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Seems to be kosher... but fails to answer the real questions https://www.cia.gov/library/re...

Whoosh. You totally ignored Dr. Manhattan's question and simply restated your original premise. He asked, essentially, how do you eliminate your own cognitive bias? The answer is, you can't. At best, you can *try* to take note of it.

A psychologist for the CIA, Richards J. Heuer, Jr., wrote a book entitled, The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, addressing this very issue. It's a fascinating read; download it over Tor if you must.

Evaluation of evidence is a crucial step in analysis, but what evidence people rely on and how they interpret it are influenced by a variety of extraneous factors. Information presented in vivid and concrete detail often has unwarranted impact, and people tend to disregard abstract or statistical information that may have greater evidential value. We seldom take the absence of evidence into account. The human mind is also oversensitive to the consistency of the evidence, and insufficiently sensitive to the reliability of the evidence. Finally, impressions often remain even after the evidence on which they are based has been totally discredited.

As an aside, he takes care to note that cognitive bias (which I would argue that you are exhibiting) is not the same as cultural bias (although the line is quite fuzzy this instance, and I'm not a psychologist).

Information that people perceive directly, that they hear with their own ears or see with their own eyes, is likely to have greater impact than information received secondhand that may have greater evidential value.

Case histories and anecdotes will have greater impact than more informative but abstract aggregate or statistical data.

India is at 2.51. In 2007 it was at 2.81. So if this trend continues, in a couple decades it will be below replacement.

Philippines is at 3.06. Right now the Philippines has very low per capita income - roughly comparable to India and Syria. Once this rises, the birthrate will probably drop. In any case, the Philippines forms less than 2% of the world's population and is not going to drive world population growth.

So basically the main issue is Africa. And really Africa has bigger issues than overpopulation, like civil war and dictatorship and malnutrition and malaria. But all these issues are connected to each other. If you can somehow help with one issue (I'm not saying that it's easy) then Africans will have more resources to put into defeating the others.

Sources:
https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...
http://web.archive.org/web/200...

No. Sweden has decent oil exports considering their population. It's not like all the oil in that area is only on the west coast, and the central and east is barren.

"Decent oil exports" doesn't necessarily mean "a gigantic amount of crude petroleum wealth". As far as I know, Sweden isn't a petro-state; the CIA World Factbook entry for Norway says that the petroleum sector "accounts for the largest portion of export revenue and about 30% of government revenue", whereas the entry for Sweden says that "the engineering sector accounts for about 50% of output and exports".

No. Sweden has decent oil exports considering their population. It's not like all the oil in that area is only on the west coast, and the central and east is barren.

"Decent oil exports" doesn't necessarily mean "a gigantic amount of crude petroleum wealth". As far as I know, Sweden isn't a petro-state; the CIA World Factbook entry for Norway says that the petroleum sector "accounts for the largest portion of export revenue and about 30% of government revenue", whereas the entry for Sweden says that "the engineering sector accounts for about 50% of output and exports".

Where are the headlines about Ukrainians having already done the same thing? Where is the balance?

The Russians are sending arms and support into Ukraine and have created a war there. If there appears to be bias against the Russians, then the Russians have brought it on themselves.

Proof needed.

If the Russians hadn't been in Eastern Ukraine, where they don't belong, then nobody would be complaining about Russians.

What do you mean by where they don't belong. According to the CIA Factbook 17.3% of the population of Ukraine are ethnic Russians. Besides, you should study the history of the USSR a little bit: Russians live in the Eastern Ukraine because they were resettled there before the breakup.
At the same time, on a number of occasions the workforce was transferred by non-violent means, usually by means of "recruitment" (). This kind of recruitment was regularly performed at forced settlements, where people were naturally more willing to resettle. For example, the workforce of the Donbass and Kuzbass mining basins is known to have been replenished in this way. .

Instead, Putin and his buddies have been acting like jerks, which kind of makes the Russians look like suspect #1.

