An eye-opener, that was! The thing that struck me the most was Alcohol Consumption between the US and Russia. To hear the Russian women talk, they claim their men just lay around drunk all the time, but the chart shows us as nearly on a par with them.

I reckon I need to tell Natasha not to pack her bags just yet...

On another front, it looks to me like if the US and Russia could give up the pissin' contest and ally up, the rest (read: China in particular) wouldn't have a prayer.

LOL

Maybe if Russia got more broadband and roller coasters their happiness index would rise.

Excellent thread!

I find it curious that both Russia and China each holds vastly more gold reserves than the US.

I recall an article a few months back that China would not allow any gold to leave the country, and was buying it up as much as was reasonably possible.

In view of the dollar, seems like a prudent thing to do.

I was surprised to see the size of the Chinese navy.

Originally posted by honkusbobo
I don't know where the hell they're getting their numbers from but this stuff is utterly laughable.

I would like to see some hard numbers on these as well. These graphs are pretty ballparkish.

The real look see should be

US, Russia, China, European Union

Vs

the rest of the world...

Because all of the Above have been playing a big Fat game of Good Cop Bad Cop with the rest of the Planet since the UN was formed and said nations became a part of the security council anyway with even our own citizens respectively being periodically abused to make this order concrete

I am and have my whole life actually been of the Opinion the members of the UN security council have been in this together all along, selling arms and building a huge military and playing sides from day 1 to create an appearance of being enemies when in reality it's the rest of the world we exploit together. The NWO as many like to put it.

Obviously we have taken the role of "Bad Cop" off Russia hands for the near future...

The fact that we have the largest nuclear arsenal and have proven our willingness to use them, is the reason people hesitate to # with us.

[edit on 24-10-2009 by ItIsWhatItIs]

Originally posted by ItIsWhatItIs
The fact that we have the largest nuclear arsenal and have proven our willingness to use them, is the reason people hesitate to # with us.

[edit on 24-10-2009 by ItIsWhatItIs]

Did you look and see what the comparison was between US/Russia was? They have more. So they have the largest arsenal.

Thanks for posting those.

One interesting fact is that Russia has about 1/2 the population of the US (and a whole lot larger land mass). They are really hurting in that department as population affects things like work force and available troop strength. Russian population is headed downward at a much greater rate than either the US or China. The women don't want to have kids over there, an increasing trend all across the Western nations.

If you look at the graph comparing "paid maternity leave", the Russians have a whole lot and the US has very little. All across Europe and Russia they pay women well to have babies in terms of maternity leave and other benefits.

Do to our higher immigration from the south the US hasn't had to face the decreasing population problem yet.

We used to worry about the population exploding and all that. Not true any more in most first would countries!