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not true as can be seen here the number of tvs in india equals 63 million for a 1000 million people. as shown here in india the reach for non-cable tv is 42% while for urban areas its 69% and rural is 33%

actually usa almost spends as much as the rest of the world combined as seen here

North Korea tops the list at 33.9%...

(per capita): 109 prisoners per 100,000 pe [82nd of 164]
(per capita): 14.34 per 1000 people [1st of 164]

What are you talking about?

The U.N. has Rwanda as the highest per capita prison population.

Meanwhile for drug offences there are three countries leading the U.S., according to the U.N. again.

What are you talking about?

The U.N. has Rwanda as the highest per capita prison population.

Meanwhile for drug offences there are three countries leading the U.S., according to the U.N. again.

Kent State Massacre

The RIAA adduces as evidence statistics such as "Surveys in all major markets prove [file-sharing] is a major factor in the fall in world music sales, down 7% in 2003, and down 14% in three years." (Cary Sherman, RIAA president). The RIAA's claim conflicts with figures provided by Soundscan, the Nielsen company responsible for compiling the Billboard music charts, which suggest that US sales rose by 10% from 147 million in the 1st quarter of 2003 to 160 million in the 1st quarter of 2004. The difference is that the RIAA uses statistics on shipments to record shops; Soundscan measures sales to end users. (From NationMaster; I've no idea whether they tend to be biased.)

As far as I know, no-one with any real resources and an unbiased point of view has actually undertaken a serious study of the figures worldwide. Claims that the figures definitely show an increase of sales (or that they definitely show a decrease) are therefore premature. However, since the RIAA's figures seem to be a little disingenuous, I'm more inclined to believe in the increased sales version - if there were hard figures to back the other view, I'm sure the RIAA would have trotted them out.

(Opinions provided without warranty, whether express or implied. Have fun with your arguments.)

No you don't, not even close. The USA doesn't even make the top twenty in several categories. Here comes the science, all statistics from Nationmaster.com:

Education spending per primary school pupil

Education spending per primary school pupil (per $ GDP)

Education spending per secondary school student

Education spending per secondary school student (per $ GDP)

Just another mindless yank, brainlessly thinking that your country is "teh best!". Sorry if my attitude offends, but I am a little pissed at the USA right now.

No you don't, not even close. The USA doesn't even make the top twenty in several categories. Here comes the science, all statistics from Nationmaster.com:

Education spending per primary school pupil

Education spending per primary school pupil (per $ GDP)

Education spending per secondary school student

Education spending per secondary school student (per $ GDP)

Just another mindless yank, brainlessly thinking that your country is "teh best!". Sorry if my attitude offends, but I am a little pissed at the USA right now.

No you don't, not even close. The USA doesn't even make the top twenty in several categories. Here comes the science, all statistics from Nationmaster.com:

Education spending per primary school pupil

Education spending per primary school pupil (per $ GDP)

Education spending per secondary school student

Education spending per secondary school student (per $ GDP)

Just another mindless yank, brainlessly thinking that your country is "teh best!". Sorry if my attitude offends, but I am a little pissed at the USA right now.

No you don't, not even close. The USA doesn't even make the top twenty in several categories. Here comes the science, all statistics from Nationmaster.com:

Education spending per primary school pupil

Education spending per primary school pupil (per $ GDP)

Education spending per secondary school student

Education spending per secondary school student (per $ GDP)

Just another mindless yank, brainlessly thinking that your country is "teh best!". Sorry if my attitude offends, but I am a little pissed at the USA right now.

When did you last check? In the Victorian era?

How the heck did this post get voted "Insightful"?

Good grief! Give us some facts and links! Don't just shout your uninformed opinion!

Even a doom-laden report from the BBC says:

The British Crime Survey, which includes crimes not reported to police, also found:

• Overall crime fell
• The risk of being a victim is the same as in 1981, at 26.9%
• There were 5% fewer violent crimes reported to the survey in the 12 months to June 2003
• Recorded robbery fell 7% in April-June 2003 compared to same period last year

America has about 12 500 murders a year compared to about 850 for the UK. Even taking into account population differences (60mil in UK, about 290mil in US), that makes American homicide figures much worse than the UK. America has over 2 million people in jail, for heaven's sake!

Whatsmore, there is no way you can call "new" Labour a socialist government. It is one of the most right-wing in Europe. And socialist, continental Europe generally has lower crime rates than both the UK and the US.

Come on, people! Google is a great tool! Learn how to use it!

When did you last check? In the Victorian era?

How the heck did this post get voted "Insightful"?

