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How many times are you people going to post "just increase spending blah blah..."

OECD already ranks US per capita spending on primary education as the 2nd highest on Earth, yet results show our ranking in global standardized tests decreasing every year for three decades.

http://www.oecd.org/

Isn't it better to compare by population density rather then size?
Sure it isn't a surprise that the Netherlands is in the top with a population density of 392 people per square kilometer, but let's check the other top countries.

Population per square kilometer:
United States: 31
Sweden: 20
Finland: 15.5
Norway: 12
Iceland: 2.9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ population_density

Oh, and TFA uses OECD statistics from 2001.
The 2005 statistics are here: http://www.oecd.org/document/39/0,2340,en_2649_374 41_36459431_1_1_1_37441,00.html

The simple and direct way to combat financial identity theft is to forbid banks and others from extending credit or opening new accounts without seeing the applicant face to face and seeing photo ID. If that were true, your SSN and all your account numbers could be completely public, but of no use to the ID thieves. It is the banks who profit from easy credit that oppose meaningful identity theft legislation.

When I lived in Sweden years ago I was surprised to get letters in the mail for each request for information about my credit record together with a copy of the information provided. That very simple, almost trivial, requirement actually provided me with a great deal of protection.

Another different approach I learned in Sweden. They required companies to obtain a license from the government to keep a register (on paper or digitally) of information on private citizens. It applied all the way down to a desktop Rolodex with customer names and addresses. If you didn't have a license, you couldn't keep that information.

To get a license, the company had to declare all uses that it intended to make of the information. The government had the right to audit the company at any time to see if they had complied with the terms of their license. That's a very powerful lever to keep the companies on their toes. If they lost their data license they would be out of business instantly.

Still, the proposed bill does have a few gems. Notably, giving individuals access to, and the opportunity to correct, any personal information held by commercial data brokers. That would be a major change. Today, these brokers do not deal with individual consumers. If citizens by the millions started demanding copies of their files and asking for corrections, it could cost those brokers much more for customer service than their current gross income. I suppose the big loophole is that it would apply only to data brokers. Just watch for all the database owners to scramble to avoid that definition so that the law doesn't apply to them.

If the senators wanted to make a really tough bill, they should just adopt the OECD privacy guidelines and make them apply to all companies and nonprofits and government agencies. Ha -- don't hold your breath, the lobbies pay off both Reps and Dems.

Yawn, being a dumass and having to explain to others worse off is a boring job.

But I have looked for the information on the study and close as i can tell is it this study in particular. It is a direct link to a PDF because that how google presented it to me.

Now, our canadian rant on the problems seem to be explained well enough in other sources including popular news sources. But we can look at much of the same problems in Australia and this same report explains them. It says that the government tries to push as much as possible off onto the private health insurance, It says that heart surgury amung others can be considered elective and that an average waiting time of between 11 and 73 days (depending on the severity of the illness) for heart surgury is normal if you don't have private health insurance. Private health insurance covered patients recieve teatment much faster. It says that this is in place on purpose by the government to encourage people to carry private health insurance. It says that there is a tax penalty if you don't have private health insurance and a tax break if you do. This in of itself is scary enough to me. But the study also says that the private health coverage is being used to offset the cost of the public system. It also limits what the private system can cover to limit direct competition from the two coverages and offset the expenses from the most costly proceedures.

This also apears to be the same study that claims costs for private medical coverage are more then for public. It make no difference to the point though, If the GP pays X amount in medical expenses and Y amount in taxes, Any switch in system to cover more people are going to result in more cost and likley cost him more money. But don't take it form me, take it formthe horses mouth. Read the study.

Telecom companies are not constantly producing faster last-mile solutions.

especially when regulators keep giving them sweetheart deals

What country do you live in where the money that parents pay for public schools, are refunded to let the parents pay for private schools?

That is an entirely different argument than "government has a monopoly on schooling".

If you are forced to pay for a public education, even if you choose to go to a private school, it makes it cost prohibitive to all the but wealthy who can afford to pay for an education twice. In nearly all countries, you are required to purchase an education from the government, no matter if you decide to use it or not.

Here in Australia, there has been a massive boom in private schooling - and it sure as hell isn't the statistically insiginficant "rich" who are the ones driving it. Added to that, private schools in Australia receive the same amount of public funding as public schools (although that situation probably varies from country to countr), so your complaint does not apply here.

Finally, I'm not sure what delusion you're channeling to conclude that poor people would suddenly be able to afford private schooling if public schooling disappeared (even if that portion of taxation was refunded), because it's a highly unlikely outcome, at best. Almost certainly, what would *actually* happen if public schooling were abolished would be a return to the good old days of poor people not even being able to read and write, the middle class getting just enough education to make them useful and the rich being the only ones who received the schooling (upper secondary and tertiary) that 30% - 80% of the population gets today (and, effectively, closer to 100% have the opportunity to).