Please elaborate.

Captcha: certify.

In Australia that might be the ticket, but here in the US they'll just find a useful program to cut. Last I knew the CIA had a legally undisclosed budgetary dispense, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if NSA falls under the same category. If they don't find a useful program to cut, they'll force the companies to pay for it, who will pass the costs on to us or risk losing capital from shareholders.

When dealing with an enemy like a government, one cannot assume that its resources are necessarily limited within the scope of the conflict so long as one is within the jurisdiction of that government. And when dealing with any but a "rogue" state in 2014, one cannot assume that simply leaving a border will necessarily provide a buffer, as nice as that might be. I'm pretty sure Ed Snowden will eventually get sold for something more valuable to Putin than egg in Obama's face.

And it is no longer just the playground of conspiracy theorists and lunatic fringe anarchists like myself to be at odds with the government. Since they have decided to violate the very documents which they all swear to on more massive scales than any other hypocrite in the history of the continent, I believe that the government has made itself the enemy of the American people, who I would prefer to no longer associate myself with, but again, simply leaving America would not put me far enough away from her.

With a really large economy, without losing much GDP.

I was curious about this, so I did a quick bit of research. Germany solar power subsidies vary with the size of the installation, but are typically around 20 c/kWh (source). Their solar power output in 2011 was 18 billion kWh, or 3.2% of total production (source). That implies a subsidy of 3.6 billion Euros per year.

The GDP of Germany - in 2013, which should be close enough - is 3.2 trillion USD (source), equivalent to 2.3 trillion Euros. So this subsidy cost them 0.16% of GDP, which is pretty trivial - about a month's growth. Scaling up to 100% of total production (ignoring the storage issue), to convert completely to solar power would cost them 5% of GDP, which is a bit more significant - for comparison, the US lost 4.3% of GDP during the 2008 crash (lazy source). So, converting to solar power would (optimistically) be equivalent to a medium recession - but, as you say, not bad enough to make a country drop out of the first world.

The Americas have always been two continents; North and South, for as long as the concept of continents and the name America has applied.

Well, that is shockingly ignorant of you to say.

The term America precedes the existence of the USA by over 270 years. In Waldssemuller's map the label "America" is well entrenched in the South American part of the generally unexplored territory (hint: third row, first column, near the top), and there was a reason for that (hint: first row, third column, right at the top: the guy who charted the South American coast but never visited North America). Even in much more modern maps that do include most of the territories the label America is placed next to South America (but probably only for layout reasons).

Of course, in the 1770's the people of a very small percentage of America gained independence and decided to call that small strip of land "The United States of America", a name as brain dead as calling a very small country in the middle of Africa "The Central African Republic".

Why is it brain dead? Because now Central African refers to either someone from that country, or from any other of the adjacent countries that by some criteria are located in the center of Africa. In fact, the case of the USA is even worse, as the new "America" wasn't even close to being near the center of the old America.

And regarding the definition of "continent" you need to realize that there are at least five different definitions for that word using different criteria. You were taught a particular one that separated North and South America, but other people (in particular outside the USA) are taught other definitions and most of those don't make that distinction.

By the way, according to the CIA the conventional short name for the United States of America is "United States", not "America" (look in the section "Government").

I see your hungry people and raise with...
twice as many dead babies as France.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/... Even when all the sick ones die at birth, the rest of your healthy ones still dont live as long.
https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...

Tell me, if the exact same thing is true of capitalism, then why is it that all of the self identified capitalist societies have the highest education rates, highest literacy rates, and highest standards of living for everybody overall?

"Education rates" and "Standards of living" or somewhat subjective and thus hard to compare (though I guess what you say is true for many countries, with notable exceptions). "Literacy rates" are hard comparable numbers, and looking at that Cuba is not doing bad:

Literacy in Cuba 99.8%
Literacy in US 99%

Source: CIA World fact book: https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...