Good grief! Give us some facts and links! Don't just shout your uninformed opinion!

Even a doom-laden report from the BBC says:

The British Crime Survey, which includes crimes not reported to police, also found:

• Overall crime fell
• The risk of being a victim is the same as in 1981, at 26.9%
• There were 5% fewer violent crimes reported to the survey in the 12 months to June 2003
• Recorded robbery fell 7% in April-June 2003 compared to same period last year

America has about 12 500 murders a year compared to about 850 for the UK. Even taking into account population differences (60mil in UK, about 290mil in US), that makes American homicide figures much worse than the UK. America has over 2 million people in jail, for heaven's sake!

Whatsmore, there is no way you can call "new" Labour a socialist government. It is one of the most right-wing in Europe. And socialist, continental Europe generally has lower crime rates than both the UK and the US.

Come on, people! Google is a great tool! Learn how to use it!

sorry /. seems to munge the url.

here's the link

Have you ever taken an economics course? I'm not being an ass (this time), I'm asking that as a serious question.

GDP growth is important because it shows us the rate of advancement of the economy as a whole.

For example, take a look at this page. See China? 382% GDP growth between 1980-2000.

And look at the gains they are making, slowly but surely. More people employed, less starvation, and more people able to buy non-essential, luxury items (computers, for instance). They have teething problems with their slow conversion to a market economy to be sure -- their healthcare and pollution problems leave plenty to be desired -- but those problems will be solved as their economy grows and as their increasingly-democratic people start demanding those problems be fixed, rather than waiting for the govn't to get off its ass to command work on it. "In time, everything is fine" (as a socialist I once knew liked to say).

GDP growth is only 1 indicator of an economy's strength, that is true. That's why I included per-capita GDP, which indicates an *average* slice of the GDP pie that each citizen gets (a median would be better, to remove the effects of the extrema of the population, but it's still an indicator).

You ask why we should value GDP growth. We should value it because it shows the technological and scientific advancement of a nation. The faster that grows, the less-expensive technology becomes (like computers), and therefore, the less-expensive access to that technology becomes. As the price of access drops, more people can afford to access that technology (better medical/health care, etc.).

For instance, look at the U.S. in 1900. What would happen if you got smallpox then? You probably died. But what has happened since then? Our medical technology advanced -- rapidly! At first, only the rich could afford to fight smallpox -- poorer people still died. But as time has gone on, an increasing number of people were able to be vaccinated against it.

And now look -- in the 1970s, the world was able to practically eradicate smallpox; the virus now exists in Moscow and Atlanta, GA, USA, as far as public knowledge knows. And the collective wealth of the world is increased as a result.

That's what happens when scientific and technological advances are made, and, as a result, GDP growth occurs because of the increase in the amount of output we are capable of thanks to that advancement (consider the effects on output when you can prevent smallpox infection with a vaccine, for instance. What does that do to productivity of the people as a whole? It increases -- and, usually, so does the output of the economy, and thus, the GDP).

Consider another example: safety systems in automobiles.

Notice that most safety features are introduced in expensive cars (Mercedes, BMW, etc.)? That's because the systems were expensive to do R&D for.

But notice! Those systems eventually trickle-down into more-plebian cars. That's why my Ford Focus -- at less than $20k -- has side-impact airbags. 10 years ago, only Mercedes, etc. had them. Now regular cars have them.

So it goes with every advancement -- the rich are, and always have been, the first to be able to use those advances. But with time, those advances reach the rest of the population. That is part of the effect of GDP growth.

1 more example -- the printing press. When it was originally created, only the rich could afford it. Poorer people could not, correct?

Now any Tom, Dick, or Harry can go down to OfficeMax and make 10 copies of a piece of paper for $0.80 -- most Americans have lost more change into the seats of their sofa than that.

That again, is scientific progress, and it is directly-linked to GDP growth (it's more-productive for you to make machine copies of your papers than to do it by hand, is it not? That increased productivity leaves you more time to produce other things,

That site is scary, check this graph out:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_exp_dol_fi g

Unfortunately, the US is rated 38th in business efficiency among the 188 nations recognized by the UN. Several countries with features like 35 hour work weeks, twice our number of government recognized holidays, Manditory minima of 2 weeks vacation/year, and so on are doing about as well as us

(England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark)

or actually better

(Australia, Holland, Germany, Sweden, and some smaller nations such as Iceland).

We rank 7th in average prices, while France, for all the problems you point out is at least 15th, partially though not completly offsetting that high unemployment. France has a much higher average income tax rate (They're 5th, with an average of 50.5%, while the US is 26th, with an average of 30.5%), and I'd argue that that extra 20% is quite enough to give them their unemployment rate.

