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This comes as a great surprise to me, considering the NZ government is SUPPOSED to be the 2nd least corrupt government in the world: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/gov_cor-government-corruption All this talk in the article of secretly implementing crap to filter the internet doesn't bode well for NZ. Internet there is already shiit.

Interesting point. My understanding (from a fellow Kiwi who is usually pretty reliable on these sorts of things) is that it is known that NZ government administrations under-report corruption to a criminal level.

It may interest fellow 'dotters that we don't ship out the encumbent administration when a new government takes power. That's right - unlike the US, we leave them there to undermine the incoming cabinet. This can be particularly challenging when the outgoing government has been nine consecutive years in power, leaving behind it a thoroughly indoctrinated public service to receive the incoming party..

I'm not so sure this is different from the UK system of governance (although we have no House of Lords) so I may well be off-base with this thought.

Thank you for your reply. I do question the quality of the data at nationmaster. For example, this chart suggests that the US has no military spending at all.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_dol_fig-military-expenditures-dollar-figure

I am not sure looking at Military spending as a % of GDP is better, but it may be.

Annual US military expenditures have MORE THAN DOUBLED in the last 10 years.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_chart_30.html

By any measure, that should be significant.

Don't you know what inflation is? Any time you hear "doubled over the last decade", it's JUST INFLATION.

Look at the same graph, but as a % of GDP. There's a little bump, but it's not some massive trend upwards. Considering the US is fighting two wars, and has actually increased it's Afghanistan troop numbers recently, that's actually quite a small increase.

Thank you for your reply. I do question the quality of the data at nationmaster. For example, this chart suggests that the US has no military spending at all.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_dol_fig-military-expenditures-dollar-figure

I am not sure looking at Military spending as a % of GDP is better, but it may be.

Annual US military expenditures have MORE THAN DOUBLED in the last 10 years.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_chart_30.html

By any measure, that should be significant.

In what ways is France's healthcare better than the United State? Seriously?

Cost (11.2% of GDP or US$3,926 per capita) in France vs (15.2% of GDP or US$6,347 per capita) for the United States

And just about everything else:

Life Expectancy
Abortion Rate (irony!)
Deaths from Cancer
Heart Disease, Obesity
# of Physicians per 1000 people
Teenage Pregnancy

Any questions?

This comes as a great surprise to me, considering the NZ government is SUPPOSED to be the 2nd least corrupt government in the world: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/gov_cor-government-corruption All this talk in the article of secretly implementing crap to filter the internet doesn't bode well for NZ. Internet there is already shiit.

Do Americans really live in this permanent state of fear?

I just hope I can live my entire life in a country that is safe enough that I will never even have to think about owning a weapon as self defence mechanism.

In general I'd argue that the USA's weapon's laws make is less safe than similar more restrictive countries.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir_percap-crime-murders-firearms-per-capita

Murders with firearms:
United States: 0.0279271 per 1,000 people
Canada: 0.00502972 per 1,000 people
United Kingdom: 0.00102579 per 1,000 people

Unfortunately this one doesn't show the more civilized countries:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_gun_vio_hom_fir_hom_rat_per_100_pop-rate-per-100-000-pop

My country (The Netherlands) isn't entirely safe, but according to the statistics bureau (www.cbs.nl) about 60 people a year die from firearms. Compare this with the state of New York, which has about 750 and has a similar number of inhabitants and population density. With numbers more than ten times higher than in my country, it ranks #46 on the list of USA states:
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-death-rate-per-100-000

With those numbers I'd argue that having a gun might make you feel more safe, but actually has the opposite effect if everyone has one.

Do Americans really live in this permanent state of fear?

I just hope I can live my entire life in a country that is safe enough that I will never even have to think about owning a weapon as self defence mechanism.

In general I'd argue that the USA's weapon's laws make is less safe than similar more restrictive countries.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir_percap-crime-murders-firearms-per-capita

Murders with firearms:
United States: 0.0279271 per 1,000 people
Canada: 0.00502972 per 1,000 people
United Kingdom: 0.00102579 per 1,000 people

Unfortunately this one doesn't show the more civilized countries:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_gun_vio_hom_fir_hom_rat_per_100_pop-rate-per-100-000-pop

My country (The Netherlands) isn't entirely safe, but according to the statistics bureau (www.cbs.nl) about 60 people a year die from firearms. Compare this with the state of New York, which has about 750 and has a similar number of inhabitants and population density. With numbers more than ten times higher than in my country, it ranks #46 on the list of USA states:
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-death-rate-per-100-000

With those numbers I'd argue that having a gun might make you feel more safe, but actually has the opposite effect if everyone has one.

