That wonderful Europe

As someone who immigrated to the United States from a small island off the coast of Europe, I take an extremely dim view of anyone in Europe criticizing anything about America. Frankly It continues to bemuse me how anyone who has had the experience of living both in and outside America could mount a serious comparative criticism.

Note that this figure may not be exactly comparable.

You can say that again--about a million times.

Different nations report different figures in different ways, and big meta-comparisons are misleading. As Brian correctly notes, my favorite example of how that works in practice is Infant Mortality (IM) stats. Every country uses a different definition of what infant mortality is, every country collects their stats in different ways with differing degrees of accuracy, the figures can't be compared without accompanying (and accurate) perinatal mortality (PM) stats--which very few nations compile at all. And some, like Cuba, actively (gasp!) lie about their IM figures.

To get even remotely good comparison figures for economic well-being, you'd have to translate available income per capita into figures adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP)--a standard unit of purchasing power. And that in turn would have to be compared to a standardized "basket" of goods and services that were agreed to constitute a basic minimum.

And there's several dozen basic variables to compare and adjust for. For example, the Swedish population median age is about 3.5 years older than that of the U.S., Germany's about 5.5 years older, and people have different wants and requirements at different ages...

In general, GDP per capita as measured in PPP is about 50% higher in the U.S. than in the higher-income nations of Europe, but that still has to be converted back to what is actually received in the way of goods and services.

About two years ago, I got into a verbal with my band, who collectively thought Europe had it better than us Yanks. I later sent them links to articles written by Europeans discussing the flagging economic conditions throughout the region. No one ever brought up the subject again.

Just ran across an old link I made in a posting on another forum, which reminded me of another data point for comparison. The U.S. ranks about 40th in the world based on male suicide rates, according to the U.N. World Health Organization. We're 50th for females, but the rank order stays about the same. Here's some key country-to-country comparisons on the male suicide rate: Belgium is 14th, Switzerland 17th, France 18th, Denmark 29th, Germany 32nd, Sweden 33rd, Canada 34th, Norway 35th. Note that the U.K. beats us out, coming in 54th.

I used to get embroiled in very intense conversations with folks over at DPReview.com. While DPReview is an excellent site devoted to photography, its extensive world-wide readership often generated good trans-Atlantic interaction on hot-button political topics.

Once, I was in an argument with a Swede who was busy denouncing America and promoting Europe as one of the places around the world where they take democracy a lot more seriously than in the United States.

Here's one of my several responses:

You mention Sweden as an example of a more enlightened form of democracy than the U.S. Did you know that in Sweden, every resident is required to be registered with the central government at birth, and that you are required to constantly update the government on your current address? And that to enable this registration system to function correctly, every resident is assigned a unique identifying number upon registration? http://www.rsv.se/broschyrer/711/711b03.html

As for how America ranks in its values and its commitment to such things as education and health care, as well as cultural freedom and commitment to diversity, the U.N., in its annual human development report, ranked the U.S. 8th in the world. Not as good as I would like it to be, but well above 16th place France and 19th place Germany. http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/

Contrary to the assertion that criticism of the current administration is shouted down as treasonous or unpatriotic, the American public has shown itself to be very tolerant of even the most ludicrous of attacks on our government, so deep is our commitment to freedom of speech. I would point out, too, that Michael Moore criticizes not only our goverment but also our people as a whole, calling his fellow countrymen stupid and ignorant. His recent efforts to tell other countries who they should vote for and what policies they should adopt have led some foreign media to suggest that he himself is the prototypical "ugly American", arrogant and condescending to others.

Please take a moment to investigate the actual facts, and not just those that suit your own predetermined opinion.

I thought his response was rather classic, proclaiming that when his government tracked people, it was for good, not evil:

Yes, and your point is?

The fact is, most civilised countries have that requirement. That's how the monthly childcare, compulsory health insurance, voting card and a million more things succeed in reaching 98% of the people all the time, every time.

Actually, the rest of his response cited figures on relative poverty rates around the world. According to the figures he used, which came from the U.N.'s annual human development report, several countries in Europe had poverty rates much lower than the U.S. I'm going to have to go back and take a look at this U.N. report to see how it calculated poverty rates across countries.

Europeans do occasionlly suggest Americans are stupid. But they're pretty even-handed, applying the same term to members of the opposite party or to other European nations. So I don't take it personally. They're more likely actually to say we're fat. Since we are in fact fat, it's hard to take too much offense there, either.

As for comparative poverty. I used to snark to Europeans that I could at least get through an American city without being panhandled ten times. No longer true. Here in relatively prosperous Chapel Hill, NC I can't pull up to a stoplight without some hobo asking me for money.

And I would note that despite being well above the American poverty line I can no longer seriously contemplate relocating to Europe because the currency I own, the USD, is worth about as much as Monopoly money when traded for Euros.