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Since people are arguing over subjective impressions on both sides, I decided to pull in some harder numbers.

WRT education hear are some stats on the literacy rate:
Argentina: 97.2%
Thailand: 92.6%
Brazil: 88.4%
Nigeria: 66.8%
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ literacy_rate )

Okay, so except for Nigeria, most people in these countries seem to have a decent (though not necessarily high tech) education.

WRT general human development, here are some stats:
Argentina: .863 (High Human Development)
Thailand: .778 (Medium Human Development)
Brazil: .792 (Medium Human Development)
Nigeria: .453 (Low Human Development)
(Source: http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05_ HDI.pdf )

Okay, so except for Nigeria, most of these countries seem to be decent places to live (even though life is likely much harder than what north americans and europeans are used to)

They may well be part of the democratic ideal, but they seem to conflict to some extent with the capitalist implementation. A completely free market economy seems to lead to a polar distribution of wealth. A completely communist economy (at least in the way it tends to be implemented) leads to the same. The problem seems to lies in our inherent need to be better than our neighbour. This is clearly a good thing in that it drives us forward to better and greater things, but if left unchecked you get the disparity which so clearly affects the US and, increasingly, other western countries. Society can only move forward as a whole, not in parts determined by wealth, and to achieve that some balance is required in which ambition and success are encouraged, but still capped.

You are quite right in saying that the key to this balance is the variance in wealth distribution, and it is interesting that the countries with the lower disparity between rich and poor generally seem to have better health, longer lifespans and a higher standard of living. These are often (but not always) the more democratic socialist states, particularly the scandinavian countries http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/ (undp.org). These also rank high in terms of happiness, due to sensible work-life balance and employment regulations that don't force you to work every hour of the day. Not to say these countries have it right, but i only have one life and i'd rather enjoy it, see my family and live to a decent age. Even if it means i have a lower chance to strike it rich.

Sorry to bust your bragging about Indian women but lately, the sex ratio of the country has dropped to around 930 which implies nearly 40 million Indian women have been wiped off the planet (no, Nazis don't come close even though the colonial and post-colonial genocides by the British and Americans might): http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/apr/hlt-csratio. htm .

Yes, many Indians from the Indian upper middle class have managed to launch themselves into US (and elsewhere in the West) and grab enough merited jobs to cause panic amongst Americans (read "racist white christian males") but the vast majority of Indians are still rotting in an unimaginably socially oppressive environment that is based on casteism and anti-women practices. As per the human development report, http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/indicators.cfm ?x=24&y=1&z=1 , almost 80% of Indians live below the US$ 2/day income level. And yes, Iran and Saudi Arabia have higher HDI than India. Not to mention India now has 5+ million AIDS cases and is only 2nd to Africa in AIDS. And did I forget to mention that in your vaunted Indian law rape within marriage is not considered a crime ( http://www.intersectworldwide.org/statistics.html ). And rape is on its way up there ( http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/2554.asp ). Need I go on?

BTW, your "voluntary dowry" phrase made me laugh! Just shows that an entire society (including the "educated" elite) has succumbed to the social evil instead of fighting it.

A number of separate issues are being fudged in some of these posts...

Q1: Are working conditions in countries such as China perfect by our standards?
A: Obviously not, too strict.

Q2&3: Are working conditions good enough by their standards? Are working conditions better than, for example, working on a peasant farm?
A: Yes, otherwise why would they work there? There's plenty of peasant farms in China -- people are leaving them in droves.

Q3: Will working in such standards help raise the wealth of China so that in years hence they can afford to have our standard of living -- along with real unions, health care, etc.
A: Yes - globalisation in East Asia has brought about the greatest mass liberation from poverty in the history of the planet. For interesting data, check out:
http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/
Click on Human development trends 2005 NEW !

Q4: How would China be without globalisation?
A: Check out Burma or North Korea, both of which are following their own roads to paradise.

Q5: Is the rise of such factories a challenge to labour in developed countries?
A: Yes of course - globalisation is not a zero sum game -- it does make all coutnries better off -- but jobs will go where they can be done cheapest. And that does include a lot of skilled tech jobs.

Q6: Is the rise of China accompanied by extra pollution?
A: You bet.

However, I believe it's worth it overall -- a country as big as China is never going to be raised from poverty through our charity. It needs industry. This will be accompanied, as it was in the West, by pollution, and also by job losses. But everyone reading this has reaped the benefits of industrialisation (computers don't grow on trees), now it's their turn.

