If It Were My Home
January 19, 2011 5:44 AM Subscribe
If It Were My Home lets you see in what ways your life might be different if you lived in another country.
If it were my home, I'd buy a faster net connection. It's getting swamped...
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 6:04 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 6:04 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
someone obviously gave them a hard time about the use of the subjunctive
Heh, I was going to make a joke about the subjunctive case in the thread title but i couldn't think of one.
posted by empath at 6:16 AM on January 19, 2011
Heh, I was going to make a joke about the subjunctive case in the thread title but i couldn't think of one.
posted by empath at 6:16 AM on January 19, 2011
It let me compare my home country, Canada, with the featured country of the week, Canada.
I think I'll stay in Canada.
posted by sandraregina at 6:37 AM on January 19, 2011 [6 favorites]
I think I'll stay in Canada.
posted by sandraregina at 6:37 AM on January 19, 2011 [6 favorites]
Luck egalitarianism for the masses. I like it.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:42 AM on January 19, 2011
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:42 AM on January 19, 2011
Shit, I'm moving to Japan.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:53 AM on January 19, 2011
posted by shakespeherian at 6:53 AM on January 19, 2011
I would be 33% more likely to be HIV positive in America than Canada? Yikes!
Wait, the infection rate is 0.60% in the US vs. 0.40% in Canada. Pardon my innumeracy, but is that characterization of that statistic wrong, or just alarmist?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 6:54 AM on January 19, 2011
Wait, the infection rate is 0.60% in the US vs. 0.40% in Canada. Pardon my innumeracy, but is that characterization of that statistic wrong, or just alarmist?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 6:54 AM on January 19, 2011
About half these stats are useless. Telling me I'd spend X% less on health care doesn't tell me if health care is cheaper/subsidized or if I'd just feel so much better there I'd never need a doctor.
Does telling me I'd use less oil mean I'd never travel, or that the economy there is based on natural gas?
I'd get far more interesting information from the CIA factbook.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:56 AM on January 19, 2011 [3 favorites]
Does telling me I'd use less oil mean I'd never travel, or that the economy there is based on natural gas?
I'd get far more interesting information from the CIA factbook.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:56 AM on January 19, 2011 [3 favorites]
if it were my world
(it is).
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 6:57 AM on January 19, 2011 [2 favorites]
(it is).
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 6:57 AM on January 19, 2011 [2 favorites]
As someone who embodies the average statistical attributes of whichever place I inhabit, this site is of great interest to me.
posted by allen.spaulding at 7:02 AM on January 19, 2011 [6 favorites]
posted by allen.spaulding at 7:02 AM on January 19, 2011 [6 favorites]
I could see the site being more interesting if it featured a bit of writing on each comparison.
posted by Harald74 at 7:13 AM on January 19, 2011
posted by Harald74 at 7:13 AM on January 19, 2011
I like the bibliographies!
posted by mareli at 7:27 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by mareli at 7:27 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
As someone who routinely (since my hopes were dashed and my change was spent) thinks about leaving the US, I was looking for less superficial comparisons.
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:33 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:33 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
It gets especially tricky to compare these statistics when most countries have significant class divides.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:32 AM on January 19, 2011
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:32 AM on January 19, 2011
About half these stats are useless.
Comparing US and Sweden (having lived in both countries for long periods), living in Sweden I should:
"experience 48.89% less of a class divide"
I don't even know what this means, but no doubt in Sweden I see fewer poor people and fewer rich ones.
"consume 38.32% less oil"
Not fair. I don't own a car and I live in a city which has a central heating system. I am sure that if I lived in the US in a city with a central heating system and no need for a car my oil consumption would be lower.
"have 26.68% fewer babies"
But receive 390 days parental leave at near full pay, child benefit payments, and subsidized very high quality day care.
"spend 52.94% less money on health care"
But pay lots more in tax. Lots more. Insanely lots more.
make 20.69% less money
And see above. If you measure your standard of living by income, Sweden is not the place for you.
"use 18.73% more electricity"
In the 1970s Sweden was big on nuclear power. A lot of houses are heated with electricity. Now Sweden buys her electricity from dirty coal-fired plants in Denmark, but still a lot of houses are heated with electricity.
live 2.73 years longer
The only way to try and get some of that tax money back in the form of generous pension benefits.
be 83.33% less likely to have HIV/AIDS
Swedish people need to get out and travel more.
So as I always say when comparing any two countries: not better, only different.
posted by three blind mice at 8:33 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
Comparing US and Sweden (having lived in both countries for long periods), living in Sweden I should:
"experience 48.89% less of a class divide"
I don't even know what this means, but no doubt in Sweden I see fewer poor people and fewer rich ones.
