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India exports are only $165 billion and ranks 22. Why do they need a New Rupee Symbol?

Is this adjusted for cost of living? Income values are meaningless unless you know the relative costs of equivalent standards of living between the two countries.

For this, you could look at GDP per capita using Purchasing Power Parity method to adjust. On that page (you can also pull from The World Bank with the same results) you'll see U.S. as #11 and China as #128.

By the end of 1985, 20,303 cases of AIDS had been reported to the World Health Organisation.In the USA 15,948 cases of AIDS had been reported, and in the UK 275 cases. -- http://www.avert.org/aids-history-86.htm

In 1985 there was a reliable test for AIDS and 36,526 known cases worldwide. I stand by my original numbers of there being in the 100s of thousands of cases or less at the time.

Given that there are an estimated 33.4 million people currently living with HIV/AIDS in the world and millions of people dyeing each year. I also stand by my numbers of millions of lives saved. Could all HIV/AIDS infected people now be removed from population to limit the continuance of this virus? Not likely IMO, I feel it would certainly have been curtailable in the 80's though.

I don't do the fancy pseudo-math to fudge around with the margins of error to find the number of false-positive deaths as well as the number of false-negative slips, but I do guarantee that it wouldn't be 33.4 million living dead now.

Figures are for the number of people jailed per 100,000 population, for 2007. There is a more up to date list (7th edition) but I couldn't find a link for it that didn't require a PDF download.

We are free for this one number alone. But don't you worry, the powers that be want to "change" that too. Reuters

About half the US population is sitting in jail as a result of drug related offenses - due the the war on drugs and 3 strikes policies there. It's also a big part of the reason why California is going bankrupt.

Why is it that the people most involved with drug trafficking never get caught?
These sites may open your eyes if you have the guts to do so.Site 1
Site 2
As to California's problems, do you think that this may have had something to do with it? Site 3

Of course, as everyone know, Australia is entirely populated by criminals, which may account for the relatively low percentage of us locked up here.

As everyone "knows" America was first made up of religious radicals and status quo malcontents and they were sent west across the Atlantic ocean by the same people who sent criminals to Botany Bay.

Really? Well, since we're on the subject, the USA buys 700 billion dollars worth of oil every day.

[citation needed]

Let's see, 700 billion x 365 days is more than 255 trillion dollars. The US economy was estimated at a little over 14 trillion dollars in 2009. Are you saying that in the last year, our economy has gotten 18 times larger, and all of it is now spent on oil?

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

Since the 70s or something we've let in lots of immigrants and I think we give the most foreign aid in the world relative population size.

Many of those immigrants end up in suburbs with low employment rates, though as an American you'll most likely be seen as a hero rather than a zero in the job market I assume. Don't know, I'm no employer =P. At least people may assume you've got an education and competence. Education btw is free over here, you even get some money as a student.

Start your visit in Stockholm and travel outward. Here you have some information about working in Sweden, and here you've got ads for Stockholm.

We're right onto that.

--
USA

We're still the largest nation in the world!

--
Russia

The United States gets very offended by espionage activity, because we would never do it to anyone else. They promise. Not a single satellite. No high altitude spy planes. No high altitude long range supersonic spy planes (we retired all of these, we promise). No remote control spy planes. No flock of agencies with covert operations world wide. Nope, not the US. Keep your spies out of our country, we don't do it to you.

    Excuse me, there are a couple nice men in black suits knocking at my door that just want to ask me a few questions.

CIA World Factbook

"This is great news because this could help wipe out Afghanistan's poverty"

Um.. how on earth are you coming to that conclusion? Their total deposits are worth $1T, and clearly they can't mine all of that in one year. It probably will take them well over 70 years to deplete their natural resources, but let's just say 70 to boost the per-year numbers. Every year they could mine 1/70th of their resources, thereby adding $14Bn to their GDP of $14Bn (not $10Bn as the OP said, see https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html). Okay, so say their GDP will go up 2x. Do you realize how poor they are? The per-capita income there is $800. By doubling their GDP, their per-capita income becomes $1,600. Comparatively, Saudi Arabia's per-capita income is $20,400 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sa.html). Afghanistan's GDP will have to improve by a factor of 25.5x to catch up to Saudi Arabia.

