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They also have a concept of the 60 hour work week.

Or, you know, a little over half that, just like us.

http://stats.oecd.org/index.as...

Which do you prefer? Freedom, Higher risks and higher reward? No risk, less freedom, but a lower standard of living?

It is not a binary choice. Rewards for doing well are still high in Germany. It not "no risk" but lower risk. Average standard of living is almost the same in Germany and the US: Where-to-be-born Index You will have a lower standard of living if you are doing well and earning a lot, but on other hand your are not doing that well, maybe because of an illness or because of a few bad choices that you have made, then your standard of living will be a lot higher in Germany.

Socialism has made many promises it cannot keep. Capitalism promises nothing, but can generate much more wealth.

Germany is not trying to establish socialism. Its system is called "social market economy", it is basically capitalism with some regulations and some redistribution of wealth. But it is not even that different from the US. Germany is spending 25.8% of its GDP on these programs, while the US spends 19.2% of its GDP on these programs. There is not a huge difference. There is a slight difference in how the two systems are adjusted but it is not huge.
Statistics from the OCED

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. And to in my experience end up giving up liberty AND security.

How are people in germany giving up "essential liberty"? Since when is paying 35% instead of 25% taxes giving up "essential liberty"?

For fun, in the PISA 2012 results, the U.S. scored higher than the following wealthy, western countries:

...in math: Sweden.
...in reading: Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, Italy, Sweden.
...in science: Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, Italy, Sweden.

Also important to remember that just as there are big differences from country to country there are big differences between U.S. states. If you compared only the scores of U.S. students in Massachussetts to the rest of the world then the U.S. would fare pretty well. When you include Mississippi, not so much. For historical reasons there are also large differences between the performance of majority and minority groups in the U.S. I realize other countries also have disadvantaged minority populations, but I suspect the U.S. would do better in a global comparison pitting majority vs. majority.

Ask yourself what your high school economics class was like. Were you ever taught there was any way but free market laissez faire economics? Heck, in my class they didn't even bother demonizing it, it just wasn't taught. Libertarianism was a fait accompli. The grandparent, like a lot of /.ers is fighting the same uphill battle. It's the same reason the right wing just won the UK. You take control of the basic discussion and thought processes. Hell, look what we're doing. We're not talking about our standard of living, we're talking about "Job Creators". They've framed the debate in such a way that we can't even start to talk about the real issues.

Even such well known leftist bastions as the IMF and OECD have finally come to the conclusion that income inequality hurts economic growth. Yes the almighty economic growth of the whole nation.

In Sweden we increased our financial inequality in the nineties due to our banking crisis. And even though we've had very good growth since then, the IMF believes we have lost a substantial amount due to the increase in income inequality. If we had kept our old system we would be much richer now as a country, and as a people.

How do you fix this? Easy, redistribution tax the rich, and let the money flow to the relatively poorer. Says the IMF and the OECD. Bloody communist bastards the lot of them... Yeah, right.

Endless educational financing is already available.

In what universe would that be?

This one. The U.S. tops the world in education spending per student (p. 4, chart B1.1).

The idea that we're not spending enough on education is a myth, manufactured by those who are sucking up the largest chunk of education dollars. If you ever take the time to dig through a school district's budget, you'll find that the biggest single item is administrative overhead. Basically school payroll is top-heavy with too many administrators and managers.

Every time a budget cut is threatened, they make sure the cuts land squarely on classrooms and teachers, creating an artificial financial crisis. That riles up the teachers' unions and PTAs who broadcast the message that we're not spending enough on education. We really are spending more than enough, but from their perspective we aren't because the administrators aren't passing the money through to them. When the tactic works and public pressure forces legislators to increase school budgets, the administrators divert the bulk of it to fattening up their pay (or hiring more administrators), throwing a few token bones to teachers and classrooms (e.g. an iPad for every child in Los Angeles, which was probably a kickback scheme for the administrators who selected which companies got the contract).

And that very graph you cite is for primary through tertiary [higher] education, not primary through secondary.
To quote from the paper "On average, OECD countries spend nearly twice as much per student at the tertiary level as
at the primary level."

You can't talk about the figures from that paper and talk about school districts in the next paragraph.

