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Originally Posted by zerojunkie  Compulsory education, health care, and "general standard of living" are the ones that immediately come to mind. |
kinda of a hijacking (of my making) I guess but periodically we go down this road... so if we don't lead in those catagories who does? Just so we can look at side be side comparisons. Just for the record... statistics on this stuff often fail to represent a valid side by siude comparison. For example, many love to cite live child births and claim Cuba's got a better rate. When you dive into the stats we find that if a direct comparison is used rather than simply relyuing on Cuba's reported rate it is no longer true. (Cuba is extremely generous with itself in compiling its statistics)
Oh, agreed on compulsory education but on non compulsory (meaning private k-12 and university) you're gonna have a hard time denying our position as the best in the world. So, it comes down to how you decide to do your rankings... do you compare our worst to others best or our best to others best.
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Originally Posted by zerojunkie I will cede that Rumsfield had a great deal to do with the shift in military thinking that put more of an emphasis on covert ops. Lets be real though, the speed in which we reached Baghdad was more because Saddam's army wouldn't engage US forces in a stand up fight than any sort of brilliance on the part of the administration. |
You're addressing a "why" when he was simply stating a "what."
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Originally Posted by zymote Heathcare stats: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-healthcare.htm
And on the quality of life thing, unless you're wealthy or upper middle class, the quality of life in Western/Northern Europe is definitely higher. I've spent quite a bit of time on both sides of the pond, and while I live in the US by choice, the average person does live quite a bit better over there.
And education? C'mon. |
again... you're comparing our lowest to their best...
education... the world sends its best and brightest to our universities. They send their sickest to our best hospitals etc etc. But you're right - money matters in the equation.