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

Turkmenistan is the named used in the english speaking world.

The country was a former province of the USSR.

Good odds it will be again at some point.

Turkmenistan? Wikipedia is making up country names now?

So must the CIA, the BBC, and even their own embassy and government. They've got their own TLD for crying out loud.

Seriously, listen to the news or something. Read a book. It's an actual country.

America's poor may be rich relative to Africa or some other benighted continent but the Gini index has the US looking like one of those African hell hole dictatorships in wealth distribution. The top 1% makes more money than the bottom 50%, the top producers make 900,000 dollars an hour and 80% of the US still has 7.25 as a minimum wage. Maybe what we need is a maximum wage.

Yeah, and what exactly are Americans downloading from The Pirate Bay or LimeWire? Linux ISOs? Maybe the US should be on that list, too. Oh, and all the Americans dealing drugs? Clearly the US is doing nothing to stop them.

What you're missing as your knee jerks (oh noes we're being prejudiced against the chinese! won't someone think of the chinese babies?) is that the US doesn't claim otherwise. For example, the CIA World Fact Book clearly shows the US as a major importer, exporter, and trafficker of drugs. China claims that our statements about copyright infringement are overblown, while everybody knows that the majority of professionally-pressed pirate media (i.e. piracy for profit) comes out of China, and is made on the same assembly lines as the real thing, but typically with inferior materials and without quality control. Everybody knows that the US is a major player in the illegal drugs market, but the US doesn't deny it, and the hypocrisy is the difference here.

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

Here are two I like to pull out: wage disparity and longevity. One is generally thought to indicate how egalitarian a society is, and the other how good the quality of life is. In both, the US shows some disturbing data.

For wage disparity, Wikipedia has an interesting world map from the World CIA Factbook of 2009: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.png The US ranks above Russia in its GINI coefficient, and with China, Venezuela and Madascar. Even Greenspan thought that this level of wage disparity is disturbing.

For life expectancy, see again the CIA world factbook for 2009: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html. The US ranks 49th, below any EU country except Poland. Heck, Ireland scores higher.

Both are areas where Americans like to beat their chests, and both are areas where the US not only fails, but is on a level with countries that Americans consider ignorant and authoritarian backwaters.

Illicit drugs: Tasmania is one of the world's major suppliers of licit opiate products; government maintains strict controls over areas of opium poppy cultivation and output of poppy straw concentrate; major consumer of cocaine and amphetamines

We don't need the pot.

Its charter is not the science of climate change, but the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources.

And so it goes.

Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the "War on Terror" to Halliburton and Blackwater. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans's residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.... These events are examples of "the shock doctrine": using the public's disorientation following massive collective shocks - wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy.

Isn't it convenient how the most powerful quakes and tsunamis have hit countries like Iran, China, and Indonesia(because of its Muslim population)? More recently, there were quakes in Mexico and Chile. America has a stake for transforming all of the above nations from the inside out, invading their territories under the guise of "aid" and establishing a cancerous presence before rendering them docile with its culture before sucking them dry. Chile in particular was mentioned in Shock Doctrine as an example of a country who has thumbed their nose at America's financial control of South America to become independent and stable. There's been a lot of Tsunami FUD in San Diego lately, to build hype for the climate weapons and persuade its overwhelmingly Christian population to buy into the "end times" madness.

I think the World Factbook is pretty awesome, actually.

And you have some cite for this, or perhaps a ranking of countries by an adjusted method that evens out the methodological differences?

Your own CIA Factbook backs up what I'm saying, and I suspect they don't just call up the country's embassy and ask for the number.