Are the French, over all, doing worse than us? Probably yes. Are we doing the best? Probably not.
Where did I get these numbers?

http://www.nationmaster.com/

(On the economic menu, several of these are in the section under ... more economic stats, instead of the main menu. Nationmaster gets its numbers from multiple sources, including the UN councel on economic development, but also the CIA's world factbook.

The net result is a massive and sustained reduction in violence

Pardon? I'm sorry, but published crime statistics do not agree with that at all. The USA has some of the highest levels of violent crime in the world, and is one of the few western countries in which firearms are routinely available to regular people. Now I'm not saying that there is a proven causal link there (although I personally believe there is) but to say that having guns leads to a "massive and sustained" decrease is quite unbelieveable.

Stats:

USA is 8th in the world for gun murders

USA is 24th in the world for murder of all kinds (better!)

USA is number 5 in the world for assualts

For all of the above stats, compare the position of the USA to other countries in a similar economic situation but without common firearms, such as the UK, Germany, Japan (I don't believe they have widespread guns). I don't think you'll see any evidence for your massive decrease.

Even if you lived in a fantasy universe where you could de-gun everybody including the crooks, there are arrows, swords, spears, clubs, sling, rocks, ...


The point is that it's much harder to kill someone with a sling than a gun. If something is harder to do, it's (a) less likely to happen by accident and (b) less likely to happen at all. If you took away the guns, less people would die - simple. Maybe more people would get hit over the head with rocks (though I don't see that happening) but if that saved lives, so be it.


And if you managed to disarm everybody and everything, would you have stopped crime and violence? Absolutely not. You'd just have put everybody at the mercy of the strongest bullies. Kiss civilization goodby - it's back to feudialism, or worse.


Do you have any actual real world evidence for this conjecture? Because I have many examples (as noted above) which contradict you.

The net result is a massive and sustained reduction in violence

Pardon? I'm sorry, but published crime statistics do not agree with that at all. The USA has some of the highest levels of violent crime in the world, and is one of the few western countries in which firearms are routinely available to regular people. Now I'm not saying that there is a proven causal link there (although I personally believe there is) but to say that having guns leads to a "massive and sustained" decrease is quite unbelieveable.

Stats:

USA is 8th in the world for gun murders

USA is 24th in the world for murder of all kinds (better!)

USA is number 5 in the world for assualts

For all of the above stats, compare the position of the USA to other countries in a similar economic situation but without common firearms, such as the UK, Germany, Japan (I don't believe they have widespread guns). I don't think you'll see any evidence for your massive decrease.

Even if you lived in a fantasy universe where you could de-gun everybody including the crooks, there are arrows, swords, spears, clubs, sling, rocks, ...


The point is that it's much harder to kill someone with a sling than a gun. If something is harder to do, it's (a) less likely to happen by accident and (b) less likely to happen at all. If you took away the guns, less people would die - simple. Maybe more people would get hit over the head with rocks (though I don't see that happening) but if that saved lives, so be it.


And if you managed to disarm everybody and everything, would you have stopped crime and violence? Absolutely not. You'd just have put everybody at the mercy of the strongest bullies. Kiss civilization goodby - it's back to feudialism, or worse.


Do you have any actual real world evidence for this conjecture? Because I have many examples (as noted above) which contradict you.

The net result is a massive and sustained reduction in violence

Pardon? I'm sorry, but published crime statistics do not agree with that at all. The USA has some of the highest levels of violent crime in the world, and is one of the few western countries in which firearms are routinely available to regular people. Now I'm not saying that there is a proven causal link there (although I personally believe there is) but to say that having guns leads to a "massive and sustained" decrease is quite unbelieveable.

Stats:

USA is 8th in the world for gun murders

USA is 24th in the world for murder of all kinds (better!)

USA is number 5 in the world for assualts

For all of the above stats, compare the position of the USA to other countries in a similar economic situation but without common firearms, such as the UK, Germany, Japan (I don't believe they have widespread guns). I don't think you'll see any evidence for your massive decrease.

Even if you lived in a fantasy universe where you could de-gun everybody including the crooks, there are arrows, swords, spears, clubs, sling, rocks, ...


The point is that it's much harder to kill someone with a sling than a gun. If something is harder to do, it's (a) less likely to happen by accident and (b) less likely to happen at all. If you took away the guns, less people would die - simple. Maybe more people would get hit over the head with rocks (though I don't see that happening) but if that saved lives, so be it.


