Slashdot Mirror

There is a shitload of data available for anyone to look at. Here is one good source, there are hundreds of others. You are just trying to find excuses to be ignorant.

Don't the that American ass. Poor you, Europeans are meanies and you totally don't deserve anything they say about you :(

According to the World Bank (who's not known to be particularly anti-American), the per-capita oil consumption in the US in 2010 was 1,108 kilograms (clearly they are, in fact, anti-american for not using gallons). France sits at a whopping 113. UK 241. Germany 223. So yes, please, tell me more about the poor Americans who are not sucking up all the oil.

How would tax movement of money encourage domestic investment? Why would I want to build a domestic plant for export knowing that the plant’s revenues (not profits) will be taxed? Why would a foreign company bother investing in a domestic plant knowing revenue being sent home will be taxed?
Well, yes. The point of a good tax policy is to extract the money needed with the least amount of pain – but what makes you think that the pain associated with your tax would be less than that of a corporate income tax?

I will point out there have been huge gains in efficiencies because of greater world integration which would be reversed under your tax regime. Currently, trade is about 25% of the US GNP. In Europe it is even higher. I suspect that to be revenue natural that your tax would be the greater disincentive to invest then a corporate income tax. For example would you want to pay a 20% tax on an investment that return 8% or a 30% tax on a investment that returned 10%?

By the way, I am not a huge fan of a corporate income tax, partly for the reasons you suggested. I will point again to studies that a low corporate income tax does not discourage investment and I do think they should pay some taxes for the advantages and privileges that corporate ownership has (i.e. limited liability). But this all comes down to my belief that corporate taxes should be low and simple – not nonexistent.

For trade as a percentage of GNP,

http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

And that is the WORST metric going. The reason is that emissions is NOT based on ppl, but GDP.
Only idiots try to push the concept of per capita.

And claiming that 3rd and 2rd world produce small amounts per capita indicates total foolishness on your part. Many of their are massive. Worse, China doubles every 10 years, and they are NOT SLOWING DOWN.

here is based on 2005 emissions which is worthless, but there it is
This is based on PPP GDP (which is also a bad idea, but still better than per capita) However, as you look at it, you realize that most of the bad polluters, are oil producing, high GDP growth nations, AND CHINA.

Even with GDP based, you can see that the majority of 3rd world nations that do not have economy, have no real emissions.

I was explicit in including Veterans Benefits. It is is obviously part of the military compensation package. The figures I looked at had a listing for "Medicare&Medicaid" which explains why your figure for "Department of Health and Human Services including Medicare and Medicaid" was slightly higher.

In any case, there are are three almost exactly equal budget categories that dominate the federal budget at over 20% each, vastly larger than anything else in the budget. There's no reasonable way to call any of those three "a small fraction of the federal budget".

And, yes, that's a small fraction of any nation's budget.

I can't find global figures breaking down military spending expenses as a portion of each "nations budget", but I did easily find global figures breaking down military spending as a percentage of the entire GrossDomesticProduct.

The United States spends an extraordinarily high percentage on the military.

-

Yup. You've heard their motto, "be prepared"?

So when you say;

I won`t believe that we are in a crisis until I have enough evidence that we are, and this evidence has not been provided in my view.

I'd like to think you aren't rejecting the idea that, even if you aren't in a crisis, it's not a bad idea to prepare for possible ones, yea? Now, I get that we probably disagree as to the risk of AGW - you've made your stance perfectly clear, and I'll just say I'm an AC that thinks we have a problem here. But I think we agree on risk having to be judged.

So, when the the US Military thinks they should, and so does the insurance industry. That the Maldives needs to relocate, says the World Bank, and so on. These aren't insignificant organizations,; they could field their own studies, if they doubted the risks, or the one's already done. They don't.

IMHO, that says something.

I'd invite you to look really hard at the sources you have that make you think that AGW isn't an issue. Just to be sure, if nothing else.