The guy was right: taxation is robbery. Residence in a place is not voluntary if you are born into it.

Scandanavia's living standards are at least a little lower than those in the US: that is why you get more people moving from Scandinavia to the US than the other way around. Even the health care is inferior: you certainly have no hospitals in Scandinavia to compare to Mayo in the US.

Also, no matter how you try to spin it, if you end up shot and killed for refusing to pay taxes, that is how it is. Resisting arrest and the threat of force are just parts of the robbery.

Yes, similarly, shoplifting can result in a "death penalty": but shoplifting is a specific and easily-avoided action that violates other's rights.

Not giving money to robbers is not an action: it is the default situation, and it doesn't violate anyone's rights except for the arrogant "right" of the ruling class to think it can steal from anyone.

A democracy (or democratic republic if you wish to be pedantic) only functions well when there is a reasonably educated and informed voting population. For that reason it is sensible to have a basic minimum standard of education provided to all comers - the health of the democracy depends upon it. There already is a private competitive market for education: they're called private schools (and home schooling). If you want more than the basic minimum level of education then you can pay for it (in money for private school, or in time for home schooling); no one is going to stop you - private schools and home schooling are perfectly legal. What you are bemoaning is that, despite these other options being readily available, most people opt for the basic education provided by the public system, which apparently rubs you the wrong way ideologically.

This is not to say, of course, that you can't complain about the current state of the US public education system: it is quite appalling. To be honest I would suggest that the US is teetering toward the point where the cracks in the democratic system are starting to show. If you could take off the ideological galsses for a moment, however, you might note that the poor quality of the US public education system is not intrinsically because it is a public system. There are plenty of publicly funded school systems around the world that are doing quite well indeed: Look at Finland, for instance, which finished first in recent surveys of high school students science and math skills worldwide. Most of the other countries listed as doing well also have publicly funded school systems. Clearly there are other reasons why the US public system performs so poorly - perhaps you would be better served determining what the underlying causes are, rather than making pronouncements based on faith in ideology instead of actual evidence.

One of the reasons Denmark is leading the OECD list this year*, and probably will remain high on the list for many years, is the fact that the power companies have started to roll out fibre to consumers, as they work to bury overhead power lines. We just had a big merger in Denmark, where many of the major power companies turned into one company called DONG Energy, which is going to speed up the process. They estimate 98% of the population will have access to this within 10 years. I very much welcome this development as my 8Mbit/s line isen't cutting it anymore!

* http://www.oecd.org/document/9/0,2340,en_2649_3422 3_37529673_1_1_1_1,00.html

I love it when Americans write about those "Europeans" as if we were one country. There are 50 countries in Europe with a combined population of about 600-700 million people. Land area and population vary greatly. Theres quite a range from the top to bottom (80 million to 50.000).
Some countries do have high densities - however the countries that score well are mostly countries with small, rural populations and very LOW density. Take Norway for example (no. 7) with 12/km2 versus the USA (no 12) with 31/km2!

show the US at a 12th place

http://www.oecd.org/document/9/0,2340,en_2649_3422 3_37529673_1_1_1_1,00.html

it ALSO has a nifty penetration/inhabitants per sq km ... (hmmm, that just sounds wrong)

anyhoo, here's the list:

1 Denmark
2 Netherlands
3 Iceland
4 Korea
5 Switzerland
6 Finland
7 Norway
8 Sweden*
9 Canada
10 United Kingdom
11 Belgium
12 United States
13 Japan
14 Luxembourg
15 Austria
16 France
17 Australia
18 Germany
19 Spain
20 Italy
21 Portugal
22 New Zealand
23 Czech Republic**
24 Ireland
25 Hungary
26 Poland
27 Turkey
28 Slovak Republic
29 Mexico*
30 Greece

The physical factors account for some of it, but not much. For one thing, the suburban qualities of America doesn't give much insight into why it is that city dwellers in most of America still have broadband speeds that pale in comparison to those in much of Europe and Asia. Remember that according to the FCC, broadband means anything over 200kbs, so talking about "broadband" in America and South Korea is really talking about two completely different things.

The "America is so huge" argument doesn't work when you also recognize that most Americans only have two broadband providers to choose from. The consolidation of the telecom market means that it is a losing proposition for one carrier to enter a geographic market that another carrier has already taken. Usually it comes down to "competition" in the form of a choice between the dominant local telecom and whichever cable operator has the contract for the area. You can drink anything you want, as long as it is Coke or Pepsi.