According to the Human Development Reports, the US and Canada are basically tied on the educational front. Both have such high literacy rates that they don't bother to collect detailed national statistics, so UNESCO gives both a 99% rate. On the other hand, Canada's life expectancy from birth is 80.0 years, and the US's is 77.4 years.

I think it's safe to say that the US military budget would not go towards education in any case.

Agreed. That doesn't mean it shouldn't go there though. Or, why not put it towards healthcare and get our life expectancy rates up?

Do all hippies think that we don't need a military?

Can't speak for hippies, having not talked to many in my life; but some of us regular people think we could reduce spending to a mere $100 billion, spend the other $400 billion on health, education, infrastructure, etc., and still have more than enough power to defend our country from anyone else in the world. We outspend the next 20 countries combined---we don't need to spend that much.

I remember reading a UNDP report a while back on the development of countries in Africa. The researchers observed that the international market prices of commodities such as coffee or sugar were higher then than at any time in the past, and yet in the last few years the prices payed to the small farmers was at its lowest point in the past 60 years.

The reason for this apparent contradiction was the fact that small farmers can't sell their wares directly to the final consumer who brews coffee at home. Rather, this coffee is bought up by one of a handful of multinationals, who because they are so few, more or less dictate prices to the farmers, and then sell it on to the consumers. The fact that there are few of these middle men puts them in a position of power which allows them to make off with the king's share of the profits, and indeed they absorb the price hikes.

Maybe its time musicians got together and set up an electronic coop to sell their music the way farmers sometimes set up "farmers markets". They could have more control over their prices, and how much of what consumers pay goes to them.

Shouldn't the internet be making it easier to cut out the middle man like this?

Okay - I've just seen this link in a post further down. Looks like that kind of wage is not uncommon.

However, I'd still say it's not a decent wage.

So if you assume 4, 6-day work weeks per month, thats about 24 work days/month $2/day == $48/month.

So they're doing better than 46% of the population of China on total income. 50% of your pay on room and board is pretty reasonable.

And not having visitors can be a bonus if you're a young single gal worried about her virtue (which I'm told actually happens in China ;-))

I don't hear anything here about anyone being beaten, worked more than 50 hours/week, etc. And given the slant here, they would have mentioned it if they had a whisper of it.

And compare this to old U.S. "mining towns" where between rent and the company store for food you spent 90% of your income on room and board, it's really quite good.

They are to be given out by government agencies. The motivation for making it as cheap as possible is to help connect as many people as possible, even if it means making compromises on system capabilities (So long as it's adequate to get people connected).

The architecture (AMD Geode 2) was chosen because of its *extremely* low power consumption--The whole thing takes up around ten watts to operate if memory serves (About six for the mainboard, RAM, and CPU and four for the rest). You simply cannot buy a good embedded system from Dell, and you certainly can't buy one that is as rugged and portable as the OLPC systems. And remember--A lot of the places these laptops are going will probably not have a stable enough power grid to plug in and charge a 'normal' laptop regularly.

"In 2003, French companies received over seven billion US dollars more foreign investment than USA companies. In the past few years, Airbus have overtaken Boeing in sales and shipments. If France isn't innovating, how come people are investing in French companies more than in USA companies?"

Not according to U.N. Figures
http://www.unctad.org/sections/dite_dir/docs/wir05 _fs_fr_en.pdf
http://www.unctad.org/sections/dite_dir/docs/wir05 _fs_us_en.pdf

It is true that FDI in the U.S. dropped pretty dramatically during 2000-2003, and I think that tracks pretty closely with the drop in currency value of the dollar against the euro. Similarly, you can see that FDI tanked in 2004 for france, as the price of the dollar started rising again.

"The French are not afraid to use nuclear power, making them the most energy independent Western nation. France pollutes less than the USA, CO2 in particular. As far as energy goes, they are beating the USA."

I can't argue with that, it's a shame that such a clean method of power generation goes unused because of political pressure from the left in the U.S.

"Reporters Without Borders ranked France as 30th in the world when it comes to freedom of the press. The USA languishes down at 44th. So much for freedom of speech."

Can't really argue that either. Reporters without borders is free to use whatever arbitrary criteria they choose to determine this.

