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> US is #1 at caring about being #1

That seems like a bit of an overstatement[0] considering all the categories that the US isn't #1, e.g. Life expectancy (#49) [1]. Granted, these rankings are quite old, but you can pretty easily find others, for example Hans Rosling's presentations on health care.

EDIT: This is not a dig at the US as such. I just think it's time for a reality check for many people.

[0] Or, rather, the US doesn't seem to be very effectual at improving the situation.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_the_U...




Actually, the US probably does lead in life expectancy... As usual, you can make the data do anything you like, but this methodology makes a lot of sense.

http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-the-us-lead-in-life-exp...


I may be off my rocker, but it seems kind of weird to specifically discount murders and such when calculating life expectancy. I mean, I get that the health care system probably can't have much effect on murder as a cause of death, but life expectancy is life expectancy no matter what eventually ends up killing you.

(My reference to Hans Rosling was more of an aside, I didn't mean to conflate average life expectancy with the standard of health care. I apologize if that wasn't clear.)


You're totally correct, but so is the paper discussed in the WSJ link.

Different measures of life expectancy for different purposes.

It's a bit like the inequality data "showing" that the US has higher post-tax&transfer inequality than does France. -News flash- nations with stronger social safety nets have stronger social safety nets!

It seems that the pertinent measure would be pre-tax&transfer income inequality... a measure which just so happens to show the US and France have identical GINIs. But you won't read that in the NYT...


> That seems like a bit of an overstatement[0] considering all the categories that the US isn't #1[...]

I wrote caring about being #1. Not necessarily being nr. 1.




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