Look at this page from the CIA World Fact Book and look at the relative positions of the US and Cuba.

Maybe you should check again? Open Source Intelligence is the correct term for intelligence gathering from publicly available sources.

Now only if the CIA had an Office of Congressional Affairs that could have worked with the Intelligence committees to make sure their Director wasn't put in a position of either perjuring himself or illegally declassifying information...

New Zealand's incredibly innovative and creative economy has allowed their populace to experience the highest living standard the World has ever known, followed by Finland's.

No, in GDP/capita (PPP) Finland is ranked 37th and NZ is 48. The US is 13. Finland and NZ are also ranked lower than Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Iceland, Germany, Taiwan, Belgium, Denmark, UK and Japan. Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...

NZ and/or Finland may be wonderful places to live, because they're both more than wealthy enough to more than provide for people's basic needs, and I think there's a lot more to quality of life than standard of living (a phrase which in practice means material prosperity). Regardless, your claim is wrong.

Which begs the obvious question: Why do we need GMO to feed the world?

My post was about overpopulation, not GMO.

Which commodities would those be?

In my economics class, the professor showed a graph with the inflation-adjusted price of copper. It was stable for a century.
For electricity, a quick Google search shows the price has _fallen_ in the last 20 years.
http://inflationdata.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Inflation-Adjusted-Electricity.jpg
For food, see figure 4 in
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40545.pdf

> And how do you define "stable"?
I meant "stable" as "not oscillating too wildly and not showing a clear positive correlation with time". If it rises significantly in the long term, it is not stable.

but inflation itself is an instability in the system.

Inflation is not caused by "overpopulation", it is caused by the government printing too much money.

Fourth, there is no clear correlation between population density and income per capita.

How is income relevant?

if "overpopulation" caused poverty, we would expect to see a negative correlation between population density and income per capita.

World income per capita has grown even with the financial crisis:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html
Unfortunately, in a quick Google, I did not find a historical graph.

We already invent pointless jobs for people, mostly in the public sector, because there isn't enough real honest work for everyone to do. That's in the first world, where we can afford more cruft. What happens in India and China, though, as mechanization replaces smallhold farming? What are a half-billion extra people, in each of them, going to do?

Human wants are insatiable. As simple things like food are mechanized, people will want more services such as (just one tiny example) live music.

...where we'd outsourced defense materials to the Soviet Union. That would rightfully be called "freaking insane."

We've already done that. Most of the titanium used in the A-12 and SR-71 was covertly acquired by the CIA from the Soviet Union.

It's amusing to me that you think outspending on health is bad and that outspending on education is good. [This assumes that all your data points were intended to show Sweden superior].

I fail to see the humor here. Sweden manages to spend just over half of the US on health, but manages to have nearly half the infant mortality rate and a longer life expectancy. It seems that they must be doing something right.

Please don't make the mistake of thinking that all of these numbers are independent.

American health care is more expensive than other countries because we subsidize the healthcare of the rest of the world. You're welcome! You're welcome for all those inexpensive drugs developed by American companies based on American-government-funded basic science and sold to you at a discount. You're welcome! You're welcome for all those medical devices and procedures developed by American doctors in American hospitals having been trained in American universities with the cost borne by the American economy. You're welcome! We don't mind doing you the favor but frankly it's a little unflattering for you to turn around and say it's to our shame that you are freeloading off of us. Gosh, would it be so hard you all to say thank you?

Obesity is a sign of wealth. Americans are wealthy and fat -- we are living the dream, baby! Pass the cheese dip!

I couldn't tell whether the education expenditure counted both public (tax) and private spending. Sweden has tax-paid college education, right? I don't know whether America's private college tuition payments are part of your numbers, but in any case Sweden is getting outspent by Namibia and Cuba and whatever the heck Lethoso is.