Oh NO! We're outside the top 10! Clear we "don't have a manufacturing sector" as you've said.

Who's "full of shit", now?

Manufacturing per GDP #75
Exports per GDP #179

That's not even remote what I said. I said Clinton gave them a bigger tax cut. Bush's tax cuts, on TOP of Clintons tax cuts, of course puts Bush's rate lower, because he came after.

Effective Federal Tax Rates

Top 1%
1988: 29.7
1992: 30.6
1996: 36.0
2000: 33.0
2004: 31.4
2006: 31.2

Top 10%
1988: 26.7
1992: 26.9
1996: 30.1
2000: 29.6
2004: 27.1
2006: 27.5

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456

And I quote: DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Oooh! Look what else he said!

Well, this is one-- this is a great irony. George Bush owes almost his entire fortune to a tax increase that was funneled into his pocket and into the use of eminent domain laws to essentially legally cheat other people out of their land for less than it was worth to enrich him and his fellow investors...

One of the key sources I quote is a prominent Republican lawyer married to a United States senator who is the expert in Texas on municipal finance. The subsidy, he says, is $202.5 million. And Bush and his partners captured about 168 million of it.

Anecdotes are awesome... but I prefer the CBO's statistical analysis. Johnston may be right about the top 400 households, but I was unable to find any real data on that.

Oh NO! We're outside the top 10! Clear we "don't have a manufacturing sector" as you've said.

Who's "full of shit", now?

Manufacturing per GDP #75
Exports per GDP #179

That's not even remote what I said. I said Clinton gave them a bigger tax cut. Bush's tax cuts, on TOP of Clintons tax cuts, of course puts Bush's rate lower, because he came after.

Effective Federal Tax Rates

Top 1%
1988: 29.7
1992: 30.6
1996: 36.0
2000: 33.0
2004: 31.4
2006: 31.2

Top 10%
1988: 26.7
1992: 26.9
1996: 30.1
2000: 29.6
2004: 27.1
2006: 27.5

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456

And I quote: DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Oooh! Look what else he said!

Well, this is one-- this is a great irony. George Bush owes almost his entire fortune to a tax increase that was funneled into his pocket and into the use of eminent domain laws to essentially legally cheat other people out of their land for less than it was worth to enrich him and his fellow investors...

One of the key sources I quote is a prominent Republican lawyer married to a United States senator who is the expert in Texas on municipal finance. The subsidy, he says, is $202.5 million. And Bush and his partners captured about 168 million of it.

Anecdotes are awesome... but I prefer the CBO's statistical analysis. Johnston may be right about the top 400 households, but I was unable to find any real data on that.

True. How fortunate that the US is #1 in manufacturing, and vastly ahead of #2 (Japan) and very far ahead of #3 (China).

You know what the most important thing is for statistics? Context. Our manufacturing per capita consistently places us outside of the top 10. It's like people celebrating a US or Canadian women's hockey victory despite the fact that we have more players by a factor of a thousand. Sweden, Norway, Japan, and Germany outperform us in a number of areas. And I bet if you took entertainment out of the equation it would really be illuminating.

You also may want to know that the #2 economy (by GDP alone) is now China. It also just overtook Germany as the world's largest exporter (again, by pure GDP, not per capita).

And worse, Bill Clinton signed a larger tax cut for the rich than George Bush ever did...

Alright, now you're just full of shit, by income tax and by effective tax rates. Read the tax rates here. Top bracket under Bush is 35%. Top bracket under Clinton is 39.6%. Capital gains tax was cut from 20% to 15%. Income from dividends went from 35% to 15%. The Estate Tax was halved, and even completely nonexistent for one year (this year, I think). And that's why you hear the babbling heads screaming bloody murder about keeping the Bush Tax Cuts.

There's even an article in the Times from 2007. This shit is no secret. "Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional study."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/washington/08tax.html

And before you say a word about the richest paying the most taxes - OF COURSE. The top 1% of households hold more than 50% the assets. Why wouldn't they be paying most of the taxes?

If you have any other questions about reality, feel free to ask.

I've already posted this twice in this discussion, but most people only seem to believe this when they see the numbers, so here goes again:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita [nationmaster.com]

Compare
UK: $1764 per capita
USA: $4631 per capita

Providing free/cheap health care to your entire population is in the end much cheaper than only providing it to those who can pay, because it leads to a much healthier population, which results in lower hospital bills.

