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America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28
- yousry 10y agoIt should be metioned that the process of statistical data collection can vary between countries.
- TempleOS 10y agoWe have highest biblical literacy. You are an atheist. I have slightly unsatisfactory satisfaction.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago"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).
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jnordwick 10y agoThe 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 world.
- JonnieCache 10y agoDoctors stand by as babies perish because they're concerned about their nation's WHO rankings? Citation needed.
- jnordwick 10y agoI'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."
- napoleoncomplex 10y agoThe first of the numbers (rate of mothers dying) would not be affected at all by what you mention, and the second (rate of children under age of 5 dying), while affected by infant mortality (number of deaths of infants under 1 year old), is a much wider metric, so the effect is also relatively small. Either way, I'd be interested in seeing some sources for those claims, as it's the first I've heard of it happening, at least in the developed world. And I mean it sincerely, since it's a topic of interest to me.
- DarqWebster 10y agoI 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.
- mpweiher 10y agoMy daughter was born 8 weeks premature in Germany. She was considered an extremely unproblematic case (though without medical attention, she probably wouldn't have made it). On the same ward, we had at least one 700 gram baby that was doing fine, and several that were close to that. So agree, the parent's claim is definitely way too broad.
- wtbob 10y agoI 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.
- f_allwein 10y agoThe 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...
- vletal 10y agoI did not mention the higher = better. I was wondering how can Russia be so great at handling unsafe drinking!
- j_jochem 10y agoI'd say they're more than a little confusing. Why would anybody from a western cultural background choose yellowish orange for "better" and a range of blues for "worse"?
- chme 10y ago> Good performer: War (fatalities per 100k population): Germany 100 What does that mean?
- return0 10y agoBut it is #1 in military might. So, its the greatest
- vacri 10y agoMightiest is not necessarily greatest.
- return0 10y agoHistory would suggest otherwise.
- vacri 10y agoReally? The Mongols were fearsomely mighty, yet their empire lasted less than a hundred years and their culture spread nowhere. The USSR was a military superpower, yet it only lasted one human's lifetime, and it absolutely sucked to live there. Alexander the Great was stupendously powerful in a military sense, 'conquering the known world', yet his realms collapsed upon his death at only 33.
- jsemrau 10y agoyou did not finish your sentence. Please allow me to correct. ---- But it is #1 in military might. So, its the greatest in military might. I would assume "greatest" should be measure by more than one dimension. I think we can agree that Muhammad Ali was the greatest boxer in the world, if he would have been slow or small despite having a killer punch one can argue he would not have been the greatest.
- stangeek 10y ago...as evidenced by their numerous successes whenever they have intervened in outside theaters for the past 50 years... ?
- CalRobert 10y agoIt's a shame they had to funnel the apostrophe budget to the military, though.
- aryehof 10y agoWhen traveling in the US, I'm always amused at the reactions of disbelief, horror, aggression, and utter incredulity when I propose that their country isn't the greatest in the world. After all, they likely hear or are told every day that they are not only "free" (unlike everywhere else?) but the "greatest".
- Hermel 10y agoReally? What kind of people are you talking to? Note that Bloomberg, the source of the above news, is American. Note that the reaction you get might not only stem from the message itself, but also from the way you deliver it. How do you react when a foreigner critizes your country out of the blue? Imagine someone saying to you: "Your people regularily mistreat immigrants, did you know that?" How do you react?
- majewsky 10y ago> Imagine someone saying to you: "Your people regularily mistreat immigrants, did you know that?" How do you react? "I know, right?"
- kristopolous 10y agoReminds 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, just barely ahead of San Marino in its military might. So what does someone from Luxembourg do? Do they go around shame-faced? Do people tease them, "Are you from Luxembourg?", "No no, I'm uh...French". And you say, "Do you love your country" and they say "well wha..what is there to love ... I mean a few border police, no army, no navy ..." Here's the mp3: http://9ol.es/luxembourg.mp3 http://9ol.es/luxembourg.mp3 The entire speech: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/23514 http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/23514
- jnordwick 10y agoWhy 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.
- kristopolous 10y agoHave any empirical evidence? (I'm questioning the veracity of your observation).
- Hermel 10y ago> Everybody seems fine with European snobbery That's simply not true. The French, for example, are often seen as arrogant by other Europeans. Also, sometimes their view of being "la grande nation" is ridiculed. Generally, the more snobbish someone behaves, the easier it is to make fun of that.
