Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Nate and with me is Mike.
It is a tale as old as time.
We are smoking, and that's a hint because this is going to be kind of, even if it's
not a two-parter topic-wise, it will be a two-parter cigar-wise, we are smoking the
Gurkha Beauty.
And it's a hefty one.
It's a Gurkha legend, and it looks like a lighter wrapper Connecticut maybe, and it's
a Gurthie lengthy bastard.
Alright, so Mike's had some technical difficulty.
It could be us, but I'm just going to blame Mike for it because I don't want to blame
myself and therefore I should go into politics.
Well, I have a very old MacBook and we're going to blame Steve Jobs because he's dead.
Let's blame him.
Also, we've been continually smoking throughout, so we're, I don't know, maybe a third of the
way through the cigar, so just heads up that if we finish before you finish...
There we go.
That's assuming you're smoking the same cigar we're smoking.
But to bring us back to where we were is, I'm assuming that like other episodes and
other topics that we talk about, it's not going to end up being a America is all bad
or America is all good, it will be some shade of gray.
But I'm excited to hear Mike's four pages of single-spaced notes.
Perfect.
So people talk about America and whenever I criticize America to people, they like to
bring up, well, would you rather live in communist China or something?
Like that's the only option.
So we're going to lay some groundwork.
There's 36 countries that meet the IMF, World Bank, Human Development Index, and also make
at least $22,000 a year of a First World Nation.
So the IMF, the World Bank, and that HDI, which is created by the United Nations, has
a set of criteria that makes you a developed country.
There's 66 of those, but only 36 make more than $22,000 a year per capita GDP.
So when we're comparing America, really we're only talking about 36 to 66 countries that
we're even considering in the ranks.
You know what I mean?
Out of the 224.
Yeah, because I mean there's that...
Oh, go ahead.
Oh, I was just going to say because there's like...
Out of the 224 recognized countries, oh geez, we're talking over each other.
Go ahead, Nate.
I'll be done.
Now, I got to get some words in before Mike gets going because like we're talking about
you said 36 countries or 66 or whatever it is.
But there's countries out there, like that one country that has that tribe of people
that don't want to see any...
Like that reporter tried to land there and they shot him with a bow and arrow or something.
So nobody's landed there forever.
Right.
Yeah.
Like we're not talking about that country.
Like that's not where we're talking...
We're not comparing to that country.
Right.
There's...
I think there's 174 countries in the UN and there's 224 countries in the world total,
but only 36 meet all the criteria of a developed nation.
Yeah.
And to be comparable enough to the United States.
Right.
66 are in the zone.
36 are really what we're looking at.
So you talked about...
The sweet spot.
You were talking about the Human Development Index earlier.
And the HDI is created by the UN and it's a stat that gauges an economy, life expectancy,
education level per capita income, and it's an attempt to capture what the economic opportunity
of a country is or economic opportunity for an individual.
Sure.
Is that your understanding, I guess?
Yeah.
It's not necessarily a true happiness index, but it takes in enough other things to where
you can kind of get a quality of life index.
And that wouldn't necessarily equate to happiness, right?
Because there's certain things that are causation or correlation, and this would probably be
more in the correlation camp and less in the causation camp because there's a lot of things
that contribute to happiness.
Right.
So the UN ranks the United States 20 and 21 on the HDI, whether it was last year or the
year before.
It switches.
That sounds an awful lot like not number one.
Are we sure the UN isn't communist?
Right.
The UN, for those who don't know, is basically funded by the United States.
So anything that it produces is going to favor the United States as much as possible.
Well, we've got to up our contribution then if they're giving us 20 or 21.
I mean, come on.
We've got to bribe them for something, right?
So how are we going to get all those immigrants to take our jobs?
Rank in 2021.
What is it with that bullshit?
This is going to make it even more interesting.
There's something called the Inequality Human Development Index, which is also used by the
United States or the United States, the United Nations.
And that modifies the HDI with the level of inequality in a society and basically the
attempt to create a realistic, a more realistic view for the average person.
And on that index, the United States is ranked 25th.
Okay.
Yes.
And we'll talk about...
Which is still probably better than our...
I feel like that's still better than our math scores on standardized testing.
We have that on this list too, Nate.
Okay.
I'm jumping the gun.
I'm getting ahead of things here.
Oh yeah.
So a lot of this data comes from the United Nations and for the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development.
And that group was created in 1948 to run the Marshall Plan in Europe.
And then at the conclusion of the Marshall Plan, it got co-opted into the Cold War to
promote democracy and capitalism around the world.
And that organization creates a lot of stats that the United Nations and other stuff uses.
So a lot of this stuff is coming from this Cold War era, US backed NGO.
Okay.
Just so we all know.
And before we get too much further in, I feel like I'm just approaching the halfway mark
and I had a couple of sour puffs here on my stick.
It's been good so far, but I had a couple of sour puffs, so I'm kind of, it sounds like
power puffs, but they're sour puffs.
And so I'm just going to let it sit for a little bit.
I don't know if you've had the same thing, Mike, or if that's just, I got excited when
you were saying we're 25th and I got like, I was puffing angry.
If I remember correctly, this one's really susceptible to getting sour if you smoke it
too fast.
So I'm really only like three quarters of the way through because I've been trying to
take it slower during our technical difficulties.
I'll try to take it slower too.
Yeah.
Anyway, carry on.
Mine's good, but I'm taking it a little slow.