Exactly, as I already wrote in another post:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita [nationmaster.com]

Compare
UK: $1764 per capita
USA: $4631 per capita

Providing free/cheap health care to your entire population is in the end much cheaper than only providing it to those who can pay, because it leads to a much healthier population, which results in lower hospital bills.

Though this might be a contributing factor, the medical education is organised in a similar way in most western countries. Still in the USA health care costs about double of what it costs in countries like the UK, Germany or Sweden.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita

Compare
UK: $1764 per capita
USA: $4631 per capita

This huge difference is mainly due to other factors, not the way medical specialists are organised as that is very similar in both countries. It's mainly due to something that the western-european countries have figured out a while ago:

Providing free/cheap health care to your entire population is in the end much cheaper than only providing it to those who can pay, because it leads to a much healthier population, which results in lower hospital bills.

They might still be smiling since they'll get their face fixed for less than it will cost you after they smash your face in retaliation.

Compare how much the US is spending per person with the other countries:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/02/health-care-costs-opinions-columnists-reform.html
http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita

And the average US citizen isn't getting better health care for all that spending.

That said, healthcare costs are increasing in many countries.

It's too easy for politicians to try to spend the money of future generations to win the votes of today's voters.

I think there should be a limit on how much public money each person gets for healthcare. A quota that depends on how rich the country is. Because as technology improves, there's going to be more and more things that can be done, but the costs for each "level" will increase way more than linearly[1].

Once you've used up your quota, you have to find the cash some other way (savings, donations, loans), maybe people should also be allowed to donate some of their quota to you if they want (subject to regulatory approval - to avoid abuse and swindling).

If you can't find enough money, too bad so sad, yes it's unfair that you have to die or stay crippled/sick, but it's also unfair to keep making everyone else pay for you past your allocated quota. And it means other people may get less as a result (which is also unfair).

Past a certain point, it becomes unfair to make others continue paying for you. Like it or not, the rest have done their fair share for you.

Some may ask, why should it be even fair for others to pay in the first place? I think it's fair to make people pay for the civilization they enjoy. To me it's uncivilized (and inefficient and crap) to have people sit in ER in order to get treatment, or even die needlessly from problems that are easily and cheaply avoided.

[1] Billionaires might be able to afford the best. Maybe in the near future there would be tech to grow replacement limbs from scratch - e.g. a batch of 1000 replacements grown, with the best one selected. A billionaire could pay for that. But a country is unlikely to be able to afford to do that for every person who wants that and still be able to provide other healthcare to others, at least not for a long time. So on the "public money" plan in a rich country, you'd just get a high tech prosthetic.

So, presumably, whenever you quote prices for health insurance in the US, you add on the $2,368 per person that the US government spends on healthcare? Given that Canadian government spending on healthcare is less than US government spending on healthcare, comparing this $100 figure with insurance costs in the US actually exaggerates how expensive Canadian coverage is.

Every developed country spends a significant amount of taxpayers' money on healthcare, and this is going to be implicit in any discussion of healthcare costs. The difference is, in most Western countries, in return for their tax money, everyone gets healthcare for little or no additional cost; in the US, on the other hand, we have to pay taxes for healthcare, and then we have to spend a huge amount of money on insurance or out-of-pocket costs, as well.

[Move to Canada] and enjoy universal health care for about $100 per month for a family of 4, unless you can show economic hardship, and then it's free.

With all due respect, and I really don't mean this as a troll, but you aren't just paying $100 a month -- you simply cannot afford any medical system for that sum (even if you weren't screwed like the States into paying stupid large administrative costs) . In reality, a large fraction of the money for the health care system comes from taxes which you are ultimately going to pay.

I am a big proponent of some form of public healthcare but I dislike the fact that many of the people here in the US that are arguing for it will not acknowledge that it's simply going to expensive. They point to the naive out-of-pocket expense in Canada or The Netherlands without acknowledging the true cost of the system in the form of higher taxes. My position is that we can and should afford such expense but one does not do any favors to the debate by dissembling about the cost. If anything, it's ammunition to opponents that can point to your dishonesty in selling the plan.

There is no free lunch and there is definitely no first-world healthcare for $100/family/month. The closer figure it probably $650/family/month. Again, I believe it's a fine way to spend that money (and we are affluent enough to afford it) so I'm not approaching this from a position of ideological opposition, only one of demanding honesty from everyone.

Cite: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_spe_per_per-health-spending-per-person. The exact numbers are highly debatable, especially since we don't know how much various plans will change the cost structure here in the US but $100/f/m is simply unreasonable.