And if you managed to disarm everybody and everything, would you have stopped crime and violence? Absolutely not. You'd just have put everybody at the mercy of the strongest bullies. Kiss civilization goodby - it's back to feudialism, or worse.


Do you have any actual real world evidence for this conjecture? Because I have many examples (as noted above) which contradict you.

but not unexpected, over 10% of Americans are functional illiterates and are 68th on the global general literacy (total population) scale

link

turn off that TV and get reading folks

The pascal (symbol Pa) is the SI unit of pressure.

It is equivalent to one newton per square metre. The unit is named after Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist and philosopher.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Pascal-(u nit)

Thats true they just hear a hell of a lot more cases then any other Circuit Court due to the fact that they have the largest territory. In fact in 2003 the 9th Ciurt had the least amount of overturns. Here.

Your source seems to indicate that the DC district court was the most overturned by total cases handled in 2003 (though quick Googling did not turn up actual numbers for caseloads.) As for percentage of cases heard by the Supreme Court overturned (probably what the OP meant), here is a source to back the OP's comment.

So while we may spend twice as much on private health care, we don't pay nearly as much taxes, so it more or less evens out. It's also more efficient.

Muahahahahahaha! You're kidding, right? Okay, first, read this, then read this. Oh, and maybe read this. Then, tell me again how the US system is somehow more efficient. Hell, compared to Canada, the US spends 3 times as much, per capita, on health care. And almost a quarter of that is on administrative costs alone! And, continuing the comparison with Canada, if you look at this, you'll see that, on average, an American citizen bears a greater tax burden than a Canadian.

So, tell me again, how is the US system better?

So while we may spend twice as much on private health care, we don't pay nearly as much taxes, so it more or less evens out. It's also more efficient.

Muahahahahahaha! You're kidding, right? Okay, first, read this, then read this. Oh, and maybe read this. Then, tell me again how the US system is somehow more efficient. Hell, compared to Canada, the US spends 3 times as much, per capita, on health care. And almost a quarter of that is on administrative costs alone! And, continuing the comparison with Canada, if you look at this, you'll see that, on average, an American citizen bears a greater tax burden than a Canadian.

So, tell me again, how is the US system better?

Well if the music industry wants to educate children about the blessings of copyright - despite their support of "sampling" rap and RnB artists - I am sure they won't mind education into their industry's contracts that make artists subject to indentured servitude, which is considered illegal if, say, you had a border farm employing Mexicans smuggled in lorries. But apparently not in the great lobbying industry, sorry, I meant music industry.

Oh, not to mention they own your name while under contract. Gee, what a nice bunch they are. They truly deserve to decide what children learn.

Coming up in history education, a pamphlet from the NRA with the "real" version of the second amendment, which removes that confusing "A well-regulated militia" bit, which goes against the obvious need of individuals to own guns without the responsibility of being part of any defence force.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/DEC-Alpha

I'll remind you that europe and austrailia are both adopting US-style patent systems, and that effectively leaves no-where to run to if you're european, austrailian or american.

Don't fret, China is poised to overtake the US as the world's number #1 economic power within the next decade based on the our 3% GDP growth rate vs. China's 9% growth rate. At that point, we'll all be adopting a Chinese-style patent system. Guess I'd better learn some mandarin so I'm ready for the Chinese outsourcing boom.

Any day now, Congress will convene a "Central Committee" to handle this issue.

I keep wondering when media lobbyists are going to just give in and start calling their strategy a "Five-year plan"...

What is the LD50 for irony, anyway? The US Federal Government must be poisoning us all with it by now...

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/List-of-c ountries-by-IQ

No economic growth in Europe? Interesting point of view. Let's look at some facts:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp_gro_19 9

According to this, the largest GDP growth in the WORLD in this period (1998-2002) was Ireland. 10 points for whoever can name which continent Ireland is in? Anyone?

Other interesting (European) countries in the top 10:

Luxembourg
Greece
Hungary
Finland

(note this is continental Europe I'm talking, not just EU, but the poster didn't specify).

Where's the USA? 14. Just under Slovakia, Poland and Mexico.

Don't know about the Chinese, but the Arabs actually tried. The succeeded in grabbing Sicily and Spain but was stopped dead at the battle of Tours/Poitiers in 737 and soon after driven from all of their french possessions.

The battle also marked the end of the reign of the feared Arab cavalery as the super-weapon of the time. This defeat was accomplished by the medieval french infantery drawed up in square formations to defend against the onslaugt. Until then the Arab cavalery had been virtual undefeated, but from the battle of Tours and on the odds had changed in favor of the europeans.