By defining broadband as an "information service" the FCC and the Supreme Court (in the Brand X decision) turned the incombent telecos and cable companies loose. They no longer had to lease excess capacity to new entrants in the market. The anti-competitive measures taken by the Baby Bells in the late 1990s were essentially excused and ratified, and almost all of the plucky broadband competitors that sprung up to bring broadband to the masses were squashed by the giant, slow-moving, ever-consolidating telecom entities.

The South Korean approach worked in part because the government created an initial infrastructure and allowed carriers to compete on top of it. Here in the US, we talk about the free market incessantly, but in reality we have coddled the Baby Bells. They are the severed pieces of the old AT&T, which was essentially a government-protected monopoly for decades. So when the heads of these companies talk about how pissed off they are at Google, et. al., for using "their" networks, just remember that they were born rich. Sure, they built the fiber optic networks and invested billions in infrastructure, but were it not for government intervention in the early years of telecom, they would have been in the same place as Covad and all the other newcomers. Anyone can compete in the broadband market in theory, but in reality if the incumbents have a decades-long lead on you and billions of dollars, how in the hell are you going to get the funding necessary to compete? Of course, with that nice head start, the mutant offspring of the Baby Bells are fervent supporters of free market competition. Funny how that works, isn't it?

Look up broadband prices in the US from 10 years ago, five years ago, and now. Evidence of a truly competitive market? Check prices per megabyte in the US against those in the OECD report linked to below. Something isn't right.

I could go on and on about this, but Copps is right. The US is getting its ass kicked in broadband, and the "hands off" approach the government has taken over the last ten years has clearly not worked. Sure, we're a big country, but the technical aspects are the smallest part of the equation. After all, the Internet was started here. DSL was invented here. Fiber optic cable was first put to practical use here. We screwed up politically, and now we're paying for it.

Broadband Reality Check II (PDF)

OECD report on broadband access in several countries

GAO report on broadband (PDF) - takes the FCC to task for failures in its methodology for determining broadband penetration.

No, I bet we'll see a some restrictions of executive power over the next two years (depending on whether the Democrats can get a majority in the Senate or not). That will result in a net reduction of central government power.

You claim that the US is the "most expensive, most powerful government AND world empire" is incorrect. First, the US is still per capita less expensive than most OECD countries (the study compared 30 countries with the US ending up third from the bottom). Various forms of US power are limited due to its nature as a republic. For example, military intervention needs to be justified and tends to be expensive and limited when it occurs. The US's economic power used to be more profound (eg, in the 1960's) than it is today. The US is currently riding on past accomplishments with much of its economic base being moved to other countries.

BTW spell checking in Firefox 2.0 is fantastic - first time I've used it. First time I've noticed it really, I was wondering what the red dots were for a few mins.

french people are emigrating fast, at a rate of 100,000 to 200,000 each year, and it has been going like this for years already (2+ million people left the country, compare this with Cuba). This is the most massive exodus this country has ever known since the French Revolution ! There are reasons behind this continuous stream of people, reasons for fleeing this country.

Parent is right, we are witnessing a mass exodus of Frenchmen with marketable skills. To give you an idea, when the 18th century Kings of France offered 40 acres and a mule to French farmers accepting to go colonize the New World, less than 50,000 Frenchman ever accepted and left the country. We aren't talking Ireland here: The French historically never emigrated massively. If they are suddenly doing so, there must be a problem.

Indeed, engineers and scientists are fleeing to England and the US, mostly. This is not good for a country that heavily spends on public universities and has low tuition. It means that the French taxpayers are subsidizing foreign countries to the detriment of their own.

Also, there is a massive level of illegal immigration in France, and the illegals are, in their majority, unable to occupy a high-tech job for lack of qualification (by definition, immigrants with marketable skills don't need to be illegal, they will easily go through the work permit procedures). Most of the illegals end up in either low-paid jobs or on the dole, thus requiring social services paid by the taxpayer.

Conclusion: This means that France is effectively swapping highly qualified workers for unskilled immigrants. French taxes are quite high as a result, and more importantly, the country's future is bleak: this continuous brain drain cannot improve an already bad situation.

When President Chirac was challenged by journalists about this problem, he said that skilled workers leaving the country are "making room for unemployed people". This clearly shows the French elites are clueless: high tech jobs are hard to fill, and retraining unemployed people to take these jobs is rarely a solution. Especially when they arrive from a poor country and lack even basic skills.

The OECD has nice little graphs showing the level of general government spending in various countries, which is to say, how much of the country's production ends up in the government's pocket. Right now, France is at about 54% and still growing: Out of 8 hours, you work 4 hours and 20 minutes for the government in France. As a comparison, the US is at 26%, The UK at 34%.

I fail to see why a Slashdot reader would want to move to a country that will tax him/her so highly in order to support such a disastrous policy and such moronic, disconnected elites.

