7 ms·

I am sorry, I don't buy the "we are like several countries, you can't compare us to a single one !" argument. Japan is at 40% of USA population and its average

• rmc 14y ago
  Europe has had a common history for thousands of years. Constantly forming, splitting and reforming. The Hellenistic Greeks were all over the Mediterranean, the Roman empire was all over the place, these England was a subsidiary of the kingdom of France, then not, then Ireland of England. Netherlands was part of Spain, Belgium was part of France. Lots of western Poland was in Germany, Austria was part of Germany, Nice (now in France) was part of Italy. We're one big family who've been all over each other for thousands of years.
  • jeltz 14y ago
    Technically Nice was never a part of Italy. Nice was most of the time part of the Duchy of Savoy (later called the Kingdom of Sardinia when the Duke of Savoy also became the king of Sardinia). Nice became French in 1860 while Italy was formed in 1861. What used to be the Duchy of Savoy is now split between Italy and France. EDIT: A map of Savoy in the 16th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Savoy2.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Savoy2.png
  • ExpiredLink 14y ago
    Austria was part of Germany only between 1938 and 1945. 7 out of ~1000 years of existence.
    • rmc 14y ago
      What about the Holy Roman Empire? When talking about history there are very few "correct" and "right" answers, since one would have to first define what one means by "Germany" and "Austria".
      • ido 14y ago
        What about the Holy Roman Empire? I believe the Hapsburg monarchy controlled a larger portion of it than the Prussians, so it technically it's closer to Germany having been part of Austria than the other way around. Of course it is even more accurate to say neither is true, since the holy roman empire was more of a loose confederation than a country, i.e. closer to something like the EU than to Germany or Austria.
        • rmc 14y ago
          And what about East Fracia, or even the Carolingian Empire itself? Austria & Germany together. That's the thing with this history stuff, it's rarely as clear cut, nor are today's examples (e.g. modern Germany, EU) totally relevant for examples of the past.
• icegreentea 14y ago
  His argument doesn't really hinge on states. He's arguing that the there's a hilarious geographical disparity going on, in that big bits of rural backwater America is nothing like the America people like to believe in. It's like how if you took Canada, with our pretty good (I like to think so) health care and general infrastructure, and more or less respectable indicators of health and safety.... and then decided to just look at our reserves. Huge WTF. Natives are 1/30th of the Canadian population (so significant, but not huge), and their average life expectancy is ~10 years less than the national average. How does this happen? Situations like this shows that it IS important to consider internal divisions like this. If the native population in Canada happened to be doubled or something, then you would run in all sorts of problems trying to improve out overall health care without addressing specific issues regarding why the native population appears to have such poor outcomes.
  • JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    Population density may explain the whole fabricated issue. Where medical care is hours away and expensive to reach, life expectancy drops. Surprise. Also low-density population means smaller sample sizes thus larger error. Again, surprise.
    • thejteam 14y ago
      This is a good point. Every year in various parts of Appalachia there are health festivals were doctors come and volunteer their time to give free medical care of various kinds, from eye exams to cancer screenings. This is intended for the poor and uninsured, but around 1/3 of the people who attend have health insurance that would pay for the exams. They still don't have real access to healthcare, though, because it would take over 3 hours each way to get to the appointment. Even in the semi-rural area where I live, if I needed heart surgery, the local cardiologists won't do the surgery. They would send me up the road to DC, two hours away, like they did with my father-in-law. And I live in a county with a high median income.
    • planetguy 14y ago
      Except this is the map of population density: http://www.instantpatientnewsletter.com/images/USA-2000-population-density.gif http://www.instantpatientnewsletter.com/images/USA-2000-popu... which looks very much unlike the map of life expectancy. The truly low-population areas of the US (the non-coastal western half, the tip of Maine, and the whole of Alaska (where medical care is truly remote) seem to have fairly long lifespans. The South, where lifespans are short, is mostly fairly densely populated. A map which correlates much better with the lifespan map would be this one http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2lW15AgGThE/S_7yokwe3zI/AAAAAAAAABc/96BUvJ3vdEs/s1600/black.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2lW15AgGThE/S_7yokwe3zI/AAAAAAAAAB... showing the percentage of black people in each county. It's still not a perfect match, though, and it's clearly not just about race because the average lifespan for a black man in the US is 75 and for a white man 79; a much smaller disparity than the county-by-county disparity we're looking at there. If the men in your county are dropping dead at an average age of 66, it's not just about health care, it's gotta be some combination of: 1. Widespread substance abuse or alcoholism, and 2. Serious widespread obesity. Come to think of it, we can probably find a map for the latter too; here it is: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/11/24/business/economy/obesity.jpg http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/11/24/business/econ... I love southern food and all, but it should come as no surprise that if you eat fried chicken, biscuits and gravy every day for breakfast you're gonna wind up dead.
