Social Progress Index

[Belsnickel]

I know this will go over like a pregnant pole-vaulter with some people here, but I thought it would be something interesting to put out there. http://ideas.ted.com/why-we-shouldnt-judge-a-country-by-its-gdp/

Quote:Analysts, reporters and big thinkers love to talk about Gross Domestic Product. Put simply, GDP, which tallies the value of all the goods and services produced by a country each year, has become the yardstick by which we measure a country’s success. But there’s a big, elephant-like problem with that: GDP only accounts for a country’s economic performance, not the happiness or well-being of its citizens. With GDP, if your richest 100 people get richer, your GDP rises … but most of your citizens are just as badly off as they were before.

That’s one of the reasons the team that I lead at the Social Progress Imperative launched the Social Progress Index in 2014. The Social Progress Index determines what it means to be a good society according to three dimensions: Basic Human Needs (food, water, shelter, safety); Foundations of Wellbeing (basic education, information, health and a sustainable environment); and Opportunity (do people have rights, freedom of choice, freedom from discrimination, and access to higher education?)

Together, these 12 components form the Social Progress framework. We evaluated them using data from a wide variety of international sources (see the full list) to assess 133 countries to come up with a ranking of the world’s most socially progressive countries — and this year, for the first time, an overall progress score for the world. Here are six charts from the 2015 ranking that I think speak volumes.

[JustWinBaby]

If you're going to engineer a study to push a liberal agenda, you should probably make sure Japan and Ireland don't come out ahead of the US (at least they caught Spain and Italy).

But comparing individual EU countries to the US is apples-and-oranges, compare the whole (where populatioon and geography is more equivalent)...or we could see where US states rank for a better comparison.

It's interesting, but studies I've seen including transfer payments have the US much higher, like in the top 5 or so with really only Norway and Denmark (I think) coming ahead consistently.   And intuitively that makes sense - most of Europe has had higher social benefits (well, mainly just healthcare) but also pays higher taxes, has lower wages, lower job growth, lower employment and lower economic growth for decades.

LOL:
"We see that exclusion across the U.S.’ scorecard: lack of access to health care, lack of access to education, lack of access to information, lack of access to safety and even — relative to other rich country peers — lack of access to piped water."
.....Ummm, BS, BS, BS, the US has among the strictest safety regs in the world, and the last two are people choosing to live in rural areas where services and piped water aren't remotely cost feasible.

[BmorePat87]

People will argue with the opportunity metric and, not surprisingly, it is the area where the world does the worst on average.

Is the bar being set too high? Should we have lower expectations? Are those who appear to be meeting the standards truly overachieving? Or should we have high exceptions in that area?

[*michaelsean*]

Seems like we could save a lot of money and buy plane tickets for all the illegals who would be much happier in all of those other countries.

[Belsnickel]

(06-10-2015, 02:57 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: If you're going to engineer a study to push a liberal agenda, you should probably make sure Japan and Ireland don't come out ahead of the US (at least they caught Spain and Italy).

But comparing individual EU countries to the US is apples-and-oranges, compare the whole (where populatioon and geography is more equivalent)...or we could see where US states rank for a better comparison.

It's interesting, but studies I've seen including transfer payments have the US much higher, like in the top 5 or so with really only Norway and Denmark (I think) coming ahead consistently.   And intuitively that makes sense - most of Europe has had higher social benefits (well, mainly just healthcare) but also pays higher taxes, has lower wages, lower job growth, lower employment and lower economic growth for decades.

LOL:
"We see that exclusion across the U.S.’ scorecard: lack of access to health care, lack of access to education, lack of access to information, lack of access to safety and even — relative to other rich country peers — lack of access to piped water."
.....Ummm,    BS, BS, BS, the US has among the strictest safety regs in the world, and the last two are people choosing to live in rural areas where services and piped water aren't remotely cost feasible.

Yeah, there is no study like this that does not have problems with their methodology. I do like reading them, though, because at the very least the individual metrics used can be something fun to look at. The arbitrary scores assigned to things always baffle me, though.

As for that last part, yeah, those without access to those last three especially it is typically by choice and not because of our society not providing it.

[StLucieBengal]

(06-10-2015, 03:14 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Seems like we could save a lot of money and buy plane tickets for all the illegals who would be much happier in all of those other countries.

Yup.

I love how everyone loves to remind us how not like europe we are and how we need to be more like them .... Why don't they just go to europe.

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(06-11-2015, 05:42 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Yup.  

I love how everyone loves to remind us how not like europe we are and how we need to be more like them ....   Why don't they just go to europe.    

Geography.

[fredtoast]

(06-11-2015, 05:42 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Yup.  

I love how everyone loves to remind us how not like europe we are and how we need to be more like them ....   Why don't they just go to europe.    

Why don't people who do nothing but cry about government regulation move to Somalia?

You keep talking about how people should just move to places where the government fits their beliefs. So why are you still here in the United States?