We’re (not) Number One
Before the yelling starts I’m America-hating Eurotrash, I’d like to clear a few things up: first off I am American — not British as the many emails people send me assume. Secondly, I desperately, desperately want America to actually be the best country in the world. I’ve lived in London for the majority of the Bush presidency and been miserable watching from a distance as the nation crumbles from within.
What is it that prevents America from righting herself? Stupid, blind, unthinking patriotism — willful idiots yelling “We’re number one!” while ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
That Americas now have shorter lives than Bosnians, that our democracy is only slightly better than the Czech Republic’s, that we have more people in prison per capita than any other country in the world, and that a child born in Slovakia is more likely to survive than in America is pathetic.
We can fix this. We must fix this. But before you can fix a problem, you must acknowledge that it exists.
This comic is also available as a printable PDF and as a poster in the miscellanea store.
The sources used for the poster are:
The OECD Countries of the world Database
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listofcountriesbynumberofmobilephonesin_use
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/08/14/science/sciencespecial2/20050815EVOGRAPHIC.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldwidePressFreedomIndex#WorldwidePressFreedomIndex_Ranking
http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/series/2543/pisa_2006/29012/29013/6
http://www.itif.org/files/BroadbandRankings.pdf
P.S. If you are interested in an amazing lecture covering how countries compare to each other, check out this TED talk by Hans Rosling and his website http://gapminder.org/
October 27th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Obesity. you left that off your list. America is #1 again!
October 27th, 2008 at 9:48 am
You missed one that US is #1 for - military expenditure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
;)
October 27th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Oh trust me, I haven’t forgotten how fat America is. : )
October 27th, 2008 at 10:46 am
It seems to me to be nonsense to imagine countries as being in competition with each other (even if you could really quantify all those criteria so precisely, which is doubtful). This attitude is probably the cause of more problems than it solves.
Is there some significance in your having to explain, in a numbered list, how many countries there are between the bronze medal and the US?
October 27th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Can’t find the source of the life expectancy stat in the links you gave, the only one I did find that had Bosnia was off the photius link and it was circa 1999 and had bosnia way down.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Thanks for pointing that out. I took it from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy and will edit that back into the main post.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:54 am
I’m moving to Iceland. Clearly Iceland’s three #1 spots make it the best country to live. There would never be a financial meltdown or flag-burning in Iceland.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:00 am
The Iceland situation makes me feel sad. I was just there this summer and it’s an amazing country — so beautiful and modern. I was very surprised at the melt down they had. Admittedly, their inflation was their own problem, but the British sure didn’t help the situation when caused a run on the banks and froze their money under never-intended-to-be-used-that-way terrorism laws.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Methinks it would be way cool (in a geeky kinda way) if you could put this data in a spreadsheet for us, since you clearly have the data already gathered. Say for instance the top 50 in each category. We could download it, assign weights to each category, and even add our own categories such as climate and availability of work in our chose fields. (You could even pre-supply the necessary formulas, and some placeholders for custom categories. Yes I’d volunteer to help with the Excel-fu.) Then everybody could figure out what countries really suit them best, and know exactly why, instead of being blindly loyal to wherever they happened to be born.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I have one criticism:
“What is it that prevents America from righting herself? Stupid, blind, unthinking patriotism — willful idiots yelling “We’re number one!” while ignoring all evidence to the contrary.“
That’s nationalism, not patriotism. The confusion of the two is something that I continually try to correct (though it is probably tilting at windmills).
October 27th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
You know, you might want to do what your source does and list Taiwan as “Republic of China (Taiwan)” Because I *know* I’m not the only one who’s going to look at that casually and think “There is no way in hell we have less press freedom than China. This poster is bunk.” I know the political reasons for the name, but there’s something to be said for unambiguous labels as well.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
It’s a good point. I tend to defer to wikipedia when it comes to naming conventions but I think you have a good reason for changing it.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
In 2007 the International Labor Organization announced that the US labor force was #1 among nations in productivity, but that only reflected more yearly hours worked than other countries. When the ranking was changed to take into account productivity by the hour (probably a more valid method, since we all know longer hours do not equal greater actual productivity), Norway beat the US. Even if we accept the method that puts the US in the top spot, though, other countries are catching up fast, especially in Asia. I agree with the sentiment of this post. So long as we run around claiming we’re number one in everything (McCain made the “#1 in productivity” claim recently) we’re never going to do anything to fix how far behind we actually are.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
No way Italy is 2nd in public healthcare. Do you know what are the criteria for that list?
October 27th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Sadly, there is an underlying assumption that any metric that doesn’t put the US first must be biased.
But, the preferred spelling of “Prison” contains only one “i.”
October 27th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
And Barack Obama is going to do anything about the farm subsidies that make it rational and cheapest for Americans to eat crap and get fat? Or is he going to make symbolic changes, spend a lot of money, but not go to the root cause of the problem? (Which, by the way, contributes to our low life expectancy and our health care system’s ranking.)
How about another significant reason our life expectancy is as low as it is - murder? Is BO going to lower crime rates in America somehow? Because a president has that power?
Or he’s really going to work on increasing the civil liberties in our country, instead of keeping things status quo? Going to keep the CIA/NSA/FBI in check? That’s why he voted for the telecom immunity bill, right?