I looked up Texas spending per student for public education (primary and secondary) and it was $6000 per student last year, on the level of Czech Republic (for primary through tertiary)

Endless educational financing is already available.

In what universe would that be?

This one. The U.S. tops the world in education spending per student (p. 4, chart B1.1).

The idea that we're not spending enough on education is a myth, manufactured by those who are sucking up the largest chunk of education dollars. If you ever take the time to dig through a school district's budget, you'll find that the biggest single item is administrative overhead. Basically school payroll is top-heavy with too many administrators and managers.

Every time a budget cut is threatened, they make sure the cuts land squarely on classrooms and teachers, creating an artificial financial crisis. That riles up the teachers' unions and PTAs who broadcast the message that we're not spending enough on education. We really are spending more than enough, but from their perspective we aren't because the administrators aren't passing the money through to them. When the tactic works and public pressure forces legislators to increase school budgets, the administrators divert the bulk of it to fattening up their pay (or hiring more administrators), throwing a few token bones to teachers and classrooms (e.g. an iPad for every child in Los Angeles, which was probably a kickback scheme for the administrators who selected which companies got the contract).

http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/oe... TL:DR Workers in China have more rights than US workers.

Phil Collins held money in a swiss bank account. What a crook! Where does Phil Collins live? Oh right. Launsanne SWITZERLAND.And OMG, David Bowie had a bank account in Switzerland.... where he lives.

I'm not going to defend the rich musicians claiming to reside in tax advantageous locations (cough*Isle of Man*cough). Nor am I going to defend those who advocate revolution (wait till you see what the regime is trying to repress) and failed to study history (hint: France had three revolutions, technically 5) - and I'm definitely not going to defend those that complain from the comfort of their armchairs:-

• while continually voting for major parties in the hope that optimism will overcome experience (or votes lost in a previous election to minor parties will set the agenda for following elections.
• work for a wage (or worse, don't work) and expect the same returns as those that take risks and work for themselves (even if it's using daddies money).

Anarchy is not destruction - it's the opposite of outsourcing responsibility to others.

Enlightened self-interest is not shitting upstream, unenlightened self-interest is. Enlightened self-interest is creating a business that doesn't dump sewage upstream and marketing the non-polluting aspect to advantage. Unenlightened self-interest is demanding a bigger government (composed of people who claim/believe levying taxes = production) that will regulate sewage dumping - which is like hiring someone to train a cat not kill things.

Sheep is a good analogy, they are stupid, but they feed themselves (and they don't go around saying other species can't be bred to be stupid). So just keep bitching, I won't call you sheep.
Don't take that the wrong way.

So did anyone actually stop to think that this guy stole bank details and sold them?

Yes, and no. Some of us thought "Maybe that's bullshit - let's check, before we believe the bank who makes it's money helping themselves to the profits from helping their clients break the law - 'cause, ya know, what if.... one crime gets lonely?"
So maybe the question you ask should have been four questions:-

1. Did the guy try and sell the data about illegal activities?
2. If so - so what?
3. Why am I so quick to hang him?
4. Maybe the world ain't simple (no matter how much I wish it was so), and maybe, just maybe - there are more than two options

And yeah - Phil Collins should go straight to jail for crimes against music (as should the rest of Genesis).
Of course, if I thought he was a musician, like David Bowie, then spending the requisite amount of time in countries that charge him less tax on his complicated corporate tax structure than I would have to pay using obfscurated family trusts in my country, would be OK.

Funding for public schools needs to increase at all levels.

Why? How much is enough? The average class size right now is about 22 students (average of elementary and secondary), and about $12,600 per student. So that's $277,000 per classroom of funding. Of that, the teacher "cost" is about $6800 per student. Meaning about half the income goes to the teacher (or $149,600 - for a class of 22) and the other half goes for everything else.

IF this was, in fact, what was happening - as is claimed by the links I provided - then teachers would be exceedingly well-paid - better than 94% of all taxpayers in the US. But this isn't happening. Why? Maybe money (and VAST amounts of it) are being siphoned off for other things. Lots of vice-principals, lots of extra counselors and specialty cafeterias, lots of buying of fads of technology, lots of half-million-dollar-a-year union bosses, etc.

