Cooking The Numbers

In "Empire at the End of Decadence" (February, 18, 2011), Charles Blow declares that:
"It’s time for us to stop lying to ourselves about this country. America is great in many ways, but on a whole host of measures — some of which are shown in the accompanying chart — we have become the laggards of the industrialized world. Not only are we not No. 1 — “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” — we are among the worst of the worst.

Yet this reality and the urgency that it ushers in is too hard for many Americans to digest. They would prefer to continue to bathe in platitudes about America’s greatness, to view our eroding empire through the gauzy vapors of past grandeur."


And Charles Blow to quote numbers coming from organizations which have interest to exalt the Reagan view of the world. Even these numbers look bad. The real numbers would be even worse.

One has indeed to understand that many of these numbers go first through a dedicated filter of organizations (CIA, World Bank, Bureau of Labor Statistics, the pro-plutocracy magazine The Economist, etc.).

These organizations are determined to prove the superiority of the present American way of exploitation, as their thriving depends upon it.

For example the "percentage thriving" finds 50% more Americans "thriving", whereas only 33% of the French are "thriving". I know both countries extremely well, and I can tell you, it's not the case. What is perceived as thriving on one side of the Atlantic would be viewed as inimaginable misery, on the other side.

The French do not believe it's cool to claim they are thriving. Self glorifications led to sorry episodes such as Louis XIV or Napoleon. They cost millions of dead, and severely weakened the country. As the protestants were forced to flee by Louis the criminal, they enrich Germany, and eported wine making to South Africa. So later nazi germany invaded with some generals bearing French names.

The terrible wars of the Twentieth Century, which left metropolitan France 20% smaller than it would be otherwise (let alone the loss of the enormous empire, not all parts of it should have been disjoined, in a better world) were another case where glory itself came to be viewed as a colaborator of self extermination.

So the French believe, deep inside, that it is better to complain, and demonstrate. Whereas the Americans fear that if they are not perceived as winners, they will be run over.

So to complain about France as loudly as possible is a major French religion (it literraly ties the French together, for example during the ever popular demonstrations). But many major worries Americans have do not even register in France. For example health care, or child care, or education. Although the unemployment rates cannot be compared; as Krugman observed, France has actually a much higher employment rate of the 24 to 55 population.

This being said, the USA has a disease called hubris. The country takes itself for imperial rime, and is the last one to used the imperial system of units. The USA was also the only "democracy" to re-introduce slavery on its own territory, ot its own citizens since Europe had outlawed it, a full millennium before that.

The USA is a time-wrap. Long has been. Why? Because being primitive in some important ways allowed a self satisfied, oblivious mentality to reign, designed specifically to exterminate the natives. And thus gain a continent, making America's fortune.

Notice that the Boers and the British did not exterminate the natives in South Africa.

Now, this American mentality, lost in self grandeur, and oblivious delusion is backfiring, ever since it went on steroids with that mean and short sighted man, Reagan. Reagan' confusion between fortune and merit has ruled the land, in a last, self destructive spasm of a better forgotten past.
PA