Statistics on America

Nightmare · Post by **Nightmare** » Sun Sep 08, 2002 5:26 pm

This was written in todays Toronto Star, and I how them them interesting, and even some appalling.

Here they are. The link to the web version.

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Percentage of Americans who believe the United States is viewed favourably in the eyes of the world: 79%

Percentage of Pakistanis, Jordanians, and Saudis who view the U.S. unfavourably: 68%, 62%, and 64%, respectively

Percentage of Americans who say they don't follow international news because international events don't affect them: 40% (this was one where my jaw dropped)

During the 2002 Presidential campaign, American voters were asked to rank 23 election issues according to importance. Rank given to U.S. role in world affairs: 20

Number of words George Bush devoted to foreign policy in his inaugural address in January 2001: 45

Percentage of Americans who want Domestic Social Issues discussed in the upcoming Congressional Elections: 56%

Percentage who want foreign policy discussed: 7%

Rank of U.S. in overseas development assistance (by GNI) among the 22 member countries of OECD's Development Assistance Committee: last

Percentage of Americans who feel the country gives too much foreign aid: 54%

Percentage of Americans who think the U.S. should take a leading role in solving international problems: 26%

Percentage of Americans who believe the development of a peaceful solution to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians should be an important foreign policy goal for the United States: 54%

Percentage of Americans who approve of President Bush's international policy: 69%

Percentage of French, Germans and British who do: 32%, 35% and 40%, respectively

Percentage of Americans who follow news of terrorism at home very closely:78%

Percentage of Americans who follow news of the war in Afghanistan closely: 51%

Percentage of Americans who think the U.N. is doing a good job: 58%

Percentage of Americans with valid passports: 20%

Percentage of Canadians: 25%

Percentage of Americans who do not know that India is the world's largest democracy: 80%

Percentage of American high school students who cannot name the ocean that separates North America from Asia: 25%

Percentage of American high school students that identified Vietnam as an island nation: 66%

Number of hours dedicated to Canadian news on the American networks' evening news from 1990-1999: Less Than 12

Number of countries that received less than one hour of coverage during the same period: 132

Number of countries that received 0 minutes during that period: 41

Rank of Canada as nation viewed most favorably in the annual Gallup poll of Americans since 1987: first

Percentage of Americans who could name Canada's Prime Minister: 2%

Percentage of Americans who say they are satisfied with the United State's position in the world: 71%

Percentage of Americans who supported the development of a missile defense system in 2001: 41%

Percentage of Americans who support it now: 51%

/-\lastor · Post by **/-\lastor** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 7:17 am

Here in the Netherlands is the percentage of people who think Bush is doing a good job internationally: 0%

I seriously can't think of anyone who approves of him at all. To quote the great Bush himself during a conversation with the prime minister of India: "I honestly don't know why I've been chosen, I was running against peace and prosperity."

Bush is IMO seriously the worst president you can think of, take a Inuit, put him in a suit and dump him at the White House and you've got a better prez.
Proof: Which president ever literally said in a public speech: "Don't misunderestemate me".

Vivien · Post by **Vivien** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 7:31 am

Sad

gnomethingy · Post by **gnomethingy** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 8:46 am

Originally posted by /-\lastor
Which president ever literally said in a public speech: "Don't misunderestemate me".

Tell me thats not true...

smass · Post by **smass** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 10:21 am

Does this really surprise all of you? In America we live in a virtually strifeless society with good standards of living. We live on a continent that geographically isolates us from most of the rest of the world. We are the most powerful nation in the world economically, culturally (no judgement of good or bad) , and militarily. That makes the average American rather content and not interested in stirring the pot. Americans have no reason to concern themselves with the rest of the world - for good or for bad.

Please don't misunderstand me - I am not in "favor" or happy with the results of this poll - just trying to point out that this information is not surprising.

What does it say positively about Americans - to me it says that we are not interested in running your countries, or dictating how you should live. Contrary to popular belief on this forum - Americans are not looking to take over the world - they are looking to live their lives with the least worry possible. If you need us to be more concerned with your situation then maybe you should take a look at your own house.

