How do you rank your country?

Was this news a suprise to you?

The scrolling list makes selecting the country a PITA since it moves, move it one notch and it goes 2...I gave up after a few tries. Suffice where I'd like to be at times...was ranked 9'th. Pastures look greener but on a broad list like this, it isn't as simple.

As an american, I think that article makes sense, maybe except for australia and canada. I think they should be right next to america. Also, that graph had "political climate" which seems like it could be easily biased, and I think america deserves a boost for personal rights laws (australia's banning things left and right, for example)... but otherwise it seems to make sense.

Hard to believe the USA ranks 11 place given our double digit unemployment, porous borders, sky rocketing deficit, and those in power looking to take us further down that road.

Interesting. Regarding personal rights, that could either be a positive or a negative. Obviously, if a country bans something you wouldn't want to do anyway, then lack of that "right" isn't seen as a negative. And allowing things in the name of personal freedom is only good up until the point where what your neighbor does doesn't negatively affect you. Ideally, anything which doesn't affect others at all should be allowed. Anything which does should be banned if the effects are sufficiently negative ( i.e. I'm talking about real, demonstrable effects on physical or economic health, not banning things simply because some segment of the population finds them annoying ).

And I personally find the 11th place ranking of the US astounding. Besides the high unemployment, deficit, poor education system, poor health care, there is a huge infrastructure problem. Roads and the electrical grid are one step away from catastrophic failure. Public transit is pretty much non-existant in 95% of the country. We haven't even started a high-speed rail system. Because there is an entrenched culture against investing in public infrastructure, fixing things is unlikely anytime soon. I would personally put the US much lower, probably a notch or two above Mexico.

Id say this is going to get sent "Underground" in a hurry.

mrartillery said:

Id say this is going to get sent "Underground" in a hurry.

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Ditto.

But then I like a good train wreck as much as the next person so let's see who's going to be the idiot this time....

They don't have Californian or Hawaiian women in Finland..

Greta said:

Ditto.

But then I like a good train wreck as much as the next person so let's see who's going to be the idiot this time....

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LOL

And as for america's financial woes, you guys are being way to negative. A notch or two above mexico? Have you looked over the border recently? Our unemployment is only 9.6%, which is only around 3% too cold. Even during our market collapse, our GDPPC was ranked at 24th, and has gotten higher since then. Our spending power is incredible. The reason we have a deficit is because the majority of voters do not have the slightest economic education and will vote for the person who will give them more handouts. I'm looking at you, stimulus package. If Obama wasn't just after votes he would actually listen to an economist and use monetary policy to help the cold economy AND decrease national debt. But of course, he's just like every other politician and only wants more political power.

I like this better... http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/ just kiddin!

it's too many of these ''best country lists''

i've been in Finland, it is a very very great country!

In the interests of keeping this thread above ground, I offer up the premise that rating a country as a whole is flawed. That might account for what some consider unusually high or low ratings for their country of choice. You probably need to break each nation down into at least regions, and/or large cities, for things to make some sense. This is especially true in highly diverse countries like the United States. It all comes down to statistics. You might have a nation where one city is doing exceedingly well, and that could bring up the average substantially while the majority of citizens are still suffering. For that reason, maybe the spread between the best and worst places in a country should be weighed in somehow also. It's sort of like the idea of a group of 100 people having an average income of $50K. You can get this if you have 25 each with incomes of $20K, $40K, $60K, and $80K. You can also get the same average with 99 incomes of $1K and one income of $4.901M. It's pretty obvious which place would be better to live for the majority, even though both would rank the same on a scale of income.

BTW, anyone notice a strong correlation between climate and overall ranking? The hottest countries tend to do the poorest in most areas. To me this isn't surprising. People as a rule slow down when it's hot. That accounts for the poor economics. Hot weather increases the prevalence of insect-borne disease, so no surprise the hottest countries generally have the lowest life expectancy.

wyager,

Maybe I'm overly pessimistic in my assessment of the USA. The thing with me is I tend to evaluate things not just as they are, but the way I see them going. Everything you say is presently true. However, do not underestimate the infrastructure problem here in the USA. IMO, it's not the deficit or any of other things people often mention which has the greatest potential to be our undoing. Remember that if our transportation network and/or electrical grid fails, so goes the entire country. Both now are on life support. I really don't want to get any more political than this for fear of having this interesting thread locked. I'll just say for now that we really need to diversify both the grid and our transportation network.

Canada My Canada generally does well in these best country surveys but that said one has to point out that they typically use socialist values and also that Newsweak is the mag that had the cover saying "we are all socialists now" when Mr O was elected.

jtr1962 said:

Maybe I'm overly pessimistic in my assessment of the USA. The thing with me is I tend to evaluate things not just as they are, but the way I see them going. Everything you say is presently true. However, do not underestimate the infrastructure problem here in the USA. IMO, it's not the deficit or any of other things people often mention which has the greatest potential to be our undoing. Remember that if our transportation network and/or electrical grid fails, so goes the entire country. Both now are on life support. I really don't want to get any more political than this for fear of having this interesting thread locked. I'll just say for now that we really need to diversify both the grid and our transportation network.