Lots of folks are objecting to a focus on marginal rates (I do think they're important, but whatever). From the same database, here's spreadsheet (Excel) that looks at "All-in average personal income tax rates at AW" (AW=average wage). And remember the US doesn't have a VAT.

Some data excerpted: "All-in less cash transfers: The combined central and sub-central government income tax plus employee social security contribution, less family benefits (in respect of dependent children) paid by general government as universal cash transfers, as a percentage of gross wage earnings. " These numbers are for a one-earner family with two children.


Turkey 30.4%
Poland 30.3%
Denmark 29.2%
Sweden 23.7%
Finland 23.6%
Germany 22.3%
Belgium 22.2%
Greece 22.1%
Netherlands 21.7%
Norway 20.4%
United Kingdom 19.4%
Hungary 18.4%
France 17.1%
Austria 16.7%
Japan 15.3%
New Zealand 14.5%
Italy 13.7%
Spain 13.0%
Canada 12.3%
Australia 10.9%
Switzerland 9.6%
Portugal 9.1%
Korea 8.6%
Mexico 7.9%
Iceland 5.9%
United States 5.0%
Slovak Republic 3.0%
Czech Republic 1.5%
Luxembourg 0.3%
Ireland -1.8%

See the OECD Tax Database for lots of data (in Excel format) on comparative tax rates in various countries. The US is relatively low-tax.

This table shows top marginal tax rate, factoring in social security-type contributions if they are separate. The actual definition for the number is "The all-in (top marginal) tax rate, calculated as the additional central and sub-central government personal income tax, plus employee social security contribution, resulting from a unit increase in gross wage earnings. The all-in rate takes account of the same aspects as the combined rate, but does in addition include employee social security contributions and if they are deductible in central government taxes etc." This table is for 2005.

Hungary 69.5%
Denmark 63.0%
Belgium 59.3%
Sweden 56.6%
Finland 56.5%
Netherlands 52.0%
Poland 51.8%
Norway 51.3%
Greece 49.6%
France 48.6%
Australia 48.5%
Ireland 48.0%
Luxembourg 47.9%
Japan 47.9%
Switzerland 47.9%
Portugal 46.6%
Canada 46.4%
Spain 45.0%
Germany 44.3%
Italy 44.1%
United States 42.7%
Austria 42.7%
Turkey 41.1%
United Kingdom 41.0%
Czech Republic 40.5%
Iceland 40.2%
New Zealand 39.0%
Korea 38.2%
Slovak Republic 29.9%
Mexico 24.6%

I haven't seen anyone else in this discussion mentioning what is to me the most obvious problem with a web-based office suite, namely that only about 15-16% of people in the first world have broadband (extrapolated from OECD stats). I mean, duh? Who on dial-up is going to opt for web-based over locally installed software?

Outside of Europe and the US, electricity is expensive, broadband is nonexistent, and dialup internet sessions are metered by the minute.

Sure. Except: The number of households and businesses worldwide with high-speed DSL Internet connections has hit 26 million -- with South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong leading the way..

From the same article "The full top 20 looks like this: 1. SOUTH KOREA 2. TAIWAN 3. HONG KONG 4. Belgium 5. Canada 6. Denmark 7. Germany 8. SINGAPORE 9. JAPAN 10. Sweden.... "

Other data puts NZ, Australia, Japan and S. Korea in the top 20 per head of population.

I'm looking at the Education at a Glance study from 2005. (XLS warning)

The high school graduation rates for the Netherlands and the UK are 60-70%, differing between age groups. The rate for the US is 85-89%. If your standards are higher, of course your graduates are going to have higher IQs on average.

Now, I think having higher standards is a good thing (the "no child left behind" crap in the US annoys me to no end), but don't take statistics out of context.

Ironically, almost all developed countries help more than we do:

1.Norway (0.87% GNI)
2.Luxembourg
3.Denmark
4.Sweden
5.Netherlands
6.Portugal
7.France (0.42% GNI)
8.Belgium
9.Ireland
10.Switzerland
11.United Kingdom (0.36% GNI)
12.Finland
13.Germany
14.Canada
15.Spain
16.Australia
17.Austria
18.New Zealand
19.Greece
20.Japan
21.United States (0.16% GNI)
22.Italy (0.15% GNI)

Source: OECD, 2004 statistics. Also, in contrast to other nations, the majority of our aid budget is targeted to our military allies (free guns accessories surely help african kids to get in college). Yeh, it feels good to be an American!

ven i remember witnesses saying things like car-bombs, truck bombs, and even missles. Which witness do we actually trust? The ones the government backs up?

> I don't know much, but I know that taxes are higher in those countries

No, you don't know much

OECD Tax Database: Table I.2 Average personal income tax and social security contribution rates on gross labour income

The UK total tax wedge is 29.7% for the average wage earner

The US total tax wedge is 30.0% for the average wage earner

Your point?

