I find it interesting when Americans don't want America as a whole to be compared to other countries as a whole, because inevitably it makes for an unfavorable comparison.
Of course looking at a country-wide statistic is an average across the whole country - that's the entire point. I'm sure if you really wanted to, you could find a part of Oregon where the homicide rate is 0.1, but that doesn't tell us much about the bigger picture.
America has a single federal government, yes. If you just want a ranking, you can go ahead and use the national average.
However, America is ridiculously diverse culturally, and just using the national average is useless for understanding anything about America.
Perhaps the Americans in the thread aren't trying to avoid an unfavorable comparison - it's not like Americans aren't aware of the pros and cons of their own country. Perhaps they're actually trying to teach you something about their country and point out that relying on averages can be misleading.
> and just using the national average is useless for understanding anything about America.
I agree. We're talking about understanding America compared to other countries, not things about America internally.
>it's not like Americans aren't aware of the pros and cons of their own country
I completely disagree with that statement. How many times have you heard someone say "Best country in the world" with no understanding of the outside world? I'm continually shocked when meeting Americans that have absolutely no idea their infrastructure, education, health care, leave entitlements and general quality of life sucks compared to the developed world. They genuinely think they are the best in the world because that has been driven into them from day 1.
> relying on averages can be misleading.
Obviously looking at an average is exactly that. An average across the entire population, not a deep dive into where is the highest and where is the lowest, etc.
Those are strawman arguments. Meeting uninformed Americans is not evidence that the entirety of the American populace is ignorant of their failings as a developed nation.
For example, we are taught about slavery and the genocide of Native Americans in primary school. We dedicate an entire month to Black History because we are acutely aware of our status as one of the most institutionally racist countries on the planet. We have impasses at the highest levels of government over dealing with our failure to control healthcare costs, and that is something that many Americans are cognizant of. We are repeatedly informed of our failure to create a stable market economy. I can go on.
Please leave your preconceptions at the door when having a serious discussion.
I can tell you that your experience will be vastly different depending on where you live and work. That's why it's hard to make meaningful statements about America as a whole, such as "Americans think they are number 1" or "You're more likely to get murdered if you move to America". Nobody throws a dart on a map and moves to America the country, they move to California or Virgina or Wisconsin.
Your supporting evidence cited a Fox News poll, which is probably the most biased and self-selecting demographic I can think of. That's one of our well-publicized failings, actually--the inherent biases of corporate media and the echo chamber of politics.
>I can tell you that your experience will be vastly different depending on where you live and work.
I'm not sure how this makes the US different from the countries it's being compared to. They all have more and less dangerous regions. There are more and less dangerous regions within a block's walk from me, but the average over that area gives me a general basis of comparison with other areas.
I always feel that there's a racial subtext to this kind of defense of US statistics (which I often hear in terms of education, crime, and health outcomes.) It is, basically, that the parts of the US that the average Scandinavian or Japanese citizen would ever be in have comparable rates of terribleness to their own countries - just ignore the massive portion of the US behind the curtain.
e.g. I am more likely to be killed when moving to an average Chicago from an average Finland. Since Chicago is segregated, however, very few white people would ever see an average Chicago - so an average Chicago can't be a meaningful comparison.
> I always feel that there's a racial subtext to this kind of defense of US statistics (which I often hear in terms of education, crime, and health outcomes.)
There is, and that is a characteristic of the United States in general of which most who live there are keenly aware. This is why they speak quickly against comparisons of the United States as a whole against Scandinavian countries or Japan. Those countries do not have the ethnic heterogeneity or deep-seated institutional racism that the United States has experienced and still experiences.
For example, my state sterilized violent criminals and the mentally disabled until the 1980s, most of them being ethnic minorities. This would be unthinkable in Sweden, for example.
We also have easy access to guns and a destabilized internal culture in ethnically-heterogeneous areas, where community respect is a factor of how much crime you have committed or how many people you have killed.
You are exactly right, however, in that living in an upper-class neighborhood in Chicago would skew your perspective of crime in America.
>This is why they speak quickly against comparisons of the United States as a whole against Scandinavian countries or Japan.
I'm not excusing this perspective on US statistics, I'm saying that it's racist. It's the view that if compared properly, the US isn't so bad. Proper comparison involves excluding groups who are discriminated against from the comparison.
>This is why they speak quickly against comparisons of the United States as a whole against Scandinavian countries or Japan. Those countries do not have the ethnic heterogeneity or deep-seated institutional racism that the United States has experienced and still experiences.
America is not unique in that it faces challenges and obstacles to being successful. Japan had two nuclear weapons used on it's citizens, half of Western Europe has been invaded and occupied in the last 70 years, and Australia has had the worst drought ever recorded. Those examples barely scratch the surface.
Your line of reasoning that America is "unique" or somehow "different" because of the challenges it continues to face is a perfect example of American exceptionalism.
Facing challenges and obstacles is all part of the challenge of building a successful country where the average person on the street has a high quality of life. When compared against other first world countries, which have also faced very large challenges to their success, America does not rank well. Stop making excuses and finding reasons to excuse yourself from greater comparisons.