• padobson 14y ago
  You have a single president, a federal senate, a federal army, a federal police, a powerful federal intelligence agency, and many institutions at the federal level. This one sentence does an excellent job of summing up our failures as a nation over the last 236 years. One, gargantuan government can never hope to meet the vastly different needs of 300 million people living in highly diverse geographies, population densities, and climates. So while the US should be treated like one country for all those reasons, those reasons should also be blamed for most of her failures.
  • JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    I vote for school board, county supervisor, state governor, representative and two senators. One monolithic government is a myth. It could even be argued that the fractured nature of US govt is responsible for wide variation is schools, infrastructure, moral laws etc.
    • padobson 14y ago
      Your school board, county supervisor, and state governor are flacid, neutered versions of their virile predecessors of the 19th and 20th centuries. All of them spend most of their time wrangling federal money. And your representative and senators vote consistently along party lines, and, again, get re-elected almost entirely based on how much of their constituents' money they bring back from Washington.
  • its_so_on 14y ago
    Okay, so now you have something to blame. Is that as far as you wanted to go, or did you want to also remove these things? Genuine question.
    • padobson 14y ago
      I wouldn't remove them, but I'd certainly want to invert the power structure. Make me dictator for a day, and I'd change the whole tax system so that the local govt gets 30% of your income and th e federal gets 1%. The military and entitlement programs in particular would serve the wants and needs of the people better if they were structured and deployed by local power as opposed to a large, centralized one.
• Nrsolis 14y ago
  Well I've lived here all of my life and in many different parts of the US. I've also lived for short periods abroad. Let me address your points one by one: 1. Comparing us to Japan is really a poor choice. Japan is a highly uniform society and very xenophobic. They have an almost uniform cultural, religious, and genetic makeup. 2. We don't have a single language, a single president, a federal police, or any of the other things you are mentioning in the same manner of which you think of them in your country. The authority of those particular institutions is VERY limited in some very crucial ways. We are more like a strong union of 50 separate states, each with its own government (and president, called a governor here) with its own particular political challenges. There have been SEVERAL fights between the state and federal government over things like national policy and states rights that run counter to your argument. For example, Arizona is fighting with the federal government over immigration enforcement. California is fighting with the federal government over marijuana. Nevada fights with the federal government over online gambling. etc etc etc. During the civil rights era, some southern states mounted what almost became an armed rebellion against the federal government. We also dont have a single language. LARGE parts of this country speak ONLY Spanish, or ONLY Haitian, or ONLY Russian. There is no requirement for someone living here to speak English and it's been a HUGE problem politically in places like California, Texas, and Florida. In California and Washington State, there are large Chinese and Japanese populations that only speak their mother tongue. Furthermore, the country itself is changing constantly. Dearborn, Michigan is home to the largest concentration of Muslims in the USA, and that is having an interesting effect on the political and social dynamic of what was once a very very white/european part of the country. It's easy here to understand how we can identify a Southerner or a Californian by their manner, diet, and dialect. I feel like the rest of the world is often confused by the idea that the USA acts and thinks alike as a uniform country. We're not.
  • jeltz 14y ago
    The same applies to almost any large country. Outsiders tend to think that every country has a single culture, single language, etc. (I am from Sweden so for us that assumption is basically true.) Examples where it is not true: Russia, India, China, Germany, Spain, Italy.
  • 14y ago
• anamax 14y ago
  > That shows a very inefficient use of USA's wealth and a very poor healthcare policy. Actually it doesn't. Suppose we compare the lifespans of Japanese-Americans to Japanese in Japan. Your theory predicts that Japanese-Americans will have a shorter-lifespan. Reality says otherwise. The populations are different. The US is incredibly diverse, and much of that diversity is correlated with geography. Japan, not so much.