Sicily was liberated later by descendants of wikings from the Normandy looking for a kingdom to conqueror :-)

PBS has been feeding at the Government trough for years. They have been grabbing at taxpayer dollars like there is no tomorrow.

Uh, you're wrong.

A quick excerpt:

The largest source of revenue for U.S. public television stations comes from donations by individual viewers.

plutonium and neptunium are _not_ chemically toxic in any way. in biological systems they are chemically inert as no cells are capable of processing it, and it cannot substitute for any element used in biological systems (unlike radium, which can substitute for calcium).

they are however _radiologically_ toxic.

as for the "toxic as botulism toxin", i call bullshit again. eat 1 mg of plutonium and 1 mg of botulism toxin and see who dies first.

but don't just take my word for it. try here.

hat New Zealand doesn't pull it's weight in the ANZUS alliance. Give me proof, ANY proof, that we spend less on defense PER CAPITA than the majority

From nation master's Military: Expenditures - dollar figure (per capita) page.

No 3: United States $953.01 per person
No 14. Australia $577.23 per person
No 39. New Zealand $153.29 per person

Frankly tho' (speaking as an australian) you should be proud that your country spends so little on its military.

Umm, no... according to this, they have the fourth largest budget, and it's still roughly an 8th of what the US spends. In fact, the second-place nation, China, spends 55.9 million per year, compared to the US's whopping 276.7 million! Sorry, but no nation even approaches the US on military expenditures. Of course, total expenditures are only part of the picture. For example, the per capita numbers are quite interesting...

the billions of dollars in aid sent from the US to help countries is also given no (or at least very little) media attention.

Well, that's probably because the existance of those billions is overshadowed by the fact that the US provides less dollars in foreign aid as a percentage of GDP than any other first world nation (source). Sorry, but, in terms of US foreign aid, the media got it right.

1. Denmark: 5.1% (optimal)
   
2. USA: 5.6% (near optimal, same as our "peak" in the 90s).
   
3. Canada: 7.2% and improving, probably partially thanks to the improving U.S. economy. People would want to see heads rolling at this rate in the U.S., though.
   
4. France: a miserable 9.6%. Apparently that 35 hour work week was a wonderful idea.
   
5. Germany: 10.6%.
   

[Gotland] is an island off the east coast of Sweden where the (historic) Goths lived.

This was claimed for a long time, not only by nationalists, but also by reputable historical researchers. However, most of them today believe that the theory that the eastern Goths and the Visigoths came from Gotland is wrong. The best link I could find on the subject:
NationMaster.com

90% ? Where did you get this number? this is nonsense, sorry. The TOTAL contribution of ALL agricultural products to the Australian GDP is 3%. By comparison services amount to 71%.

See Australian profile

As for exports, Australia primary sector (commodities such as coal, gold, meat, wool, alumina, iron ore, wheat, machinery and transport equipment) amount to 65% of all exports.

I don't know where you got this 90% from.

so you spend more time in school than any other nation yet still have terrible literacy, math, science etc etc

face it, you might think you work hard but other nations work harder, because they want it more, perhaps you should stay in bowling class

so you spend more time in school than any other nation yet still have terrible literacy, math, science etc etc

face it, you might think you work hard but other nations work harder, because they want it more, perhaps you should stay in bowling class

so you spend more time in school than any other nation yet still have terrible literacy, math, science etc etc

face it, you might think you work hard but other nations work harder, because they want it more, perhaps you should stay in bowling class

The page you reference is a great example of how statistics can prove anything. Your page lists school life expentancy. The differences are explained by the fact that many countries require 13 years of compulsory education vice 12 in the US. Look at the numbers here. Now look at average years of schooling which includes non-compulsory eduction. By gosh, the US is number one.

The page you reference is a great example of how statistics can prove anything. Your page lists school life expentancy. The differences are explained by the fact that many countries require 13 years of compulsory education vice 12 in the US. Look at the numbers here. Now look at average years of schooling which includes non-compulsory eduction. By gosh, the US is number one.

well America has literacy levels like that of third world nations 67th/100

sums up USA's education standards really
MUST TRY HARDER

go ask an employment agency if it helps in a job , you see if every buisness wants degrees/phd's then they become the norm in order to gain employment and so less valuable

with USA not even in the top 10 of educated nations whatever you are teaching in these degrees/phd's its not very successful

if that was true USA would have superb math literacy, the facts however disagree and USA is 18th in the world!!

perhaps you should leave that calculator at home and use your brain for a change