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[sluissa]

Re: foreign relations. I'd say the total amount of hatred we've accrued is worse than anything since pre-WW2. Our economy is the only thing keeping us from losing friends.

So your hypothesis is that Clinton is more hated by say, the French or Koreans or Egyptians, then the wars in Iraq and Vietnam?

I can't think of something sufficiently passive aggressive to say at this time.

I can't find comprehensive information either but here's a little game to play.  Go to this website:
http://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/1/survey/17/

Click on 2015, then click on 2005.  Compare.

Kind of hard to compare those years because there are a heck of a lot more countries listed for 2015 (for both categories) than 2005.

Edit: Jordan seems to have never liked the US very much anyway.

Also, the way those are measured. The poll gave 5 choices of rating of the US while that result list just simplifies it down to a binary choice.

[mainiac]

Kind of hard to compare those years because there are a heck of a lot more countries listed for 2015 (for both categories) than 2005.

Yeah but you can look at the countries in 2005 and 2015.  Here are some before and afters for the  Clinton reign of terror:

Canada 59/68
China 42/44
France 43/73
Germany 42/50
Indonesia 38/62
Jordan 21/14
Lebanon 42/39
Pakistan 23/22
Poland 62/74
Russia 52/15
Spain 41/65
Turkey 23/29
United Kingdom 55/65

Seems pretty obvious to me that the US is more popular, not less, then 10 years ago.

[Loud Whispers]

Who promised consequences? the US? Or are you talking about the South China Sea stuff?

Yes, the Chinese seaforts

[smjjames]

If you go to 2007, it works a bit better because of larger sample size.

Kenya 87/84
Ghana 80/89
Israel 78/81
Uganda 64/76
Poland 61/74
Peru 61/70
Japan 61/68
South Korea 58/84
Mexico 56/66
Chile 55/68
Canada 55/68
Italy 53/83
United Kingdom 51/65
Lebanon 47/39
Tanzania 46/76
Russia 41/15
France 39/73
Spain 34/65
China 34/44
Germany 30/50
Indonesia 29/62
Malaysia 27/54
Jordan 20/14
Argentina 16/43
Pakistan 15/22
Palestinian ter. 13/26
Turkey 9/29

Does anybody remember how come Turkey was so pissed off at the US at the time? Or more pissed off than they usually are I guess.

[sluissa]

Does anybody remember how come Turkey was so pissed off at the US at the time? Or more pissed off than they usually are I guess.

That was when a massive set of anti-goverment/anti-candidate protests were starting off as well as an election occuring. Might have been related to that but I don't remember the US being particularly involved there...

But it also marked the beginning of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip... which Turkey was very much against so it might be fallout from that as well given the ties between Israel and the US.

[mainiac]

Didn't Israel kill a bunch of Turks who were giving assistance to Palestinians around then?

[sluissa]

Didn't Israel kill a bunch of Turks who were giving assistance to Palestinians around then?

If you're talking about the raid on the ships Turkey was sending to aid Palestinians, that was 2010.

[mainiac]

k

[PTTG??]

The US needs to be doing something right...

Most of the other countries at the top of the GDP(PPP)/Capita are small, rural, and oil-producing. The US is colossal by comparison and isn't reliant on exporting natural resources or on being a tax haven to boost its GDP.

[Reudh]

The US needs to be doing something right...

Most of the other countries at the top of the GDP(PPP)/Capita are small, rural, and oil-producing. The US is colossal by comparison and isn't reliant on exporting natural resources or on being a tax haven to boost its GDP.

The US also has a huge working population that isn't particularly well paid by world standards.
I'm surprised Australia is as high as it is on that list (~20th) as it is. While we're huge in size, we have 1/15th the population of the USA and a very significant portion of nearly-barren land. That said, beef is a primary Australian export that is pretty much always lucrative.

[smjjames]

The US needs to be doing something right...

Most of the other countries at the top of the GDP(PPP)/Capita are small, rural, and oil-producing. The US is colossal by comparison and isn't reliant on exporting natural resources or on being a tax haven to boost its GDP.

I'm a bit surprised China is as far down as it is for it's economic power.

As for what we're doing right, well, we are a major player in trade and I'm sure we do export resources, we're just not reliant on it. Plus diverstification I guess, we don't rely 80% on oil revenues or whatever.

[Reelya]

"Not being bombed back to the stone age" in WWII gave the USA a huge comparative advantage. Everywhere else got completely trashed and the USA ended up with 50% of world GDP in 1945. So that might be an impressive statistic, but you've slid all the way down the ranks ever since the end of WWII, not climbed up. Going into debt by $18 trillion helped too (in the short term).

USA is the third most populous country in the world btw, after China and India. So to say "we're huge but we got this covered" isn't really saying a lot because there's no-one else in your size class that's a good comparison. Also GDP(PPP) per capita doesn't take into account how income is divided up. It could be one guy with all the money and a teeming mass of penniless people, so it's not a great measure of how a country has flourished for it's regular people.

Here's a better measure, look at median adult wealth, which is how much assets they typical person manages to accumulate in their lifetime. This allows you to get a good picture of how everything stacks up in the long run - wages, cost of liviing, taxation etc. If the common people can accumulate wealth, you can say the overall system is working pretty good:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult

In America the net mean wealth is $300,000 whereas the net median wealth is $44,000. Some countries have both a high mean wealth and a high median wealth, meaning that the wealth has spread from the rich to the middle class. That hasn't really happened in the USA.

Australia has a net median wealth of $220,000, Japan has a net median wealth of $110,000, Italy has a net median wealth of $138,000, and Canada has a net median wealth of $90,000. That's what having an actual middle class is like.

[smjjames]

Look at Australia though... dang, you guys are RICH, or something. At least comparatively.

[sluissa]

I can only assume those spiders, snakes and various other deadly beasts drop loot. That is the only explanation that covers both how they are so rich and why anyone would willingly stay there.

[smjjames]

CNBC (because that's where the debates will be shown) just said that the budget deal just cleared the House, just has to pass the Senate and then for Obama to decide whether there is anything in there he doesn't like or not.