Yeah, there must be, oh, thousands of ATMs out there.

2.2 million.

Average amount of time a new ATM machine is installed --- 5 minutes ATM Machine Statistics [2012]

Automated teller machines (ATMs) (per 100,000 adults) [2009]

US 173
Canada 205

Education is like building a skyscraper. The floor never moves upward, but the roof can be set so high up. The rest of the world lives for the high roof, and we Americans tie a rope between the ceiling and the floor and say "you cannot be taller than one story", and it can only be made of simple materials. All that rope does is hold the world down. It does not move the anything up.

The modern American education system is a few swans tied to a herd of deer, trying to get the deer to fly. The deer don't want to fly - they are heavy. They are not built for flight. They are built for something else. They want to run around in the woods and eat plants. The swans were made to fly.

This is the ideal case - to differentiate the best and worst. Make a school for the deer that teaches to deer , and make one for swans that lets them fly. Don't chain the ceiling down. Academically and intellectually our nation clearly demonstrates the consequences of forcing EVERYONE to live in these mud-huts. Foisting education on the children of uninvolved parents, and upon children who do not want to learn, should not be required. Allowing truly great students to be as great as they can - this is a good thing. We shouldn't tie them to the floor. They carry the world of tomorrow on their backs and they are going to make it good - lets help them to make it amazingly great.

The efficiency of capitalism requires multiple, independent vendors who compete against each other for sales. The current education system is clearly a state-owned and sponsored monopoly. This monopoly has failed badly by every measure. Dollars may be the inefficient measure - but they exist as hours of the lives of citizens taken by force. We take the most hours out of tax-paying citizens lives in order to pay for this state-instituted monopoly, and by every measure we are at the bottom level of outcome for the free world.

Reason suggests that we should be able to say to Taiwan, bring your education system here, and run it with your people in your ways, but using English, and we will send a statistically relevant sample of students there. Corporal discipline - whatever. If you can have better educational outcomes than our schools then we will move our federal dollars to pay you to do a better job at teaching our youth then our current failed federal monopoly can.

Things like charter schools - they are not actual competition. They are the beginning of actual competition, but they don't really count as a functional replacement. An actual replacement would take away dollars and students that would otherwise go to the state-monopoly. The pro-monopolists are whining that they don't like "eau de competition" but they aren't talking actual value. There are tangible, critical, internationally significant consequences that come from raising generations of children to be stupid and underperforming.

Here is a perspective on actual value: http://go.worldbank.org/GOBJ17VV90
Read where it says "Why focus on learning outcomes".

A good start, but with a per capita GDP of ~$1100 USD, that's still a good chunk of money. Keep working on driving down costs, guys!

For $120, you can give the gift of GOAT .

What you linked is not scientific study but opinion pieces, and you want a true scientific study to be returned? You gave a Google search which returns lots of opinions about how those programs help, but no studies. Hell, the articles you linked don't even consider an alternative opinion or point of debate. Kind of the state we are in today, nobody can give alternative opinions.

How would you devise such a study? Think about that rationally for a minute and let that question sink in. A "study" is quite impossible! Who's country do we use as the bench mark, the study case, and the "normal"?

Max Kaiser, Milton Friedman, and countless others would have as many pretty graphs as what you see today backing the alternative opinion.

A large number of actual studies have been done. References to and highlights of findings can be found in the annex of this World bank paper on Productive Role of Safety Nets. It includes a large number of studies which look at direct payments (ala unemployment benefits), Food aid (ala food stamps), Education funding, retraining and a number of other areas where the social safety net can improve economic health in addition to alleviating poverty and the conditions that cause it.

Thanks.

What is scientific about what you did? You just googled and said look I found something that agrees with me? It is essentially argument from authority and argument from consensus.

You are correct. I did nothing scientific. The papers referred to in the links on the other hand are another story.