"France has a 99% literacy rate. The USA has a 97% literacy rate. So much for education."

Again, according to the U.N.

http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05_ HDI.pdf

This is seems to be untrue.

"Yes, I know you didn't state that you are from the USA, but experience tells me only one country produces idiots like you in mass quantities. The rest have idiots too, but there's less of them, and they say where they are from."

Anonymous Coward? Heh.

Couldn't find the data at Gates, although I'm certain it's there. For second-best, though, here's the UN's numbers -- I was wrong, by the way, it's 80% of the world lives on less than $2/day. Only about 60% of the world lives on less than $1/day. GDP certainly does include products produced for export, by the way. It doesn't include imports. Yes, they are as skewed as the US; in fact, they're considerably more skewed than the US'. That's common in emerging economies; whatever we in the west may think of what labor unions and minimum wage laws actually achieve, they make things better.

BTW, according to this, we came in 10th! w00t!

You keep describing this as a process of wealth redistribution to the 3rd world, when the reality is that the wealth is being distributed to the rich. The way markets have worked, and the way that they have always worked, is that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.

This seems to be the key sentence in your post. According to this view, market-driven countries like America, Britain and the rest of Western Europe have seen their poor grow poorer over the last 300 years of capitalism. And yet, by any measure you care to mention, this is not true. Nutrition is better than the pre-capitalist period and better than that in communist countries. Education is better. Working days are shorter. Health is better.

Furthermore, this is true not just in "rich" countries but also in most poor countries that have adopted global capitalism. With the exception of war-torn and AIDs-ravagead sub-saharan africa (which is hardly a key part of the globalized economy), people's health and and other development indicators have been trending steadily and rapidly higher. In other words, the facts are starkly at odd with your "opinion" that the world's poor are getting poorer. These findings are summarized in an easily digestible form at the UN site. http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/flash.html

Among other things you can see there, the average Chinese life expectency has increased from around 43 to around 70 over the last 50 years. GDP is about 10 times what it was in 1950. Even the poorest regions of China are better off today than they were 20 years ago.

The poorest countries of the world are not those that have embraced globalism most warmly (your poor get poorer theory) but rather those that have been fighting wars that prevent their economies from participating meaningfully in the global economy.

My question for you is: do you hate the rich so much that you would ignore the the demonwtrated benefits of globalization for the poor?. Or are you willing to look the facts in the face? http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/flash.html

You keep describing this as a process of wealth redistribution to the 3rd world, when the reality is that the wealth is being distributed to the rich. The way markets have worked, and the way that they have always worked, is that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.

This seems to be the key sentence in your post. According to this view, market-driven countries like America, Britain and the rest of Western Europe have seen their poor grow poorer over the last 300 years of capitalism. And yet, by any measure you care to mention, this is not true. Nutrition is better than the pre-capitalist period and better than that in communist countries. Education is better. Working days are shorter. Health is better.

Furthermore, this is true not just in "rich" countries but also in most poor countries that have adopted global capitalism. With the exception of war-torn and AIDs-ravagead sub-saharan africa (which is hardly a key part of the globalized economy), people's health and and other development indicators have been trending steadily and rapidly higher. In other words, the facts are starkly at odd with your "opinion" that the world's poor are getting poorer. These findings are summarized in an easily digestible form at the UN site. http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/flash.html

Among other things you can see there, the average Chinese life expectency has increased from around 43 to around 70 over the last 50 years. GDP is about 10 times what it was in 1950. Even the poorest regions of China are better off today than they were 20 years ago.

The poorest countries of the world are not those that have embraced globalism most warmly (your poor get poorer theory) but rather those that have been fighting wars that prevent their economies from participating meaningfully in the global economy.

My question for you is: do you hate the rich so much that you would ignore the the demonwtrated benefits of globalization for the poor?. Or are you willing to look the facts in the face? http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/flash.html

You are right. Better comparative figures are based on PPP(Purchasing Power Parity). Here is the latest (2002) from the UN Development Program, http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/cty/cty_f_BGR. html You would need to check more recent GDP figures to get an idea of where the PPP would be today for Bulgaria.

A way better indicator is (as another poster mentioned) is the Human Development Index. Per-capita GDP doesn't take into account things like typical standard of living, wealth inequity, etc.

Another good indicator is the Quality of Life Index.

