An open letter to certain parties...

[conuly]

"Greatest country in the world" is a meaningless statement until and unless you give some sort of metric. In what way is this the "greatest" country? What, exactly, are you measuring here? That's not sarcasm - or, at least, it doesn't have to be. Just give me something to work with here!

(I've tried actually asking people individually, but I've never gotten anything constructive out of them. I think they don't know what they mean either.)

Comments

[hudebnik]

Obviously, the metric is whatever we're greatest at. If we're not greatest at it, it's obviously not a good metric.

Off the top of my head, "spending money on health care", "gun ownership without being in a civil war", and "gunshot deaths and injuries without being in a civil war". All per capita, of course. We're only second or third for incarceration, and somewhere in the top twenty on a number of other more-positive measures.

Oh, number of Nobel prizes. But I doubt the U.S. still wins that per capita.

[conuly]

These people really resent the phrase "per capita" and pretend they have no idea what it means or why it's relevant. (Maybe they don't know what it means.)