: ...well, statistics, at any rate. I found some interesting ones in the paper yesterday and was wondering if anyone would care to comment.: Electoral Turnout
: Indonesia 96%
: Australia 95%
: South Africa 86%
: Germany 82%
: UK 72%
: France 69%
: Japan 60%
: US 49%
: (taken from most recent elections)
My personal take on this is that Americans simply do not care. I am not saying this as a bad thing however, it means that things in the country are going just dandy and so long as things remain well, there are no big issues to vote on. If there were, say, a referendum on the sovereignty of Texas, I could see a large portion of people coming out to vote.
: Literacy
: Japan 99%
: UK 99%
: US 97%
: Cuba 96%
: (Source: CIA)
Life is good :)
: External debt, 1999
: US $862 billion
: Russia $164 billion
: China $159 billion
: Colombia $18 billion
: Bangladesh $16.7 billion
: Ireland $11 billion
: (Source: CIA)
Not surprising. Keep in mind however, that the U.S. has an annual budget in the range of 3-5 trillion dollars. It is all relative. Also, the thing with debts, is that the government is not subject to interest. This allows governments to hold off payments for quite some time, and with increasing inflation, this means that a 10 billion dollar debt after WW II, which was a tremendous amount, can be paid of 30-50 years later, and it is small change.
This of course would be different if we ran on a gold standard...that, however, is another topic!
: Percentage of population obese
: US 30%
: Cuba 26.9%
: Brazil 25.1%
: Ghana 17%
: UK 16.5%
: China 7.2%
: India 3%
: (Source: CIA)
Well, at least they are happy :). Seriously though, I think it all boils down to lifestlye. More Americans are becoming more concious about their health these days though, I mean, I live in a fairly middle class neighbourhood and when I go jogging every morning (except cold ones!)at 5:30 I see a lot of people out.
: Electricity consumption per capita
: US 13477 kWh
: Japan 7523 kWh
: France 6966 kWh
: UK 5525 kWh
: Russia 5397 kWh
: (Source: CIA)
Cheap electricity. Very, very, very cheap :) (Personally, I love it!)
: Infant mortality, deaths per 100
: Colombia 28
: Cuba 7.8
: US 6.6
: UK 5.9
: Japan 3.8
: Sweden 3.6
: (Source: CIA)
Very interesting. Does it take in abortions? What are the causes of the infant deaths?
: TVs per capita
: US 0.79
: Japan 0.79
: Germany 0.62
: UK 0.33
: China 0.24
: Cuba 0.22
: (Source: CIA)
Still nothing good on. I am not allowed to watch C-Span anymore because I get too excited and call in and then I have massive phonebills with calls to D.C. :)
None.