Not really argument from authority, as I cited specific studies whose methodologies and conclusions can be reviewed and critiqued. This paper gives a nice overview of the *actual* research being done in this area.

Whether you agree with me or not makes little difference to me. If you or anyone else has other data or analyses, I'd be happy to look at it. If my conclusions are faulty, I will change my mind and admit that my conclusions were wrong. Thanks for your comment.

And here has 2011 per capita figures.

Canada: $5,630
United States: 8,608

US is still $3000 higher. I won't hold my breath on you having figures that ever show the opposite.

Picked from 1995 here but it at least wasn't becoming much worse:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/gdp-growth

Then again never amazing either.

(Sweet page but not useful for this: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/11/european-economy-guide
Lots of downloadable data: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?page=2
Employment numbers: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php?title=File:Employment_rate,_age_group_15-64,_2001-2011_(%25).png&filetimestamp=20121030182934 http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Employment_statistics)

Venezuela's poverty rate dropped from 32.6% to 25.4% over the last five years, a remarkable achievement anytime but this coincides with the worst global depression in over 70 years. Over the same period GNI increased from $4,920 to $12,500.

The USA needs a hell of a lot more socialism. Too bad our "liberal" party rates as right wing or far right in the rest of the first world.

Sigh. The harsh truth is that big power plants are a huge part of the problem. Loss in transmission and distribution in the developed world is around 6-15% depending on where you live and how you measure it. We still generate most of our energy using steam. Most of the heat disappears up flues, and then we use additional energy to heat our homes.

Big central power plants are a stupid idea in the modern world. Lots of small CHP generators around residential areas and a few medium-sized generators around industrial areas make much more sense.

Not anymore. 2008 was the last year this was true. And consider that this table only shows the added value in dollars, not any kind of intrinsic value: for $1 you can manufacture more things in China than in US.

How much more does an average American consume than a middle-class person in Europe, Japan, China or other emerging economies?

According to World Bank figures, almost 2 Europeans, 2 Japanese, or 5 Chinese based on the 2010 values.

Funny thing: as the age of the children goes up, so does the salary. And oh look, so does the percentage of male teachers. And if we want to look for causation, well, locally the government reduced the wages of new teachers by 25% in 1985. My guess would be that afterwards, the percentage of female teachers increased rapidly (or rather, male applicants went elsewhere).

And this has to do with sexism, since it presupposes the fact that the male is the provider and the female is provided for. If females were the ones expected to provide the main family income, they wouldn't be entering into jobs that were guaranteed to never reach that income.

For some data, see:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.TCHR.FE.ZS
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.TCHR.FE.ZS

Funny thing: as the age of the children goes up, so does the salary. And oh look, so does the percentage of male teachers. And if we want to look for causation, well, locally the government reduced the wages of new teachers by 25% in 1985. My guess would be that afterwards, the percentage of female teachers increased rapidly (or rather, male applicants went elsewhere).

And this has to do with sexism, since it presupposes the fact that the male is the provider and the female is provided for. If females were the ones expected to provide the main family income, they wouldn't be entering into jobs that were guaranteed to never reach that income.

For some data, see:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.TCHR.FE.ZS
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.TCHR.FE.ZS

The US is a terrible polluter and has lots of fraked natural gas that have driven down prices, so isn't a very useful comparison.

Unless electricity costs matter to you more than those other concerns (the "terrible polluter" is about as polluting as the EU and fracking just doesn't seem that bad compared to normal oil drilling) at the minor levels they occur at.

We're talking about electricity production here and the most problematic pollutant in electricity production with fossil fuels is CO2. The US produces c.a. 17 tons of the stuff per capita. The only EU country that tops that is Luxembourg with 20 tons, the runner up is the Faroe Islands with 14.3 followed by Estonia with 11.9. So on average the EU countries produce between 50-60% as much CO2 per capita as the US (cit.). Thus in terms of CO2 pollution the USA does indeed rank as a great polluter although the good news is that the current trend is downward, but the US still has a whole lot of progress to make before it reaches EU per capita levels.

