From: hiraga@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Yuzuru Hiraga)
Subject: Re: US as No. 1 (3 data books) 
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 23:45:11 GMT

Some thoughts (and like Bill Lambert, newsgroups trimmed to s.c.j. only).

In article <1993Jan22.151010.17928@acuson.com> miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman ) writes:
>	... E.g., the US murder rate is 9.4/100,000, with the next
>	highest being Sweden with 7.2/100,000.  (From another data
>	source I know that the US rate for blacks is 66/100,000 and for
>	whites it is 8+/100,000.)  The surprise for me is not that the
>	US has the highest rate but that it isn't as much higher as I
>	thought.

Perhaps we should consider the population distribution here, assuming
that the US has greater rural population and that murders are centered
in the urban areas.
In one of his "Metamagical Themas" article, D.Hofstadter wrote
something like:  It's alarming to know that the number of murders in
the LA area is about equal to that of whole Japan.

>	Another surprise to me was how poor the US is in
>	recycling - 29% of glass, 12% of paper, compared to the best
>	country (the Netherlands) at 53% and 62%, respectively.

Well no surprise to me (I knew it beforehand :-).
And this in spite of all the public consciousness and visible efforts
we see in the US (do I see a common tendency here?).

How about the gross amount of environmental pollution?

>	One surprise:  The US has one of the smallest middle classes of
>	the major countries.  In the US, 53.7% have incomes between
>	0.67 and 1.5 times the national median, compared to Japan with
>	90%, Sweden with 79%, Germany with 70.1%, and 6 other countries
>	with higher numbers.

This by itself isn't much of a surprise (in Japan, the wages of the
national university staff differ by about a ratio of 3 between the
lowest (assistants) and highest (permanent professors); Similarly,
in corporations, executive/freshman around 10).
It is surprising, though, in a different way.
In many polls, over 90% of Japanese people claim themselves to be of
middle class.  I thought this was a misconception, that they don't know
what being a middle class (or upper/lower class) means.
At least in the above sense, they were right.

>	Another surprise: the US is 12th in
>	households owning their own home at 59% - just below Japan at
>	60% (the run up in housing prices there is recent.)

This actually is the problem in Japan.
In much of the city area, we can spot many single households in places
where in other cities (like London, Paris, New York) we would expect
high-story apartments.

>	"The Economist Book of Vital Statistics" (New York: Times
>	Books) is another good one, cited in the Shapiro book.

And where's the data? :-)
Looking into the subject title, the only "US as No.1" you sited
seems to be the highest murder rate.   ;-)

>	Actually, I've never seen actual data convince anyone on the
>	net of anything.  There seems to be something that prohibits
>	people from writing "Oh, I didn't know that - so you were right
>	and I was wrong - thanks for the info." 

I hereby confess all of my wrong conceptions in the past.
Thanks for the info.

>	It would be nice to
>	see more of that, though the shock would probably kill half the
>	long time netters.

Bill Lambert killed one half, I'll kill the other.
Amen.

-Yuzuru Hiraga