And sheesh we do all of that with tax rates less than half of Sweden's. We have problems, sure, but I'm not sure you've focused on the biggest or truest ones. If you want to focus on the way that Sweden is most better than America, focus on the rate of the populace which believes in magic -- Sweden is a century ahead of us there, even though Sweden was a theocracy until 2000.

Some more figures about Sweden, shall we?

Health expenditure (in percent of GDP): 9.4 (USA: 17.9) Physician density (per 1000): 3.8 (USA: 2.4) Adult obesity: 18.6% (USA: 33%) Education expenditure (in percent of GDP): 7.3 (USA: 5.4) Public debt (2012/2011, in percent of GDP): 38.2/38.4 (USA: 72.5/67.8)

Unlike your claims, I have a source for them. Well, of course only if you believe that socialist propaganda machine that the CIA is.

It's amusing to me that you think outspending on health is bad and that outspending on education is good. [This assumes that all your data points were intended to show Sweden superior].

Some more figures about Sweden, shall we?

Health expenditure (in percent of GDP): 9.4 (USA: 17.9)
Physician density (per 1000): 3.8 (USA: 2.4)
Adult obesity: 18.6% (USA: 33%)
Education expenditure (in percent of GDP): 7.3 (USA: 5.4)
Public debt (2012/2011, in percent of GDP): 38.2/38.4 (USA: 72.5/67.8)

Unlike your claims, I have a source for them. Well, of course only if you believe that socialist propaganda machine that the CIA is.

China, as in the one where the vast majority of people live well below the poverty level and die in their 40s

If the majority of people died in their 40's, I would expect the life expectancy to be around that number.

According to the CIA Factbook it is 74.99 using the 2012 rank. That is 3.63 less than the United States.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html

Since both numbers are pretty close, an im not a mathematician or native of the US, do most people die in their 40's there?

Really ?:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2034rank.html?countryname=United%20States&countrycode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=19#us

In sum: CIA ain't run by the military.

Ok then. Tell me, what part of CIA drone strike in Pakistan kills suspected militants and Support to Military Operations is not military? The CIA may have started out detached from the military, but what they do now certainly sounds to me like it's run by the same General Hotshit egomaniac brass you see on CNN.

from Wikipedia article "Central Intelligence Agency":
In September 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 established both the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.

It is a separate agency. Period. That CIA and DOD cooperate on some matters (transportation, signals, paramilitary training and action, for some examples) is no wise equivalent to control. Each body is quite protective of its own space and prerogatives. Most DCI have been civilian, often with little or even no military experience.

See also the short http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947
See also https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/6-12th-grade/operation-history/history-of-the-cia.html
While it has "kids" in the title it nonetheless gives a concise accounting of formation and scope of CIA.

In sum: CIA ain't run by the military.

From the Wikipedia article on "National Security Agency":
The National Security Agency (NSA) is the central producer and manager of signals intelligence for the United States, operating under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense.

So, one no, one yes.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ec.html

Open data, huh? Will this include some actual facts about Benghazi, or does Obama plan on continuing to cover that up?

They publish it right here: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/countrytemplate_ly.html. What coverup? Do you have any verbs, or just a place name? FWIW, Wikipedia's page is much better, but that's to be expected.

How about Fast and Furious? Will we finally learn how much of a role Obama played in that?

Unlike whatever unsubstantiated 911-truther new-age-shakra-measuring black-cat-fearing fantasy you have about Benghazi, F&F was a real scandal where the government was objectively working against its own people. I seriously doubt the president is going to want to talk about that much.

Or how about opening up the data on how much the FBI knew about the Tsarnaevs ahead of time?

Meh. Unlike F&F (active malice toward the people) that was the usual mere incompetence at worst and I'm not even sure it was that. What's there to know? How is that going to be interesting to anyone?

Sure, you can donate here. They take paypal.

Russian GDP is $2T. 50B/2T = 2.5% of GDP for this project.
Maybe a decimal place is off somewhere?
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2001.html#rs

By the way, according to the CIA the conventional short name for the United States of America is "United States", not "America".