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Doesn't everyone evaluate things that way?

It's true that the infrastructure here is failing. Roads, electrical systems, water, gas, they're all dying from the inside. We'll probably get a smart grid with energy storage in the next few years once blackouts reach critical mass. Roads/maglevs are easy to do once we get out of this debt sinkhole. Our education system also needs a revamp, I can tell you having been in both public and private schools that public schools are generally much more awful, and a lot of money is wasted in them too. The teachers they hire don't know their subjects, they spend too much on athletics and aesthetics, and they waste all of their extra dollars on kids who either A)can't speak english or B)don't want to learn.

The public school I used to go to many years back in california was a GATE school-that meant they had a special program for kids that excelled in sciences and stuff. Well guess what? Now they've abandoned that program for a program that teaches spanish speaking kids. In an american public school.:fail: So THAT's where my tax dollars are going.

I like Canada. The only thing I don't like about Vancouver is the rain.

Generally nice people, no racism, extreme prejudice... people generally get along. No crime, and safe walking home at all hours in most if not all neighborhoods. Kids play on the street outside all the time.

And also good is the lack of polarizing debate we see with our neighbors to the south. It's sad sometimes to see this is the choice of politicians you guys have :sigh:. We don't have many of those boisterous, my-way-or-the-highway politicians up here that draw so much of the world's attention, but at the same time things work better this way.
Also a plus is within the same country you can hop a plane to Quebec - and be in a completely different culture. Of course you guys on the Eastern seaboard can do so easily then me .



Edit: 1 difference also is the lack of Canadian counterparts to American political pundits.
About those, all I can say is this: Americans have little to worry about. What they need most is perspective. You live in the the richest, freest country in the world with the opportunity much of the world would die for.

Those who have no perspective don't know what injustice really is; they don't know what tyranny is; they don't know what poverty really means.
People brave the desert, the sea, hell they travel on rickety boats to Canada just to make their way to the states!!!
The sky is not falling, the American constitution is written up that it would take eons to take away your freedoms, you have quite possibly the cheapest gas in the world, cheapest food (so cheap !!!!), housing, living expenses, etc. Worry not!

These kinds of lists come out pretty frequently, but I don't think you can sum up and "rank" a whole entire country based on a tiny handful of misc statistics - there are just so many different things that could be considered and valued in different ways. So the whole concept of these lists doesn't make any sense to me.

wyager said:

It's true that the infrastructure here is failing. Roads, electrical systems, water, gas, they're all dying from the inside. We'll probably get a smart grid with energy storage in the next few years once blackouts reach critical mass.

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I'm noticing that you're in Texas. The fact that the infrastructure there is failing just underscores how bad things are. Texa mostly wasn't built up until air-conditioning became the norm. And yet the relatively young infrastructure there is failing. Here in the Northeast a lot of our utilities date from the 19th century. Don't even ask about the condition of the roads here in NYC. We have patches over patches. I don't even think the problem is lack of money. Things were in better repair when tax rates were less. It's all a matter of how those tax dollars are appropriated. Unfortunately, I think things will have to literally fail before the public sees the need to put some money into infrastructure.

jtr1962 said:

I'm noticing that you're in Texas. The fact that the infrastructure there is failing just underscores how bad things are. Texa mostly wasn't built up until air-conditioning became the norm. And yet the relatively young infrastructure there is failing. Here in the Northeast a lot of our utilities date from the 19th century. Don't even ask about the condition of the roads here in NYC. We have patches over patches. I don't even think the problem is lack of money. Things were in better repair when tax rates were less. It's all a matter of how those tax dollars are appropriated. Unfortunately, I think things will have to literally fail before the public sees the need to put some money into infrastructure.

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I actually haven't noticed it as much in texas (just moved here), but the area I live in is old (think early 20th century) and the public doesn't even WANT to renovate the area's utilities (if they could), simply because of the "historical value", which I couldn't care about less. But in the city, I think power is not a problem. I've heard bad things about electricity in NYC, like those blackouts a few weeks back in the heatwave... awful!

wyager said:

As an american, I think that article makes sense, maybe except for australia and canada. I think they should be right next to america. Also, that graph had "political climate" which seems like it could be easily biased, and I think america deserves a boost for personal rights laws (australia's banning things left and right, for example)... but otherwise it seems to make sense.

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I think Australia is probably higher up the list because of our health system and we got through the recent financial crisis far better than a lot of other countries.
Norm

Norm said:

I think Australia is probably higher up the list because of our health system and we got through the recent financial crisis far better than a lot of other countries.

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And Miranda Kerr.

Greta said:

But then I like a good train wreck as much as the next person so let's see who's going to be the idiot this time....

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Is it my turn yet? :thinking:

Please fill in the blank.

__________ is a perfect utopia. Everybody else is one step from a hell hole.