I am not making excuses for my country, and I am not here to prove that America is unique in that it has to face challenges. I am trying to say that America is not one place or one people, or even one government, and that comparing the entirety of a loose coalition of independent states to single independent nations is disingenuous and ignores specific factors that other developed nations simply don't have to deal with. Yes, all countries have challenges, but all challenges are not the same. I listed a few in my previous posts.
I don't appreciate your belligerent discourse, putting words in my mouth, or typecasting me as a brainwashed patriot. I am well aware of America's problems and I recognize that the United States as a whole is falling well behind in many important metrics. You are not buying my argument that these metrics are skewed greatly by historical and regional concerns that are outside the control of the federal government, and that is your prerogative. But please do not belittle me and accuse me of being ignorant of the world's problems.
I'm not sure why you think that other countries are in general by nature more homogenous than the US. Most of the countries that outrank us have engaged in massive internal orgies of slaughter over their differences.
>these metrics are skewed greatly by historical and regional concerns that are outside the control of the federal government
These metrics aren't "skewed" by, they are determined by. That your concerns (if I translate "ethnic heterogeneity" as "racism") are the reason for the bad numbers is clear. The reason that they should be excluded is unclear.
Racism and easy access to guns are written into our constitution.
> I am trying to say that America is not one place or one people, or even one government, and that comparing the entirety of a loose coalition of independent states to single independent nations is disingenuous and ignores specific factors that other developed nations simply don't have to deal with.
There is nothing unique about that. That is the case of all countries in the world.
I wonder what you would like to see happen? Rather than compare Japan to America, should I compare Japan to Oregon, and Japan to Louisiana like they are separate places? I wonder what the attitude would be then? Everyone in Oregon sits pretty because they are ranked with the world's best, and people in Louisiana are condemned to life of poverty and suffering?
I wonder what would happen if violence and poverty broke out in a corner of Oregon, vastly changing it's position - would you then further break-down Oregon into counties, so once again you can sit pretty in the knowledge your county ranks well and can ignore the others?
You sound like a baseball team manager who's team constantly finishes towards the bottom of the ladder- then you say "yeah, but we have unique challenges because our team is made up of different races, etc. If we had a better pitcher and short stop, we'd be so much better". The reality is you have the team you have. You can choose to work with it as a team to improve things, or you can segregate yourself and say "well, I'm a great first baseman, so screw everyone else".
How is that productive?
A country is made up of the sum of it's parts - every country has areas that are way above average, and areas that are way below average for an enormous number of reasons - that, of course, is the definition of average
Apologies for offending you, that was not my intention, though reading back through my comments I see I have not expressed myself well.
When talking about murder statistics, you can't be speaking from experience, can you?
The truth is that there are some very nice places in America, and some not very nice places. In the nice places, statistics is good or better than a developed country, in the not nice places, statistics is worth - because these places are nothing like developed country. While they are inside the borders of the USA, their life is very different from the life of the nice places. Smaller countries frequently do not have such diversity, and averages can be deceptive (when Bill Gates walks into a bar, average wealth of the bar patron raises significantly, even though nobody really got any richer).
"Sorta". It's more appropriate to compare it to the EU than to, say, Germany. The EU will still come out ahead in terms of murder rate, but it more accurately reflects the US in terms of both governmental structure and diversity of people (Louisiana is as different from Washington as Italy is from Finland)
America is one united federation of states. The federal government still exercises surprisingly little control over individual states, although that control is increasing over time. Most of the federal controls exist merely to regulate inter-state commerce to make sure there are no unfair practices where Michigan can enact laws to keep Indiana businesses from operating in their state. However, two neighboring states can have wildly different laws on local issues. Michigan for the longest time required motorcyclists to wear helmets when the neighboring states didn't, and only allows heavy trucks to have two trailers where other surrounding states allow them to carry three trailers at once.
Classifying America as one solid country all across is, to be honest, quite inappropriate. It's more of a slightly more put-together European Union, with a federal government existing just to make sure everyone plays fairly.
I'm not terribly familiar with states in different countries, but I wasn't trying to imply America is necessarily unique. What I was trying to get across is that, for all intents and purposes, each state in the union (read union as union of federated states) is semi-independent and can do almost anything they want outside of printing their own currency. Even that law comes with a stipulation that you can print your own currency but still have to accept US dollars as well.
The parent had asked if the US in particular was one country. In actually, it's not quite that simple. Similar reason why people refer to Canadian provinces by their provincial title in some circumstances. British Columbia is only incidentally related to Nunavut. At the same time, Washington state is only incidentally similar to Alabama.
As scale increases, you invariably include populations that affect your per capita statistic. The EU as a whole has a 3.5 per 100k murder rate, for example; much higher than Germany or the UK alone.
If you think about it this one, then wouldn't it be best to compare homicides per kilometer or mile? The point the parent was making is entirely valid though- the United States is a huge country compared to most.
Of course looking at a country-wide statistic is an average across the whole country - that's the entire point. I'm sure if you really wanted to, you could find a part of Oregon where the homicide rate is 0.1, but that doesn't tell us much about the bigger picture.
Is America one united country, or isn't it?