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Yes, third... right after the US, China, and Japan... and maybe India.

It's nice that you're proud of your country, but let's not confuse pride with the facts.
Japan is the most expensive country to live in and has been for some time. South Korea is next and also has been for sometime.

Secondly, I call BS on your "cost" analysis. While it is almost certainly true Norwegians, on average, pay less, have better coverage, and less uncovered in the field of health care, the true cost can only be derived by an in depth analysis for what they pay and pay into the system, and what part the government foots. I think, you'll find it costs more in any socialized medicine European country than in the US. But let's be fair, US coverage sucks, doctors and pharmaceuticals are greedy, and if you include all the legal kickbacks Pharms get from Congress, you may be right on it. I haven't analyzed it, mainly, because I know knowing will probably just make me sick.

Lastly, please don't lump all Usians, in one category. Yes, there are a lot of old, prejudiced, f***ers running the country, that doesn't mean that all US citizens have old fashioned ideas of civil liberties. A significant portion of the people support homosexual marriage. On top of which 21 political states of 51 in Europe have some recognition of same sex couples, as opposed to 16 US states have done so. There are only 7 European states recognizing same sex marriage, versus 6 for the US. I'm sorry, I have to call BS on this one also. Europe is a bit ahead, but not significantly.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

well the article is so short its not possible to comment on their implementation. so here are some calculations i did to amuse myself.

number of neurons in the brain: 100 billion
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/AniciaNdabahal iye2.shtml

transistor count per CPU: ~300 million
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2795

average synaptic connections per neuron: 7000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron

total number of synapses: 100 to 500 trillion

since a 'calculation' for one artificial neuron mostly involves a summation of weights, we can view one total step as 2 X the number of synapses we wish to analyze. or 200 - 1000 trillion calculations for one step. by step i mean summing all inputs and pushing the result to an output for each neuron.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neuron

fastest computer in the world FLOPs: 280 trillion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Gene

pentium 4 FLOPs: 40 GFLOP

using the fastest computer in the world 1 step would only take around 1 - 5 seconds, not counting storing all of that information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Gene

so how fast do we think? well i couldn't find anything on this so lets get a quick estimate. the average neuron is .1m in length .1 / c = 3.3x10^-10 or 333 picoseconds. now lets add in some delay for the chemicals in the neurons to do their thing, this is probably much slower than the electrical impulse, so lets say 3.3 nanoseconds.

so assuming our computers could network instantly, and store the data used instantly, we would need 3-15 trillion Blue Gene supercomputers to simulate the human brain in real time. or if we are using pentium 4s we would only need 21-105 trillion pentium 4s.

man thats a lot of cpus.

number of computers in the world: ~300 million
http://www.aneki.com/computers.html
guess at average FLOPs per computer: 40 GFLOPs
total FLOPs of worlds personal computers: 1.2 PFLOPs
time to calculate one brain step if all computers in the world were networked: .2 - .8 seconds

using moores law, when will a single computer be fast enough to simulate the human brain in real time?
200-1000 trillion calculations per step = ~600 trillion every 3.3ns = 181x10^18 or 181exeFLOPs
181exaFLOPS / 40GFLOPS = 2^n, n=32
32*18mo = 48 years based on personal computer technology

or 28 years based on supercomputer technology

of course a real neural network will contain highly parallel processing and using a specific chip design we will probably be able to simulate a brain much sooner, perhaps in the order of 10-20 years.

Hmmm. Millions of children in the Third World not dying of easily preventable diseases versus pissing off technophiles in the world's richest country. Yeah. It does make up for it. What's Larry Ellison doing with his millions?

yeah right http://www.aneki.com/richest.html

I am not American or Canadian, but I lived in both countries for a couple of years. In fact I've lived in 4 countries during the last 5 years (Chile, US, Canada, and France). Based on my experience I think each one has its own advantanges/disadvantages. US has its very "developed economy" and individualist culture that gives more opportunities to people and makes it a vey "CHEAP" place to live. If you do not believe me compare the price of an apartment, car, or PC in any big European city and an American one. Canada has its multicultural/socialist society that makes a very good but "EXPENSIVE" place to live.

After living in different countries I have realized that the single most important point I consider to move to a new place is the quality of life of their cities. That is more important that higher salary, cheaper computers, etc. You can check the cities with better quality of life at http://www.citymayors.com/features/quality_survey. html. My favorite city in North America, Vancouver, where I lived and I expect to move soon, appears as third one. Please check the position of the first US city.

When comparing health systems I think it is important to ask what is the main purpose of a health care system. To me a good health care system is the one that can offer a long healthy life to MOST of its population. Go check this page http://www.aneki.com/expectancy.html to see wich country has the longer life expectancy. You can also check other index of social development.
I visited doctors in the US and Canada. As far as I am concerned the only difference was that in US I got a bill of US$300 plus my insurance coverage while in Canada I did not pay anything else that the provincial health insurance. The quality was the same, I would say a little better and more "human" in Canada.

