The following article is based on excerpts from the book The Measure of a Nation: How to Regain America's Competitive Edge and Boost Our Global Standing.
A key goal in Measure of a Nation is to compare the United States to other wealthy countries, with the idea being to identify which countries are performing the best in each area of interest: health, safety, democracy, education and equality. In each of those areas, the countries that are performing the best are examined to determine which best practices might be applied here in America. In order to do this analysis, we selected the subset of countries that are both wealthy (nominal GDP per capita over $20,000) and have a population greater than 10 million (upper third of national populations, no city-state countries) as a comparison group. This comparison group consists of 14 countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, The Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Equally instructive is the index's breakdown of states within the United States. According to the GPI, the most peaceful states are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Utah and Minnesota, while the least peaceful are Louisiana, Tennessee, Nevada, Florida and Arizona. These state-level rankings correlate closely with economic opportunities, education and health and are independent of the party in power in the separate statehouses and state legislatures. Incarceration and homicide rates in the most peaceful American states are roughly one-fifth the rates of the most dangerous states and are close to the rates found in the European competition.
It is ironic that Japan, one of the aggressors of World War II, has enjoyed under US protection an era of relatively minimal internal and external violence that has enabled it to reduce its military expenditures and to institute policies and laws that make it a safer place to live than the United States.
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Note: Data for the GPI were extracted from Vision of Humanity, Global Peace Index:
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Serously though my heavy weapons are down now. Since I am older I prefer the easier to carry over the ones that need a four wheel drive vehicle.
Oh Canada we stand on guard for thee. At your Southern border we will protect you, like we protect those on our Southern border, the Hispanics, and our most Northerly border the Tovarish clan.
Now if we could only protect ourselves from ourselves, and each other.....
In other words, our constitutional freedoms make us "less peaceful"? Thanks, but I will keep freedom...
Your email exemplifies point (1), an attitude regarding weapons that is very much at home with many Americans but is out of place with much of the developed world.
Like a carrier group that costs a million dollars a day to assist rebels in Libya! I am confident that Spain and Portugal could have done the exact same thing the US did - no better! What? They are broke you say and defaulting on loans? As if!
Talk about cherry picking the points to evaluate - this is about as valid as the hockey stick and global warming. What would happen if you took out the military and military actions, then what would happen if you use the entire EU, what would happen if you included more of Asia with Japan?
What would happen if they took out the top 100 city centers in the US evaluation? See the old story is still valid statistics do not lie but all good liars have statistics for their point of view.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
Mark Twain
I am comparing data at a national level, that is country-to-country. I can't tell if you are joking in your email but I am certain that you realize that selecting parts of one country to compare to an entire other country would most certainly be cherry-picking.
California is the 7th largest economy on earth and it is just a State. IMO there are numerous smaller States that would stand well versus European Nations. My attempt is to just point out the facts that comparisons are impossible in my opinion as the European Nations do not report crimes like we do - they do not seek out drug dealers and users. They do not arrest many prostitutes. many of the big cities have high crime rates from theft that go unreported IMO.
No, Europe has been a very dangerous place in the last 120 years and millions have died. Maybe if they had been armed they could have saved those millions? Is war not the greatest crime of all?