I will let you all expound on the numerous bad points about Americans that this poll makes.

Weasel · Post by **Weasel** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 11:02 am

Originally posted by Gaxx_Firkraag

Percentage of Americans who think the U.S. should take a leading role in solving international problems: 26%

Percentage of Americans who think the U.N. is doing a good job: 58%

International problems...(I believe we (The US) need to work on lowering it to between 0% and 15%.

U.N. is doing a good job...(Depends on what part. Food aid, I say support should rise to 100%. Military aid...0%)

/-\lastor · Post by **/-\lastor** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 11:02 am

I don't think that America is "taking over the world", but it seems nowadays that all the attention the US is giving the world is negative. The States seem to do no 3d world help at all except threatening them when they do something that hazards the US industry or wealth.
I don't want to look like a fanatical patriot here, here but in Holland, I honestly don't know anyone who doesn't give a fair deal on money to charity. Even the goverment seems to try to bankrupt itself to give to 3d world countries.

Sorry for anything that might be offensive,
No worries

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 11:17 am

I would like to see a similar poll conducted in other countries with the same questions. I suspect that you'll see that everyone has an inflated view of themselves and that ignorance isn't limited to the United States alone.

As our friend smass says, the United States is geographically isolated which means that we generally don't need to learn another language and the distance from New York to Los Angeles (2461 mi/3961 km) is about the same as the distance as it is from Lisbon to Moscow (2431 mi/3913 km). This means that someone in Atlanta, GA may know about as much about their immediate neighbours (Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina) that someone in the Netherlands knows about their immediate neighbours (Belgium, German, Finland).

I think that the citizens of many other nations are more in tune to international events than the people in the United States are, but that doesn't mean that we care less about the world around us (it just seems we do) because the United States is the number one source of funds for the United Nations (even if we don't always pay our bills on time), our government gives out more gross foreign aid per year than any other nation on Earth and our population gave over $203 billion to charity (public and private, foreign and domestic) last year (thats $1 out of every $50 of the GDP).

Vicsun · Post by **Vicsun** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 11:30 am

Originally posted by HLD:
our government gives out more gross foreign aid per year than any other nation on Earth and our population gave over $203 billion to charity (public and private, foreign and domestic) last year (thats $1 out of every $50 of the GDP).

Rank of U.S. in overseas development assistance (by GNI) among the 22 member countries of OECD's Development Assistance Committee: last

Is "foreign aid" the same as "overseas development assistance"? If it is, it looks like that one of the above is wrong. If it's not, then just ignore this post

fable · Post by **fable** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 11:37 am

Originally posted by frogus
Pardon? Explain this, please.

Look at his context. That whole paragraph is giving the view of the "average American."

Weasel · Post by **Weasel** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 11:41 am

Originally posted by Vicsun

Is "foreign aid" the same as "overseas development assistance"? If it is, it looks like that one of the above is wrong. If it's not, then just ignore this post

Based on GNI.

Country (B) ------ (%)

Australia 852 ----- 0.25
Austria 457 ----- 0.25
Belgium 866 ----- 0.37
Canada 1 572 ----- 0.23
Denmark 1 599 ------ 1.01
Finland 389 ----- 0.33
France 4 293 ----- 0.34
Germany 4 879 ----- 0.27
Greece 194 ----- 0.19
Ireland 285 ------ 0.33
Italy 1 493 ------ 0.14
Japan 9 678 ----- 0.23
Luxembourg 142 ----- 0.80
Netherlands 3 155 ----- 0.82
New Zealand 111 ------ 0.25
Norway 1 346 ----- 0.83
Portugal 267------ 0.25
Spain 1 748 ------ 0.30
Sweden 1 576 ----- 0.76
Switzerland 908 ----- 0.34
United Kingdom 4 659 ----- 0.32
United States 10 884 ----- 0.11

/-\lastor · Post by **/-\lastor** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 11:43 am

Originally posted by HighLordDave
our government gives out more gross foreign aid per year than any other nation on Earth

I'll give this the same reply I give all the "made in America" stories (you know, the ones about a thief sueing the family he was stealing from for having a too slippery staircase and falling down from it). America is a continent, it isn't comparable to say ... Austria. The sheer size and population of a country completely change "large" and "small", like Einstein said: "Everything is relative."