  • lebski88 14y ago
    Are you saying that it's genetic or that it's cultural (e.g. food, exercise and lifestyle choices)? I think in America you also have to account for socio-economic status more than in other first world countries. Also where do Japanese-Americans tend to live? I find it hard to imagine that immigration is as high in the poorest regions.
    • anamax 14y ago
      > Are you saying that it's genetic or that it's cultural (e.g. food, exercise and lifestyle choices)? I don't know why it's different. I'm just pointing out that it is, so any theory that predicts otherwise .... > I find it hard to imagine that immigration is as high in the poorest regions. I'm often surprised at where I find people. For example, there are lots of Vietnamese on the gulf-coast. I was treated by a Thai doctor in the middle of Ozarks. > I think in America you also have to account for socio-economic status more than in other first world countries. Why? Are you assuming that health insurance affects life-expectancy? (The effect, if any, is almost in the noise.) I'd expect that rich people in New Orleans would have the same exposure to carcinogens as the poor as they drink the same water.
• anamax 14y ago
  > Actually, I could understand that you could say that US is an union of two countries because of this episode, but a union of 50, no way. How many, and which, states have you lived in? Heck - if you live in CA, how much time have you spent outside LA/SF Bay area? The central valley (where I grew up) is very different, as are the sierra folk. And no, ski trips or summers at Tahoe don't count.
  • _delirium 14y ago
    I've lived in a few, and I agree that, say, the central valley and LA/SF are very different. But I think SF and Boston, say, share a lot in common, enough to be roughly the same country, at least in the way that Paris and Bordeaux, or Oslo and Bergen are the same country (some cultural differences, but not completely foreign). So I would guess there are fewer than 50 really distinct social groups in the U.S.--- several urban social groups, several small-town groups, several rural ones, maybe 5-8 total.
    • bane 14y ago
      I agree with this. I grew up in the mid-Atlantic of the U.S. and feel comfortable anywhere from D.C. up to say...Toronto. Similar enough culture, language, food, architecture, etc. that I don't feel out of place anywhere in that stretch. Go to North Carolina or Georgia? I may as well be in Greece for how at "home" I feel there. Similarly the stretch from SF to Vancouver (Canada) feels relatively homogeneous to me (as an outsider) but distinct from the stretch I grew up in. It's only similarity is the relative wealth. But everything looks and feels different. While San Simeon, CA on south feels like yet another distinct place. Texas is southern but very different than say Kentucky. And Colorado and surrounding have a distinct feel as well.
      • Iv 14y ago
        > Go to North Carolina or Georgia? I may as well be in Greece for how at "home" I feel there. But the language is the same, the newspapers are the same, the political parties are the same. Compare that to Europe where there are, what ? 23 languages for 27 countries, political parties specific to each and news sources totally different.
• maratd 14y ago
  > That shows a very inefficient use of USA's wealth and a very poor healthcare policy. The greatest factor in longevity is genetics, not wealth expenditure. Ever consider that the average genetic makeup of someone in Japan may be quite different from the average in the US? Now, compare those of Japanese ancestry living in the US with those in Japan and I might be interested in your theories.
  • laaph 14y ago
    The greatest factor for longevity in an individual is genetics. For a population not so much. Lots of people say if you remove the US, the greatest correlation (not causation and all that, yes yes) to longevity is health care spending. Picking the first result off google, here: http://andrewgelman.com/2009/12/healthcare_spen/ http://andrewgelman.com/2009/12/healthcare_spen/ Japan is a clear outlier but so is the US.
    • Iv 14y ago
      Wow ! very interesting graph!
  • Iv 14y ago
    Cultural habits are probably the dominant factor. The extension of longevity these last years is mainly due to people stopping smoking. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110207112539.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110207112539.ht... Don't smoke, drink coffee moderately, have low cholesterol, and be wealthy.
• bane 14y ago
  "You have 200 years of common history as a single country..." That's actually not true...even remotely. California and Texas for example have been part of at least three different countries. Texas for example has had six different national owners, including a stint as an independent country. Alaska wasn't a state in the U.S. till 1959! Something like half of the land territory of the U.S. was added in the 20th century. And territories like Virginia have around 400 years of history, only half of which is with the U.S. Oklahoma (a non-European word) held out till 1907 and has at least 25 Native tongues and presently is home to 39 recognized nations protected by treaty!