I like US, but Americans should recognize that there are a lot of better places to live... I think US IS the largest economic/militar power in the world, but it IS NOT the best place to live or raise my children. I hope Americans will find the energy and motivation to make US the best place to live, too.

I could have stayed in US, but I decided to move to Canada. I hope Americans that are concerned about inmigrants will feel better now. Since my education (PhD) was paid by the taxes of citizens of many countries including US, I wish the best to those people. I know Canadians feels better they got a new inmigrant with a lot of energy to build a better society.

I wonder what will happen if US academic graduates begin to emmigrate overseas? Will the Brain Drain effect be felt in the States too?

Probably not to the same extend that it might be felt in other countries.
The US is still one of the best places on earth to live (along with others: Norway, Sweden, Canada always rate highly) so if you have the choice of living in the US or some {dictatorship, no-medical, no-food, no-freedom....}-type country, most people would chose the US.
America's not perfect, but I think most Americans who have never been abroad have no idea just how nice it is to live in the US, and how lucky they are to have such riches and freedoms.
'course that doesn't mean that the drain couldn't head towards Norway, Sweden or Canada ... but at least here in Canada we've lamented the last 10yrs about the brain-drain drawing talent south with bigger bucks. (for those without a map/globe, Canada is the big country to the north of the US)

At least 20 Million people are still enslaved today [source]
Communism (or some varient there of) is alive in five countries [source]
It seems that we're doing most of the raping and killing in Iraq [source] [source]

Liberals, as it turns out, have been for US and UN intervention to end slavery world wide. They've been for withholding MFN status from China until the communist regime there did something about its human rights record. And the left has been 100% behind preventing AMERICANS from raping and murdering Iraqis.

The right, in contrast, has lept into the arms of communist China for the sake of making a few quick bucks. It's turned the other way as millions are enslaved around the world, some on our own shores. And the neo-cons refuse to hold accountable those that knew about the Abu Ghraib attrosities and yet did nothing.

As to your first question, let me ply my left wing university education. As plato once said, given the ability to elect their own leaders, the people will inevitably choose fools and naives.

Wow, thousands of years later and the guy's still got it pegged.

I was thinking that the correlation would be that the Ukraine would have the fourth highest rate of unemployment in the world....

But some might find this joke in bad taste... like much of Africa. (link)

No offense intended.

There are better places to live, and I believe I am now in one of them.

You do realise Finland has the highest suicide rate in Europe, and the 10th highest in the world? Where I live in the South of France there are always plenty of Finnish trying to escape the long dark evenings of back home. If you're young and don't mind roughing it a bit then a better option is to fly to France and get an Inter-rail pass which lets you travel around every European coutry as much as you like by train for one month (around $250 last time I looked). Make sure you take in coutries such as Spain, Italy, Holland, Czech, UK, etc. You are bound to fall in love with one of them.

Phillip.

> Wasn't the coldest inhabited place Vostok(?) in Russia?

Isn't Vostok just the name of the Russian base in Antarctica? Look Here.

Most countries in the world are more socialist than the US, even considering our vast corporate welfare. And those countries rank high in wealth (GDP per capita). Luxemborg, quite socialist, is at the top, while Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and others follow closely. Germany, Italy, Canada, Switzerland and France also follow the US in absolute headcounts of domestic billionaires.

It's more accurate to say that poor countries adopt socialism, without excluding rich countries from its adoption. The same factors that protect poor populations from complete failure, collective strength, also protect poorer populations in richer countries. That efficient protection also contributes to the wealth of the richer people in all of those countries. Even the richest countries have some poorer people - otherwise, who'd pick up the trash?

Most countries in the world are more socialist than the US, even considering our vast corporate welfare. And those countries rank high in wealth (GDP per capita). Luxemborg, quite socialist, is at the top, while Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and others follow closely. Germany, Italy, Canada, Switzerland and France also follow the US in absolute headcounts of domestic billionaires.

It's more accurate to say that poor countries adopt socialism, without excluding rich countries from its adoption. The same factors that protect poor populations from complete failure, collective strength, also protect poorer populations in richer countries. That efficient protection also contributes to the wealth of the richer people in all of those countries. Even the richest countries have some poorer people - otherwise, who'd pick up the trash?

Cloning, when promoted, is generally seen as a technology that could have research or medical therepeutic value, more rarely as one could allow infertile parents to have children that are genetically their own. That's not to say that I agree with human cloning (I'm not sure, and would lean towards against), but 'there are enough people in the world' is not all there is to the argument by a long shot. Look at IVF - it's not exactly producing people by the billions, but rather helping a small percentage of infertile couples.