These are all, well, a lot of these stats come from this Cold War organization that
wants to boost the Western world.
So they're trying to like make the US look good because it's paid for by the United States
tax dollar.
So these are best case scenarios, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
And some of them are pretty good.
Some of it's good.
It's not all gloom and doom here.
So there we go.
You and I, we have a fairly good life and I would like to live more of it, right?
So the World Health Organization has ranked the United States health expectancy, which
for us is 77.28 years.
And they have this index and it's based off of 195 countries, which is all of the UN countries.
So I misspoke earlier, it's 195.
What rank is the United States out of 195?
Well, I know it's not number one because, well, I don't want to say because why, but
I feel like there's other cultures that live an awful lot longer than we do.
The United States is ranked 51.
So we are out of the 36.
We're still in the 66, but we're out of the 36, which is where we really want to be.
Even being the ranking to be one of the best, we have to be in the top 36.
So there we go.
Yeah, for sure.
On to education, which we can, you want to talk about the healthcare system or the education
system first?
Well, you know, we just talked about life expectancy.
So let's kind of go that way, I guess.
And we'll stick there and then we can switch over to education.
Sure.
So for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Prosperity, the blah, blah, blah, the
United States is ranked 36 out of 36.
We have the lowest life expectancy and we have the highest per person medical costs
of $10,000 per year on average.
The next lowest country, which is number 35 out of 36 has a life expectancy of 81 and
$6,800 out of pocket by comparison.
Okay.
So it's a good 40% drop of medical care.
Yes.
Yeah.
So 10, 10 extra years, nine, 10 extra years or whatever.
Three extra years and like 40% more money.
Yeah.
The WHO has ranked our medical system.
The WHO.
Who is that?
They've ranked our overall medical system as 37th in the world overall.
Okay.
And if you take the health of citizenry as a priority, we're 72nd because our citizens
are not healthy.
Yeah.
And so that's out of the 195?
That's out of the 195.
We're 37th overall for medical and 72nd in health of the average citizen.
Okay.
Yes.
The U.S. Hey, we got a top 10 here.
The USA has the fifth highest reported cancer rate in the United Nations.
You know what?
It's a win and I'm going to take it.
Right.
Now granted, I looked at all these stats.
Yeah.
These first world countries are all higher than us for the cancer rate as well.
I think Bangladesh was in the group, but it's like Netherlands and a lot of the cancer rates
in the Western world are high because we have reporting.
So again, it's based off that main 36 because that's where our main group of data is from.
You know?
Yeah.
And I think that's a good point, Mike, about the cancer rates and reporting and we don't
have the greatest healthcare.
I think anyone that's an American knows that.
I think anybody that's not an American knows that we don't have the best healthcare, but
we do a lot of reporting and we have a lot of mandated reporting on stats and things
and a lot of these other countries just, they don't.
You know, if they're industrialized and westernized or whatever, or you know, first world country
type of thing, they probably have reporting, but it might not be as stringent as ours.
Not that it does us any good really in the long run, but it's kind of one of those things
when you're looking at 195 countries or 66 countries or even 33 countries, not everybody
collects the same stats.
So sometimes it's a guess.
Right.
It's all relative.
But like I say, they're going to try to make the United States look as good as possible
when they can.
So the United States has the 46th highest maternal mortality rate in the world.
Out of the top 36 nations, we have the highest childhood deaths.
So we're 36 out of 36.
Yeah.
And I guess let's clarify that just real quick.
What does childhood death mean?
All cause mortality.
So that includes gunshots, that includes car accidents, that includes childhood cancer
rates.
That was everything I was trying to get at was does it count abortion?
Because no, I just want to make it clear for any religious listeners that when it says
childhood mortality, that means post egress from the yes, from the well, I mean, I don't
want to dive too deep into it, but we have like no, no, 100% more childhood deaths from
car accidents and like the numbers are crazy.
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of crazy and SIDS kind of comes up and down and a lot of other
countries don't have that same kind of issue with it, I believe.
So this is some of this is all right.
So these are the five year survival rates after certain diseases where we have 13th
best for colon cancer, for 16th best for rectal cancer, for fifth best for lung cancer, we're
ninth best for stomach cancer, for 14th best for childhood cancer.
This is the high one.
We're second best for breast cancer.
31st best for cervical cancer, seventh best for heart attacks and sixth best for hemorrhagic
strokes and fourth best for ischemic strokes, which I've never heard of.
I know some of those words.
Yes.
So it's a real mixed bag for long-term survivability after major events.
If you have breast cancer or lung cancer, you're pretty decent.
But for everything else, we're kind of middling.
We're kind of a middling country in a lot of these stats.
Sounds about accurate.
Yeah, I mean, that's that's going to be the theme here, guys.
I hate to tell you this, but we're just kind of we're not the best.
We're not the worst, though.
I never let anybody tell you that we're the worst.
I think that's kind of the thing is, you know, would you say, well, I hate it here, like,
I wish America would be this or that.
A lot of the people that are on the rah rah pro America side are so that side that they
will not even take any form of criticism whatsoever.
And they go right to the like you said, well, would you rather live in communist China?
That's not what I said.
That's not what I meant.
There are things that need to be fixed and should be fixed here.
I'm not saying I'm packing up my bags and moving to Russia or China or that island in
the Pacific or wherever that's got the tribe that will shoot me with arrows.
Like, that's not what we're saying.
Right.