I'm an "old-timer" in a variety of meanings despite my ID, and I know about Cantor and Siegel. Nevertheless, Terry asks the right question and points out how uninformative this article is.

The article reports that 13% of hosts "relaying spam" reside in the US. But what should we compare that 13% to? According to the figures in the CIA Factbook, some 57% of worldwide Internet hosts are located in the US. So I'd say the article's entire premise is flawed. If the conditional probability of a host spamming were equivalent world-wide then, using the Factbook's figures, US hosts should account for 57% of spam relays, not 13%.

On top of that, relaying tells us nothing about how spamming works. Spam doesn't come from computers; it starts as some back-alley deal and spreads relentlessly across the globe. Those zombied machines with the ISO country-code domains we all see pummeling our servers aren't the source of the spam either. They're just drones that take their orders from masters far away.

As Woodward and Bernstein were told, "follow the money." Looking at distributions of Internet hosts tells us nothing about the business of spamming or its effects.

The only citation needed is here.

Similar arguments were made by the Ptolemaic churches attempting to discredit Aristotle.

The UK acknowledges the phenomenon: Ministry of Defense
So does Mexico
oh, and so does the FBI
and the CIA.

UFO's are not just some hoojum bullshit. There is a serious phenomena of unexplained activity/objects, and rigorous scientific endeavor would get much more credibility if this area was at least explored from a rational and logical standpoint in educational institutions without all the hooting and hollering, even if what we discover is against our rational and logical assumptions.

and if your really interested, check out the NASA video of the STS-75 incident. Watch the video, and then read what NASA conveniently doesn't discuss.

To pick one data point Singapore is 2.31/1000, and the US is 6.3/1000: the US rate is 273% higher. See here. You seem to be basing your "less than 1%" difference on the fact that all of the developed countries have an infant mortality rate of less than 1%, but this is a ridiculous way to compare statistics for rare events.

Life expectancy:
male: 75.65 years
female: 80.69 years

Source

Therefore, middle age for women is 40.345 and middle age for men is 37.825 years.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Afghanistan's top three exports are opium, fruits and nuts, and handwoven carpets. They produce absolutely no oil. Natural gas production is 30 million m^3 per year and is all used domestically. None of the gas is exported. Furthermore, it's not like they're sitting on a natural gas gold mine. Known reserves place them at number 65 in the world.

One of the most powerful countries?

Meh. China discovered the industrial revolution 150 years after everyone else did, and they think they invented it.

The average income is about $100, and most of the country is poor. That's not a superpower.

The US not only recognizes Taiwan, it has created a legal obligation to protect it. It recently sold billions in arms to Taiwan (NOT China), in fact China was opposed to the sale. It has it's own flag, sends people to the Olympics. It makes it's own laws. China has no say it Taiwain's internal or international diplomacy. To get from Taiwan to China, you need a Visa, and you couldn't fly (until recently) or ferry directly. Taiwan has it's own military. The CIA World Factbook classifies Taiwan as it's own country.

Just because China keeps repeating a lie, and some are hesitant to correct them every single time they say it, doesn't make it the truth.

Taiwan != China

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

You have yet to give me a good reason why it is complicated. It is really simple. Perhaps uncomfortable for some. But simple.

If we're going to talk facts, how about a few citations? Look, it's easy:-

• In the US, infant mortality is 6.22 per 1000 live births.

• In the UK, infant mortality is 4.85 per 1000 live births.

Source: The CIA World Factbook.

Of course, in Singapore it's 2.31, so there's nothing much for either of us to crow about :-(.

Is this the same logic that says the problem of Mexican drugs being imported into the US is the US's fault? Sure, there needs to be demand, but this is a bit like saying that murderers wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for all of these *living* people around!