If you want a simple, raw economic number, MEDIAN income rather than mean income is one of the better indicators of the wealth of a nation's people. Slightly better is median income scaled to purchasing power. Unfortunately I don't have tables for these. =(

Human rights abuses aside - and ok that's quite an omission - Cuba does remarkably well for itself. Take a look the UN's 2004 Human Development Report Cuba Fact Sheet. If you put this in the context of the US's trade embargo, it's quite impressive.

To those posters who've been to Cuba, and been shocked by the poverty they've seen, here's the full Human Development Index - maybe your next vacation should be to one of the 125 countries lower down the list.

Human rights abuses aside - and ok that's quite an omission - Cuba does remarkably well for itself. Take a look the UN's 2004 Human Development Report Cuba Fact Sheet. If you put this in the context of the US's trade embargo, it's quite impressive.

To those posters who've been to Cuba, and been shocked by the poverty they've seen, here's the full Human Development Index - maybe your next vacation should be to one of the 125 countries lower down the list.

Lower standard of living? Canada?

"For almost a decade (up to the year 2001), Canada was ranked number one among 175 countries in the United Nation's Quality of Life survey." - Vancouver Best City in the Americas (Third in world) - Mercer Human Resource Consulting

The U.N. currently ranks Canada third in quality of life, U.S. eighth.

Canada may not be as populous as the United States of America. It's definately not as powerful, either economically or militarily. But IMHO, it's a better county to live in. Its people are better educated, they live longer, and they have a smaller homeless population.

Canada is not perfect, but don't say it has a lower standard of living.

Lower standard of living? Canada?

"For almost a decade (up to the year 2001), Canada was ranked number one among 175 countries in the United Nation's Quality of Life survey." - Vancouver Best City in the Americas (Third in world) - Mercer Human Resource Consulting

The U.N. currently ranks Canada third in quality of life, U.S. eighth.

Canada may not be as populous as the United States of America. It's definately not as powerful, either economically or militarily. But IMHO, it's a better county to live in. Its people are better educated, they live longer, and they have a smaller homeless population.

Canada is not perfect, but don't say it has a lower standard of living.

The correct URL is http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/pdf/hdr04_ HDI.pdf

Keep in mind that most of the US lives much, much more sparsely than Europeans. They are not (for the most part) crowded into dense polluted cities. They are spead out over rual areas with clean air, clean water, and blue skies.

The wealth distribution in this country sucks

Depends on what you mean by "sucks". The GINI index for the USA isn't that bad at 40. Sort this table by Gini. Higher numbers are less equal distribution of wealth. You'll see the USA ranking in the middle. What's more interesting is sorting by human development shows that with an average GINI index, the USA is #7. So unequal distribution of wealth does not have to equal a lousy country. Compare to say, China with an almost identical GINI rating and yet #104 in human developments.

A composite index measuring deprivations in the three basic dimensions captured in the human development index-- a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living--and also capturing social exclusion.

Poverty as measured by one's lifespan? That's necessarily a relative measure. Clearly we prefer people to live longer (except those people worried about world overpopulation), but developing a ranking system based off the notion that a short lifespan means living in poverty (as if this is a reasonable conclusion; if I die in a car crash at age 23, did I live a life of extreme poverty? Certainly not!) makes the measure a relative one. The index, therefore, is one which tends to favor equalization of lifespans, and thus, equalizations of the factors which may promote equal lifespans, such as education, healthcare, and yes -- income, which enables the purchase of all these factors.

Knowledge? How does one measure that, and to what degree of relevance? The knowledge of the African bushmen is irrelevant to me, yet they are far more knowledgeable in that r

A composite index measuring deprivations in the three basic dimensions captured in the human development index-- a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living--and also capturing social exclusion.

Poverty as measured by one's lifespan? That's necessarily a relative measure. Clearly we prefer people to live longer (except those people worried about world overpopulation), but developing a ranking system based off the notion that a short lifespan means living in poverty (as if this is a reasonable conclusion; if I die in a car crash at age 23, did I live a life of extreme poverty? Certainly not!) makes the measure a relative one. The index, therefore, is one which tends to favor equalization of lifespans, and thus, equalizations of the factors which may promote equal lifespans, such as education, healthcare, and yes -- income, which enables the purchase of all these factors.