Well you go on believing that FUD: We've already made it back to the 90's, I don't think the 90's rate is sustainable at all so I'm expecting a downturn over the next couple of years because we are doing so good it can't be sustained. As for your statement about unemployment figures the change only was for federal employee's benefits affecting only an extremely small fraction of the number. The random sampling method continues today, let me let snopes.com school you on your FUD: http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/unemploy.htm On the economy, let me just copy and paste what I did on another forum back in November (which is why some of the numbers are a little older than a couple of months but still less than a year, and we've gotten even better since then)

ftp://ftp.iza.org/charts/PDF56_e.pdf
For the past 3-4 years the US has had the highest GDP growth of: germany, france, italy, japan, canada, UK & EU in general

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/35/47/35326565.pdf
From OECD standardized unemployment rates, July of 05 we have a level of 5.0, less than Germany (9.3), less than France (9.7), less than Italy (7.8), less than Canada (6.8), only UK (4.7) and Japan (4.4) have a lower one.

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/ CurrentInflation.asp
For about a year we've been hovering at around 3% or so (up and down) inflation, which is the same it was before 9/11. You'll note around 9/11 Greenspan dumped a whole lot of cash into the economy & China picked up it's output significantly decreasing inflation to some of the lowest rates it's ever been (~1 percent). Greenspan only lately has been saying that our economy has been doing so *good* that our growth rate is starting to encourage those inflationary items, so he's started gradually raising the interest rate to start removing dollars out of the economy to slow it's growth rate down. Classic example of a Phillips curve. I think greenspan should probably start getting more aggressive on it as our economy has been going so *good* that we need to stop it from turning into a beast like it did in the 2000 where we get another big bubble. Right now it ain't sky high, it's nowhere near sky high, under 1-2% means our employment level isn't doing well and pressuring it down, over 5% is high, over 10% is sky high (look to the 70's).

So we have a higher GDP growth rate (rate our economy is expanding/contracting) and we have one of the lowest unemployment rates. Our unemployment rate is at a level that is lower than almost every other country in the world. Our inflation rate is increasing but it's still very reasonable, but the government does need to start pulling money out of the economy because we are doing so good we are starting overheat it. The govenment needs to start becoming more miserly with our money: spend when the goings bad and save when the things go good to reduce the major peaks and valleys. Unlike you, from all the things I see as economic indicators that I think our economy's been doing *so* good that we should be expecting a dip here in the next few years as part of the general up/down cycle, and we should start pulling money out of the economy.

Second, reduction in spending doesn't necessarily mean a 90-95% reduction in US armed forces. After all, the US hegemony has provided considerable value to the US and that appears to require a significant yet affordable amount of military power. Currently, there's isn't a compelling reason to relinquish that and one would need to take into account the decline in tax revenue.

Finally, the US already serves as a sort of ideological dumping ground. If the PNAC couldn't for some reason function inside the US, it would no doubt set up shop somewhere else. The EU is an obvious location.

Cite for your figure?

I find $19,705 million for 2004 (cf France with $8,473 million).

source, found via

It sounds like you're assuming that broadband penetration is ubiquitous. It clearly is not, if only 60% of the people have it. Of course it isn't non-existant, but 60% isn't as much as you make it out to be.

Here are some statistics we might like to consider:
http://www.oecd.org/document/60/0,2340,en_2649_342 25_2496764_1_1_1_1,00.html#timeseries

According to that 2004 data, only 13.0 of every 100 people in the US have broadband. For South Korea, the number is 24.9. Of course, if you want to look at a far larger nation than the US or South Korea, we can check out Canada, with 17.8 broadband users per 100 people.

If you fail, you should retake the class.

That isn't an option. If you can't get a teacher to give you an incomplete, the grade is final.

You might be able to go to the Dean and ask them to reconsider, though.

K-12 is even worse. Once you've gone through 12 grades (13 counting kindergarten), you're locked out of taking any more courses.

Then you have to depend on finding ways to get money for college.

Allowing children the freedom to 'discover' things at their own pace causes more dropouts, and mostly tests motivation and discipline instead of talent.>

Rote is no different.

They used to have speed drills for multiplication in elementary school. I could have done all the problems correctly if allowed to work them in my own time. Those speed drills were just a waste.

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

I found the website for PISA. You could have put it in one of your messages as a courtesy.

I'm not sure how valid their random picking method is. You aren't exactly citing the relevant portions of the site that explains their methodology on anything. In fact you are making a lot of assertions about PISA without appropriate citations. The main problem with PISA as I see it is that it compares schools that generally do things the same way to each other. Nor does it appear to highlight which portions of the differences in systems is responsible for good or bad performance. If a system were to produce 15% extremely high performing students and the rest sub-par, I don't know how they would rank against a system producing 40% slightly above par, 20% at par, and 40% sub-par students.