Do you have any statistics to back this up? I went to http://www.nationmaster.com/cat/cri-crime and added up the per capita statistics for murder, rapes, and assaults and it looks like the UK has more violent crime than the US. The US has more murders, but that is a relatively small percentage of violent crime.

This article also says Britain has more violent crime than the US, and has the most crime in Europe. I know it's easy mod points to say anything bad about the U.S., but reasonable people need to try to avoid the temptation unless it's factual.

Considering this:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel_mob_cel_percap-telephones-mobile-cellular-per-capita
The global average number of functioning cell phones per person is 0.6~... I am surprised 50% of all of us have not gotten cancer yet. In fact, countries like the US take the number to the extreme, with 1000 cell phones per person! With these numbers I can safely claim that there is not even a correlation between cell phone use and cancer :/

You are right, Portugal's violent crime rates have been rising recently. But if you look at the world, there's really no correlation between an increase in invasive security presence and an increase in violent crime. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita That doesn't mean that invasive security is a good thing--it has all sorts of negative consequences and potential for abuse--but it can be effective at stopping crime. .

and the most powerful military.

The US spends more money in total than the next dozen or so nations combined: http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending#InContextUSMilitarySpendingVersusRestoftheWorld

Note how the US is just slliiiiiiiightly less than half of that pie chart, and the United states spent 5.8 times what China did in 2008. Let's also not forget who is embroiled in two wars- Iraq and Afghanistan.

Per capita for the US, looks to be about $2500 in 2004, now $3200: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PerCapitaInflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG

Why not have a look at where that places us relative to everyone else? For some reason "Nationmaster" doesn't list the US, but here you can see that figure is $1000 more than the next-highest, Israel (all the figures are from 2004): http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_dol_fig_percap-expenditures-dollar-figure-per-capita

GDP-wise, America outspends at a percentage twice the world average; Russia actually beat the US relative to GDP on a couple of occasions, but that probably has more to do with Russia's GDP being in the toilet.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ms_mil_xpnd_gd_zs&idim=country:USA:CHN:GBR:RUS&tdim=true&tstart=567993600000&tunit=Y&tlen=20

Well, there are a lot of "1st world countries", but some are firster.

And it is always a bit difficult to find a metric for comparing the quality of countries. Myself, I like crime rate http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita and teenage pregnancy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_incidence_of_teenage_pregnancy

I'm not sure I understand your thoughts around a license costing more equaling better or more serious drivers. The USA is not even in the top 10 for deaths due to vehicle accidents per capita; we're ranked #15 in the world even though, surprisingly, we're #7 per capita in the number of vehicles.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mor_car_occ_col_wit_car_pic_up_tru_or_van_percap-up-truck-van-per-capita

Well Russians are actually nicer people than Americans if you go by prisoners per capita. Here have a look at the map:

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita&b_map=1

Russia has a higher murder rate though:

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita&b_map=1

Now I'm conflicted. How do you define nice again?

Well Russians are actually nicer people than Americans if you go by prisoners per capita. Here have a look at the map:

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita&b_map=1

Russia has a higher murder rate though:

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita&b_map=1

Now I'm conflicted. How do you define nice again?

The United States continues to lead in nobel prizes and university-level education and research as well as these measures of innovation and technological achievement.

I'm curious which metrics you used to come to your conclusion that "[a]ll innovation will take place elsewhere, as it largely is already."

The United States continues to lead in nobel prizes and university-level education and research as well as these measures of innovation and technological achievement.

I'm curious which metrics you used to come to your conclusion that "[a]ll innovation will take place elsewhere, as it largely is already."

Anyone could easily come up with a bunch of random links about fucked up environmental stuff happening in any country, but it doesn't mean they've actually said anything interesting or insightful.

I'm really getting tired of the "underfunded" argument as to why schools are failing in the US. Seriously?

And I'm getting really tired of morons failing to grasp the simple connection, then invoking government conspiracy theories about them damn lib'ruls, as well as made-up statistics, to justify running the education system further into the ground.

Public funding has increased steadily, at a rate faster than inflation.

First of all, without other information this is completely meaningless. If schools were grossly underfunded to begin with, then you would expect spending to increase faster than inflation just to make up the deficit. How do we stand on education spending? As a percentage of GDP, 37th in the world (source: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_spe-education-spending-of-gdp). What country is first? Cuba. Is this correlated with educational quality? Perhaps, perhaps not, but the country with the world's highest literacy rate? Also Cuba (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate).
Second, your claim that this increase has been steady is false. ( http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1980_2010&view=1&expand=&units=b&fy=fy10&chart=20-total&bar=1&stack=1&size=m&title=&state=US&color=c&local=) True, most years the increase is more than inflation, but certainly not all, and in a few years it was as low as 1.8% when inflation was around 3%.