Wow, is that you, BadAnalogyGuy? Drugs require willing participants. Yes, there is the issue of addiction, but to develop the addiction, first you must be taking the drugs. According to the CIA, The USA is heavily invested in the drug trade:

world's largest consumer of cocaine (shipped from Colombia through Mexico and the Caribbean), Colombian heroin, and Mexican heroin and marijuana; major consumer of ecstasy and Mexican methamphetamine; minor consumer of high-quality Southeast Asian heroin; illicit producer of cannabis, marijuana, depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, and methamphetamine; money-laundering center

World's largest consumer of Colombian cocaine and heroin, Mexican heroin and Marijuana, etc etc? I guess that must be why they're shipping that stuff here, huh? I mean, to be fair, we're right here. Oh, there's another reason; it's lucrative. And why is that? Because it's illegal, of course. I thought we learned all this from prohibition of alcohol and the mob.

Americans are willing to pay a fraction of what they would to a local, to do a menial job. Mexicans are willing to risk life and limb just to get a chance to do that job. Something is very wrong with every part of this situation.

End the payment of farm subsidies to megacorporations who don't need them. It would be a good start. Legalizing drugs you can grow would be another good step. It would eliminate huge swaths of crime. However, federal, state, and local government are all profiting from it... on the backs (and blood) of the people of both nations.

New Zealand is a country of 4 million people and 60 million sheep. No, I mean actual sheep.

There was a site about New Zealand called Adult Sheep Finder. I notice that it has been shut down, but that image shows how it looked.

"Why would an ISP implement a filter voluntarily?"

A lot of stupid things happen in the government of New Zealand. However, they have not been stupid enough to invade Iraq, so they don't qualify as being really stupid.

Do you really believe that anything the EU does is going to prevent the US from rather forcibly letting the world know that the IP manuactured in the US isn't going to be passed around for free? Dream on. You are talking about a huge economy that is responsible for the well-being of nearly a half a billion people

The European population is more than 830 million whereas the US's is estimated at 309 million. The census being done will likely raise the number but it's still less than half of Europe's population. Well maybe you meant something else... According to the CIA the EU has the largest exports, China is second, and Germany alone is third. The US shows up behind Germany at number 4.

If that's not what you mean then what do you mean? Quite simply both the EU and China have bigger markets. About the only thing the US has going for it is IP and productivity.

Probably the biggest thing that people are missing is the US is poised to take on a huge new madate to pretty much supply health care to everyone.

I doubt it but I hope Obamacare is stopped. I'm feeling sorrier and sorrier I voted for him.

Falcon

(btw, I've seen you shouting bullshit in many different areas, from running trackers to some china government and now this - do you even know what you're talking about?)

Ad hominim attacks will get you nowhere.

Also, are you really serious about us economy being closed?

Yes.

...and that's why it will fight ACTA.

Ah, a righteous uprising by the people is a much more reasonable explanation than their import/export imbalance being a lot different than the US. And compare what is being imported and exported with the United States, and you'll see what I'm trying to say.

Did you forget China and Taiwan, the Indian coders and phone support, even us mail manual processing being offshored to Singapore? You can't be serious.

We weren't talking about the price of tea in China. We were discussing why the ACTA is being fought by the European Union. Please stay on topic.

Unlike the US, that has an economy that is mostly closed (despite what you may think, our import/exports make up only a small amount of GDP)

A quarter of the US GDP is in imports and exports. It's not a small amount. Looking at the CIA World Factbook, the EU and US seem to have similar levels of imports and exports (remember interstate trade between EU members doesn't count as imports and exports from the EU itself, else we should count interstate trade between US states as well). I get that the US has 15% of its GDP in imports and 9% in exports. The EU has 11% of its GDP in imports and 13% of its GDP in exports.

The rich and greedy that know about this are certainly thinking about it. However, you still aren't getting my point about economic collapse. Post-collapse money is worthless, but assets are not. People will be unwilling to sell oil because of how useful it is for surviving and because they know they won't be able to get more later. Hoarding mentality. For those who hoarded more than enough to support themselves, yes they will barter with their surplus oil and most likely acquire some very nice assets. But it seriously won't take long for those with surplus to run out of surplus. And it certainly won't be easy to barter when most of the world is fighting for food and water.