And I think anybody that's a little more logical and rational will will say like, look, there's
some good things about America.
There's some bad things about America on the whole, like without doing a huge kind of life
change or big international move.
Like, what are you going to do?
Are you not really going to go anywhere?
I mean, some people, but the more you look at the stats, there's no one country that
comes out as like a clear number one.
There's averages that are significantly better than the United States.
And there's probably a dozen countries that are overall better in a lot of ways.
But even they have issues.
You know what I mean?
Like they have problems, too.
They're not perfect.
So I there's a growing community of people that think that the United States seems to
be like unforgivably evil and bad.
And that's just as foolish as the people who think that we're the greatest country on
Earth.
Yeah.
We're not the worst country on Earth.
We're definitely not the best.
But I mean, all these numbers you're going to find, it's it's middling at best.
We are number one in certain areas.
Did you also look at like the carbon footprint?
Yes, I did.
OK, I figured you would have.
So carry on because we got a lot of stats to get through.
Yes, we do.
So we're going to go on to education.
We are ranked 16th best education system in the world.
I don't know how they got that because internationally we're ranked 40th in math, 25th in science
and 24th in reading.
So I don't know how you add those three together and get 16.
But apparently you do.
Maybe the statistician went to school in America.
We have the second most expensive post-secondary system.
England is more expensive.
I was just going to ask who was first.
Yeah, it's England.
Costs have doubled since 91 at private schools and two and a half, two and a half times a
public.
So, yeah, it's gone up.
And then apparently, and this stat got started to get recorded in 1980.
This is the lowest ever that a college degree has made in the history of the country.
So that college degree that's costing twice as much is not worth the least amount it's
ever been.
Yeah, I can see that.
And I think it's only going to go down, to be honest.
Oh, it will.
It will value.
I mean, the value of the degree is only going to go down.
I agree.
A lot of the degrees that are valuable in our country right now are like two year degrees
and people going to two year school is not very high.
So we'll see.
But there's a coming change, I'm sure.
So let's move on to our government because that's people love the United States government.
They love to hate it and they love to love it.
And I have a couple of interesting stats.
Oh, they love to talk about it.
So people love our democracy.
They think that we're so democratic.
The Economist magazine has rankings for these things and they generate a metric out of 60
indicators and the United States is ranked 30th freest country out of 167 that they ranked.
Now I don't know about that.
That doesn't sound like number one to me.
The United States government was ranked 23rd least corrupt by Transparency International,
which is an NGO that works with people.
We were ranked the 45th most free press by Reporters Without Borders, which also works
with the UN.
I said, OK, OK.
And we were ranked 21st least corrupt in the justice system by World Justice Project, which
also works with the UN.
Well, shoot, that's pretty good.
Right.
It's like I say, it's not great, but it's not the worst.
Yeah, twenty twenty first is definitely not twenty fifth.
So yeah, exactly.
Well, you remember, we're competing against thirty six countries realistically.
Yeah.
So we're like middle to bottom of the top nations.
It's kind of it's kind of the yay, we're not we're not last.
Yeah, we're not the worst place to live in the developed world.
Which is great.
We got the most we got the most Super Bowl wins of any country, I tell you that.
We do.
We have a big topic because our economy is the Republicans like to say we have the strongest
economy in the world and they have this big message, right, that all economy, economy,
economy, economy.
And a lot of this, a lot of the economy statistics are manipulations.
Right.
Well, yeah.
So they like to talk about averages and they don't like to talk about medians when they
start talking about income and they like to talk about GDP.
They don't like to talk about GDP that's adjusted for purchasing power and they don't like to
talk about the median GDP.
So just for a quick refresher between average and median.
Yes.
So I have this written down because I knew we didn't want to talk about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the average is taking all the people and taking all their data and dividing it by the
number of people where the median takes half of the people on the bottom side and half
the people on the top side and they find the middle of these 50 percentile groups.
Boom.
So in the United States, according to the World Bank, the United States is the fourth
most unequal country on the planet.
I can see that.
OK.
So 122,000 people out of 125 or four were number four most unequal.
We're more unequal than France before the French Revolution.
Yeah.
So two point two nine percent of our country has zero income and is not looking for work
and is not included in our unemployment statistics.
Yeah, because that's another cook the books kind of thing, the unemployment.
And I remember that back when like 2008 like that crash.
And you have to be actively seeking work to be considered unemployed.
And if you kind of give up, then you're not unemployed anymore.
Right.
And we're ranked 20th in the number or the percentage of the population that is just
not looking for work and is, I mean, either homeless or living off other people.
Yeah.
And that's a huge percentage of people.
So when you talk about averages, you're taking that two point nine percent and then you're
talking about Bill Gates and then you, you know, you're trying to make somehow make that
OK with the average, which is impossible.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, like what Bill Gates makes so much money that I heard one statistic at one
point that he makes so much money that if he were to drop a one hundred dollar bill,
it wouldn't be worth his time to stop to pick it up.
I've heard that one, too.
So now that we've kind of laid a groundwork for our stats, I would like to talk about
our economy.
Right.
So the average incomes of percentile.
Right.
The point one percent average income in the United States is three point two million.
The top one percent is eighty eight hundred and twenty three thousand.
Five percent is three hundred and forty two thousand.
The top ten percent is one hundred and seventy three thousand for an individual.
OK.
So if you're making like one hundred and seventy K a year, you're in the top 10 percent
of earners in the country.