Consult a proper dictionary.
You consult a proper dictionary. Better yet take a course, though I'm not sure what course would address your lacking in this particular area. English isn't the native language of the Netherlands, unlike America, where I'm at, and English is my native toungue.

But to help you out, consider these definitions from WordWeb:
procedure: A particular course of action intended to achieve a result

instruction: A message describing how something is to be done.

Dictionary.com:
instruction:4b Detailed directions on procedure
procedure:1. A manner of proceeding; a way of performing or effecting something: standard procedure. A manner of proceeding; a way of performing or effecting something: standard procedure.

The students are going nowhere: even migration levels inside the country are very low due to religious, linguistic, and cultural division in the country. We do get a lot of foreign students these days at our university.

Cite sources please.

Seeing as Japan's ODA budget was 8859 million dollars in 2004, I'd say you're confusing dollars with yen. 50 billion yen is roughly $424 million, hardly enough to pay for a space program, even taking into account the much lower costs in China. Japan has been decreasing it's aid to China since the beginning of the century, the reasoning being that China doesn't really need the money anymore. And I don't think the Chinese would start rioting because "Japan threatened to pull the aid", more likely they are happy that they don't need aid anymore, getting foreign aid can't be anything else than embarrassing for a country.

we do work harder -- more hours per week, more weeks per year.

That's a bit of a simplistic analysis of any massively complex stastistic. All the countries have their own methods of reporting, classification, etc...

For instance, I can see three countries (using 1994 data) on page 6 of this document: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/8/51/2080270.pdf which exceeded the USA in the category of percentage of workers working more than 45 hours per week; Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom. This is of OECD countries - I'd like to see figures for non-OECD too; I had a discussion about this with a Chinese guy at Uni and he said 7 day work weeks were not uncommon over there. If it comes to that, I've worked a 7 day week two or three times, too.

what you should do, imho, is take a couple of weeks off and travel around a bit. we have cheap airlines that will let you get around on a low budget. we also have an excellent railway system, you'd see more that way.

it's not just the working hours (and cheap bandwidth, although it's important, of course) that make for quality of living, but also the food and the people. those are highly individual factors, so going there first before you decide to begin a new life would be a smart investment of the little time and money it would cost you, imho.

Interesting, so I did some research.

OECD Tax database gives us a pretty close to median level of taxation for those countries when state and local taxes for all countries are figured in. Interestingly however, another unbiased source seems to show the OECD numbers as being a bit low in their local tax numbers. Either way, it doesn't look like we are among the lowest of the nations, unless by lowest you mean lowest 30-40 percentile. We definitely aren't among the highest though.

The reason I challenged the figures in the first place is that the US is modeled after a union, not a centralized govenment. Even though since the civil war it has become much more centralized than it was originally, the state governments still share a very large burden of the job of govenment and hence a large expense that is not centrally collected, so a direct comparison to a near fully centralized govenment is extremely biased towards downshifting an American tax burden. In absolutely no case is the state burden 0% and the actual rate of local taxes is more believable at the OECD reported comparable mean of 6.4% which pushes out of the extreme lower end of the spectrum.

US workers are not the most productive in the world.

I will not fish out the details for you, but organizations like the OECD and others will cure your unabashed optimism.

You might not bother to fish out the details, but I will.

First, let me cure your ignorance as to what productivity is with this site: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=132

Then let me show you how the US is compared to the world with this site:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=160

The definition that economists use when they talk about productivity is the GDP per person. The US DOES have the highest productivity in the world.

Now OECD does explain that a six other nations have higher productivity then the US per hours worked(http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/7/29880166. pdf). That is to say, if everyone only worked 40 hours a week, some other nations would have higher worker productivity (GDP per person). That however is not the case, and they specifically state that in these nations they work fewer hours per person compared to the US... ...Which, is exactly what my point was. I didn't claim Americans were the smartest or most efficient, but that they were reasonably smart, reasonably efficient, and work like animals. This is great for the economy and for me, but bad for the poor dumb bastard that is wasting 80 hours each week of his life at work.

So, uh... yeah... thanks for the finding the statistics that completely confirm exactly what I said.

While there may need be exemptions for such basic assets as home and tools of the trade, as there is during bankruptcy procedings, there is another asset that should be protected from taxation and respected by all nations:

Inventor-owned IP.

The point of this is quite simple: At present, acquisition of assets is subsidized by taxing things other than assets for the maintanence of the social construct of property rights. The only asset that is taxed is the patent of invention -- a situation that forces frequently-capital-poor inventors to assign their inventions to acquisitors who have been subsidized.