"consume 38.32% less oil"
Not fair. I don't own a car and I live in a city which has a central heating system. I am sure that if I lived in the US in a city with a central heating system and no need for a car my oil consumption would be lower.
"have 26.68% fewer babies"
But receive 390 days parental leave at near full pay, child benefit payments, and subsidized very high quality day care.
"spend 52.94% less money on health care"
But pay lots more in tax. Lots more. Insanely lots more.
make 20.69% less money
And see above. If you measure your standard of living by income, Sweden is not the place for you.
"use 18.73% more electricity"
In the 1970s Sweden was big on nuclear power. A lot of houses are heated with electricity. Now Sweden buys her electricity from dirty coal-fired plants in Denmark, but still a lot of houses are heated with electricity.
live 2.73 years longer
The only way to try and get some of that tax money back in the form of generous pension benefits.
be 83.33% less likely to have HIV/AIDS
Swedish people need to get out and travel more.
So as I always say when comparing any two countries: not better, only different.
posted by three blind mice at 8:33 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
If you measure your standard of living by income,
...then you're nuts.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:36 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
...then you're nuts.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:36 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
If I lived in Mexico I would:
Drink 427.5% more tequila
Encounter 312.1% more iguanas
Eat from street vendors 963.2% more
WTF I would masturbate only 12.3% as much
well thats the price you pay for iguanas and tequila
posted by Xoebe at 8:52 AM on January 19, 2011 [5 favorites]
Drink 427.5% more tequila
Encounter 312.1% more iguanas
Eat from street vendors 963.2% more
WTF I would masturbate only 12.3% as much
well thats the price you pay for iguanas and tequila
posted by Xoebe at 8:52 AM on January 19, 2011 [5 favorites]
the infection rate is 0.60% in the US vs. 0.40% in Canada
Right, so you're 33% less likely to have HIV in Canada than in the US, or 50% more likely to have HIV in the US than in Canada. Depends on where you put your starting point.
The reason it sounds alarmist is because whenever you compare things with a low incidence rate, a huge difference as a percentage is actually a very small difference as an absolute.
posted by echo target at 8:52 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
Right, so you're 33% less likely to have HIV in Canada than in the US, or 50% more likely to have HIV in the US than in Canada. Depends on where you put your starting point.
The reason it sounds alarmist is because whenever you compare things with a low incidence rate, a huge difference as a percentage is actually a very small difference as an absolute.
posted by echo target at 8:52 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
Note that the More info link on each stat gives the source of the data (which is often the CIA World Factbook), the absolute value and a description of the parameter (for health care, the figure "combines government, personal, and employer spending on health care"). The choice of parameters and the presentation as percentages can be criticised but it's not just some random info.
posted by elgilito at 9:32 AM on January 19, 2011
posted by elgilito at 9:32 AM on January 19, 2011
I lived in Bosnia-Hercegovina one year an before that had 3 seperate stays of arond 3 months each.
The comparisons are good as far as they go, but they leave out the less tangiable cultural aspects of a place. These cultural differences are profound. The fact is that for all material purposes other than health-care the U.S. Has a lot to offer, but from a cultural viewpoint, I felt more at home in BiH than I do in the U.S.
Before you go someplace you don't know if that will happen or not.
I think though that it doesn't hurt for people to compare the material differences.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 9:34 AM on January 19, 2011
The comparisons are good as far as they go, but they leave out the less tangiable cultural aspects of a place. These cultural differences are profound. The fact is that for all material purposes other than health-care the U.S. Has a lot to offer, but from a cultural viewpoint, I felt more at home in BiH than I do in the U.S.
Before you go someplace you don't know if that will happen or not.
I think though that it doesn't hurt for people to compare the material differences.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 9:34 AM on January 19, 2011
I need this explained to me like I am as dumb as I am. What does being 100% more likely to have AIDS mean?
posted by Iteki at 11:13 AM on January 19, 2011
posted by Iteki at 11:13 AM on January 19, 2011
I would also pay less on healthcare (private and public) because North Korea spends a dollar per capita on healthcare as opposed to the 3k dollars Sweden spends. Probably explains why I would die 16 years earlier.
posted by Iteki at 11:16 AM on January 19, 2011
posted by Iteki at 11:16 AM on January 19, 2011
I need this explained to me like I am as dumb as I am. What does being 100% more likely to have AIDS mean?