I'm all for safer cars, but safety ratings are measuring the wrong things. Moms love SUVs because they are perceived as safer for the occupants. Never mind that they are more dangerous for everyone else. For a pedestrian, SUVs are one of the most dangerous! Car safety needs to consider how dangerous it is for other people.

Cars kill twice as many pedestrians as drivers or passengers (World Bank) (That's worldwide--in USA, pedestrians are closer to 14% of deaths because everybody drives and nobody walks in US). Of course, nobody wants to buy a car that's safer for other people.

Maybe the Model S is safe, maybe not. Who knows?

It already is happening. The amount of interest we pay as a % of total tax revenue collected has been steadily rising and is at a a 10 year high even though the interest rate on treasury bonds is at relatively low levels. In other words the money we're borrowing is really cheap, yet we're borrowing so much of it that we're still paying more in interest relative to total revenues collected than we have in the past decade and there's no reason to believe that we will be able to continue to borrow money cheaply especially if we increase our public debt too much.

Look folks, China is in the #1 spot emitting ~25% of the worlds CO2, and its still a god damned developing nation (about half of the people in China are still subsistence farming.) There is no chance that reducing CO2 emissions here is going to mean anything, ever.

It's really easy to absolve yourself of any responsibility with statements like this. Perhaps looking at your country's contribution per capita would be more helpful.

The final figure is about 6% transmission loss in the United States overall, a shockingly easy to derive figure. The total loss is the total amount produced by the industry minus the total amount delivered by the industry.

The World Bank lists it by country.

That really is NOT the case. The fact is, that a MINORITY of Americans think that climate change has some doubt.
The problem is NOT that, though republicans use it as a crutch.
The REAL problem is that the Liberals are making a HORRIBLE mistake with this and refuse to come up with NEW ideas on how to solve this. And CO2 and other GHG will continue. Heck, even Europe is backing off because they have found that they can NOT compete against other nations that are NOT taking the economic hit.
Assume that USA takes the economic hit. Then what will happen is that China, India, Russia, South Africa, etc. will build up coal plants WITHOUT pollution control as quickly as possibly. Why? To capture more manufacturing and other items from USA.
So, what is a REAL SOLUTION? Involve ALL nations (and states ) at the same time.

For America, we need 2 things ASAP:
1) require all new buildings under 4 stories to have unsubsidized on-site AE to provide energy equal to 95% or more of their HVAC. Why do this? Because it will encourage builders to NOT put up loads of solar, but to instead, look for alternatives such as better insulation, aerogel windows, geo-thermal HVAC, etc.
2) put a tax on ALL goods based on which nations/state they come from and the CO2 emissions. But several things about this:
a) none of this guess work. We need it based on OCO2, which will measure directly. Greenies are in for a REAL shocker. Their beliefs about America's emissions are probably close since we do direct measurements, but China is way too low. In addition, it does not matter the source. Just co2(out) - co2(in).
b) this needs to be normalized, but not based on per capita. It needs to be on tonnes / $ of actual GDP (not GDP-ppp). The truth is, that the vast majority of emissions is not tied to ppl, but to business.
c) it needs to start low and increase. If you want your product to be an exception to the tax, then you will say where components come from and then the tax is lowered based on the location being more efficient. As such, goods from China would have the max tax on it.
America's own goods would then have average tax, but dropping.
Likewise, goods from Sweden would have a low tax.

Here is some data for the later:
This is wiki, but it is based on 2006 data.
Here is 2009 data, but it is ppp GDP (which rewards nations for manipulating their money against the dollar; hence why it has to be real $GDP ).

With the above approaches, it would put ALL nations/states on the same footing. If they want to sell here without a tax, they need to drop their emissions. And by spending a bit of money cleaning up, it rewards a nation by paying lower taxes.