This is the opposite of what should be subsidized. Creation, not acquisition, should be subsidized. Inventors should be more capable of independent capitalization of their own ideas so that the world has more positive sum options and fewer forces driving it to resource conflicts.

You shouldn't base your assumption on population, for example China has a huge population but isn't even in the top 30 for the number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. It would be better to base the assumption on the number of internet/broadband subscribers per country. Lets compare the US & South Korea as suggested:

From zombieMeter, we see that the US has 19.08% of the 'zombie market' with 964,020 new zombie machines found in May. By comparison South Korea has 9.61% of the market with 485,492 new zombies.

In 2004 OECD reported that South Korea had the highest number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants with 24.9% or 11,921,439 subscribers. By comparison America came in 12th with 12.8% or 37,258,608 subscribers.

So, combining the 2 sets of figures we can calculate the ratio/percentage of broadband subscribers that were new zombies in each country during May:

Korea: 485,492 / 11,921,439 = 4.0%
US: 964,020 / 37,258,608 = 2.6%

Conclusion: Your assumption is correct based on broadband figures only. However, as South Korea has a higher percentage of broadband users the figures may change if we included dial-up internet users - although dialup is not 'always-on' so this may not effect the results too greatly.

You can determine whether the above is lies, damn lies or statistics though...

While in places like the UK and Australia unemployment is low and economies are doing good, in America there is one of the weakest dollar's ever and unemployment is high with workers getting screwed every day. It is so abundantly clear that this guy is screwing over the US, yet people just voted him in again!

It seemed like your last paragraph was parroted exaggeration from a non-credible source. Being a fan of facts myself, I decided to check out the OECD Standard Unemployment Rates (PDF link). While Australia and the UK do indeed have lower unemployment than the US, but the disparity (a delta of a few tenths of a percent) is not to the level that your remark connotes. This leads me to the conclusion that you, Sir, are talking (posting?) out of your ass.

• Belgium : 97.3%
  
• South Korea : 82.5%
  
• Canada : 78.9%
  
• USA : 77.4%
  
• Norway : 75.0%
  
• Switzerland : 67.3%
  
• China : 36.7%
  
• India : 27.9%
  

As a fellow NZer, I say just take it in stride. We're also near the top (if not the top) for average literacy rates.

Well, at least on the study quoted. Consistently. It kind of has everyone baffled, as for the last umpteen zillion years everyone talking about the politics of education has been drilling to our heads that the education system is in a terrible state, students are doing horribly and the nation is going to get ruined because of it...

Hungary with only 10 million people (compared to USA's 293 people!!) was ahead of the USA in the more up to date 2003 figures Pofon Amerikai Egyesült Államok :-) (Angol vagyok !)

Your scores are old. Here are the newest:
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/47/34011082.xls

Hong Kong-China 550
Finland 544
Korea 542
Netherlands 538
Liechtenstein 536
Japan 534
Canada 532
Belgium 529
Macao-China 527
Switzerland 527
Australia 524
New Zealand 523
Czech Republic 516
Iceland 515
Denmark 514
France 511
Sweden 509
Austria 506
Germany 503
Ireland 503
Slovak Republic 498
Norway 495
Luxembourg 493
Poland 490
Hungary 490
Spain 485
Latvia 483
United States 483
Russian Federation 468
Portugal 466
Italy 466
Greece 445
Serbia 437
Turkey 423
Uruguay 422
Thailand 417
Mexico 385
Indonesia 360
Tunisia 359
Brazil 356

This may also be a reason why students in other countries fair better on tests...they aren't testing the one's that are in the trade schools.

This is NOT the case for the results of the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment that were recently published and widely covered by the media. A quote from the methodology report (chapter 4) on selecting participants:

The desired base PISA target population in each country consisted of 15-year-old students attending educational institutions located within the country. This meant that countries were to include (i) 15-year-olds enrolled full-time in educational institutions, (ii) 15-year-olds enrolled in educational institutions who attended on only a part-time basis, (iii) students in vocational training types of programmes, or any other related type of educational programmes, and (iv) students attending foreign schools within the
country (as well as students from other countries attending any of the programmes in the first three categories).

Education or vocational training programs are usually mandatory for 15 year olds. That's why they compare 15 year olds.

We (I am from the Netherlands) rank third, above Japan. The major difference between vocational and other types of secondary schools here is usually the number of foreign languages these kids learn, and that they spend less time on formal education. Math skills on vocational schools are generally reasonably good, taking the lack of talent of those kids into account.

We also have a 'no child left behind' type of reorganization going on for a decade now, reducing the number of school types and early choices between schools. I work at a university, and we observe that math and writing skills have deteriorated because of later specialization. We make the exams easier every year. Still we rank third in the world?