It means you are twice as likely to have it. With 'you' being defined as a person randomly selected from the relevant populations.
posted by empath at 12:07 PM on January 19, 2011
It means you are twice as likely to have it. With 'you' being defined as a person randomly selected from the relevant populations.
posted by empath at 12:07 PM on January 19, 2011
17.3% less money to move to canada ? Fuck that, I'm staying in the good old U.S of A. With that 17.3% I'll just buy myself into a higher class.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:22 PM on January 19, 2011
posted by Ad hominem at 12:22 PM on January 19, 2011
WTF, I went through almost every country comparison and the average person in the US makes more money than every other country, other than Norway and Lichtenstein? What are they drinking? Tell the people of Flint that they are better of than the people of Zurich. Go ahead tell them.
posted by Xurando at 12:29 PM on January 19, 2011
posted by Xurando at 12:29 PM on January 19, 2011
Tell the people of Flint that they are better of than the people of Zurich. Go ahead tell them.
Our curve is thrown off by Mark Zuckerberg, our average has shifted up to 250k a year.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:33 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
Our curve is thrown off by Mark Zuckerberg, our average has shifted up to 250k a year.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:33 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
I went through almost every country comparison and the average person in the US makes more money than every other country, other than Norway and Lichtenstein? What are they drinking? Tell the people of Flint that they are better of than the people of Zurich.
It's pretty simple math to figure out per-capita income. What do you not understand about it?
posted by empath at 12:36 PM on January 19, 2011
It's pretty simple math to figure out per-capita income. What do you not understand about it?
posted by empath at 12:36 PM on January 19, 2011
So as I always say when comparing any two countries: not better, only different.
What do people mean by things like that? To take just the last comparison I happened to make as an example:
If Jamaica were your home instead of France you would...
be 3 times more likely to have HIV/AIDS
have a 3.5 times greater chance of dying in infancy
make 75% less money
use 68.08% less electricity
have 56.64% more babies
have a 49.48% greater chance of being unemployed
spend 91.02% less money on health care
experience 39.14% more of a class divide
die 7.61 years sooner
consume 11.64% less oil
Not that Jamaica isn't wonderful in many ways, but that is worse, and lots of people have to live with the ways in which it is. And that's just Jamaica, which is doing better than a lot of places in this world.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 1:26 PM on January 19, 2011
What do people mean by things like that? To take just the last comparison I happened to make as an example:
If Jamaica were your home instead of France you would...
be 3 times more likely to have HIV/AIDS
have a 3.5 times greater chance of dying in infancy
make 75% less money
use 68.08% less electricity
have 56.64% more babies
have a 49.48% greater chance of being unemployed
spend 91.02% less money on health care
experience 39.14% more of a class divide
die 7.61 years sooner
consume 11.64% less oil
Not that Jamaica isn't wonderful in many ways, but that is worse, and lots of people have to live with the ways in which it is. And that's just Jamaica, which is doing better than a lot of places in this world.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 1:26 PM on January 19, 2011
I always find it interesting when it tells me I'll use 99% less of something.
posted by biochemist at 1:39 PM on January 19, 2011
posted by biochemist at 1:39 PM on January 19, 2011
Apparently, if I lived in Canada I'd have 17.03% more fewer babies. I'm confused.
posted by andraste at 9:42 PM on January 19, 2011
posted by andraste at 9:42 PM on January 19, 2011
I went through almost every country comparison and the average person in the US makes more money than every other country, other than Norway and Lichtenstein? What are they drinking? Tell the people of Flint that they are better of than the people of Zurich.
The discrepancy exists because using per capita income as a solo figure of merit is nuts. Many, many things other than sheer income go into one's quality of life.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:55 PM on January 19, 2011
The discrepancy exists because using per capita income as a solo figure of merit is nuts. Many, many things other than sheer income go into one's quality of life.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:55 PM on January 19, 2011
WTF, I went through almost every country comparison and the average person in the US makes more money than every other country, other than Norway and Lichtenstein? What are they drinking? Tell the people of Flint that they are better of than the people of Zurich. Go ahead tell them.
First of all these are national data. You can't compare Switzerland's banking capital with Flint, a fairer comparison would be with NYC (if we were going to compare cities).
Second, these are PPP adjusted GDPs per capita. In other words they're the total economic output of their respective countries, divided by population and adjusted for price differences (PPP = Purchasing Power Parity). This is incorrectly translated into "make less/more money" by the site. This is wrong for two reasons:
1) The GDP refers to the economic output, some of this goes to labour as wages&salaries, some to capital as interest&equity, and some to land, IP, etc. as rent&royalties. Now in the US, the bargaining position of labour is poor, so workers are not able to "capture" as much of the output as elsewhere. This results in more returns to the other two factors of production.
Not only that, but because the US has so much FDI (foreign direct investment) the figures are distorted. Some of the GDP contribution that accrues to capital actually goes to foreign owners of American stocks, if you compare the US with a country that has less FDI the numbers will be biased in favour of the US. TL;DR - Weak labour bargaining = workers getting a smaller slice of the total pie.