Oh, they can can they? Or is this how it will be in the near future, you know, just after WMD has been finally found?

They decided to go with a GSM-based cell phone system, for example, even though it would please the US companies to go with the incompatible US standard. What does WMD (or lack thereof, rather) have to do with anything? This is all an argument about the "No War for Oil" BS. This has nothing to do with "No War for Kickbacks, and Phantom WMD" which incidentally I would agree with, though as usual hindsight is 20/20. You keep changing the argument, rather like SCO. What are you going to bring up next, minimum wage?

Yes, and Saddam could influence who the oil was sold to and in what currencies it was paid (euro)

I was talking about the oil companies, not Iraq. Every sale had to be approved by the UN, so ultimately it was they who were in control, not Iraq. Oil companies don't "make" oil, all they want is the cheapest supply of crude, either getting it out of the ground themselves when they can secure mineral rights, or buying crude from nations for as cheap as possible when they can't. I imagine the oil companies involved got sweet deals to reward them for going through the UN, otherwise they wouldn't bother. Half of the oil Iraq sold under the program was to US oil companies (some direct, some through intermediaries). That supplied 8% of US oil imports. So it wasn't a bad deal for them at all.

Iraq post-war with no more UN sanctions will have a lot more choices than they did under the sanctions. Do you actually think Iraqis are so stupid that they will give away long term mineral rights? They are not stupid, so there is no way that will happen, and the US will have little more influence there than it does in several other countries in the area. The fact that Iraqis have already influenced both the timeline and election plans is a good demonstration they know what they are doing.

According to most estimates, Iraq has more oil than Saudia-Arabia. Hard to tell after years of war and mismanagment.

What are you talking about? Go to the OPEC site and see for yourself. Of course it depends who you ask, but I have yet to see anyone say Iraq. Try to provide a link with more credibility than OPEC.

The biggest problem Apple has at the moment is still one of a limited audience. They have yet to open the iTMS to an international audience. Canadians, especially, are really feeling as if they're left out in the cold, and may go to other services (if they haven't already).

The US is a much bigger market than any other single country. Canada has 1/10 the number of computers as the US. Market size wil likely be a factor driving the order in which deals are negotiated.

number of computers by country

LOL. If you want to ridicule a post by echoing it and "reversing" who it talks about, you have to make sure the reversal maintains atleast a smidgin of truth. Otherwise you just make yourself look like an idiot.

That black hole of a country

On that map North Korea is in fact a "black hole". It looks like ocean. The United states is by far the brightest region, with "the whole of euorpe" coming in a close second.

the world's LARGEST ARMY and LARGEST NUMBER OF NUKES.

You are demonstrating pure ignorance. China has the worlds larget army, 2.9 million servicemen, more than double the US's 1.4 million. Russia has the most nukes, well over twice as many as the US.

They are diverting their entire economy (what little there is of it) to supporting that army and building weapons.

North Korea spends somewhere between 20% and 30% of its GDP on its military while approximately 10% of its population has starved to death in recent years. The US spends somewhere between 4.3% and 5.7% on its military, and the US spends a higher percentage of its miliary spending on RESEARCH, compared to all western nations. The US provides food (food stamps) to anyone who needs them.

The North American government is incredibly isolationist

LMAO! Isolationist?? The usual complaint is the exact the opposite.

and paranoid.

The US thinks that there are terrorists trying to blow up Americans and American buildings. Americans and American builings are in fact blowing up.

In this document North Korea accuses the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency of conspiring to harm North Korea. Part of the "proof" of this supposed conspiracy is the fact that North Korea is reffered to as "North Korea" rather than as "DPRK". They take a "serious view" of this "insult to their soverignty". This document is fairly typical of North Korean perception on international relations. Not to mention their constant fear that at any moment the 38,000 US personel and South Korea's half million servicemen are going to charge head-long into what is undoubtedly the most heavily forified border in the world, against the third largest army in the world.

As for Liberation, Iraqis were in fact dancing in the streets and toppling Saddam statues. Somehow I don't think you are going to find many South Koreans welcoming North Korean forces.

-

You lost to the friggen Haitians! Were saved twice from Germany by in no small part the US (btw the second time we saved France we were also fighting a war against Japan). Yes we lost Vietnam (formerly know as French indo-china (with Kampuchea and Laos) who also booted out the French. You lost Quebec to the English, you won the 100 years war but burned alive the woman who led you to victory. Hmm Napoleon won a few but he was Corsican.

The US defeated England in our revolution (I will grant the French were there but we did most of the fighting) and the war of 1812, we defeated Mexico (another nation that kicked the crap out of France), Beat Spain in the late 1800's, helped save you in WW1, then again in WW2 (while fighting at the same time two very powerful nations), we fought to a stalemate soviet plans and Chinese troops in Korea, lost Vietnam because we did not play to win, then won a few minor wars with Panama, and Iraq (again France cant beat Haiti so it relevant), and most recently helped the NA removed the Taliban from Afghanistan (umm Karzai is still president of that nation and the taliban is shrinking more and more every day).