Nationalized healthcare solves this problem. For-profit corporations have no business in health insurance.

What a trusting soul. Such mystical faith in the State. Psssst ... the State has no power to overturn economic realities. Nationalized healthcare may indeed be morally and practically the best solution to health care, but it can't take a gigantic burden off everybody and make it magically go away. If you think corporate profits are the only reason, or even the major factor in the exorbitant expense of health care, you are naive. It's expensive because it takes vast resources to do the job.

According to The World Bank, only Palau and Liberia spend a larger proportion of their GDP on healthcare than the United States. Note that according to the UN/WHO, the US ranks 40th in life expectancy, Palau ranks 99th and Liberia 171st.

The top ten countries in the UN/WHO rankings of life expectancy either have public, single-payer systems or heavily regulated and/or not-for-profit healthcare systems.

Someone's been lying to you and a lot of other people. Why lie to yourself and others as well?

Posting anonymously as I don't want to blow the mods I've already made on this thread.

Cuba definitely does have better healthcare than the US, where 50 million people have none.

For instance, Cuba has two and a half more doctors per capita than the US

Oh, and here's another datapoint: the table shows literacy levels in Cuba being higher than the USA.

Thanks for the reasoned response, though I still don't think I agree with you. According to the World Bank manufacturing is 30% of China's GDP versus 13% for the US (source). Also, since the US is a big importer a lot of the carbon emissions for goods it consumes actually occur in China.

Finally, China is building at a rapid pace (though less rapid than at peak), this activity is very carbon intense. For instance in 2010 it produced just over half of all the world's cement. As its infrastructure matures emissions from this will level off while the rest of its economy grows, so intensity will again go down.

I wonder if you can do this:
Millions of people leaving extreme poverty in a short time in an historically poor country, all while you have the people who control prices and products in the opposition (which also means artificial shortages), the CIA and the US govt. actively organizing and paying to disinform and to destroy internal economy and political stability (as they did against Allende in Chile, and against many other, which is well known and documented), under an international economic crisis, with food prices increasing since (if I recall correctly) 2008, with consumption rising because of people leaving poverty (and, from there, prices), etc.
None in the poor-hating, racist and xenophobe Venezuelan upper class, none of the previous presidents did anything like that before Chavez, they are mostly foreigners who don't care about their own workers (same as in all Latin America).

Cuba didn't receive oil for "free", they gave LOTS of medics and teachers in exchange to Venezuela, and it's the same for every other country: Chavez exchanged help.

How stupid can people be to believe everything media says, knowing that the mass-media and international "news" agencies are controlled by big holding corporations, kept in their place by corporate marketing and PR? Same for Venezuela. The "freedom lovers" there were a little group of the same kind of people and corporations, that was instrumental in the coup attempt. You can't have real freedom if you don't have basic education, or even food.

Yeah, it's easy to do anything from your computer and/or mouth. Not all has been good, obviously, but Venezuela has changed for good, there is no doubt about that, and even the opposition recognizes it (and even imitates, saying Capriles is a leftist, the same thing Obama has done).

I guess this is the kind of advances and the country you like, don't you?

The US is essentially bankrupt, huh? Have you ever seen the GDP of the united states compared with...say, all of Europe combined?

Not sure what's up with Googles data, but the World Bank says your wrong.

Well, there's two different things here - will certain places run out of work or will the world "run out" of work, as certain post-post-post-modern world futurists have predicted. Despite what is happening in the US and parts of Europe, if you look at the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, China, India) or the OECD report you'll see that the world isn't exactly running out of jobs, they're just not created in the "Old World". In fact despite all the trouble in the developed world, extreme poverty is on its way down:

More recent post-2008 analysis reveals that, while the food, fuel and financial crises over the past four years had at times sharp negative impacts on vulnerable populations and slowed the rate of poverty reduction in some countries, global poverty overall kept falling. In fact, preliminary survey-based estimates for 2010 - based on a smaller sample size than in the global update -indicate that the $1.25 a day poverty rate had fallen to under half of its 1990 value by 2010.