Isn't the official conventional short name 'Murica?

Oh yeah, all that horrible Cuban propaganda about their great health indicators...

Use the dictionary of your choice and check the words "continent" and "country".

Well, I went one step further and used several of the dictionaries and encyclopedias of my choice and checked the word "America". Guess what I found.

From the New Oxford American (oh the irony!) Dictionary (emphasis mine):

America (also the Americas):
a landmass in the western hemisphere that consists of the continents of North and South America joined by the Isthmus of Panama. The continent was originally inhabited by American Indians and Inuits. The northeast coastline of North America was visited by Norse seamen in the 8th or 9th century, but for the modern world the continent was first reached by Christopher Columbus in 1492.
- used as a name for the United States.

Note that the definition of the landmass precedes the definition of the USA. Similar precedence will be found also in Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster, and most other authoritative sources (admittedly not all, although all will acknowledge both meanings).

And regarding the definition of "continent" you need to realize that there are at least five different definitions for that word using different criteria. You were taught a particular one that separated North and South America, but other people (in particular outside the USA) are taught other definitions and most of those don't make that distinction.

By the way, according to the CIA the conventional short name for the United States of America is "United States", not "America".

Oh, good god. I hate it when ppl bring up the crap about defense spending and have absolutely NO idea of what they are talking about. The first thing is that you have NO fucking idea of how much spending China does. You only know what they tell you. OTOH, you DO know how much western nations spend.
Secondly, there is the issue of how much something will buy. If China tells their gun manufacturer to sell them copied firearms of ours at $10 per, while We have to buy our at $2000 / unit, well, that is a HUGE difference. That is called buying power.
Finally, the REAL issue is how much per GDP.
So for China, they spend at 4.3 % of their GDP just on military in 2006, while the USA spent 4.06% in 2005. And ours include 2 wars, while Chinas is just building new weapons systems. And since 2006, our DOD spending has gone DOWN, while China's has gone up a great deal EACH YEAR (per their announcements).

So, stop the foolish crap about how much USA spends. It is Total BS.

That's almost as big as West Virginia!

There's also less people and lower GDP per capita.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/en.html
Population: 1,274,709 (July 2012 est.)
GDP - per capita: $21,200 (2012 est.)

Really, can you provide some examples of how you "take more immigrants" and i don't mean "temporary" H1B's but real immigration with full citizenship.

For example, the US takes in more immigrants per thousand people than the EU countries, except for Luxembourg, Spain, and Italy. During the 90's, the immigration rate was considerably higher and the US probably outmatched any other developed world country.

It looks to me like most of the slow down, while occurring in the restrictive 9/11 era, also was due to the economic and political weakness of the largest states, particular California, Illinois, and New York. For example, the fraction of California's population that was foreign born jumped by 4.5% between 1990 and 2000 and increased a further 1% between 2000 and 2010. Meanwhile, its increase in population dropped from 14% increase between 1990 and 2000 to 10% between 2000 and 2010. That probably is most of the decline in immigration for the US just in that state. There are some smaller states that show similar trends of high immigration in 1990-2000, but not in 2000-2010. The rest of the big states (for example, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio) don't show that.

I wonder if you can do this:
Millions of people leaving extreme poverty in a short time in an historically poor country, all while you have the people who control prices and products in the opposition (which also means artificial shortages), the CIA and the US govt. actively organizing and paying to disinform and to destroy internal economy and political stability (as they did against Allende in Chile, and against many other, which is well known and documented), under an international economic crisis, with food prices increasing since (if I recall correctly) 2008, with consumption rising because of people leaving poverty (and, from there, prices), etc.
None in the poor-hating, racist and xenophobe Venezuelan upper class, none of the previous presidents did anything like that before Chavez, they are mostly foreigners who don't care about their own workers (same as in all Latin America).