This is not just nationally, but also at the local level through property taxes.

I don't know where you live, but where I grew up (a village in southern Wisconsin) the school budget declined every year for the entire time I attended middle and high school, to the point that there was a toilet paper shortage, since it "wasn't in the budget" to buy a few dozen more rolls toward the end of the year, all because every year local conservatives whined more and more about property taxes. In the time since I've graduated funding has gotten even lower; a friend who now teaches at the school has reported that school lunch is now down to a couple slices of white bread, a slab of meat, and an apple. At least when I was there, we still got two vegetable choices and pizza day twice a month.

Also, the funding argument is easily dissuaded simply by pointing out counter-examples: there are many, many private schools which are able to educate students to superior levels in all of the basics. We're talking half as much funding and less.

Do you have documentary evidence of even one private school taking in half as much money as a nearby public school and outperforming it? Comparisons of widely different geographic and demographic areas don't count; that's called cherry-picking your data. While it's certainly true that the average private school outperforms similarly situated public schools, almost all of these private schools take in more funding per pupil AND have the selection bias of families whose parents are more motivated towards education than the local average.

The cause for government school failure in the US is not due to a lack of funding. That's an excuse, and pushes the blame from the cause.

Again, evidence please? In statistical or logical form, not just your assertion.

The cause is that they're government schools, with strict top-down models they must adhere to, and do not take the individual student in mind. Schools have to do well on standardized tests, yad

I'm sorry you do not feel I am worthy of being better informed. All of my research without your assistance seems to come up with information basically contradicting your statements. I guess the "socialists" have managed to hide the truth from my eyes?

Tax rates by country seem to put the US on the lower side of things for personal tax rates, but still comperable to Canada, and higher than Iceland, Ireland, and Australia, and the highest of the graphed countries for corporate tax rate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world

As for "by what measure is the US at the top of the health care heap"? Well we have the shortest times for getting treatment, we have the highest number of hi-tech medical equipment per capita, we have the highest survival rate of premature births, the highest survival rate for cancer patients, we have access to the most advanced medicines and treatments, we have the highest number of doctors per capita - do you want me to continue?

Humm, LA seems to have 12+ hour wait times in the emergency room, which doesn't sound great:

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-er-wait-times-socal21-2009dec21,0,2238664.story

I can't think of how to search for "hi-tech medical equipment per capita", so could you let me know where to find that?

Premature birth survival rates are also hard to find for me at least, and as you noted, the birth survival stats are a bit hard to compare across countries and regions due to different reporting methods - if you had some references I would be interested if it wasn't too much trouble.

The US cancer survival rate seems among the highest, but clearly not THE highest, particularly if you are not white it would seem:
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20080716/cancer-survival-rates-vary-by-country

The US is way down the list on doctors-per-capita, ranking 52nd on the list by nationmaster, and also mentioned in this piece on Forbes. Oh the Forbs article mentions "the amount of highly expensive medical equipment per capita" as being highest in the USA, but that the lead is shrinking.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_phy_per_1000_peo-physicians-per-1-000-people
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/02/health-care-costs-opinions-columnists-reform.html

Heck, that Forbes article (are they a socialist rag? I thought they were sort of right-leaning?) seems to indicate they at least do not think "it [the US medical system]'s a hell of a lot better than what the rest of the world has."

The overall point seems to be that American citizens, as a whole, do NOT "have access to the most advanced medicines and treatments", in that a significant fraction of them have little to no access to primary health care that they can afford.

In my opinion, much of your opposition to various levels of socialism is well founded. There are downsides and disincentives inherent in any system trying to promote the collective good, however I think you are being willfully ignorant to think that the current situation in the USA is somehow vastly superior to situations in other places where different decisions have been made. One of the biggest problems in policy formation in the US is the instinctive fear or socialism and big government so what seems to happen is that we end up with the worst of both worlds - governmental programs that artificially alter the market, but do not actually benefit anyone but a few special interests. In the US we already have a whole lot of socialism, it is just half-assed and poorly implemented.