Most other indicators like literacy, life expectancy etc. also indicate that the world is overall moving forwards. I think it's more globalization that's catching up to us, if you outsource the low-end jobs and keep the high-end jobs here then eventually they graduate and take the high-end jobs too. If anyone thought you could keep design and management here without hands-on knowledge from production and maintenance they were fooling themselves. Sure it doesn't happen right away, it takes a decade or two. Coincidentally, it's now a decade or two since outsourcing became the "big thing".

You seem like a reasonable chap, given to reasoned thinking.

However, you have a gross error in your reasoning. You're treating "on average" as if it meant some sort of uniformity. Climate Change in no way shape or form is going to occur in a fashion where changes are uniform.

For a rather good synopsis of the varieties of ways this plays out, please read the recent World Bank report. Even things one might expect to be uniform (such as sea-level rise) won't be for a variety of rather interesting reasons.

As you've stated, plants don't do well with high heat and low humidity. Unfortunately, this is exactly what's predicted for much of the mid-latitudes over land (think much of US, China, Mediterranean). These areas are likely to see (on average... chuckle) roughly twice as much temperature increase as ocean or tropical areas. Plus the bulk of this extra precipitation/humidity is going to occur over the oceans, not over land.

Furthermore not only is the earth not going to become "like a rain forest", a good chunk of the rain forest itself will be replaced with grassland. Indeed, the conversion of the Amazon basin (predicted for massive drying) via forest fire, dieback, etc., is in and of itself a massive positive feedback effect (massive immediate carbon release; long-term huge net loss in carbon sink with grass replacing forest) that awaits us if things continue unabated.

By definition, 4.7% (in 2011). A GDP graph indicates that's out of $15 trillion.

I think that's expenditure, not contribution.

By definition, 4.7% (in 2011). A GDP graph indicates that's out of $15 trillion.

Sticking to wealthy countries (source):

Country | % Health spending/GDP | % Public health spending/Total health spending
USA 17.9 53.1
Netherlands 11.9 79.2
France 11.9 77.8
Germany 11.6 77.1
Switzerland 11.5 59.0
Denmark 11.4 85.1
Canada 11.4 70.5
UK 9.6 83.9
Sweden 9.6 81.1
Japan 9.5 82.5
Norway 9.5 83.9
Finland 9.0 75.1

I'm fairly certain that the total U.S. government spending per capita on health care is more than the UK spends per capita for its universal system.

... it's the fact that they're generally poor and/or oppressed

This is yet another bullshit that has been regurgitated, over and over again.
 
It's a total bullshit !!
 
You want to portray the moslems as "poor and oppressed" and I will debunk your lies ---
 
Fact I: Wealth of the moslems:

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

Qatar booked an estimated gross domestic product per capita of more than $92,501 for 2011
 
Whereas for the United States of America -- only $48,442
 
As for your expression "generally poor and/or oppressed", there ARE millions and millions of poor and oppressed Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and Atheists all over the world.
 
Tell us, how often do you see the poor and oppressed Buddhist or Hindu or Christian or Atheist murdering / beheading / massacring innocent victims in the name of their religion?
 
In other words, poor and/or oppressed should not, and can never become a valid raison d'etre for anyone in massacring other people
 
  Stop apologizing for those bloody assholes who worship their "allah"
 

You have a common sense view of "regulation equals safety equals good"

I would say my view is more nuanced: Some regulations equals a particular level of safety which may be good depending on the costs. I fully realize that a lot of regulations are bad and too costly - for example, the TSA.

You seem to have the view that any regulation equals cost equals bad. The problem with relying on the market in all cases is that 1) there is asymmetrical information (e.g. I don't know what chemicals they are using to frack, so I can't, as a market agent, correctly price natural gas) and 2) the market doesn't always price externalities correctly.

