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America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

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Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#31

Post by allendoerfer »

fake-name wrote: post #23
d--b wrote: post #18

So? Is it about time someone makes it great again?

Again implies it was great at some point, (or greater then it is now). At what point, exactly, was the US "Great"? Was it when Women couldn't vote? Was it when black people couldn't sit in the "white people" part of the bus? Was it when you could get committed to a mental institution just for being gay? While there are many things wrong now, the rosy past that such rhetoric seems to assume exists was never a thing. A…

Great relative to others, not perfect.

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#32

Post by ploxiln »

pmontra wrote: post #26
jnordwick wrote: post #22

I'm so sick of these articles: 1- poverty is defined differently in each country 2- so is infant mortality 3- so is life expectancy (who gets included isn't the same) 4- social justice issues have no clear definition 5- some of these stats aren't even quantifyable, such as hygiene. ... How much is a percentage of obesity worth? As much as percent of GDP? Or why isn't the number of top 100 universities accounted for?…

Some indicators could be subjective but how can infant mortality and life expectancy be defined differently in different countries?

> However, the method of calculating IMR often varies widely between countries, and is based on how they define a live birth and how many premature infants are born in the country.

> Many countries, however, including certain European states (e.g. France) and Japan, only count as live births cases where an infant breathes at birth, which makes their reported IMR numbers somewhat lower

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality#Differences_i...

edit: other response is admittedly a lot better

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#35

Post by jnordwick »

kristopolous wrote: post #9

Reminds me of a Michael Parenti speech on "Superpatriotism" from 1988. There's no existing transcript I can find so I may be the first to do this: "The superpatriots love of country seems predicated on the country being 'up there', stronger and superior to other countries. What happens if it's gonna slip? What about people from ... lesser lands? What about somebody from...Luxembourg. I mean now, Luxembourg is #122, j…

Why people only rip on Americans for being patriotic? Nobody rips on the French when they say they have the best {food, fashion, history, literature, country, *}. Everybody seems fine with European snobbery in all its variants: French, Italian, and even English snobbery is accepted, but not quite as much as the others it seems.

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#36

Post by piva00 »

f_allwein wrote: post #8
wtbob wrote: post #5

I thought it was interesting that according to their numbers the U.S. has fewer homicides than Germany (which is worse than Syria?!). That's quite surprising.

The graphs are a bit confusing. higher = better, actually (there is a small bit saying "safe levels/ unsafe levels" above the 1st graph). I was also confused why Saudia Arabia would have such high issues with alcohol, whereas in fact it is Russia that does...

The graphics are completely messed up in my opinion, I was trying to make sense of them exactly because of that (Germany having the worst place in "Fatalities per 100k pop." in War? Saudi Arabia drinking like crazy?) and I have a background in Statistics...

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#37

Post by kristopolous »

jnordwick wrote: post #35
kristopolous wrote: post #9

Reminds me of a Michael Parenti speech on "Superpatriotism" from 1988. There's no existing transcript I can find so I may be the first to do this: "The superpatriots love of country seems predicated on the country being 'up there', stronger and superior to other countries. What happens if it's gonna slip? What about people from ... lesser lands? What about somebody from...Luxembourg. I mean now, Luxembourg is #122, j…

Why people only rip on Americans for being patriotic? Nobody rips on the French when they say they have the best {food, fashion, history, literature, country, *}. Everybody seems fine with European snobbery in all its variants: French, Italian, and even English snobbery is accepted, but not quite as much as the others it seems.

Have any empirical evidence? (I'm questioning the veracity of your observation).

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#38

Post by jnordwick »

JonnieCache wrote: post #27
jnordwick wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real shame in that number is that other countries literally let premature babies die without intervention so they can keep their health costs down and infant mortality numbers down too while the US aggressively intervenes and reports all births massively inflating our infant mortality numbers. Basically, if you are going to be a premature baby, you would much rather be born in the US than any other country in the…

Doctors stand by as babies perish because they're concerned about their nation's WHO rankings? Citation needed.

I'd say its is more of an institutional bias again costs and perception that drive policies that prevent intervention when babies are born too young or too underweight. That's how the you get the horror stories of "my baby was born X days too early/Y pounds too underweight and they refused to do anything."

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#39

Post by DarqWebster »

jnordwick wrote: post #25
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #4

"The U.S. is No. 64 in the rate of mothers dying for every 100,000 births, and No. 40 when it comes to the rate children under age five die." That is shameful for the tenth richest country in the world (per capita).

The real shame in that number is that other countries literally let premature babies die without intervention so they can keep their health costs down and infant mortality numbers down too while the US aggressively intervenes and reports all births massively inflating our infant mortality numbers. Basically, if you are going to be a premature baby, you would much rather be born in the US than any other country in the…

I was born over eight weeks premature, in 1989, in South Africa.

I got lucky, sure. But "any other country" letting premature babies die without intervention is perhaps too broad a claim.

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#40

Post by CalRobert »

caub wrote: post #16

Fun fact: America is not a country

Agreed. However this is something that most of the world (aside from Mexico, Central, and South America) collude in. I try to say "the US" in conversations with my European friends, but they will always just say "America" in response. And of course, there is no English equivalent to Estadounidense.
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