We already massively outspend the rest of the OECD on a per-student basis. And we pay well in the middle of the pack for the OECD. If we cannot educate children AND pay highly desirable salaries with over a quarter of a million per classroom - something is SERIOUSLY fucked up. All the other OECD countries seem to do a lot better in compensating their teachers whilst spending considerably less per student. The LAST thing we should do is simply throw more money at the problem. Because too much money is already wasted...

Funding for public schools needs to increase at all levels.

Why? How much is enough? The average class size right now is about 22 students (average of elementary and secondary), and about $12,600 per student. So that's $277,000 per classroom of funding. Of that, the teacher "cost" is about $6800 per student. Meaning about half the income goes to the teacher (or $149,600 - for a class of 22) and the other half goes for everything else.

IF this was, in fact, what was happening - as is claimed by the links I provided - then teachers would be exceedingly well-paid - better than 94% of all taxpayers in the US. But this isn't happening. Why? Maybe money (and VAST amounts of it) are being siphoned off for other things. Lots of vice-principals, lots of extra counselors and specialty cafeterias, lots of buying of fads of technology, lots of half-million-dollar-a-year union bosses, etc.

We already massively outspend the rest of the OECD on a per-student basis. And we pay well in the middle of the pack for the OECD. If we cannot educate children AND pay highly desirable salaries with over a quarter of a million per classroom - something is SERIOUSLY fucked up. All the other OECD countries seem to do a lot better in compensating their teachers whilst spending considerably less per student. The LAST thing we should do is simply throw more money at the problem. Because too much money is already wasted...

By any measure I know the U.S. is the most diplomatic nation on earth. [For instance, ] in terms of foreign AID.

Foreign aid is a vehicle for exerting influence: for instance, to open foreign markets to US exports. You'd be a fool to think there were no strings attached. It's logical (at least in terms of game theory) for the US to exploit it's influence to its advantage, and we certainty do: take, for instance, our strong-arming intellectual property laws into numerous countries. Those laws support US exports (which tend to be soft on tangible goods and heavy on services and content).

I'm not criticizing any of this BTW, just describing the ground in front of us. The concern arises where maybe we're consuming accumulated good will for short term gains. Obviously, ISIS is going to view us as the great satan no matter what we do. But there 7 billion other people out there, and our long term ability to shape the world rests in part on their perception of our government.

We are number one the UK is number 2 the rest aren't even in the same league.

The US drops to the bottom of the list once you account for GDP. To be fair, that doesn't account for military presence [which saves Europeans a bundle on defense spending], military intervention [when it's not, um, massively misguided], and the generosity of the American public itself (thru churches and humanitarian organizations).

Actually, of the OECD countries Chile, Mexico, and Turkey are worse.

Increasing hours is rather less important than increasing the prestige of teaching as a profession (note: this does not and should not mean paying more to teachers). The total time in instruction is in the OECD 2012 report [PDF], at chart D1.1, while the rough breakdown into subjects is in charts D1.2a, D1.2b, and D1.2c for different age groups.

In summary, Finns spend among the lowest formal instruction times in the OECD. For example, 9-11 year olds in Finland spend 640 hours per year at school lessons, while the average in the OECD for that age group is 821 hours. The hours for the USA are not indicated, as there is a good deal of variation among the states, but only 8 of them require less than 800 hours per pupil per year (some insanely require more than 1000).

You may also like to read this.

An interesting correlation here is that French people don't work nearly as many hours as US people do. For example, according to the OECD numbers (which include part-time workers), US workers average about 34.5 hours a week, while French workers average about 26.8. Their typical work week is 30 hours, not 40.

Perhaps the issue here is that French readers still have energy left after work to engage in higher civic pursuits. Meanwhile US readers when they finally get a few moments free are too brain-dead from all the work to be up for anything more challenging that laughing at cats playing piano.

It worked like this: Amazon Europe paid 105 million EU to Amazon Technologies Inc in Nevada to license the rights to Amazon's intellectual property -- the patents and software for the websites, including that button that buys a book with one click.

Amazon Europe onsold the rights to use this intellectual property to Amazon EU for 519 million EU -- five times what it had paid the US company. Amazon Europe made an instant profit of 414 million EU, which would have been taxable, except that Amazon Europe is a limited partnership. It doesn't pay tax in Luxembourg.