That wouldn't happen in the first place.

Sure it would. Companies and people will always take shortcuts to save costs. Look at Deepwater. The contractor used sub-standard practices in creating the cement casing. Now, BP has paid out billions in claims, but after the lawyers take their cut, I'm doubtful that the true cost of the oil spill will be recouped by those affected. It's virtually impossible to calculate the true cost to tourism, fishing, the environment, etc., so any settlement between BP and individuals or BP and the government will likely be incorrect. It makes more sense to insure (through regulations) that these types of events have a very small chance of happening.

One of the issues here is the is the different discount rates agents in the market have. A (public) corporation will tend to have a lower discount rate (i.e. preferring their money upfront), whereas an individual will tend to have a relatively higher discount rate (because they don't need to make their quarterly numbers). Because of this, a corporation may choose to save $100 today if the cost in a year is $120.

If there was a guy that lost his job and everyone on the block started donating food to him but you didn't want to, would you think it's acceptable for them to break into your house and take it by force?

What's the difference between that and from forcibly expelling me from their society, which is what would happen.

Do you have some numbers to back that up or is it your gut talking? I'm more inclined to believe our government military spending is due to us having bases and troops all over the world and starting wars every couple of years and pissing off half the world.

Of course our military spending is due to having bases and troops all over the world, and this is precisely why countries like the UK, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan can get away without spending as much on their militaries. Look at most NATO actions - who takes the largest role? Usually it's the US, while the rest of NATO (nearly) free-rides.

It would be hard to find a foreign politician who will say that they don't spend as much on defense because of the US's commitment to defend them, but it's an obvious conclusion when you compare military spending per GDP:
US: 4.8%
Taiwan: 2.7%
S. Korea: 2.7%
UK: 2.6%
Germany: 1.4%
Spain: 1.1%
Japan: 1.0%
Phillipines: 0.8%

The UK and Spain were targets of bombings on 7-7-07, so it's not like the US is the only target. Also, I would argue that you have cause and effect backwards. We are probably pissing everybody off because (in part) we are spending so much on defense.

poppycock. First off, there is no league of nations. Long gone. It is the United Nations.
Secondly, China is constantly dumping on foreign markets and constantly being found guilty of such. Likewise, it is know that they are manipulating their money which goes against the 2000 accords, as well as against IMF and WTO. Then they jumped from 90 trade barriers to over 400.

Fair? Not even close. Here, go look for yourself.

poppycock. First off, there is no league of nations. Long gone. It is the United Nations.
Secondly, China is constantly dumping on foreign markets and constantly being found guilty of such. Likewise, it is know that they are manipulating their money which goes against the 2000 accords, as well as against IMF and WTO. Then they jumped from 90 trade barriers to over 400.

Fair? Not even close. Here, go look for yourself.

it really only raises the standard of living for those at the top.

The proportion of impoverished Chinese fell from 65% of the population in 1981 to 4% in 2007, during which time more than HALF A BILLION people were hoisted above the poverty line. (source)

'Models are useful even when their results are not entirely correct because they facilitate communication' World Bank HEF Techniccal Report 1, June 2010

because as you can see, the model is generating discussion. If the model is wrong, it is still the first step towards making a better model.

Over the last several years the World Bank has been moving in this direction. It used to be that most of the World Development Indicators required a subscription. This is an extremely detailed country-level database of everything from GDP and prices to infant mortality and refugee populations. Now, the database in its entirety is free and it has been loaded into statistical applications like Stata and made available by these folks (along with other World Bank datasets).

It's been my experience that the academic-oriented economists at the World Bank try to disseminate their work as widely as possible. Still, centralized repositories for datasets and code under a reasonable CC license should only make this easier. In economics, potential journal articles tend to spend months or years as working papers while they undergo the referee process; this means that keeping up with the latest research involves relatively less access to expensive journals (compared to other disciplines) than it does with being able to easily find the latest version of a working paper. It's still a long way from being able to cut out the for-profit journals, though some open-access journals do exist.