Knowledge? How does one measure that, and to what degree of relevance? The knowledge of the African bushmen is irrelevant to me, yet they are far more knowledgeable in that r

"There is actually already a large number of immigrants working in Scandinavian countries, and despite some friction, they deal with it better than us in the US."

Well, as I said, they kind of need new labor to keep the system afloat.

Though the numbers are still nowhere near immigrants into the U.S. At least I can't imagine the numbers being anywhere near it...

I've also read something along the way about Islamic immigrants raping scandinavian women... I can't seem to find the article. But I don't know if it's a large trend...

The population of Norway has been rising steadily since after WW2. If I recall correctly, it hasn't dipped once. This is partly due to immigration, yes, but Norway also has a fairly high birth rate. (I really can't be bothered to dig up English documentation right now, sorry ppl:)

I'm not digging up anything on the number of immigrants in Norway and USA right now, either:)

As for Islamic immigrants raping Scandinavian women ... You must have picked up that from some far-right idiot arsehole. That is rubbish (and I wonder what sites you frequent to piuck up crap like that). Immigrants of Islamic faith aren't bigger rapists than non-Islamic immigrants. Or native Norwegians, for that matter ... Oh, I forgot to mention: I'm Norwegian. Human Development Index

>> look at what is happening in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, France, etc

> Stagnant economies with high unemployment? Thanks, I'll pass.

You are not very well informed. I'm from Norway, the country with the lowest unemployment rate in Europe, larger growth than the USA (last year or over the last 10 years) and (according to the UN (UNHDR 2004)) the highest standard of living in the world.

Sweden came second in UNHDI, Belgium sixth, US of A: eight.

The United States has the highest human poverty among the 17 high income OECD countries included in this year's human poverty index-2 (HPI). Source: HDR 2004.

I'd pick any of the countries instead of the US, thank you very much.

Oh, link to the facts? undp.org.

FYI, of course, what they consider "poverty line" in US is very different from many third-world countries. There, a poor American would be considered a wealthy, prospering person. Here are some interesting numbers.

I'm surprised that I haven't seen any jokes about /.'ing the UN, WMDs or other such jokes yet. A little background about that little server you guys are turning into molten plasma:

The International Open Source Network is part of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The IOSN's purpose is to promote Free and open source software to developing nations, particularly in the Asia-Pacific. The desktop training materials are part of that, as many governments have expressed a need for human capacity building materials. I'd link to the joint declaration for FOSS by 20 countries, but it's sitting on that same smoking server.

The IOSN server currently sits in the UNDP country office representing Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore. With a single link, Slashdot has DDOSed the UN representatives of 3 different countries! Sharing that internet link is the national website of Niue (www.niuegov.com) plus a number of websites for regional UN programs. Way to go guys. Expect UN weapons inspectors on your doors soon. :)

When the /.'ing is over, do visit the site again later and see what the UN is doing with regards to FOSS. There are a few interesting projects underway, including FAQs for policy makers, localization toolkits and much more. The training materials are just the beginning of what the IOSN has in store.

The poster didn't bother to mention that the IOSN is a project of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which is focused on developing countries. They tend to deal with really poor countries with very limited resources. They are not focused on Joe-consumer in a rich, developed country.

Under these conditions, you want a distribution that can be freely downloaded, burned and redistributed without restrictions or problems. Fedora fits that bill and is targeted towards the desktop.

The geography of invention shows clearly that the technology leaders tend to be higher latitude both in the northern and southern hemispheres. The exceptions, such as Russia, which is at a high latitude but a low level of, say, patents per capita, are easy to explain by their recent emergence from communism.

Homosexuality tends to become a "sexual preference" for many men in prisons -- largely due to the coercive nature of their situation and their low status. When freed from prisons many men revert to heteroseuxal perference.

Christianity isn't human nature -- it is an adaptation to empire construction arising from advacing post-neolithic transportation technologies. Basically, once food calories are made more plentiful and transport of genes gets amplified across latitude due to increased trade, you have the need to replace ecologically imposed monogamy (or at least ecologically imposed egalitarian sexuality) with socially imposed monogamy for a lot of reasons -- not the least of which is you don't want to breed certain genes for adaptation to the environment out of your population.

I believe that Canada ranks higher than the U.S. in probably every U.N. development report That I can remember.

I can honestly say every time I go to the United States I am always finding myself counting the days until I can come back to Canada.

Check this out if you want to know more about how Canada stacks up.