You're on the you're on the edge of the top 10 percent because you have to be one hundred
and seventy three.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I just I just meant like generally speaking.
Right.
So with that in mind, our per capita GDP is seventy four thousand dollars.
OK.
Our median for individual, right, for per individual.
So our per capita, that's our average GDP.
Seventy four thousand.
Right.
The average income is fifty four thousand and the median GDP is thirty three seven.
See what I'm saying?
That's a little swing.
That's a huge swing.
So if our GDP was split up evenly amongst all people, we'd all be making seventy four
thousand dollars a year.
Right.
If you take all of the money and you divide it up equally, you know, you take all the
money that we make, you take all the people and you divide it the same.
It's only fifty four thousand, which means that twenty two thousand or twenty thousand
dollars per person is actually going to a corporate entity.
It's not going to an individual at all.
Right.
So two out of every seven dollars is going to a corporation.
You know, just disappear.
But we're not a corporate accuracy or anything.
Right.
Yeah.
Two out of every seven dollars made in the United States goes to a corporation.
And so then, like I say, the I love that for us.
The median income is thirty three seven.
So even that average is a manipulation because of all the rich people who are taking the
other two dollars out of the pile.
Yeah.
So their average is inflated to make it look good.
And I also wrote a note that when you look up the average income or the median income
in the United States, it pops up sixty seven thousand all the sites.
But if you dig into that, that's for a family.
That's for a household.
That's not for an individual.
So it's a manipulation.
That's family earnings.
So that that's really like sixty seven thousand for a family.
That's really thirty three thousand seven hundred and sixty is what it is.
Yeah.
That's the median income for a person in the United States.
Yeah.
So, you know what, Mike?
You know what, Mike?
Freedom isn't free.
It costs a buck oh five.
OK, right.
Oh, I know.
And I want to.
So this is another one.
I loved this wage increases from nineteen.
What's what's that?
What's that?
What's a what's a wage increase, Mike?
Wage increases.
Yeah, I know.
So I have three groups.
The top one per top point one percent saw three hundred and eighty nine percent increase
from nineteen seventy nine to twenty twenty.
OK.
The top one.
And then and then between twenty twenty and today it was another seven hundred and eighty
five percent because of the pandemic and they just raped everybody.
Possibly.
But anyway, sorry, sorry.
We're only going to twenty twenty with our stats today.
I actually have one coming up to twenty twenty three.
Oh, OK.
Well, you keep going.
I didn't want to derail the top.
Yep.
I would derail away the top one percent of earners made one hundred and seventy nine
percent more.
Yeah.
Can you tell me what the bottom 90 percent wage increase from nineteen seventy nine
to twenty twenty was?
I'm going to go right out of our my corporate handbook and I'm going to say maybe three
percent.
And I think that's being a little generous.
Oh, twenty eight percent.
So the increase in wages is from nineteen from nineteen eighty.
So it'd be like, yeah.
Yeah.
OK.
Yeah.
It's like a tenth of what the top point one percent is.
What do you think the inflation rate is during that same period?
I've never heard it go down.
And I know we've and I know recently we've had like eleven, twelve, maybe even fifteen
percent inflation for a couple of months here.
So I feel like the inflation rate probably is a little less than what the top point one
percent saw in wage increase.
You're right.
It was two hundred and fifty six percent.
So every American from nineteen eighty until twenty twenty lost money other than the top
one percent lost, lost over two hundred percent of their income.
Yes.
In real earned wages to inflation.
Yeah.
I mean, to inflation.
Yep.
Because you can't get a twenty six percent increase over that time span and have a two
hundred and fifty percent inflation increase and still be OK.
Right.
Yep.
From twenty twenty to twenty twenty three.
What do you think the inflation has been?
Well, it's been I would say average per year or just collectively from from twenty twenty
to twenty twenty three.
So you have to take the inflation rate for all three years.
OK.
I'd say maybe like fifty, fifty percent, sixty percent.
Yeah.
Sixty percent.
Just shy of sixty percent increase.
Yeah.
So realistically, it's even worse for normal people because my wages haven't gone up that
much.
Right.
No, I get even if I go gangbusters at work, I get a three percent increase.
Right.
You know, and it's like, but we've had eleven percent, fifteen percent and, you know, cumulatively
over three years, it's been sixty percent inflation and I've got maybe a three percent,
three percent, three percent.
Like, no, you're not you're not OK.
You know, like it's not I don't think it's sustainable.
And I know that's not we're talking about because we're talking about general happiness.
But and there's all those people out there that say, well, money can't buy happiness.
But you know what?
No money doesn't buy happiness either.
So well, you know, there's these like weird stat people that say once you make seventy
five USD, seventy five thousand USD a year, your happiness is pretty much peaked out.
But we're half of that.
We're not even half of that for the median.
So we're only fifty percent of maximum happiness level.
If we had equal sharing, then we would all make that.
Our economy can't even generate that amount of wealth for everybody to make that.
Yeah.
And it's kind of crazy.
And we so our GDP, I feel like it could.
I feel like it could.
But that's a different, completely separate topic.
Sure.
We do have the highest GDP.
But when you adjust it for exchange rates, we have the second highest.
China beats us out when adjusted for exchange because the exchange is based off of the US.
So everybody's number goes up or down based on ours.
Yeah, as it should.
So this is the one that blew my mind.
OK.