Normally this would be called "transfer pricing" and considered "tax avoidance."

Transfer pricing involves a company selling [stuff] to its subsidiaries at market cost.
Tax avoidance involves completely legal maneuvers to minimize your tax exposure.

There are international norms for transfer pricing.
No way in hell is re-licensing some IP for a 400% profit going to pass muster.
Most likely, they'll have to restate some earnings and negotiate the size of their fine.

Over the last few years, there have been various hearings in the USA and internationally over transfer pricing.
It's on the radar of western governments and they're not very happy with the practice.

The most recent case I can think of was against Caterpillar.
They settled for peanuts on $2.4 billion in transferred profits.

That's the Scottish, you dumb twat. The Irish are just drunks who don't like to work.

Most people don't particularly like to work, but Irish people put in some of the longest working hours.

Not true there is one place where US is number one regarding health system: total cost per inhabitant. Far ahead of Switzerland which is one of the most expensive country in the world... page 155: http://www.oecd.org/els/health...

I have to say that you seem to make the mistake of regarding quantity equivalent to quality. [...] I find it pretty hard to believe that you [...] actually read and not merely skimmed them.

Well, I personally didn't read all of them, only the ones I *knew* I was going to be questioned on (like War and Peace, for instance). This usually amounted to like 50% of the list (we had a liberal teacher). But, since the "examination" was quite deep and required an actual understanding of the plot, characters, historical context, and many other dimensions of the book in question, you *had* to *read* and *understand* the book or risk getting a bad grade. Then again, my cute neighbor read *ALL* of them!
Feel free to ask someone, who went to school in Moscow or St. Petersburg (don't know about other cities, but I'd wager the situation was very similar), if you need confirmation. I know it's hard to believe for someone used to sparing the "poor kids" and providing them pre-chewed information laced with the teacher's opinion, instead of pushing the kids to solve problems on their own.

we usually cover one book per month during lessons (if that much) but in detail.

Yeah, I remember being bored on the second week of some of Duerrenmatt's or Lessing's (shorter) works, when a minority came prepared and we were reading the whole book in class (especially great, when it's that idiot, who never learned how to read properly and couldn't bind two syllables together), instead of discussing the plot, analyzing the literary style, etc. We were "reading" The Judge and his Hangman for 3 (three!) months. Seriously! WTF?!?
What I'm trying to say here is that maybe it'd be worth a consideration by the education panel to give a list of 20 books and let the students choose at least 2 of them to read over the holidays, but no, that'd be against the almighty law of not giving them *any* homework over summer. ; )

Judging by my (subjective, of course) experience, I'd say the general literacy of the population that went to school in the USSR is way higher than the general literacy of the "average German". I wouldn't expect otherwise, after I've overheard parents in DE say things like: "Oh, I really don't think my kid should go to a gymnasium, the load's too high (LOL), he/she's better off in a real [10 years total] or hauptschule [8/9 years total]", or a teacher deciding where your kid's going instead of you and/or the kid.
Eventually, when people get out of school, their prospect is to find an apprenticeship as a salesman or some other job that's going to be virtually non-existent, when RFID & Co hit the market, or their job as a construction worker get's automated away by an oversized 3D printer.
I never understood why the level of expectations in DE is so low in general.
As a comparison, in 2010 the attainment rate of tertiary education in RU vs DE is 54 (1st place) vs 25.4 (23rd place) percent for (25 to 64 year olds) source: OECD interactive tool.

Regarding PISA, of course you can dump most of the results, if they come during your last lesson and say whoever's finished can go home...*facepalm*
And regarding matrices (and other concepts): it just raises the student's general understanding and awareness of subjects. It's just one example of the "level-difference" that really stood out and that's why I mentioned it. I wish someone would have shown me this, back in school too, but maybe I'm just a nerd.

It appears that a country has to be more or less third world (2001-2002 data for the most part) in order to have 35% tariff rates (under the WTO scheme). Most of the countries in the current negotiation already have tariff rates near or under 5% including the US, the EU, Australia, Japan, and probably South Korea and Switzerland. In the link above, China had tariffs a bit over 5% on most goods aside from a few entries (it may be better now since the report is ten years old). The worst at 40% was ethanol (good "220710" in the "Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System"). Looks like China has 35% tariffs on water heaters too (841911 and 841919) and 30% on mufflers and exhaust pipes (870892).