Picking arbitrary dates around 1962:

1962 Life expectancy at birth: 66.9 years
2005 Life expectancy at birth: 74.89
source http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_lif_exp_at_bir_mal_yea-life-expectancy-birth-male-years&date=1962

1970 cost of food as percentage of income: 14%
2005 cost of food as percentage of income: 9.3%
source http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=429074

1960 home ownership rate: 61.9%
2000 home ownership rate: 66.2%
source http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/owner.html

1960 Percent of the Population 25 Years and Over with a High School Diploma or More: 41.1%
2000 Percent of the Population 25 Years and Over with a High School Diploma or More: 80.4%
source http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/phct41/US.pdf

1960 percent of the Population 25 Years and Over with a Bachelor’s Degree or More: 7.7%
2000 percent of the Population 25 Years and Over with a Bachelor’s Degree or More: 24.4%

source http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/phct41/US.pdf

Maybe here people are much more tough-on-crime than I am. In Finland, at least, murder gets you locked in for only 10 years. And yet they're below the US in overall murder rates.

Good point. I find it fascinating that slashdot is quoting a web site called "iran video news" that is run out of Arizona. If this is the only source that is reporting Iran is "considering" the death penalty then why the fuck should we believe it? We already know that the United States runs an intense media propaganda network around the world, and used it domestically during the build up to the Iraq war. In terms of Iran's use of the death penalty, they are definitely more fascist than we are, and these executions should stop. At the same time, why don't we start looking at our OWN record? Wouldn't it be easier to end our own human rights transgressions before attacking those of other countries? We've imprisoned journalists, and we've executed people who were children when they committed their crimes, the mentally retarded, and have condemned to death many people who were probably innocent, so our high horse on capital punishment and the imprisonment of journalists is not particularly "high". We've also now started imprisoning without trial and even torture.

I am sad to see slashdot fall for this obvious propaganda. I thought you guys were good critical thinkers.

First of all, he was talking about Western Europe and at least according to this statistic http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita there is not a single one of them ahead of the US, certainly not Great Britain.

The explaination is simple. We aren't that fearfull of our fellow countrymen, our prime minister can go for a jog in the morning without a bullet proof vest and a small army, most of us would like it to stay that way.

Really? Is that why people in Australia are more afraid of walking in the dark and burglaries than those in the US?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_per_of_saf_wal_in_dar-crime-perception-safety-walking-dark
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_per_of_saf_bur-crime-perception-of-safety-burglary

Seems to me like you're very much afraid of your fellow countrymen. Then again given the lovely rape rate you guys have and the stunning burglary rate I'm not surprised.

The explaination is simple. We aren't that fearfull of our fellow countrymen, our prime minister can go for a jog in the morning without a bullet proof vest and a small army, most of us would like it to stay that way.

Really? Is that why people in Australia are more afraid of walking in the dark and burglaries than those in the US?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_per_of_saf_wal_in_dar-crime-perception-safety-walking-dark
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_per_of_saf_bur-crime-perception-of-safety-burglary

Seems to me like you're very much afraid of your fellow countrymen. Then again given the lovely rape rate you guys have and the stunning burglary rate I'm not surprised.

You must not live in Britain. From everything I've heard about them, their crime is worse than America's. Admittedly, they don't get shot as much, but they get stabbed & beaten more.

First result on google for "murder rate statistics us uk":
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

It seems in the US you have 3 times more chances of being murdered than in the UK. Ordinary policemen in the UK do not even carry a gun. Under what definition of "worse", is crime in the UK worse than in the US?

Plus: non-statistical factoid. The only country in the world where I personally have been subject to armed robbery is the US (at gunpoint...).

I have some issues with your statement, but let me only comment on one line:

"Just look at how much we "thinned the herd" with WW I and WW II."

I generally despise of people who think that a war or another atrocity would solve economic or demographic problems. Since we take so much pride in our brains we should be able to find more civilized means to deal with such issues.

The world wars didn't thin the herd either, they took about 3%-10% of the involved populations (more like a decimation, you don't kill your whole unit as a punishment, eh?). For Germany the thinning of the herd had started with a drop of the birth rate around 1890 (from 5.5 children per woman). I suppose this came through Bismarck's introduction of the pension/insurance system, maybe reduced child mortality, and industrialization.

Regarding agriculture, an undertaking that is as necessary to a society as it has an ecological impact/dependency, European countries are encouraged to be largely independent from imports. So looking at just one country might be permissible. Currently not all farmland in Germany is in use (intermittently upset by the bio-fuel fad) and I guess that we could easily support an even larger number of people. Despite simpler technology in the begin of the last century the food supply was mainly in jeopardy because of wars. The wars have hindered reproduction (the statistics say so) but there was never a credible need to start a war because of lack of food nor did the wars have much of an impact on population size (yet causing much grief).