Next time before spewing "facts", please check where they come from!
When I try to google Mercatus, the first auto complete is Koch brothers...
The idea that we spend on average ~$90k/yr/child is hilarious. We only spend that much money on prison inmates.
The real number is ~$10k including the school lunch program, buses, and janitors.
That's comparable to the overhead cost of a class A building for a relatively low paid employee... Ok seems about right.
Oh you want to educate them too? Then throw in an "overpaid" teacher who makes 40-60k/year (gets summer off but grades at night/weekends).

Simple check. There are 12 years between 18-6 ages. The average life expectation is 72 years. So very roughly 1/6th of the population is of public school age.
There are over $300m us citizens and so there are ~50m school age students. If we were spending $100k/student/year on it would be $5T/year or half the GDP. FAIL!
Oh wait, you mean they ballooned the number by adding up 10 years together and it's actually less than $10k/yr?
You mean they only use 10 years so that they can make countries that stop education at 15 look better?

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
Ok 5% of GDP I'll accept that, but it's still well below what many other countries spend so no big surprise.

How much do other countries actually spend?
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.PRIM.PC.ZS

So we are ahead of Bhutan and Cameroon, but well behind Columbia. Congratulations!
Hmm... actual data that hasn't been so twisted by insane ideology that it at least passes a smell test.
Please learn to use the Internet.

Despite a gobal slowdown Africa saw robust growth in 2011. Prospects remain strong but elevated downside risks in the global economy could dampen the regions economic momentum.

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/0,,contentMDK:23004589~pagePK:146736~piPK:226340~theSitePK:258644,00.html

By the way Subsaharan Africa has had a 5%. annual growth for quite some time now,so things have been moving in the right direction.

Of course some of this money will end up i western (or Chinese) pockets, but still growth is a good sign. Without gnrowth Africa will get nowhere.

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/0,,contentMDK:23004589~pagePK:146736~piPK:226340~theSitePK:258644,00.html

It's much closer to an uregulated rampant free market economy. Which is why it has very, very poor people and very, very rich people.

As opposed to the glorious days when Chinese communists were actually communist, and EVERYBODY was very very poor?

53% below the poverty line in 1980; about 8% in 2001. Or, using a different source, the poverty rate fell from 85% to 16% in that same time period.

Income inequality has certainly gone up in China, but bear in mind that prior to the late-70's reforms where China started opening up their markets more, the number of people living in poverty was simply staggering, no matter which criteria you judge by. The move to an "unregulated rampant free market economy" has had a far greater net-positive impact than your throw-away comment about it producing "very very poor and very very rich" people suggests. China was - by either of the poverty criteria shown above - mostly, if not almost *entirely* full of "very very poor" people under Communist rule. Free market reforms have helped change that, increasing average income and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Interesting, and some surprises there, Trinidad & Tobago, Aruba and Luxembourg?!

Interesting too is the comparison of emission/GDP.

The US isn't the worst, but it's certainly close.

Africa has more cell phones than toilets. http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/more-cell-phones-than-toilets The entire infrastructure was built on "e-waste", used cell phones were imported and hacked/jailbroken, which created enough subscribers for private sector companies to erect the towers. The free market bypassed the entire government-infrastructure track. Of course, there is evidence of a second crime here.... http://archive.basel.int/industry/mppi/gdfd30Jun2010.pdf Cell phones are labelled "e-waste" in Europe http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2011/09/new-world-order-interpol-calls.html and Africans who buy them have been declared "criminals" by Interpol.

Nope. Romney's advisers are mostly W's advisers, with a few from reagan's time. Romney is a PURE neo-con. To vote for him is to vote for more W's politics. And this is what neo-con policies look like