meant to be a temporary solution. Most of my fellow Serbs want to leave, the Croats seem to have similar fantasies and I can't imagine the Muslims would be happy about it for the same reasons why Serbia is making such a fuss about Kosovo. And remember kids, if the RS says goodbye, Bi H would loose 49% of its territory and the Croats would also want to leave the country that can only be described as an utter mess.

edited 11th May '11 1:40:45 PM by AdeptusAlpharius

I'd agree with you for Finland: the world belongs to the north!

The U.S.

1. The economy is still recovering, and the looming debt is preventing anything else from becoming a topic of change. Half of College Graduates can't find jobs. The combination of the housing market and ponzi schemes have left the U.S. with the fact that it had less money than it thought it did. A huge flooding problem is occuring down south along the Missisipi now, and it's starting to reach levels experienced during the Great Depression. Katrina devestated New Orleans, and the tornadoes that proceeded this flooding just made things worse.the only cure, regardless of what lawmakers do, is time to allow buisnesses to stabilise. Also, once the south is on a steady path to rebuilding, there should be an economic boom from that growth, following its recent deflation.

2)Politics are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Polarized now, and TV news is just making things worse. Fox news is preventing its viewers, who are almost all republicans, from understanding what the democrats want

3) See Everyone elses assesment of this

4) Insufficient Data for a meaningful awnser

Droughts? The mississipi floods?

@Adeptus: Damn. That sounds bad...