Oh man, that graph is funny. You totally leave out the part where in 2009 a barrel of oil cost about $50. Not to mention the 20 years prior where some roller-coasters happened. The fact that oil went from $50 in '07 to $100 in '08 and back to $50 in '09 is a great indicator of how volatile the oil market is becoming.

You say going from 30 bill barrels to 0 is unrealistic, but I think what you are really saying is "our economy won't collapse." Which is fine, just argue that instead. I don't see what's so unrealistic about it IF the economy collapses. Now, when I say 0, I don't literally mean 0, I was being slightly hyperbolic. However, in regard to the average person, 0 is a pretty good estimate. At the point of permanent scarcity, I believe the military will most likely be in control of the remaining oil supplies.

Yes, we have enough uranium to meet our current demands for another 20 years or so, but we sure as hell don't have enough power plants. Consider the fact that it takes about 10 years to make a plant (don't forget to factor in the oil cost of BUILDING a plant), but our economy will have collapsed before that time. We would need 10,000 of the largest nukes to mitigate the energy discrepancy. Do you think we can build 10,000 nukes in under 10 years?

Nice, you really do know your history, that is exactly why the USSR collapsed. I admit that I simplified it, but in general what I said is true. The price of oil dropped because the US convinced the Middle East to flood the market with cheap oil. So cheap that USSR was pumping oil as fast as they could and soon after their production peaked. The CIA declassified this whole story so you can read all about it here

This is reason enough to believe that "climate change" is bullshit. Just like "saving the gay whales" was the issue du jour of the nineties.

I would like to tell you how I like to wipe my ass, but the method is Classified National Security Information. Now hand over your civil liberties, it's snowing again.

Think international totalitarianism in order to "fix" the Earth at-all-costs.

Read it and weep. It seems our megalomaniacal overlords found a new pet issue since thinking of the children and terrorism are going outta style.

If you have a legitimate argument as to why America (or any other nation) should simply allow itself to be dismantled and sold off piecemeal to the rest of the world, please make it.

Look who is ranked in first, look who is ranked last (and by how much).
America has already sold itself off to the rest of the world under your very nose.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html?countryName=Dominican%20Republic&countryCode=us&regionCode=ca&rank=153#us

Here is some information from the CIA's web site: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

I picked the four countries with the highest birth rate and the four with the lowest. Countries not on the list of major infectious diseases are assumed to be at low risk.

Country, Children Born Per Woman, Life Expectancy, Risk of Major Infectious Diseases

For the countries with the highest birth rates:
Niger, 7.75, 52.6, very high risk
Uganda, 6.77, 52.72, very high risk
Mali, 6.62, 51.78, very high risk
Somalia, 6.52, 49.63, high risk

For the countries with the lowest birth rates:
Macau, 0.91, 84.36, low risk (not on the list)
Hong Kong, 1.02, 81.86, low risk (not on the list)
Singapore, 1.09, 81.98, low risk (not on the list)
Taiwan, 1.14, 77.96, low risk (not on the list)

I think the data speaks for itself. There is a very high correlation between a low birth rate and longevity/low risk of infectious diseases.

Perhaps spending money on birth control to keep the population small so the land can provide the people with clean water and resources to handle sewage is a good way to limit disease.
Of course, the fewer people who are born, the lower the cost of vaccinating them.

-Todd

As long as the average woman has about 2.1 children, there is no problem. However, if you look in the CIA world factbook, you'll see that 93 countries are not breeding at replacement levels. This includes most of the world's rich countries.

People consume resources. But people also work and produce resources. My point is that having less people doesn't necessarily translate to a richer society. The pie is not fixed in size.

there is no link between rising CO2 and temperature rise except in the reverse sense: temperature rises and then 800-1000 years later, CO2 rises in delayed response.