The future might pose some difficulties regarding oil prices and agriculture being dependent on oil (fertilizer, pesticides, machinery). There might also be a developmental gap between the availability of new technologies and an oil price increase which will make things difficult. I don't see a shift to a much more agricultural society however, since you will remain more efficient with large industrial farms even if you have to run your machinery with something else than diesel.
Getting a hard limit on mechanized agriculture through the oil prize so that people can buy cheap unused land and work on it with animals and bare hands seems incredibly far fetched to me. I guess our diet might change back to a mid of the last century type however (meat only on Sundays).

Just for shits and grins, if we were to switch to Japanese agricultural methods of 1907 we could support about 150 million people. If you want to do your own haphazard calculations check here: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/frftc10.txt and here: http://www.nationmaster.com/red/country/gm-germany/agr-agriculture&all=1

Given the overall development of a doubling of the German population since 1870 I don't really feel like we are rushing to test any ecological limits. Contrary to popular belief we are also not keeping our population size in check through wars and other calamities.

The indirect effects of our actions like deforestation of rain forests and extinction of species seems to me the more dramatic issue than what happened recently on our own soil ecologically. Europe has been under cultivation for thousands of years, and especially Germany probably has seen more habitat destruction around the time peak wood had been reached. Maybe world war three would scale back globalization similar to WW2 but how can you be certain that people will find it easier then to leave the remaining rain forests alone. Also the associated armament production/rebuilding effort would probably cause more pollution than a normal economy.

This sounds like a job for arithmetics!

Let's say every child calls this service exactly once in their whole life (that's an underestimate, I guess, if the situation is really as bad as this populist makes it sound). So very roughly 1% of the overall population of Australia dials that number once a year. How long does it take to sort out one such call? Either (a) five minutes, if they don't actually do anything about it (like when you call the police to tell them you found a car with a smashed window). In that case, this all makes no sense in the first place. Or (b) they do some sort of magic, like trying to identify the perpetrator, or "send someone over", or whatever. Either way, that'll cost them at the very least five hours, including the paperwork, and their appearance in court.
Policemen work on average (correcting for weekends and holidays) like, 5 hours a day, so one policeman can cover something like a 300 to 500 calls a year.
0.2% of Australians are policemen.. In other words, there are 5 calls per policeman, per year. That's five calls per policeman per year, divided by 500 calls per policeman per year, meaning 1% of Australia's police force will be busy chasing boogiemen, classmates, schoolyard bullies, and neighbourhood mums, spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. And in consequence, I will boldly claim that the crime rate will go up by, like, 1%, thanks to less policemen on the beat catching actual criminals. Okay, it doesn't quite work that way, but it's still a better estimate than the shady "1 in 4 children are sexually abused by the internet." from the summary.

Sounds like a great plan. A few more murderers and actual child molesters on the loose are a small price to pay for a cuddly, reassuring dolphin next to every PC.

Um, check around. The internation average in taxes collected (including fees, sales tax, item taxes, VAT, property, income, inheritence, and all the other forms of taxes combined) is over 40% for the modern industrialized world.

The US total average taxes amount to about 30%, we're 21st on the list.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tax_tot_tax_wed_sin_wor-total-tax-wedge-single-worker

I've posted this before, but I think it's worth repeating because, despite my evangelizing, people on the Internet are still wrong. :P

Why is "OMGROADS" a justification for any and all taxation? As far as roads and police go, very little money comes from the Federal government, which leaves the local government. And in my experience, roads and police are the first things cut by local politicians because it scares up support for more taxes.

Ok, I choose to respond to your reply of the three that I got.

First, the comment which I was replying to was simply

Fuck taxes

Which appears to me as pure ignorance.

Education is a mess. We're #3 worldwide in terms of spending per pupil, but Slashdot as a whole seems to find public education inadequate.

I'm not American but perhaps I can provide some insight. I attended a small, under-funded, and all around terrible private school. And yet, I'm not intellectually stunted for the rest of my life. I'm in my fourth year of university now and the high school I went to does not rule my life. I do.

It is my opinion that what people need is motivation. When the motivation for studying is Iwantcoolstuff!!! the person is less likely to take it seriously than if the motivation is If I don't get an education I will starve. Who knows, maybe the recession will be the perspective change that some people need.

Now, what percentage of our taxes actually goes to roads, police, fire, education, and defense? I can guarantee you the majority of Federal spending does not, and how much local spending does is a function of local corruption and incompetence.

I like the sig of one slashdotter, something about "taxes buying civilization." But, can you fault those who feel ripped off?

I'm from Canada and we get taxed a lot. And yes, I do bitch and complain sometimes but in general I want to keep getting taxed. I like my health care and other such benefits.