When adjusted for purchasing power, our per capita GDP, which we've already shown our
per capita GDP is twice our median GDP.
So this is already a manipulation.
We're ranked number 12 in the world per capita GDP.
Right.
And even scarier, our per capita GDP at number 12 is 57 percent of the fifth highest per
capita GDP and half the top.
OK.
That was a lot of words in there.
So our GDP is 70.
Let's see here.
What the heck is it?
Seventy four thousand right somewhere in there.
Yeah.
That sounds we're ranked number 12 in the world.
OK.
Per capita GDP.
OK.
Yes.
But we but we we had just then said we're like 30 percent median.
Right.
Yeah.
The median GDP is half of that.
It's like 30 some thousand dollars.
Yeah.
It's less than half, I suppose, when you get to nitty gritty.
But even with that inflated GDP number, we're still only number 12 in the world.
Yeah.
And we're half of the number one country in the world per capita GDP.
Oh, got it.
OK.
So the per capita GDP of number one is like one hundred and forty or one hundred fifty.
Yeah.
It's like one hundred and forty three or something like that.
And then the fifth ranked spot is like one hundred and thirty some.
Right.
So we're fifty seven percent of the number five spot.
So there's a huge gap between number five and number 12.
Yeah.
And then you're talking about purchasing power.
Yeah.
That's one adjusted for that one is that one's adjusted for purchasing power.
So that's not Roger.
OK.
That's adjusted for exchange rates for currency.
OK.
I got it now.
Which is the real this must have been some real.
Yeah.
I mean, this must have been some real nice light late night reading for you, compiling
all these stats and making sense of them.
Yeah.
Oh, no, I feel like I'm back in a feel like I'm back in econ or something like what the
fuck are you talking about up there?
I enjoyed economics in college.
Oh, yeah.
I was a nasty fuck.
So yeah, yeah.
Oh, it's interesting.
It takes a little bit because a lot of the terms and the stuff and like the stats, I
can get very confusing.
So I'm not intentionally.
It's easy to get lost.
Yeah.
I'm not intentionally trying to be obtuse, but I'm just trying to clarify.
So I understand.
And then hopefully our listeners could understand as well, because if my head's swimming, you
know, other people's must be as well.
Yes.
Well, the GDP talk, the important thing to take away, we're not the richest country in
the world.
We're the 12th.
Yeah.
The world's richest country in the world.
And the numbers that they're reporting are gross manipulation.
Yes.
And the numbers that are being reported is a gross manipulation.
So and again, that's why we're ranked fourth most unequal country in the world by the World
Bank.
Yeah.
So there we go.
Yep.
And I couldn't believe that almost three percent of the U.S. population is basically unemployed
forever.
Yeah, that's kind of mind boggling to me.
I don't know.
Do they then subside on the social programs or what do you?
I think that there's a mixture of homelessness, right?
Some of those are homeless.
Some of those people are in social programs and some of them are just leeches.
They're TERFs, man.
They're not TERFs.
They're not employed, not in education.
Yeah, like the NEETs.
The NEETs.
Yeah, the NEETs.
And we had a whole episode, season one about NEETs.
So if you need more data on that, go back to season one and check it out.
Yep.
So interesting.
Yeah.
Another little couple economic stats.
We have the 19th highest minimum wage, aka 18 countries have a higher minimum wage than
we do.
According to the World Economic Forum, we are second in global competitiveness and third
most globalized, which basically means that we have the fewest regulations and the least
amount of worker protections, second and third in the world.
Yeah.
Well, if little Billy wants to work, little Billy's going to work.
Okay.
Right.
We have the eighth best cost of living in a country out of the major nations.
So we got that going for us.
Okay.
Yeah.
We don't have purchasing power or income, but you know, cost of living ain't too bad.
Let's see here.
I mean, some people live in Iowa.
Right.
We have the prosperity index and we're ranked 19th in the prosperity index, which is like
a investment firm metric that tries to balance wealth, growth, education, health, personal
well-being and quality of life.
So it's like a...
All right.
So we missed, we just barely missed the top third of that, I guess.
Yeah.
19 out of 36.
I mean, if that's what we're comparing against, it's fine.
And then we have two bad ones.
We have the 13th highest household debt out of any country.
And even worse, we have the 12th highest government debt as a percentage of the GDP.
And if you look above us...
We just keep raising the debt limit and it's okay.
Oh, if you look above us on that list, they've all gone bankrupt.
It's pretty sketchy.
Okay.
So like what happens when a country goes bankrupt then?
That means that they have austerity and they have to like cut all their government programs,
which for us would mean like anything other than the military.
I thought that's what we already did with our budgeting.
We kind of do, but we still have public lands and we still have stuff like that, which we
have that later too, because we're actually pretty good as far as public lands.
But yeah, I've heard really good things.
And we talked about this on one of our previous episodes about the kind of the national parks
and stuff, but we'll talk more about that when we get there.
So yeah, exactly.
So yeah, the GDP, the government debt is out of control.
It really is scary.
It's scary every time they come up with a new word to define a number above like trillion.
You can stop inventing words, just stop spending so goddamn much.
It's insane.
The military spending is a significant portion of the budget.
Some people would estimate 50%.
They hide a lot of military spending.
So it's hard to assess what it really is.
Yeah, I know back in, I think it was, I don't know, back in the end when I was in college
or shortly when I was out of college, I wrote, and nobody's going to believe this, I wrote
a blog post, okay?