Fail. New Scientist Climate Myths: Ice cores show CO2 increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming

The oceans are not acidifying.

Fail. Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104 (a change of 0.075).

The reported change in the average pH of 0.1 is below the measurement error of even well calibrated instruments.

Fail. The very best (very expensive!) meters have an accuracy of ±0.002 pH units. (and besides, multiple replicates and statistical analysis is used to increase accuracy and reduce individual variance - or did you seriously think that scientists only sample a single point in the sea with a single meter to determine temperature change?!)

The Maldives had a sea level fall in the 1970s followed by stasis since. Tuvalu's sea levels have remained stable during that time.

The CIA disagree with you: "Maldives: Environment - current issues: depletion of freshwater aquifers threatens water supplies; global warming and sea level rise; coral reef bleaching" How sea level rise has affected the Maldives Tuvalu is concerned about global increases in greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on rising sea levels, which threaten the country's underground water table

there is no link between rising CO2 and temperature rise except in the reverse sense: temperature rises and then 800-1000 years later, CO2 rises in delayed response.

Fail. New Scientist Climate Myths: Ice cores show CO2 increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming

The oceans are not acidifying.

Fail. Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104 (a change of 0.075).

The reported change in the average pH of 0.1 is below the measurement error of even well calibrated instruments.

Fail. The very best (very expensive!) meters have an accuracy of ±0.002 pH units. (and besides, multiple replicates and statistical analysis is used to increase accuracy and reduce individual variance - or did you seriously think that scientists only sample a single point in the sea with a single meter to determine temperature change?!)

The Maldives had a sea level fall in the 1970s followed by stasis since. Tuvalu's sea levels have remained stable during that time.

The CIA disagree with you: "Maldives: Environment - current issues: depletion of freshwater aquifers threatens water supplies; global warming and sea level rise; coral reef bleaching" How sea level rise has affected the Maldives Tuvalu is concerned about global increases in greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on rising sea levels, which threaten the country's underground water table

If you use the UN definition of "first world," which depends on GNP, Bangladesh isn't that far from where you'd expect in both birth rates and "first worldness." Their purchasing power GDP (couldn't find a ranking for GNP) is 50th in the world and their birth rate is 71st. Total GNP seems like kind of a silly metric, but that's apparently what the UN uses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bg.html

Your statement "given the actual example of Bangladesh - is that a long term (50 years and counting) drop in fertility to (in the next decade) below replacement levels" is a bit disingenuous. The fertility rate in Bangladesh didn't actually drop below 6 until 1982.
(http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:BGD&q=fertility+rate+in+Bangladesh#met=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:BGD) The long term implications of improving education without improving the economic circumstances of the population would seem to be far from settled, using your own example. Bangladesh has achieved a replacement level fertility rate only in the last few years (it broke 3 in 2000 and 2.5 in 2006).

Checking through Bangladeshi history for events that happened around 1980, when the birth rates started to drop, it seems that the major events were the beginning of a birth control campaign, a regional cooperation agreement and the kickoff, including lots of foreign investment, in the Bangladeshi garment industry, which happens to employ 90% women. Bangladesh did begin some revamping of their education system around 1980, but it's hard to see how that could be the sole cause of a birth rates starting to drop, with no lag.

It's quite possible that simply educating women would decrease birth rates, but Bangladesh doesn't seem to prove your case that education alone does it, or that an education only approach is stable in the long term. I find it much more likely that education and improvement in economic conditions occur in tandem, each feeding on the other. If your family has enough to eat and your kids are not required to work, they're more likely to go to school (the Bangladeshis know this - one of their programs in the 80's involved food for education). An educated population tends to be a driving force behind economic growth.

That doesn't mean that everybody needs a car for birth rates to be low, but most of the world wouldn't necessarily associate a "first world lifestyle" with things like that anyway.

Especially since Japanese society still largely encourages women to abandon their careers once they have children. And, as we all know, Japanese women are expected to be baby making machines , so *not* having children isn't really seen as an option.

