I'm just pointing out how their model is not a good one for us.
Speak for yourself.........lets face it, you're vision of what's good for us is a bit biased.
And yours isn't?
Frankly, I think my view is less biased than yours.......if for no other reason that you are motivated by ideology.
On the Former AMD thread you where big on letting voters decide issues. What percentage in the US would vote for a a 1/3rd cut in GDP in order to make the distribution of that GDP more even? Or to phrase it another way that you might consider less biased what percentage of Americans would vote for socializing 10% of industrial production, plus medical care and other services combined with much higher taxes?
I don't think it would be approved.........we've had years of people like your internet friend telling us that our model is the best thing since haagan daz and that the European model is dangerous, dirty and definitely unAmerican.
And unfortunately, Americans can't readily make many comparisons to prove the naysayers wrong. Few have been to Europe; more have been to Canada but they either make up excuses to explain away why Canadian cities are cleaner and more attractive, or they shake their heads in puzzlement.
Meanwhile, supersizing is literally killing us. Obesity, asthma and depression have become chronic among our children. If these conditions continue, the AMA has said that the current generation of children will be the first in American history to have a shorter life span than the preceding one.
We are the most overweight nation on the planet. We spend billions on diets. In my experience, most people don't eat their way to obesity if they are happy. Obesity is followed by depression as a major problem among American adults and diseases related to these two conditions are experiencing a dramatic upswing.
And then I read this article last nite:
"Immigrants outlive U.S.-born residents by years
Life expectancy higher despite lower standard of living, report finds"
msnbc.msn.com
I see this kind of article at least once every couple of months; however, most Americans ignore them. And like you, they pull out the numbers for GDP, per capita income, etc to show that our way of life is better.
Well, there are more measures to determining the quality of life of a country than owning a big screen tv, SUVs and dvd players.
I told you......the crimes that are higher are bribery and other white collar crimes.
I know what you told me but your wrong. Your data only covers murder and serious assault, it doesn't cover all "street crimes". It seems like Swedes are less likely to be killed or to face a near fatal assault but are more likely to be raped or to have their property stolen.
There was another site than I linked to that broke out the various street crimes[not just murder and serious assault] as well as assorted white collar crimes.........but I can't find it now. The white collar crimes were higher for Sweden than the US but the US was higher in street crimes.
From the link I posted earlier.
minjust.nl.
Overall victimization (which includes all types of crimes)
This prevalence measure is a simple but robust indicator of overall proneness to crime. The countries fall into three bands.
* Above 24% (victim of any crime in 1999): Australia, England and Wales, the Netherlands and Sweden
* 20%-24%: Canada, Scotland, Denmark, Poland, Belgium, France, and USA
* Under 20%: Finland, Catalonia (Spain), Switzerland, Portugal, Japan and Northern Ireland.
#
Theft of personal property
# Thefts of personal property will be heterogeneous in nature, but the highest risks were in Australia, Sweden, and Poland (about 5%-6% of people were victimized).
Sexual incidents
Women in Sweden, Finland, Australia and England and Wales were most at risk of sexual assault. Women in Japan, Northern Ireland, Poland and Portugal were least at risk.
Crime seriousness
We corrected the victimization rates for crime seriousness to see how countries fared on a crime count taking seriousness into account. It did not greatly alter the 'burden of crime' picture from other measures. Australia, England and Wales, the Netherlands and Sweden still remain most pressured by crime. However, Denmark and Canada fall back in the relative order when seriousness is taken into account, while the USA and Northern Ireland go higher up the list.
What a joke.....last time I was in Sweden, the people looked mighty happy........attempts by American idiots to discredit their econ. model notwithstanding.
They may very well be happy. I wasn't arguing that they are not. Its hard quantify or objectively compare happiness.
But happy or not they are poorer then we are, and have a higher prevalence of crime in general (but less murders). And the average Swede is less likely to own a VCR, a microwave, or a clothes dryer then the poorest 1/5th of Americans.
Because of the nature of the report, I can't prove this but one can't look at raw statistics and assume you have a valid comparison; that the report is comparing apples to apples. That's why you shouldn't ignore this paragraph:
"We took six crime types to look at differences in reporting levels. The highest reporting rates were in Denmark and Sweden, Northern Ireland, the Netherlands (60% or just under). Reporting was also relatively common in Belgium, England and Wales, Switzerland, France and Scotland (above 50%). Crimes were least often reported in Portugal, Japan, Catalonia, and Poland (less than 40%). "
After years of high crime levels, Americans are notorious for not reporting crime as readily as people of other countries.
In addition, street crimes such as pickpockets are more more common in countries like Sweden because there is considerably more pedestrian traffic in Swedish cities as opposed to American cities. I suspect if the cultural differences between countries are taken into consideration, the overall crime rate would be higher for the US.
Having said that, there is no question that crime has worsened in Europe since I was last there in 1990. Its too bad that things have gotten as bad as they have.
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