Now on to what you are not trying to hide from is France Socially superior to the US??

Literacy: both France and the US have over 90% literacy
Here . The french are a whopping 2% higher than the us here . When you take into account that nearly 4% of the US population are illegal immigrants (people who want to come to this land of misery as you call it)
here and documented imigrants are around 10% of our population
here we have a much harder task in front of us than the French. There are schools in our cities with kids who speak more than 30 languages doubt France has to deal with that.

Now onto "misery, insecurity and unhappiness are more present in the USA than in France." I would like to see how you quantified that? As it's not something you can measure but Ill give it a try.

Lets start with lenght of life
People in France live one year longer than Americansas a % that is 1.3% longer (that can probably be written off to a large immigrant population who may come from a nation with a poor health care system, but even if not that's statistically insignificant as the US and Germany are tied so they must be miserable too.

Now lets look at standard of living the US GDP per capita is nearly 30% higher in the US, same source as above and also here

The US has a higher quality of life according to UN data here .

We are also a Cleaner Nation here

Now while none of this prooves the US is a more happy, and secure place than the zoo between Germany and Spain it goes allot further than your post. If you care to get into a war of wits (again be careful about being French and in a war) at least come armed next time.

Finally about most of our genius coming from abroad if you speaking to our roots as a nation (being we are 70% of European decent) than I would put it to you that you have no point as they are educated and nurtured in America. If you are referring to the # of foreign students in our universities I would ask you why are they coming here rather than going to France? I would also put it to you that your culture was started when you lost a War to the Romans and had their culture put on you, Western Culture owes more to the Italians and Greeks than the French, English, and Americans put together. There is nothing to argue we are not perfect but we are better in most ways than the French.

Note: I consider an Immigrant who comes to this nation and becomes a citizen to be the most loyal and important kind of American one who made the choice

You lost to the friggen Haitians! Were saved twice from Germany by in no small part the US (btw the second time we saved France we were also fighting a war against Japan). Yes we lost Vietnam (formerly know as French indo-china (with Kampuchea and Laos) who also booted out the French. You lost Quebec to the English, you won the 100 years war but burned alive the woman who led you to victory. Hmm Napoleon won a few but he was Corsican.

The US defeated England in our revolution (I will grant the French were there but we did most of the fighting) and the war of 1812, we defeated Mexico (another nation that kicked the crap out of France), Beat Spain in the late 1800's, helped save you in WW1, then again in WW2 (while fighting at the same time two very powerful nations), we fought to a stalemate soviet plans and Chinese troops in Korea, lost Vietnam because we did not play to win, then won a few minor wars with Panama, and Iraq (again France cant beat Haiti so it relevant), and most recently helped the NA removed the Taliban from Afghanistan (umm Karzai is still president of that nation and the taliban is shrinking more and more every day).

Now on to what you are not trying to hide from is France Socially superior to the US??

Literacy: both France and the US have over 90% literacy
Here . The french are a whopping 2% higher than the us here . When you take into account that nearly 4% of the US population are illegal immigrants (people who want to come to this land of misery as you call it)
here and documented imigrants are around 10% of our population
here we have a much harder task in front of us than the French. There are schools in our cities with kids who speak more than 30 languages doubt France has to deal with that.

Now onto "misery, insecurity and unhappiness are more present in the USA than in France." I would like to see how you quantified that? As it's not something you can measure but Ill give it a try.

Lets start with lenght of life
People in France live one year longer than Americansas a % that is 1.3% longer (that can probably be written off to a large immigrant population who may come from a nation with a poor health care system, but even if not that's statistically insignificant as the US and Germany are tied so they must be miserable too.

Now lets look at standard of living the US GDP per capita is nearly 30% higher in the US, same source as above and also here

The US has a higher quality of life according to UN data here .

We are also a Cleaner Nation here

Now while none of this prooves the US is a more happy, and secure place than the zoo between Germany and Spain it goes allot further than your post. If you care to get into a war of wits (again be careful about being French and in a war) at least come armed next time.

Finally about most of our genius coming from abroad if you speaking to our roots as a nation (being we are 70% of European decent) than I would put it to you that you have no point as they are educated and nurtured in America. If you are referring to the # of foreign students in our universities I would ask you why are they coming here rather than going to France? I would also put it to you that your culture was started when you lost a War to the Romans and had their culture put on you, Western Culture owes more to the Italians and Greeks than the French, English, and Americans put together. There is nothing to argue we are not perfect but we are better in most ways than the French.

Note: I consider an Immigrant who comes to this nation and becomes a citizen to be the most loyal and important kind of American one who made the choice