While it is true that Japanese society does have a very patriarchal outlook, and expects women to produce children, it should also be noted that Japan has one of the lowest birth / death ratios in the entire world, even though it has one of the worlds longest lifespans. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2002rank.html?countryName=Japan&countryCode=ja&regionCode=eas&rank=218#ja The societal pressure to have children is partially a response to the overwhelming trend of developed nation citizens to have less than the replacement rate, and the fear of an aging, declining population.

Yeah, I have to say I'm surprised anyone would object to CIA involvement

I certainly don't, and I can be as paranoid as anybody. For years I've enjoyed the amount of geographical information you can get from their World Factbook on their public web site. It includes such things as a country's crops and other products. If they keep historical data behind that (I can't imagine them throwing any of it away) you have the ability to mine economic indicators over time for trends.

However you judge the organisation, they do have a rather large database of facts. It's a lot of data, and with data you can do science.

we already had a very good literacy prior to it (as in, almost as good as the US), and the XO itself might not even have been the cheapest option.

Fixed that for you.

we already had a very good literacy prior to it (as in, almost as good as the US), and the XO itself might not even have been the cheapest option.

Fixed that for you.

Do you mean whole 266 (even you cut that into half) different country to build their own networking hardware? If not, why any under-developed country should trust a developed country, then? Especially if some of those countries have a bad record of bullying weaker ones for any imaginary reason.

Sooner or later developed countries will realize this arrogance will backfire. If anyone is looking for a solution for a real security, it's hidden under understanding every human being living on this planet have the same rights as you have. Once you realize this fact, whoever produces these products will lose its meaning, and you won't waste your time to build machines that kill others.

Labor force:

154.3 million (includes unemployed) (2008 est.)

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

154,300,000 / 10 = 15.43 million.

Iran's government seems to have an accurate grasp of the tactical situation. They must expand, and hope against hope this gives them access to more resources. Or they must die.

Iran, unlike the rest of the world it seems, is quite aware that it's oil will stop supporting the economy before another decade passes. And smart Iranians know that attacking Iran's nuclear facilities is all but ensuring the doom of Iran's people in the all to near future. And before you say it, no Iran's oilfields won't be dry in 10 years.

Respectfully, I think justification for Iran's nuclear program is a crock of shit. Iran has roughly 10% of the world's total proven petroleum reserves. Iran is the world's fourth largest oil producer and is OPEC's second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia. At 2006 rates of production, Iran's oil reserves would last 98 years if no new oil was found.

Their problem is that Iran has one of the most inefficient economies in the world. It has a large public sector, with an estimated 60% of the economy directly controlled and centrally planned by the state. The combined budgets of the religious foundations [Bonyads] are said to make up as much as half that of the central government. Combination of price controls and subsidies, particularly on food and energy, continues to weigh down the economy, and contraband, administrative controls, widespread corruption, and other rigidities undermine the potential for private sector-led growth. High oil prices in recent years have enabled Iran to amass nearly US$ 97 billion in foreign exchange reserves. Yet this increased revenue has not eased economic hardships, which include double-digit unemployment and inflation. References [1] [2]

I would suggest that Iran has every opportunity in the world of becoming a prosperous, modern nation if they simply reformed and diversified their economy over the next 50 years. Nuclear power is the last thing they need right now. Once they achieve a modern, diversified, efficient economy, energy technologies will have advanced to the point that there will be a number of options they will be able to take advantage of, such as enhanced oil recovery techniques. Even now, there may exist other options they don't appear to have considered, such a tidal/wave/thermalcline power from the Persian Gulf or perhaps geothermal, solar or wind energy production.

In my opinion this mad rush to develop nuclear technology makes no sense from an energy perspective, when their top priority should be economic reform. In just a few short years, if they went at that goal with the same determination that they pursue nuclear technology now, the Iranian people could enjoy prosperity and a bright future rather than the double-digit inflation they suffer now.