At a glance, I'd say the countries with the highest tariffs are probably Costa Rica and China. But maybe there's some high tariffs between individual members of the group in addition to the above list.

The U.S. spends just shy of $15k/yr on education per student, which is more than any other developed nation on earth. A quick google search shows that your $4221 figure is already in 2010 dollars. So spending per student has actually almost quadrupled since 1969.

That's been the problem all along. The U.S. spends more per student than any other OECD nation. The problem has never been lack of funding. The problem has always been administration sucking up so much money that an insufficient amount reaches the classroom and students.

The "we need to spend more money on education" wardrum is just manipulation by administrators. They starve the teachers of money, then encourage them to go out and proselytize to the public with sob stories about how they had to buy teaching materials with their own money because the school is so strapped for cash. When the public approves the spending increase, the administrators then siphon off even more money.

Sadly I think it's offshoring. If you don't let companies bring workers to the United States they are going to set up shop where the workers live. This has much more negative effects - lower tax base, lower economic activity in the US etc. than letting these workers come here.

Yes it depresses US wages and makes the job market tighter for US citizens. But at least the company still has operations and employees in the US that are paying taxes.

Ideally there would be US citizens working in the US taking these jobs. But non-US citizens working in the US on these jobs is better than non-US citizens working in Bangalore some other non-US location doing these jobs.

If you want to cut down on this, it is absolutely necessary to improve the US education system. What we have now truly sucks, as this OECD report describes:

http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac...

so out of all the shit that needs fixed on earth, your proposal is to spend billions of dollars to see how long it takes for moondust to get on a sliver of glass

fuck you

Yes, actually. This is what I want to spend my money on.
We've spent trillions, on trying to fix shit that ain't ever going to get fixed, and I'd like to take a break and look at something pretty for a while.
Some money spent here:
http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/...

But, just to put things into perspective, look at what we're really spending money on:

http://mentalfloss.com/article....

You think that we can't spend part of our cigarette budget on something else.

This gives a comprehensive overview of the fossil fuel subsidies in the US: http://www.oecd.org/site/tadff...
Far from all of these are available to other industries (somehow I doubt Apple is able to claim tax credit for production of low-sulphur diesel, or 15% tax credit for utilizing enhanced oil recovery methods or transporting Alaskan natural gas)

You might not have considered this, but the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and Strategic Petroleum Reserve are effectively fossil fuel subsidies.

One perfect example of this I see on a daily basis is the expectation that one should either live independently or live in a single family household. This is a common thing in the US, but it is extremely uncommon throughout most of the world, even in other first world countries....

Citation please?

Oh, here's one! Apparently the average family household unit size in the entire OECD (basically, the community of industrialized nations) is about 2.6, which is almost exactly the same as that for the U.S.! In other words, far from being unusual in first world countries, we are strictly average!

So, no, you are just making stuff up that you think sounds plausible.

I was in part responding to the idea that women get to choose to work lesser hours therefore it's fair they get paid less. Many women don't work lesser hours and the roles they more frequently work in are often lower paid per hour.

The reasons for this are varied and complex, but a significant part of that is the 'higher paid' STEM roles are seen as unattainable for women more than for men - even given a broad background of socio-economic factors.

Women are more likely to be channeled into nurturing or service roles such as teaching, nursing, childcare or aged care, rather than more lucrative roles such as sales or STEM roles. At the lower end of the economy, they are more likely to be a waitress than a construction worker - guess what pays more. Yes being a construction worker may be more physically demanding - but being on your feet all day waiting tables isn't being slack either. In Australia, tradesmen are some of the best paid people, I can assure you that the 'professions' for working class women are not paid nearly as well, they are likely to be a hairdresser or beauty therapist or a masseuse.

And you can bet that the construction industry is unwelcoming to women in very similar ways that IT is. I can tell you I've experienced both first hand having started in Architecture and worked directly on building sites as well as moving into IT and working directly with programmers and other IT types from the position of doing both Tech Support and now as a Systems Analyst.