But I have also seen this corruption that you speak of. I grew up in a rural area where we have absolutely terrible roads because the lack of funding and farmers who don't want to sell strips of land along the road that would be needed to widen the road. The local pm used fixing the roads as his platform. Sure enough when he got elected he put a million dollars into fixing one road that almost nobody drives on. It goes right by his place though. Idiot. Not subtle at all.

But I hear people complaining all the time about taxes and how people are dodging taxes and these people don't understand that if you take away all taxes then we wouldn't have a functional government. They really do expect all kinds of gifts to fall onto their lap from out of the ether.

I've posted this before, but I think it's worth repeating because, despite my evangelizing, people on the Internet are still wrong. :P

Why is "OMGROADS" a justification for any and all taxation? As far as roads and police go, very little money comes from the Federal government, which leaves the local government. And in my experience, roads and police are the first things cut by local politicians because it scares up support for more taxes.

Education is a mess. We're #3 worldwide in terms of spending per pupil, but Slashdot as a whole seems to find public education inadequate.

Now, what percentage of our taxes actually goes to roads, police, fire, education, and defense? I can guarantee you the majority of Federal spending does not, and how much local spending does is a function of local corruption and incompetence.

I like the sig of one slashdotter, something about "taxes buying civilization." But, can you fault those who feel ripped off?

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita

or

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_percap-crime-assaults-per-capita

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita

or

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_percap-crime-assaults-per-capita

Where are you getting your numbers from? These folk seem to think Spain has a much lower total public debt than you do (my last reference was for the external (foreign) debt rather than total public debt).

http://www.nationmaster.com/time.php?stat=eco_pub_deb-economy-public-debt&country=sp-spain

It also seems to be falling quite a bit. Maybe it has gotten much worse since 2007 but I cannot find any figures.

Not that I think debt is a good thing in general, but using debt for other economic goals is not inherently an awful idea.

If the government insurance is as good as the private insurance but cheaper, what's the problem?

Your point is valid, and applies to everything and anything — not just health insurance: "If the government X is as good as the private X but cheaper, what's the problem?"

The obvious problem is, it can not. It can only be "cheaper" if the taxpayer subsidizes it — our Medicare and Medicade spending (which only covers the old and the poor), for example, exceed the entire Department of Defense expenditures already.

Indeed! Dizzy with success of our:

• government schools — where we pay at the top of the world per pupil, but produce highschoolers unabled to compete with those of the Third World;
• government highways, which cost a fortune, but still cause an American — average, including those who don't drive at all — to spend 38 hours per year waiting in traffic (double that in busy places like LA)
• government postal service — which needs billions of bailouts every few years — despite having a monopoly on First Class Mail service

who wouldn't be anxious to switch to government-provided health insurance? What could possibly go wrong? Next up — government provided food (can't be healthy without good nutrition, can you?), shelter (same), clothes — you name it... I grew up in a country, where the government claimed to provide everything — and it sucked. I move to the US, and what do I find? A bunch of idiots wishing to make the mistake, someone has already made for them!

And it is not like you haven't been warned by your own:

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. Thomas Jefferson

Whoops - forgot the dept link: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_deb_ext_percap-economy-debt-external-per-capita

Your experiences would depend a lot on your choice of recreational activities, though you're almost an order of magnitude more likely to end up in a US prison.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita

Still, I expect if you're wealthy enough, both would be pretty comfortable. It's normally only people on the fringes who suffer.

Three different conservative groups as a source? Hmm. I've learned to take stuff that comes out of such things with a more than a pinch of salt, whether they're left-wing or right-wing. "The Mission of the Manhattan Institute is to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility"? They know the answer they want going in, and will pick evidence to find it.

The coronary disease is true, but not by a huge factor.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dea_fro_can-health-death-from-cancer

What utter bullshit. A moments Google search for total crimes per capita would have shown you that from worst to best, the rank is:

1 Dominica
2 New Zealand
3 Finland
4 Denmark
5 Chile
6 United Kingdom
7 Montserrat
8 United States

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita

Furthermore, people don't steal because they are poor. They steal because they are sociopaths. Bernie Madoff was not short of cash for a box of donuts and a six-pack. He was not poor or downtrodden or starving.

There are plenty of poor people who never steal, and plenty of rich people that do.

Reproducing the numerical values in the table counts as "junk characters". A tech website that counts numbers as junk. Go figure.

Italy had 1.29 murders per 100,000 people in 2000. We had 4.28 per 100,000 people. (link)

I guess those harsh prison sentences are going wonders for stopping murder here. Gosh, you'd think that with only 9% of the world population and 22% of the world's prison population that American society would be safe, right?