And I broke down the government data from, you know, like the White House or the secretary
of the treasury or wherever the fuck it came from, right?
And I think I landed on about 46% that was traceable was military, maybe a little higher.
I can't quite remember, but that was, you know, early 2000s.
And you know, it was the height of the Iraq war stuff.
Yes.
But still, it seems like an awful lot.
Well, did that include all the $1,500 toilet seats?
You know, I don't know.
It was just what they reported as military.
So it was, it was whatever they wanted to portray.
So I didn't dig super into it in a sense, but I remember looking at it with kind of
a critical eye and not delving in to find like ghost funds or whatever, hidden funds.
I found that it was about 46, 50% ish, you know?
Which seems like an awful lot for somebody who hasn't been invaded since like 1812 or
something.
Right.
We can have guns or we could have butter and pretty clearly we're not going to have butter.
So yeah, butter's overrated.
So is tea.
Throw it in the harbor.
So we're going to get into happiness.
I think we've discussed the economy enough.
We're not the best economy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think the caveat is we're not statisticians and we're not economists or we're not happiness
experts, yada, yada, yada.
No, I'm not an expert.
I'm just looking at the publicly available statistics and trying to make an informed
decision based on my reading level, which is above average.
And I'm sure that most of the people listening probably have an above average reading level.
Not the only thing of yours above average.
I'm above average in the United States, which is like 25th in the world.
So yeah, so I mean, it's saying something, but not as much something as one would like
to be saying.
Yeah.
If I was an Australian, it would mean more.
Yeah.
So you were talking about the global happiness index.
Yeah.
So we're going to go into that.
Before we get into that, this kind of ties back into the government and the economy.
So the UN creates a global peace ranking and the United States is 121 of 162.
So there's 120 countries that the United Nations considers to be more peaceful than the United
States.
So we just don't do the serenity now, I guess.
That's pretty shitty.
I'm just saying.
That's pretty bad.
Well yeah, and that's not good at all.
And it should be.
And I wonder, and I don't want to make the whole show about this at all, but it makes
me wonder if that is one of the things or one of the major drivers of all of the mass
shootings.
Well, we are not like people.
We have a very aggressive culture.
Yeah.
We're happy and we're not peaceful.
And I don't know.
The thing is a lot of these people have plenty of red flags, but we don't have, and that's
part of the part that goes back to the healthcare thing is we don't really have a societal good
outlook on getting mental help.
And people have red flags and they say, hey, that's not my business.
They should probably go get help, but I'm not going to do anything about it.
I'm not going to say anything about it.
Even if they get reported and nothing gets done about it, so they don't get the help
that they need.
The help that they need is too expensive because a lot of times it's not even covered by insurance
if you have insurance, which some people don't.
And it's a whole big thing.
And you know, but I don't want to go, I don't want to get into a huge.
Yeah.
We don't need to get into a diatribe about that.
We can do a show about that later.
But yeah, yeah.
But I think before we go into this next happiness step, as much as I like being happy, because
I do.
Do you want to do something crazy or do you not?
Well, so I was thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I've got, you know, four inches left of my cigar.
Really?
You have, I don't know.
I have like two and a half.
Oh, OK, OK.
I just pulled up my tape measure because I'm very bad at estimating distances and numbers
and things.
Yeah, I got two and a half inches left.
I'm sorry.
I thought I guess I was putting it in the wrong area.
It felt bigger than it is.
So do you do you have more than two and a half inches of subject matter?
No, I don't think so.
Oh, OK.
You think we're going to wrap it all up in this?
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, I think we will.
OK.
Yeah, I don't have that.
I do a lot of stuff, but.
Well, so I was going to ask if you wanted to like instead of doing two episodes, do
you just want to like when we're done with this, light up the other one and keep going?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, we can do that.
Two sticks in one episode.
I mean, it's up to you.
What do you feel like?
Sure.
It depends on how much because I don't know if I'd really want to do a topic change if
we're going to do the two cigars in one episode.
But if we're if we're going to do another episode, then let's do a different topic.
This trying to see where you're at.
Yeah, no, I think I'll be able to wrap it up with this one cigar.
This last part will be a lot quicker because a lot of them really like heavy duty meaty
stuff we we got through pretty quick.
So back to the quality of life.
So the WHO has a quality of life index and then US News has a quality of life.
Yeah, the who?
The joke never gets old for me, but yeah, I know the US News is going to have has a
better number.
We're ranked 20th, but the WHO ranked us at 28th.
OK, so best case scenario, we're in the middle of the pack worst case scenario.
We're at the low end of the 36 countries that we're trying to compete against.
Yeah, which is still better than the when you take all 195 countries like still.
It's fine, but it's not good when you're when you're looking at what should be our direct
competitors.
Yeah, we're in the middle of the pack.
The Economist ranks the United States the 16th best place to be born.
So we're in the middle of the pack.
The economic cooperation and development.
It's the the little thing that we created back in the Cold War ranks the United States
30th in time available to be devoted to leisure and personal care.
So 30th, we're 30th and time for leisure.
It's that damn hustle culture.
I tell you, it is the damn hustle culture.
Yeah.
So of the 36 countries, we're 30th in free time, basically, which is shit.
I mean, of course, people are unhappy if we're having a free time.
Retirement This is big.
We have the highest retirement age out of any of the industrialized world at 67.
Now this is modified because we can qualify for early retirement through Social Security
at 62.
And realistically, you can retire at any time.