You say that programming jobs aren't lucrative - that is a relative term. They may not be paid as well as a top performing sales person or someone in finance or banking - but they generally pay better than nursing or teaching or any of the personal care professions women tend to get pushed towards.

It has been shown in many developing countries that the best way to improve your economy is to give women more money. Here's a couple of studies to get you started. It makes no sense to keep 50% of the population explicitly in underpaid roles.

More intersting countries to investigate:

Luxembourg and Denmark; Much greater per capita GDP than the USA / shorter working week.

Greece and Mexico; Some of the longest working hours. Much less GDP than the USA.

• countries by GDP / Wikipedia
• countries by hours worked / OECD

the US government being involved in health care is a very new thing.

No it isn't. The US government has been involved in health care since Medicare began in 1966. In 2009, the year before the ACA was signed into law, the U.S. government (i.e. excluding private health care spending) spent as percent of GDP more on Medicare and its ancillary health programs than the government of Canada spent for its universal health care program. If the U.S. government truly wanted universal health coverage, it was already spending enough to provide it before the ACA.

I suspect the entire public vs. private health care debate was just a red herring, meant to occupy and distract the voting public. The real problem is probably government corruption which passes laws and awards contracts based on cronyism and bribes, and thus inflates our health care costs. I suspect the ACA is just going to be more of the same, and won't help bring down our health care costs.

Sorry, you're the one with parroting talking points, probably from Comedy Central. Here's another source for you.

http://www.oecd.org/edu/educat...

I'm afraid that parroting Jon Stewart isn't going to fix that fact that our students are routinely whipped by former banana republics.

The Scandinavian countries DO spend a lot.
Denmark is the third highest. The US is the top spender (but nowhere near the best results).

http://www.oecd.org/edu/educat...

Here

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/test/

You can take a sample test yourself. See how basic the questions are and feel appalled to see the % of students in your country that managed to pass each level.

For example, only 11% of students in my country (Argentina) were able to reach level 3 (identify the smallest value in a table). Highest rank for that question was Shanghai-China (89%). USA was 48%.

It's really more depressing when you take the sample questions. I find it sad, but I do remember grading high school physics test where one student couldn't even spell his name correctly for 2 points.

I just don't think he cared.

Here

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/test/

You can take a sample test yourself. See how basic the questions are and feel appalled to see the % of students in your country that managed to pass each level.

For example, only 11% of students in my country (Argentina) were able to reach level 3 (identify the smallest value in a table). Highest rank for that question was Shanghai-China (89%). USA was 48%.

sounds like a genuine question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of_subsidies_in_the_United_States
OECD summary: http://www.oecd.org/site/tadffss/USA.pdf
OECD page for all countries with links to data: http://www.oecd.org/site/tadffss/

The biggest "subsidy" to the oil industry imo is the amount spent protecting oil and gas pipe lines and shipping lanes.

sounds like a genuine question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of_subsidies_in_the_United_States
OECD summary: http://www.oecd.org/site/tadffss/USA.pdf
OECD page for all countries with links to data: http://www.oecd.org/site/tadffss/

The biggest "subsidy" to the oil industry imo is the amount spent protecting oil and gas pipe lines and shipping lanes.

Geez, do you need to have it spelled out for you? US "liberalism" isn't "liberal".

You're vociforously spelling out everything except what I originally asked: how you think the ministry of truth relates to this.

You should verify your "facts", because you are spewing bullshit.

Facts:
USA with the highest incarceration rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

Life expectancy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
Notice the US below Switzerland, Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Austria, Greece, Ireland, Finland, Germany, UK, Belgium, Portugal and Denmark. i.e. Europe.

Infant mortality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate
USA at #34, below most (all?) of Europe.

Annual working hours per capita: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS
USA higher than almost all of Europe (not Poland, Estonia or Hungary).

Insane drug laws: http//dea.gov
USA wins again. See also, incarceration rate per capita.

Looks like my "bullshit" facts are right.