Cuba didn't receive oil for "free", they gave LOTS of medics and teachers in exchange to Venezuela, and it's the same for every other country: Chavez exchanged help.

How stupid can people be to believe everything media says, knowing that the mass-media and international "news" agencies are controlled by big holding corporations, kept in their place by corporate marketing and PR? Same for Venezuela. The "freedom lovers" there were a little group of the same kind of people and corporations, that was instrumental in the coup attempt. You can't have real freedom if you don't have basic education, or even food.

Yeah, it's easy to do anything from your computer and/or mouth. Not all has been good, obviously, but Venezuela has changed for good, there is no doubt about that, and even the opposition recognizes it (and even imitates, saying Capriles is a leftist, the same thing Obama has done).

I guess this is the kind of advances and the country you like, don't you?

2 - If anybody actually thought that the eqyptian government was going to be all good now because of the uprising clearly has not been paying attention. Id love to visit but not until there is another revolution there.

There's a few things about Egypt you should probably know. For one thing, the poverty rate there isn't much worse there than the United States (15% versus 20%) despite the radically different size of the economy and median income ($6k versus $40k). And before you jump down my throat on "proving that", I sourced that information from the CIA World Factbook. They have a significantly lower violent crime rate than here as well -- almost four times less (and yes, I can back that up too from a reliable source, The UN Office on Drugs and Crime. And when it comes to jailing people, the United States ranks #1. Egypt? #165. (Oh yes, sourced that too).

So when you get all uppity about how they're jailing a blogger for three years for publishing something anti-muslim, I want you to remember the terror watch lists. I want you to remember Guantanamo Bay. I want you to think of the hundreds of political prisoners (Citation? Got you covered. I assume Harvard Law School is prestigious enough?) we ignore. You talk about media control and manipulation in other countries like Egypt like they're somehow worse than those of the west.

The truth is... they're better. Three years for pissing off the government here is a comparatively light sentence: We put people in jail for at least a year for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don't ask for a revolution before considering visiting Egypt. Chances are good, your country needs one more.

1) The US starts the clock one a breath is made by the child. Other European countries use weight, length, and some other factors to determine when life starts. With the US saving so many premature and all of them counting when they die from being so premature it lowers the US numbers. Also death counting is different, US counts all people who die on its soil for other countries they don't count non-citizens.

I see this over and over from those defending the US position. It's just not true for (at least) the western world. If you prefer, use your own CIA's normalised statistics for "life expectancy at birth": (ie: all these are accounted for in the same way, mainly because there's no point in having statistics in the same database that aren't comparable)

USA: 78.49 years
UK: 80.17 years
Germany: 80.19 years
France: 81.46 years

I have experience with the UK's system and with the US system. I would take the UK system in a heartbeat. If you want a *much* more nuanced and in-depth overview from a US-born writer, I suggest you look here. Spoiler: She comes to the same conclusion; there is a lot to be had from a healthcare system that is ubiquitous and free at the point of need, not to mention that it's not tied to any employer, and that there is no such thing as "recission" (a true evil if ever there was one) and there's no such thing as a "pre-existing condition".

We all get sick or injured. Leaving the decision over whether you'll get treatment to a company that now regards you as a drain on profits is not a good idea. Where I come from, healthcare is a right. The idea that someone would not receive treatment because they're too poor, or that they have to choose which finger to have sewn back on because they can't afford both is repulsive to me. Seriously and utterly horrifying.

Simon.

1) The US starts the clock one a breath is made by the child. Other European countries use weight, length, and some other factors to determine when life starts. With the US saving so many premature and all of them counting when they die from being so premature it lowers the US numbers. Also death counting is different, US counts all people who die on its soil for other countries they don't count non-citizens.