- Loic 10y agoI suppose you are American living in America, because, you would be from another country and living abroad (I am French and used to live in the US, Denmark and for the past 10+ years in Germany), you would definitely see that being a bit patriotic is fine and was always fine. The problem is being patriotic to the point you cannot see outside of your bubble. If you start to be snob, in Europe at least, your friends and colleagues will quickly be sarcastic with you. And this is fine, because we do not have a safe spaces mentality.
- caub 10y agoFun fact: America is not a country
- CalRobert 10y agoAgreed. 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.
- nmc 10y agoThe French language has "États-Unien" [0] but it is almost never used. [0] https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%89tats-Unien https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%89tats-Unien
- CalRobert 10y agoOf course, even that _could_ be ambiguous given that my homeland's southern neighbor is officially "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" (Mexican United States). That usage is so rare as to be pretty much irrelevant, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico
- d--b 10y agoSo? Is it about time someone makes it great again?
- fake-name 10y agoAgain 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. America was never great.
- allendoerfer 10y agoGreat relative to others, not perfect.
- croon 10y agoFor one of the youngest countries on Earth, the US is (maybe because of that) all too opposed to change. The US constitution was written over 200 years ago. Other countries were founded many hundreds or thousands of years before that, and have thus realized that the core principles they were founded on were maybe not all applicable today, and continually update their laws and government. The problem with "the greatest country on Earth" is that it's unwilling to adapt and learn and grow. Which is what every other country and human on Earth tries to daily.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- simbalion 10y agoIs "amount of personal freedom" not even on their list of factors? Most Americans would say that is the most important factor.
- jnordwick 10y agoI'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? can keep going and going... These are political rankings given the veneer of rigor because they have numbers attached to them. The UN Sustainable Development Goals are just busy work for the Social Justice Warriors with nothing else to do but make up yet another meaningless utopian index. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs
- pmontra 10y agoSome indicators could be subjective but how can infant mortality and life expectancy be defined differently in different countries?
- jnordwick 10y agoWho is "born" is defined different depending on which country. E.g., most European countries will not count premature babies if they don't make certain weight or other metrics and no attempt to intervene, so this sets up some really perverse incentives. These can make up more than 3 out of every 4 premature births so it can significantly tilt the stats: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/276952/infant-mortality-deceptive-statistic-scott-w-atlas http://www.nationalreview.com/article/276952/infant-mortalit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality
- richmarr 10y ago> ... most European countries will not count premature babies if they don't make certain weight Factually incorrect, as shown by your own link which lists 6 countries that have weight/gestation thresholds. Or maybe there are less than 12 countries in Europe, who the hell cares, right?
- 0verD0ses 10y agoAlthough there is a lot of local variation, after all America is the third most highly populated country in the world, I would broadly agree with this picture.
- Randgalt 10y agoHands up - who'd rather be in Iceland than the US?
- richmarr 10y agoMe. Iceland is awesome.
- erichocean 10y agoNot only that, your vote actually counts with only 331,778 people!
- majewsky 10y agoYou mean like in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV_O3BA5e28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV_O3BA5e28 ?
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoI would. Iceland is beautiful.
- squozzer 10y agoI never accepted America as "greatest country in the world" as a literal truth, anymore than I would say my Dad is "the greatest in the world" and expect anyone to believe it. It's a statement of love, or belonging, or some other sentiment, but some set up its literal interpretation as a strawman and begin wailing on it.
- ende 10y agoBingo.
- Sideloader 10y agoDid the UN report actually set out to rank countries by order of "greatness" or was that the mass media's contribution? The compilers of the report probably stated something like "based on criteria x,y and z which are based on data we obtained from organizations 1,2 and 3, or their equivalents, in countries around the world we ranked these countries from 1 to 100 (or whatever) according to their scores". So...being #28 in the list doesn't mean that country is the 28th "greatest" country in the world. Obviously there exists no objective definition of "greatest" or "best" country/city/region in the world but every time I see that written somewhere I cringe a little. It could be my inner pedant but it's also because I know somebody will take this as meaning the researchers meant x country is THE greatest in the world and argue why this is, or is not, the case. Probably not so much on HN but preventative measures have been taken just in case.