I was curious what the questionnaire was like. The OECD site has a sample in case you're curious: http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_online%20sample%20items.ppt

Actually, the average America works more hours per year than the average Japanese by about ~40 hours. The times vary from year to year. Last year (2012) it was 45 hours, but in 2011, it was over 60. Go see for yourself:

  http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS
 

In Japan, the APPEARANCE of working long hours is of utmost importance. However, there is no stigma against sleeping at your desk. I'm not joking. Sleeping at your desk shows how hard you work that you are so tired. They also take very long breaks and lunches. So it's not about actual work. It's more about getting in before the boss and leaving after the boss leaves, but not about actually working hard.

Bwahahaha, I guess you are modded insightful because it is the new funny? I actually lol-ed a little at your comment. Compared to many areas in Europe, yes, but compared to many of the better scoring nations, and especially the #1 scorer, Japan, which is well known for work-a-haulism (among other -ahaulisms), Americans definitely are not work-ahaulics.

Actually, the average America works more hours per year than the average Japanese by about ~40 hours. The times vary from year to year. Last year (2012) it was 45 hours, but in 2011, it was over 60. Go see for yourself:

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS

As for education, I do have to agree with you for education up to and including high school education. The current system in the USA is completely broken, which isn't surprising as it was designed in the 1800's, not the 21st century. It is still based on concepts and criteria to produce factory line workers and farmers, not critical thinkers, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs, or artists. Even the very concept of the "school year" itself is based on 1800's agricultural needs of the children to be home working on the farm planting/harvesting crops, which is why there exists such a thing as "summer vacation". More is lost in the 2-3 months of "summer vacation" than is taught in 2 months of classes (more for students of low income families). That actually means that in terms of education knowledge gained, our students only have 5-6 months of school while countries that do not have a 2-3 month summer vacation received 10-11 months in the same time period. It is no wonder our students do not do as well....

Thanks, I checked out the study mentioned in that article and for the life of me in the 404 pages, I could not find anything that compared educational spending by country in its contents. http://www.oecd.org/edu/eag2013%20(eng)--FINAL%2020%20June%202013.pdf

However I did find this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_on_education_(%25_of_GDP) which certainly does not put us at the top of education spenders.

Actually it is local loop length that matters for speed.

Statistics show that the US has far longer local loops than most other countries (see figure 2 in this document).

I believe this is not only due to the rural population, but it was due to a reduction in the number of central offices to have a more efficient telephony network in the analog to digital telephony conversion from 1970's-1990's before DSL technology was a reality.

Fine, then feel free to present your evidence. Oh wait, you don't have any.

Just for fun, here are some other reports
from 2012: http://milescorak.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/inequality-from-generation-to-generation-the-united-states-in-comparison-v3.pdf
from 2010: http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/02/moving_on_up_and_hitting_a_wall_social_mobility_in_the_us_and_europe.html
from 2009: http://search.oecd.org/officialdocuments/displaydocumentpdf/?doclanguage=en&cote=eco/wkp(2009)48
from 2008: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2008/2/economic%20mobility%20sawhill/02_economic_mobility_sawhill_ch3.pdf
Or some historical numbers:
http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/working_papers/2005/wp2005_12.pdf

That last study finds that "mobility increased from 1950 to 1980 but has declined sharply since 1980". I guess the economy must have entered a sharp decline since 1980.

Oh wait....it didn't.

Here's how ignorant you are on the subject of economics:

It doesn't take a four paragraph dissertation to realize that if the government creates a natural monopoly (land access rights), then you won't have competition.

"A monopoly describes a situation where a majority of sales in a market are undertaken by a single firm. A natural monopoly by contrast is a condition on the cost-technology of an industry whereby it is most efficient (involving the lowest long-run average cost) for production to be concentrated in a single firm." (WikiPedia)

If you don't understand the words, I cannot help you understand anything else. Governments do not create natural monopolies. Natural monopolies exist because of certain market conditions.

But let's look at the result of the choices in reacting to the reality of natural monopolies, in this case, broadband access costs by PPP per median mbits/sec:

21.13 Mexico
18.72 Greece
09.86 Poland
09.73 Chile
05.46 Turkey
05.42 United States
04.85 Luxembourg
04.62 Israel
04.39 Spain
04.33 Slovenia
04.08 Czech Republic
03.88 Ireland
03.82 Germany
03.82 Switzerland
03.73 Hungary
03.56 Iceland
03.29 Canada
03.27 Italy
03.24 Austria
03.21 Finland
02.92 Australia
02.77 New Zealand
02.69 Estonia
02.51 Belgium
02.05 Norway
01.84 Netherlands
01.69 Slovak Republic
01.67 Denmark
01.60 United Kingdom
01.58 Sweden
01.45 France
01.41 Japan
01.38 Portugal
00.33 Korea

Socialized or heavily regulated solutions beat our system hands down, and absolutely crush private attempts on maximum speeds (look at the data for yourself, I'm done baby sitting you.) It appears that you are flat wrong on this subject, if data and research are acceptable forms of information.