I see this over and over from those defending the US position. It's just not true for (at least) the western world. If you prefer, use your own CIA's normalised statistics for "life expectancy at birth": (ie: all these are accounted for in the same way, mainly because there's no point in having statistics in the same database that aren't comparable)

USA: 78.49 years
UK: 80.17 years
Germany: 80.19 years
France: 81.46 years

I have experience with the UK's system and with the US system. I would take the UK system in a heartbeat. If you want a *much* more nuanced and in-depth overview from a US-born writer, I suggest you look here. Spoiler: She comes to the same conclusion; there is a lot to be had from a healthcare system that is ubiquitous and free at the point of need, not to mention that it's not tied to any employer, and that there is no such thing as "recission" (a true evil if ever there was one) and there's no such thing as a "pre-existing condition".

We all get sick or injured. Leaving the decision over whether you'll get treatment to a company that now regards you as a drain on profits is not a good idea. Where I come from, healthcare is a right. The idea that someone would not receive treatment because they're too poor, or that they have to choose which finger to have sewn back on because they can't afford both is repulsive to me. Seriously and utterly horrifying.

Simon.

1) The US starts the clock one a breath is made by the child. Other European countries use weight, length, and some other factors to determine when life starts. With the US saving so many premature and all of them counting when they die from being so premature it lowers the US numbers. Also death counting is different, US counts all people who die on its soil for other countries they don't count non-citizens.

I see this over and over from those defending the US position. It's just not true for (at least) the western world. If you prefer, use your own CIA's normalised statistics for "life expectancy at birth": (ie: all these are accounted for in the same way, mainly because there's no point in having statistics in the same database that aren't comparable)

USA: 78.49 years
UK: 80.17 years
Germany: 80.19 years
France: 81.46 years

I have experience with the UK's system and with the US system. I would take the UK system in a heartbeat. If you want a *much* more nuanced and in-depth overview from a US-born writer, I suggest you look here. Spoiler: She comes to the same conclusion; there is a lot to be had from a healthcare system that is ubiquitous and free at the point of need, not to mention that it's not tied to any employer, and that there is no such thing as "recission" (a true evil if ever there was one) and there's no such thing as a "pre-existing condition".

We all get sick or injured. Leaving the decision over whether you'll get treatment to a company that now regards you as a drain on profits is not a good idea. Where I come from, healthcare is a right. The idea that someone would not receive treatment because they're too poor, or that they have to choose which finger to have sewn back on because they can't afford both is repulsive to me. Seriously and utterly horrifying.

Simon.

1) The US starts the clock one a breath is made by the child. Other European countries use weight, length, and some other factors to determine when life starts. With the US saving so many premature and all of them counting when they die from being so premature it lowers the US numbers. Also death counting is different, US counts all people who die on its soil for other countries they don't count non-citizens.

I see this over and over from those defending the US position. It's just not true for (at least) the western world. If you prefer, use your own CIA's normalised statistics for "life expectancy at birth": (ie: all these are accounted for in the same way, mainly because there's no point in having statistics in the same database that aren't comparable)

USA: 78.49 years
UK: 80.17 years
Germany: 80.19 years
France: 81.46 years

I have experience with the UK's system and with the US system. I would take the UK system in a heartbeat. If you want a *much* more nuanced and in-depth overview from a US-born writer, I suggest you look here. Spoiler: She comes to the same conclusion; there is a lot to be had from a healthcare system that is ubiquitous and free at the point of need, not to mention that it's not tied to any employer, and that there is no such thing as "recission" (a true evil if ever there was one) and there's no such thing as a "pre-existing condition".

We all get sick or injured. Leaving the decision over whether you'll get treatment to a company that now regards you as a drain on profits is not a good idea. Where I come from, healthcare is a right. The idea that someone would not receive treatment because they're too poor, or that they have to choose which finger to have sewn back on because they can't afford both is repulsive to me. Seriously and utterly horrifying.

Simon.

The US starts the clock one a breath is made by the child. Other European countries use weight, length, and some other factors to determine when life starts. With the US saving so many premature and all of them counting when they die from being so premature it lowers the US numbers.

