Thursday, December 27, 2007

We're not #1! We're not #1

(Forgive in advance this serious post. Thanks.)

As you evaluate the pomposity and nonsense spewed by candidates of both major parties this election cycle, beware in particular the ubiquitous "we're the greatest country in the world" statements. This xenophobic B.S. plays well on the campaign trail, but it's not borne out by empirical data collected by the Economist Intelligence Unit and published in the Pocket World of Figures. This annual publication looks at 200 categories in 183 countries.

Just 2 examples that may surprise you:

Quality of Life Index , by city: #1 is Zurich, Switzerland. The first US city to show up on the list at all is San Francisco, at #29! Even fucking Nuremburg, Germany, home of Nazi rallies in the '30s, comes in ahead of any US city.
Quality of Life Index , by country: #1 is Ireland. Placing well ahead of the USA -- Australia (#6), Italy (#8), Singapore (#11). USA is 13th.

Other areas you'd think we'd be #1 but we aren't: highest car ownership (#14), highest GDP per head (10th), economic freedom index (here, the U.S. is beaten by Hong Kong and Australia)...the list goes on. And while we tend to think that people are clamoring to immigrate to the US--surprise--we don't even have the most immigrants coming here per capita, not by a long shot: check this out.

What to make of this? Consider: one of the reasons the USA has an image problem around the world is that we continue to try to export (force?) our political system/lifestyle/viewpoint, and other countries bristle at this. They are perfectly content to make it their own way. And it seems a lot of them are doing pretty well on their own, at least per the facts and figures in the Economist survey.

Food for thought.

posted by Nigel St.John Regina Smegmatica Howle-Raines @ 11:28 AM