Also, there is nothing prevent competition in the delivery and quality of internet access over government owned fiber. As I have demonstrated, there is in fact more competition when the negative effects of privatization are removed from rent-seeking infrastructure, which you already know because you use the socialized road system that has a good deal to do with America's success in the modern world, and a good deal to do with how far we are behind more advanced infrastructure programs that have already starting hurting us today.

(And yes, sticking to the facts instead of my own wish thinking has served my quite well over the years. You should try it.)

There is a nice report on from the OECD on the quality of health care systems. And a short summary on the US system compared to the rest of the OECD countries http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/HealthSpendingInUSA_HealthData2012.pdf

No, not defense spending. US military spending, which despite the Orwellian terminology used to describe it, has been predominately offensive in the past decade. The US spends about 4.8% of GDP on military spending, more than double the next largest (China), with about 2%.

The US spends about 20% GDP on social programs (from here) - below the OECD member average.

The problem isn't private vs. public healthcare. The U.S. government spent more per capita on health care in 2012 (second chart) than most OECD countries with universal coverage. Looking at the chart, the U.S. government spent more on health care per capita than the UK's public + private spending combined. If a universal health care system were the answer, our government already spends more than enough on health care to implement one.

The problem is the health care system here and people's expectations from it are screwed up, government's attempts to manage it are akin to a blindfolded elephant trying to navigate a china shop, and the methodology used by private insurers encourages people and providers to do everything they can to loot the system.

Per the OECD, the "Average annual hours actually worked per worker" in the United States has been around 1,800 hours per year for the last decade. (1,787 in 2011)

Source: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS

Found some relevant numbers, Carbon Dioxide Emissions Embodied in International Trade. The US is a net carbon importer, China a net carbon exporter. The numbers are from 2005 (compiled in 2011), I imagine they've tightened a bit since then but not by a large amount.

France law sets full time workers at 35 hours per weeks. This is much more than 3 hours of work. One could argue that 35 hours is not the highest working time in the world, but french worker GDP per working hour is quite high, which make France still relevant.

The Grizz rant is just a point against globalization. It demonstrates very well that it can be used to lower worker conditions as much as wanted.

We are spending far more per person than we did in 1943, the height of World War II spending. And we aren't even in a major war.

This, and few seems to fucking know it, and its starting to piss me off that so few do.

The raw facts:

Government spending in 2011 was $6.251 trillion dollars (source: OECD.ORG
Total number of households in 2011 was 114.761 million (source: CENSUS.GOV

Government spending per household was $54469.72 in 2011, more than the median household income (source: basic math)

People seem to get caught up in the Federal numbers as if thats all that was spent, all that was borrowed, and all that is owed. Its not the case. People also jump to erroneous conclusions such as if the Federal government was greatly downsized that many government services would be cut, when in actuality the State and Local governments are funding and providing most of the cost of most of the services they cite as potentially lost or harmed (education, police, fire, justice, etc..)

The solution to the problem isn't cutting taxes on the middle class, raising taxes in the rich, or the ridiculous idea of spending even more.. no, the solution really is to stop spending so god damned much.

The sampling frame
All NPMs were required to construct a school sampling frame to correspond to their national defined target population.

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2009/50036771.pdf

quoted from the PISA 2009 Technical Report, which gives detailed information about the sampling procedure, stratification an bias corrections. they make complete sense considering the report's abjectives. and since they're very clearly defined, they mike kinda total morons of those guys at EPI (and slashdot) who seem to totally fail to grasp the purpose of such a study.

of course i have no say regarding the honesty/rigor the sampling procedure was actually carried out, but this is not wat the counter-study challenges. as said, absolute morons. there goes your elite, guys!