2) Income in the US is much more unequal than in other industrial nations1 (the only competition for comparable standards of living). This means that the GDP per capita which is a mean does not reflect the situation for the "ordinary" person. Even if we restrict ourselves to earned income (so we don't include the contribution to income from capital) there is a lot of inequality. TL;DR - The US has more super-rich and more poor people than other Western countries.
Measuring where people are "better off" is actually a very hard problem which basically involves more philosophy than statistics (you have to rank totally different ways of living somehow). To start though, you should use median income (after transfer payments). Using a median will better characterise the life of someone halfway up society. Actually what you really want to do is to adjust incomes using a "utility curve", this means recognising that the more money you have, the less "utility" having even more of it has. This would mean that someone on PPP adjusted income of $10k / yr would pull the average way down (the utility curve recognises the vast, desperate gulf between that person and someone making $45k / yr) while someone on $300k would only pull the average up a little (Their standard of living is not likely to be twice that of someone making $150k to any realistic observer).
(1) Except the UK, which within my lifetime had an upper house composed mostly of hereditary nobility
posted by atrazine at 4:32 AM on January 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
First of all these are national data. You can't compare Switzerland's banking capital with Flint, a fairer comparison would be with NYC (if we were going to compare cities).
Second, these are PPP adjusted GDPs per capita. In other words they're the total economic output of their respective countries, divided by population and adjusted for price differences (PPP = Purchasing Power Parity). This is incorrectly translated into "make less/more money" by the site. This is wrong for two reasons:
1) The GDP refers to the economic output, some of this goes to labour as wages&salaries, some to capital as interest&equity, and some to land, IP, etc. as rent&royalties. Now in the US, the bargaining position of labour is poor, so workers are not able to "capture" as much of the output as elsewhere. This results in more returns to the other two factors of production.
Not only that, but because the US has so much FDI (foreign direct investment) the figures are distorted. Some of the GDP contribution that accrues to capital actually goes to foreign owners of American stocks, if you compare the US with a country that has less FDI the numbers will be biased in favour of the US. TL;DR - Weak labour bargaining = workers getting a smaller slice of the total pie.
2) Income in the US is much more unequal than in other industrial nations1 (the only competition for comparable standards of living). This means that the GDP per capita which is a mean does not reflect the situation for the "ordinary" person. Even if we restrict ourselves to earned income (so we don't include the contribution to income from capital) there is a lot of inequality. TL;DR - The US has more super-rich and more poor people than other Western countries.
Measuring where people are "better off" is actually a very hard problem which basically involves more philosophy than statistics (you have to rank totally different ways of living somehow). To start though, you should use median income (after transfer payments). Using a median will better characterise the life of someone halfway up society. Actually what you really want to do is to adjust incomes using a "utility curve", this means recognising that the more money you have, the less "utility" having even more of it has. This would mean that someone on PPP adjusted income of $10k / yr would pull the average way down (the utility curve recognises the vast, desperate gulf between that person and someone making $45k / yr) while someone on $300k would only pull the average up a little (Their standard of living is not likely to be twice that of someone making $150k to any realistic observer).
(1) Except the UK, which within my lifetime had an upper house composed mostly of hereditary nobility
posted by atrazine at 4:32 AM on January 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
The GDP per capita in Ireland is $42,200 while in The United Kingdom it is $35,200
Yet people in Ireland are driving over the border to Ulster to buy food and fill their cars, as the exchange rate on the Euro makes living phenomenally expensive.
Per capita public and private health expenditures combined in The United States are $6,719 USD while The United Kingdom spends $2,815 USD
This seems odd given that the cost of healthcare over there has to be funded by insurance or pay as you go. My total amount of personal expenditure on health-care in 2010 was £569, which includes a lot of dental work, and I'm a heavier user than most of hospital and clinic services. I'm not sure my taxes would even fulfill the balance on their reckoning.
posted by mippy at 8:21 AM on January 20, 2011
Yet people in Ireland are driving over the border to Ulster to buy food and fill their cars, as the exchange rate on the Euro makes living phenomenally expensive.
Per capita public and private health expenditures combined in The United States are $6,719 USD while The United Kingdom spends $2,815 USD
This seems odd given that the cost of healthcare over there has to be funded by insurance or pay as you go. My total amount of personal expenditure on health-care in 2010 was £569, which includes a lot of dental work, and I'm a heavier user than most of hospital and clinic services. I'm not sure my taxes would even fulfill the balance on their reckoning.
posted by mippy at 8:21 AM on January 20, 2011
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Similarly, check out this BBC site called "Dimensions" that lets you super assorted historical landmarks, geographic features, disasters, etc. over your supplied coordinates.
posted by briank at 5:56 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]