But to get your full Medicare and Medicaid and blah, blah, blah, you have to have 67
retirement age. Australia, Denmark, Greece, Iceland and Israel all have retirement age
of 67.
So that's we're at the top.
But unlike all the other countries that have a retirement age of 67, we also have the lowest
life expectancy of that group.
So we have the highest retirement age out of the top 36 countries and we have the lowest
life expectancy.
So our retirement, total retirement age gap is the lowest.
OK, yeah.
See what I'm saying?
So if you combine our lowest life expectancy with highest for full retirement age, we get
the shortest amount of retirement because we die earlier than everybody else.
Yeah.
By a lot.
A lot.
So yeah.
We have an interesting step.
Now this I look deep into it.
This we're number one, by the way, in this next step.
We are number one.
So you can be proud of that, Nate.
I'm so proud already.
We are number one.
We have the most prisoners out of any country in the world.
The most.
We even beat communist China, who has three times more people than us.
And the reason why, if you look at the stats, we're actually ranked number two.
But if you look down, they separate they separated out all of our territories.
So if you add our territories into our prison population, we're number one.
So in order to manipulate that stats, so the United States was at the highest, they took
up Puerto Rico and Guam and American Samoa and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So we're actually number one.
We are we are the best.
We have the most human beings imprisoned out of anybody.
OK.
And even better, we're twice as much as number three.
So beat that Brazil at 800,000 people incarcerated.
So there there if you did, if you take it.
Yeah.
If you take a per cap, we're fifth.
So El Salvador, Rwanda, Turkmenistan all have a higher percentage of their population in
prison.
OK, so not exactly nice places.
Any of those countries, I don't think.
Yeah.
Oh, and Cuba.
Sorry.
Cuba is on that list, too.
We don't want to be in Cuba.
Yeah.
So we have a really high natural disaster risk.
We're one hundred and sixty eighth out of one hundred eighty five.
And that's really does it.
That just means that we have a huge territory.
So I have a couple of the countries.
Canada is one hundred and sixty first.
Australia is one hundred and sixty fourth.
And Russia is one hundred and sixty fifth, one hundred and seventy fifth.
I'm sorry.
So a lot of that has to do with the size of the country.
Yeah.
But apparently we're very vulnerable to natural disaster.
This goes to like our happiness for the Internet.
When we talked about this before, we have the 11th highest broadband speed, the 25th
highest mobile phone speed.
But and this is really good.
We have the third highest 4G LTE coverage out of any country that's ranked.
So we're not really that fast, but we do have really good cell phone coverage.
Yeah.
So that's good.
And we have 97.1 percent cell phone coverage in the states, which is crazy because I go
into dead zones all the time.
So apparently I'm one of those areas.
Yeah, I don't get that.
For the environment, we do not meet the WHO limits on air pollution.
Not even close.
Our average for a city is 12 micrograms of pollutants and five is the guideline.
So we're it varies by city, but we have unacceptable levels of air pollution.
No, no.
Rural areas are good, but city areas, not so good.
And funnily enough, the Biden administration's goal is to bring it to nine, which is still
almost double the guideline.
So yeah, yeah, there we go.
So carbon dioxide emissions, we talked about this.
We are the second most in the world directly behind China.
And that means that we're 13.7 percent of total emissions and we're the highest.
We're not the highest per capita.
We're the third highest per capita.
OK.
So we're not the worst polluter per capita or in total, but we are the second in the
third.
Well, if we try hard enough, we can be number one.
Right.
Then I have three more quick stats for us and then we can discuss what you think.
We have the second most agricultural land directly behind China.
And that's good.
That's good.
Yeah.
We have the most expensive and the most powerful military.
And that's I don't know if that's good or bad.
Yeah.
And we have the 13th or we have 13 percent of our total landmass under federal protection,
which is only the 119th highest percentage by total amount of landmass.
But it is the largest amount.
OK.
See what I'm saying?
So like a lot of these smaller countries have more than 13 percent of their total country
under like in the parks program.
But because we're so big, we have the most actual amount of land that's under a federal
a federally protected program.
Yeah.
So and that's really cool.
I think that's awesome.
Yeah, me too.
I love being outside and kind of all that stuff, you know.
Right.
So I think for the air pollution, we're nowhere near the most polluted.
The worst countries have a hundred and eighty five micrograms per cubic meter.
And we're at 12.
Yeah.
So we're not like crazy in the bad part.
We're just above what we're supposed to be.
Yeah.
Which is not good.
But it's not like we're by no means bad as far as like air pollution by comparison to
you know, others.
So yeah, pretty interesting.
But I don't know if we did we talk about the Human Development Index?
So we're ranked 20th on the human.
Yeah, we did.
We already did.
Yeah.
So overall, if you take the inequality part into it, you average it out.
We're probably the 25th best country.
You know, we're we're maybe depends on how you want to look at it.
But we're we're not the worst place in the world, but we're not even top 10.
Yeah.
A lot of stats out there, I'm sorry, guys.
It's a stat heavy episode.
That's OK.
Well, we we knew that was going to be the thing, because like I say, it's trying to
trying to create an average out of all these random stats.
And we're not top 10 and hardly anything unless it's bad.
Yeah, it is true.
Yeah.
So what do you think, Nate?
What do you think?
Well, I think America is number one and all these other commie countries need to get in
line.
Uh huh.