[ citation needed ]

What we actualy see is::

The 10 countries with the highest rates of preterm birth per 100 live births:

        Malawi: 18.1 per 100
        Comoros: 16.7
        Congo: 16.7
        Zimbabwe: 16.6
        Equatorial Guinea: 16.5
        Mozambique: 16.4
        Gabon: 16.3
        Pakistan: 15.8
        Indonesia: 15.5
        Mauritania: 15.4

I.E. high preterm birth rates are a good sign of being a 3rd world country.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs363/en/index.html

Also death counting is different, US counts all people who die on its soil for other countries they don't count non-citizens.

[ citation needed ]

Look at charts to see life expectancy from ages 5,25,50,75 and that listing changes.

Got a link?

This looks interesting:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62587/

Looking at e50 for example the US is behind AUS, CAN, DNK, ESP , FRA.

The CIA seem less bothered about the comparison problem than you:

This entry contains the average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year, if mortality at each age remains constant in the future. The entry includes total population as well as the male and female components. Life expectancy at birth is also a measure of overall quality of life in a country and summarizes the mortality at all ages. It can also be thought of as indicating the potential return on investment in human capital and is necessary for the calculation of various actuarial measures.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html

Right now, we've been looking at a consistent 1E6-2E6 BTC worth of transactions a day. That's, at current prices, about 1E7-2E7 USD per day in transactions. 365 days of that, is about 7E9 USD, which is actually more than the economy of Somalia. So what kind of "trouble" are "we" in, anyway?

>

Erm, sorry, that's just bullshit: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html

By the way, did you notice that the Gaza numbers on literacy are identical to the West Bank numbers? It looks like both came from a study that put all the people in West Bank and Gaza into one bag. That makes your info a little bit shaky. And I suspect that there is always the possibility that it could have been distorted by the Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

do you realize that, in moslem countries, the literacy rate is so low its almost non-existant?

Erm, sorry, that's just bullshit: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html

Even the Gaza Strip has a 92% literacy rate. Not even close to non-existant.

In the light of the fact that the average Arab reads something like four pages per year, I find your statement kind of inconsequential. If "literate" is defined as "at least knows individual letter of the alphabet", then the term is sort of worthless. And I won't even venture into the topic of functional illiteracy in First World countries. It would surprise me if in Gaza, of all places, the situation were better.

do you realize that, in moslem countries, the literacy rate is so low its almost non-existant?

Erm, sorry, that's just bullshit: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html

Even the Gaza Strip has a 92% literacy rate. Not even close to non-existant.

Your three references are to completely different things.

Yes, that was kind of the point. I was trying to illustrate that public debt perhaps isn't the only metric that is useful in comparing countries. I do agree that private debt (and thus external debt and the NIIP) is a different matter.

As I understand it, all debt figures cited by the CIA World Factbook are public debt.

Well, there are apparently a lot of definitions of public debt used in the listing. Just look at the differences between the 'notes':
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2186.html

I wish I could find a credible source that has a strict definition of public debt and a ranking of countries based on that definition, but I can't. What we can agree on, I believe, is that pretty much all the first world countries are in a bit of a bind when it comes to the matters of debt and the solidity of their economies.

I don't necessarily see the US as a top producer, unless all of the 12 countries above it with proven oil reserves run their supply down. For instance, the US has a 10th of what Saudi Arabia has, and until recently it was thought that Canada and the oil sands were second on the list. Canada is ramping up it's oil production and will be a heavy player in 2017 with (hundreds of) billions being invested. So where is all the optimism for US oil production coming from? Sounds like it is coming from the "drill baby drill" camp.

Bitcoin in circulation are larger in value than the money supply of 7 countries. OK, they are small countries, but you have to start somewhere.

Bitcoin current value: $110 million
Samoa money supply: $110 million

Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2214rank.html