Yup, we can and we must fix this, but we can’t rely on Obama like some sainted savior of our country. Better than McCain != great.
October 29th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Wow, a lot of Scandanavia up top…
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:42 am
As a native Finn, I find the claim of Finlands lack of corruption rather ridiculous.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Mobile phones per capita? Who cares?
November 7th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
@ Dan,
Mobile phones == connectivity, and connectivity is proportional to productivity. I think there is a tendency among an older generation (not saying that’s you) to think of mobile phones and broadband as luxury items, but they are not. They are absolutely vital for the future.
Check out this TED Talk on the topic.
November 12th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I didnt see a “contact author” method, so, please pull this from comments if you like.
w/r/t Mobile Phones, could you do a seperate entry - these comments are off-topic for the “We’re #1″ post (excellent and thought provoking). Also the link to TED talk is, of course, to multimedia rather than text. Can you help me here? I am mystified by people posting non-visual (a picture is still worth a thougsand words) information in multimedia form, or textual information via audio (podcast), What are the advantages? Why the popularity?
I am not convinced that Cell Phones are such a good idea, and I think it would be an interesting topic for comments.
Thanks, always a fun blog.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I just found your comic today, and I’m reading through the archives. Very nice, sometimes funny, and frequently thoughtful.
I wanted to comment on this one to give you another source for world rankings: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/rankorderguide.html
November 18th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Re: “…we have more people in prison per capita than any other country in the world…” It’s not JUST “per capita.” The US has more people in prison than any other country, period. From the Washington Post, Feb. 29, 2008: “With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.”
December 4th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
America is actually not even close to #1 for obesity, either. Palau (I think) holds that with something like 99% of their population in the overweight category.
December 7th, 2008 at 8:50 am
@Dave Aronson: There has already been a effort to do such a thing, though admittedly it is a bit old and missing some criteria: http://www.vexen.co.uk/countries/best.html
But if your still planning to make a better (newer) one. I am seriously planning to go to the best country for an internship or something. To see what it is like.
I live in the Netherlands, so according to this list there isn’t so much room for improvement. But I have a feeling we went down a bit in the last 4 years.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:53 am
I wonder how rankings would change if you could somehow measure levels of racism in each country. I mean, to be sure, it’s no picnic being a person of color in the U.S. (which I am). But I’ve heard horror stories about life in Scandinavia for people of color. I think it’s a bit easier to be so ‘together’ when your society is smaller and fairly homogenous. Not trying to make excuses for the U.S., believe me. Just trying to complicate the argument a bit.
December 26th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
“wellington_grey
October 27th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Thanks for pointing that out. I took it from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy and will edit that back into the main post.”
Her is your problem! Don’t take things from Wikipedia - Everyone knows this, I would like to see where you complied all these stats and where? Please don’t say all from Wikipedia - anyone can change those numbers!!
January 8th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
“Her is your problem! Don’t take things from Wikipedia - Everyone knows this”- Oh, enough with the bullshit Wikipedia hating.
No, you’d rather people had “expert” information… as long as their subscription is paid.
“anyone can change those numbers!!” If you really think so, try it out.
February 11th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
“What is it that prevents America from righting herself? Stupid, blind, unthinking patriotism — willful idiots yelling “We’re number one!” while ignoring all evidence to the contrary. ”
That is called nationalism.
“Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, “the greatest”, but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.”
- Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (1917-1986)
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:23 pm
oh, man.
if we could only get the obamacons that believe this kind of stuff to just move to those so-called “good” countries.
it would be worth every trillion that obama spends.
April 28th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
The america had became much badder when bush was president they we’re a good people as is know until somewhere 1900 i think they started to think that they are the only nation and must rule the world i think so.The Bush started a wars what weren’t needed like attacking an iraq as i know there we’re no big risk of terrorism and attack they attacked it for money…
May 8th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
It would cost more to move to another country than to just weather the storm.
We are far from the best country, without a doubt.
And no, Obama is not Jesus, he won’t fully solve the problem.
But the Obama administration is working towards solutions to some of the issues that the Bush administration never touched or addressed/made worse.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:00 am
“people in prison per capita … leaving far-more-populous China a distant second”
Sure. The Chicoms just bring “them” out back and feed them a lead snack.
Anyway, someone living in Britain complaining about American freedoms is a pot calling the kettle black.
“Mobile phones == connectivity”
Sure, when your national PTT sucks worse than a Treasury Secretary that doesn’t pay his taxes. Otherwise, your assertion is a steaming pile of monkey turds.
I just got my first cell phone 2 months ago, but guess what? With a cable modem and a land line with two phone numbers, I’ve been telecommuting for 8 years.
June 28th, 2009 at 6:07 am
I’m american, meaning I was born in america. I hate it severely, though. A bunch of tools proud of something they had no control over - where they were when they were born. If they’re proud of what americans stand for, they are almost always inaccurate. It’s stupid.
Hellooooo DJ. Jesus didn’t solve all the problems. Most of them he (allegedly) made seem less bad, and that was it. So Obama IS like jesus. Blind support/fanaticism, doesn’t actually fix much, socialist… wait… I’m thinking jesus would have no political opinion. So if he were running for something, he’d just call himself something he wasn’t… so obama IS like jesus. Obama just calls himself a democrat, like what jesus would do.