No, I mean, I think, you know, like I think if people would sit and be honest with themselves
and understand that you can be critical of the country and critical of the government
and critical of things without wanting to burn the flag in the street or move to communist
China, if you're if you're, you know, honest with yourself, you know, we're not like we're
not number one.
And I don't think any country is number one in everything.
You know, there's got to be a number one in every category.
But just because you're number one in one category doesn't mean you're number one in
all the rest of the categories.
So everything's kind of a trade off.
You got to pick, you know, if it's in your lifestyle to move, you know, like, what are
you going to judge which of these categories, which of these stats that we've talked about
is most important to you?
Right.
You know, I think for me, the big ones were like the inflation, the buying power and the
median GDP.
Like those are kind of the big ones for me because I've heard that 75k thing too.
Yeah.
You know, like 75k will buy your happiness.
And that's per person, not per not per family, but per person.
You know, when our median GDP is like half of that and inflation has been crazy rampant.
Like, yeah, don't get me wrong.
There's other good things about living in America.
Healthcare isn't one of them.
So you know, like there's room for improvement and you can look at it negatively.
You can look at it positively and say, hey, we've got a lot of work we can do and we make
things a lot better here or we can move and not worry about here too.
So right.
I thought about taking a job in Australia several years ago.
I think I told you that, didn't I?
Yeah.
I think we talked about that.
So and I'm glad I did it because their COVID policies were fucking crazy.
Yeah.
I think I would have gotten mad.
You know what I mean?
With all the crazy rules and restrictions they had going on.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, I really seriously considered it at that time because Australia is ranked
better than United States on average over for a lot of things.
Yeah.
I would say that their First Amendment or their freedom of speech is way less.
And obviously they don't have the same gun rights that we have.
So I do consider freedom of speech to be pretty important.
Gun rights, not so much, but I like hunting.
So yeah, it's one of those things.
But very interesting.
Very interesting.
So yeah, US is not the definitely not the worst place.
Like I say, I didn't get offended when I started hearing these like Gen Z years talking about
how the US is the worst ever and blah, blah, blah.
It's like, get over yourselves.
We're not even close to being the worst place on earth.
We're just not the best.
Like I realized that we've been taught that lie that we're the best.
And it's very clear that we're not the best.
But I'm not sure that there is a clear best.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Well, that's the whole thing is like, there's not one country that really kind of like stands
out, right?
As number one.
No, not really.
I mean, the Western European nations are good.
Like I said, there's 36 of the top nations.
So any one of those 36 is probably pretty good.
You're talking about Western Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and
then South Korea, too, is actually in that group.
Now, South Korea is in that group.
Okay.
So yep, yep.
And it's yeah.
And Western Europe, like I say, it's the 36 nations.
But most of them are in Western Europe.
And they're all little tiny things that are the size of a state.
So yeah.
Yeah, we're talking like Luxembourg and the Maldives and like these little tiny.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And the Netherlands and Belgium.
I mean, the Netherlands is like the size of a county.
Yeah.
So not to like talk bad about the Netherlands and they're a wonderful country.
But you're talking about landmass and all that.
I mean, it takes like nine hours to drive across our state, let alone, you know, the
country.
Yeah.
Mm hmm.
This actually this cigar is pretty good, I thought.
I hate it.
Really?
You hated it.
Well, I'm not a fan.
Why did you hate it?
I'm not a fan.
Several reasons.
One is, I mean, the first half was fine and it tasted fine.
Wasn't anything like overly special in my mind.
And then the second half got really sour.
And I've been trying to not smoke as fast.
And then it kind of goes out.
And then I relight it.
And then it's just sour again.
And I don't know.
I don't know.
This is one I probably wouldn't I wouldn't want to I wouldn't want to smoke again.
So I took it slow the whole time.
I have an inch and a half left or so.
I was slow, slow puffing it.
And I'll agree with you that the flavor was not incredible.
There's nothing impressive going on.
Yeah.
But I haven't got sour out of it.
I think because I started off slower and I stayed.
Yeah, that could be like I understand that I'm probably like.
Yeah.
The first time I smoked one of these, if I remember correctly, I thought they were shit
and I smoked it too fast and I thought the second half was crap.
So it's going to be at the user's discretion whether or not to purchase one of these.
Yeah.
And their experience.
So how much do you have left?
Let me measure, Mike.
I'm and I think it's out now and I just I'm not going to relight it.
Sure.
It's just about an inch and three quarters.
Oh, OK.
Yeah.
I would say that I wouldn't call this anything particularly remarkable.
It's acceptable.
I don't think it's better than a bin cigar, though.
No, I don't think it's better than a Fuma.
Definitely not better than a Fuma.
Definitely not.
Not a Rocky Patel Fuma.
Those things are pretty pretty good.
Yeah, those are good.
Yeah.
That's like definitely one of the memorable ones as far as like a really cheap, good cigar.
Yeah.
So is that going to be our our final thoughts on the the Gherka beauty?
Go buy a Rocky Patel Fuma.
Yeah, go buy it.
Something else.
If you're thinking about this, go buy something else.
There we go.
So I think I think so.
I think that's it.
I think just like America, this cigar is not number one.
It's not number last either, though.
So no, it wasn't offensive.
You know, it's definitely definitely something where it's like if you learn how to smoke
it the right way, it will probably treat you just fine.
Yes.
And if you're not careful, it will bite you.
Yep.
And I done been bait.
Be safe.
Have fun.
Have a great week.