I don't know if such a raw number would help, because you will need percentages to compares them with other countries' numbers.
And then there is the same problem again as the populaion structure may be very different from country to country..

Because of that there is the empiric approach used by ILO/OECD - AFAIK:
Instead of using governmental stats they do surveys and ask people if they have a job, are looking for one, how long they are unemployed etc and use those results to calculate the numbers for each country.

I found their numbers here

I think it's a crime that in the leading agricultural producing nation on earth, children are hungry.

I think it's a crime that, in the richest nation on earth, families can't afford to send their children to college.

Besides which, the USA sends more kids per-capita to college than most countries.

Er, depend on which numbers ... according to OECD, NZ is at 38.2%, USA at 35.6%, EMU average at 48.6%.

No, the US is still superior. Take a look at the numbers from the OECD.

Defense R&D typically makes up about $40Billion, out of total US R&D of $284B.

Take a look at this from the oecd.

I guess that the OECD stats should be pretty good as well.

For taxes + social security, they put both Canada at 25% and USA at 24%. Not a huge difference.

Same goes for the gross wage, canada is at 32926 US$ and USA at 33456 US$, when balanced with purchasing power & exchange rates.

"The European total absolutely dwarfs the USA total and is a fairer comparison for populations."

European population: 729,966,641

Sure. Off by a factor of 2.5. It's fairer than the earlier comparisons that you Americans were making where there were ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE difference in population size. I didn't say it was equal. I said it was fairer.

American private funding is roughly $28-$30 billion which is about 70% of the European funding with the US again only have about 48% of the population.

American's, on average, donate 2% of their income to charity (both domestic and international), or roughly ~$800 per person. The figures for 2003 are at roughly $236 billion.

I don't know where you're getting your figures from. They're in disagreement with OECD.

I agree with the private flow of $30 billion and the ODA flow of $16 billion for the US. That's $46 billion or about $150 per head. About the same as UK, France and Australia and less than the Scandanavian countries. That is in agreement with everything else I've read.

So where did this $236 billion figure come from? That looks to me like the total WORLD figure for private flows. You're not perhaps counting the whole WORLD's private flows just for the US, are you?

And, once again, that figure only counts money/aid given. It does not count military humanitarian expenditures, of which the US does a ton of, and most importantly it does not cover private donations, most of which are not in the form of large donations from Gates (which gain the most headlines), but in small, individual donations, which carry no crazy conspiratorial connections.

Oh yes, let's look at private flows. They're an interesting lot.

The OECD lumps them all together as a single private flow for the world. Presumably because the nature of international charities makes it far too difficult to tell which country actually funded which charities. The OECD won't even provide private flow figures for most countries. The US and Japan seem to be the only countries with private flow figures and their own governments had to supply the figures. Maybe because US and Japan rank 22nd and 21st on the list of stingiest countries by ODA of GDP and they need some form of positive spin.

But what is very interesting is what counts as private flow. The OECD points out that bonds and bank loans count as private flows. Those figures are for 1998 (it's incredibly difficult to find recent figures) but they show that of the $234 billion of private flows for the entire world, $156 billion was "strings attached" investment. Loans and bonds. Not charity.

So I'm deeply suspicious of anybody quoting "private donations" to try and dig the US out of its stingy hole. The US agreed in 1970 to provide 0.7% of GDP as ODA. They're currently providing a mere 0.14%. The US government is spinning that they provide 3x as much foreign aid if you factor in private donations. But as we've seen - from these figures above and my earlier example of the $400 million "donation" of Microsoft software to India - those donations don't seem to be entirely charitable.

Your turn.

Awww... poor little eurotrash. You seem to think that the only organization fit to distribute funds are governmental orgs and that the only funds that count are ones that are gathered through coercion (taxes).

Noticeably absent from the anti-american salon article are numbers for private charitable giving (which dwarf any country no matter how you slice - Hell, between 1992 and 1998 the US sent almost $2.9 billion in PRIVATE AID to CUBA!) and US military expenditures (no, we're not discussing Iraq) that are solely for humanitarian purposes.

We're moving a f'en carrier group into the region for support and search and rescue, you think that's cheap?

With 300 million people you donated ODA $6.9 billion in foreign aid in 1997.

http://www.usaid.gov/fani/ch06/privateaid.htm
The actual total of official development assistance and private giving was $44.5 billion, or 0.45 percent of U.S. gross national income - and that still doesn't account for military humanitarian spending

LOL: In 2000 U.S. universities and colleges gave more to developing countries in foreign scholarships than Australia, Belgium, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland each gave in ODA.

What were you saying again?

And, btw, the current numbers for ODA funding are:
Australia - $1.2 Billion
France - $7.3 Billion
US - $16.2 Billion (a 23% increase over last year under the evil Bushilter!)