The numbers you just gave probably are quite small in comparison with a "nation" of more-or-less the same size: The Europian Union (this is a presumption, I admit I've got no proof of this, frankly I suck at numbers, if anyone can prove me wrong, please do it).

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 11:44 am

Originally posted by Vicsun
Is "foreign aid" the same as "overseas development assistance"?

I don't think so but I haven't gotten all the way through the OECD.org website. The US also gives out military and humanitarian aid which would not fall under the category of "development".

I also found on their website that the "The US Becomes the World's Largest Donor Again" so you might want to double-check the number you got as to whether it ranks the countries by gross assistance or per capita assistance. If it's per capita (dollars per person), I would expect the US to be very low on the list, but in terms of gross dollars (flat amount), I think we're on the higher end, as the link I found suggests.

CM · Post by CM » Mon Sep 09, 2002 12:12 pm

Actually it is not. I am an economics student so i will explain this a bit. GNI - stands for Gross National Income. Compare the Annual Income of Aus with that of the US. Who has the bigger income? US, but it spends little of it in percentage compared to AUS, but in real terms it is a couple of billion more. I think the US spends around 1% of its GDP on aid, and its GDP is in trillions. Sadly most of this goes in military aid the chief recievers being Israel and Egypt not for education or health or food. But the US does do alot. Countries should follow the US and all should increase their aid, but only for social causes. Political and military ones should be cut. Pretty Idealistic arent I?

frogus · Post by **frogus** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 12:31 pm

Originally posted by fable

Look at his context. That whole paragraph is giving the view of the "average American."

Where does it say that?

I am not to be held responsible if we stop posting our own views and start posting other people's instead

. Anyway, yes, I am just being contrary really, I understand. The real intention of my post was to point out that smass was making controversial and potentially unpopular statements without really explaining himself...

Sorry about that.

RandomThug · Post by **RandomThug** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 12:56 pm

Just me again

I would definitly enjoy to see some American Journalist's take some polls and statistics of other foriegn countries not in our target scope right now, say canada for instance. I doubt any one is truly more innocent than we are.

As weasel once said in another thread to me, If there were Message boards during the hieght of the roman empire, there would be more posts against the empire than for.

thug

smass · Post by **smass** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 1:06 pm

Far be it for me to post "unpopular statements".

.

@ frogus - Explain myself? The quote that you cut out of my previous email viewed on its own would seem to imply that I am in favor of ignoring the rest of the world - At least I think thats what you took offense to...Let me explain if I was unclear:

The quote was "Americans have no reason to concern themselves with the rest of the world" - What I meant was that the average American's life is not perceivably influenced by the events in other nations - certainly not to the degree that members of some other countries are - due to the other countries geographic, historical, economic, and cultural situation. Since ALL people act in their own self interest it would stand to reason that an American who's life is not directly impacted by the rest of the world has more important (to him) things to worry about - the poll simply reflects this perspective.

I also explicitly stated "Please don't misunderstand me - I am not in "favor" or happy with the results of this poll - just trying to point out that this information is not surprising." Nuff said.

Sorry for highjacking the thead - I just wanted to straighten out the misunderstanding - thanks for you help Fable

Ode to a Grasshopper · Tue Sep 10, 2002 1:02 am

Sadly I think the results would be much the same (not to the same extent, perhaps, but still alarmingly similar) if a similar poll was done on Australia.

As Smass says, it's unlikely the average American is interested in dictating how the rest of the world lives (an assertion which appears to be backed up by the figures posted), it is the US leadership which is taking it upon itself to be an international moral policeman.

Tom · Post by **Tom** » Tue Sep 10, 2002 8:45 am

Originally posted by Weasel

Based on GNI.

Denmark 1 599 ------ 1.01

GO Denmark GO Denmark.

What? the facists has taken power and cut the aid?