I believe that Canada ranks higher than the U.S. in probably every U.N. development report That I can remember.

I can honestly say every time I go to the United States I am always finding myself counting the days until I can come back to Canada.

Check this out if you want to know more about how Canada stacks up.

You might make less but you will live better.

I didn't mean for a cheap laugh at the expense of our ice-encrusted neighbors to the north to turn into a serious discussion of economic indicators, but since we're already on our way...

The Human Development Report website lists the HDI rank for Canada as #8 and the US as #7 for 2003. The other data listed (Canada's HDI index in 2001=.937; US's HDI index in 2001=.937) would indicate that Canada's probably not pulling away in the rankings to the degree you say she is. Maybe these aren't the numbers you meant...

But more germane to this discussion (remember, there was at one time a research-related component up there), scroll down to the "R&D/GDP", "patents per million people", and "scientists & engineers per million" numbers lower on the economic indicators page. Note the nearly 7 times as many patents granted per capita (hopefully some of those patents are actually meaningful and useful), 1.5 times as much R&D expenditure per GDP (and it's a much larger GDP), and 1.4 times as many scientists & engineers per capita. That adds up to a whole lot of science goin' on. Socialized medicare is great and awesome and all, but the development of new medical techniques and medications come out of a country that gives the NIH an annual budget (in 2004) of $28 billion, not to mention the other publicly- or privately-endowed funding agencies for the sciences. It all adds up to huge expenditures on R&D: 271.8 billion for all R&D.

To tie this back to what dfasdf was saying about all those groovy entrepeneurs in Canada: those entrepeneurs aren't doing a whole hell of a lot for the country's science output, although I'm sure mosel-saar-ruwer would contend that your entrepeneurs aren't compelled to put on cheap blackface vaudeville impersonations of nineteenth-century slaves in the southern US in exchange for their daily bread. Woo capitalism, woo freedom! Right, mosel-saar-ruwer?

America, despite being the wealthiest and healthiest nation on the planet and the one with the highest standard of living, is incorrigibly arrogant, bullying, racist, sexist, prejudiced, incompetent, and generally going to hell in a handbasket.

Is the HDI enough to measure a country's level of development?
Not at all. The concept of human development is much broader than can be captured in the HDI, or any other of the indices (GDI, GEM and HPI). The HDI, for example, does not reflect political participation or gender inequalities. The HPI-2, measuring human poverty in the richest countries, shows surprising results. The United States, with the second highest GDP per capita, also has the highest extent of deprivations. The indices can only offer a broad proxy on the issues of human development, gender, and human poverty. A fuller picture of a country's level of human development requires analysis of other human development indicators and information.

what is this, flamebait? chomp.

americans don't know shit about the rest of the world. the rest of the world knows tons about america. not only do we export movies and tv shows, the rest of the world has informative news programs with correspondents reporting honestly on life in other countries and shedding light on global issues rather than focusing on the bad parts of a city like a teenager fretting over a breakout of zits (bad neighborhoods, like zits, will improve and possibly disapper with time and care but don't try to attack either).

1. WE LIKE BEING DIFFERENT

yeah, so does the rest of the world (except maybe japan). so stop trying to impose your values on them.

2. and 3. together are absurd. you could have at least seperated them a bit.

5. countries all over the world like sports which are not popular here. they like the sports but don't give a fuck who cares.

6. and one cares if you use the british system.

4, 7. "we don't give a shit" now that's a position to exalt with gusto! spoken like a real two year old who just learned to say "no".

grow up...
become a kid.

do i need to mention that america is not the center of the universe? military power, check. influencial, check back in 6 years. the highest standard of living in the world, uh, no.

why do I spend my valuable time with people I'd much rather kick in the eye?

The Chinese have long since passed us up on coal usage...

No... assuming by "us" you meant the USA. The USA uses coal at nearly three times the rate of China- while having one third the population.

(Plus, much of China's industrial usage is going to products destined for the USA- those nations have an intertwined economy)

But the bit about China "rapidly gaining" is true.

The problem is that USA actually has the highest emission rate per capita.

No. Have a look and see for yourself.

Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, and Qatar are all ahead of the US, and Trinidad & Tobago (they need to select a unified name), Luxembourg, Australia, and Canada aren't that far behind. Furthermore, CO2 emissions per capita for the US from 1980 to 1999 actually decreased by 3%, which is more than can be said for Austria (increased by 10%), Italy (11%), Japan (15%), Spain (28%), Australia (32%), New Zealand (45%), and Ireland (46%). China's has increased by 53%, and India's has increased by 120%. While the latter two's per capita emissions are still a small fraction of those of the United States (2.3 and 1.1 metric tons per capita, against the US's 19.7) and the US's emissions were 23.2% of the world emissions, China and India combined have about 2.1 billion people, are just getting into strong national consumption economies, and were responsible for 16.5% of the global emissions. Those are the two places where work should be concentrated in lowering the emissions growth rates. Or maybe have them address their underground coal fires that spew the same amount of CO2 into the air in China alone as the US does from its cars every year.

Get in early, and you might be able to head off a rapid rise. Instead, the deal was to cut them a lot of slack because of their economic conditions. That's why it will never make it through Congress.

Gender has more than one proper English usage.

Gender and sex are generally considered to be two separate (related) topics.

For those not in a reading mood, your sex generally considered to be what your chromosomes and organs say (assuming they agree, which they don't always), while your gender refers to learned social roles.

We don't want them in the Caribbean either!

The UN's Development Programme (UNDP)'s Sustainable Development Networking Program (SDNP) supports LUGs around the Caribbean and presumablly, the world.

SCO's next target: the UN? Maybe they'll send a 'peacekeaping' force to Utah?

Maybe he lives in Sierra Leone, where the GDP per capita is $470/year. $18.25/year is still kind of low though...

Or maybe he is an elf and can live hundreads of years ;)

Sivaram Velauthapillai

...how the standard of living is higher in constitutional monarchies with socialist governments than in the shining beacon that is the U.S.A.

Uh huh. Sure. Tell us another one.

Ok, I'll tell you where you can confirm that Norway, Sweden and Canada are rated higher in terms of human development.

http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2002/en/indicat or/indicator.cfm?File=indic_290_1_1.html

As for having to be a Soviet Marxist to be a social progressive and all the other b.s. that went with those comments like not being patriotic and denegrating the deified founding fathers, the abolishionist movement was a progressive movement and there is a certain monument in our glorious nation's capital enshrining the spirit of Abraham Lincoln who played a minor part in that period of history and I don't believe was a Soviet communist.

>Tell me, how do they cope?

Dunno, but the difference is due to the very low GDP for Australia vs. the very high GDP for the USA. The accounts for the difference in wages between many different countries.

In the US itself, though, there are places where $10 US an hour is well below poverty and you would be expected to drift from shelter to shelter (Parts of California), and also places where $10 US an hour will make you rich (Alaska?).

The US is quite strange like that.

• Estes Social Progress Report
  
• Health Care Indexes
  
• UN Human Development Index
  
• HHS Global Health Report
  
• Amnesty International Report on US
  

It's hard to measure Quality of Life, but before assuming that Americans are really well off consider the findings of the UN's Human Development Report. In particular look at how many Americans live below the median income (compared with other "developed" nations), or people living under (the equivalent of) $11US per day

One could go on about life expectancy, infant mortality, and other such "quality of life" stats... But you've got the relevant link and can look up these topics to your heart's content.

It's hard to measure Quality of Life, but before assuming that Americans are really well off consider the findings of the UN's Human Development Report. In particular look at how many Americans live below the median income (compared with other "developed" nations), or people living under (the equivalent of) $11US per day

One could go on about life expectancy, infant mortality, and other such "quality of life" stats... But you've got the relevant link and can look up these topics to your heart's content.

It's hard to measure Quality of Life, but before assuming that Americans are really well off consider the findings of the UN's Human Development Report. In particular look at how many Americans live below the median income (compared with other "developed" nations), or people living under (the equivalent of) $11US per day

One could go on about life expectancy, infant mortality, and other such "quality of life" stats... But you've got the relevant link and can look up these topics to your heart's content.

It's hard to measure Quality of Life, but before assuming that Americans are really well off consider the findings of the UN's Human Development Report. In particular look at how many Americans live below the median income (compared with other "developed" nations), or people living under (the equivalent of) $11US per day

One could go on about life expectancy, infant mortality, and other such "quality of life" stats... But you've got the relevant link and can look up these topics to your heart's content.

They acquired it by buying a German company (StarDivision)at a good price, and made a few improvements.