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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

American exceptionalism?

Brian Leiter

Here's a chart, make of it what you will:

Country

Homicide rate per 100,000

Covid deaths per 100,000

Per capita GDP

GINI coefficient (higher=more inequality)

Military expenditures per capita (2019)

United States

  4.96        

326.90

$69,287

41.50

$2,224

United Kingdom

  1.20

312.41

$47,334

35.10

$  720

Ireland

  0.87

164.87

$99,152

30.60

$  228

Australia

  0.89

  62.77

$59,934

34.30

$1,028

Singapore

  0.16

  29.04

$72,794

36.00

$1,932

Brazil

27.38

324.10

$  7,518

48.90

$  128

Germany

  0.95

188.34

$50,801

31.70

$  590

Switzerland

  0.59

163.03

$93,457

33.10

$  603

Chile

  4.40

325.20

$16,502

44.90

$  273

Israel

  1.49

136.44

$51,430

38.60

$2,402

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10 responses to “American exceptionalism?”

  1. Brock

    You should take the Irish GDP number with a grain of salt. Much of that is due to multinational corporations using accounting tricks to shift profits to Irish subsidiaries for tax reasons.

    Reply
  2. Brian Leiter

    Interesting and not implausible. If you or someone else has a link that would support this, please post it.

    Reply
  3. Brian Leiter

    OK, I did a quick google search, and turned up this, which confirms Brock's point:
    https://www.politico.eu/article/ireland-gdp-growth-multinationals-misleading/

    Reply
  4. Rollo Burgess

    My initial reactions:

    1. Pretty depressing as a Brit, we're poorer than we used to be and getting poorer. Although at least we're not all shooting each other.

    2. Interesting how much Australia spends on defence, when I would have thought it is more or less immune to being attacked (due to its location).

    Reply
  5. JDRox

    Interesting. Where is the chart from? High homicide rates, covid deaths, and inequality seem to be correlated with…the Americas. I don't know what that means if true, but I'd be interested in seeing if the correlation holds with more data.

    Reply
  6. Brian Leiter

    Australia has huge natural resources, which make it a target for a rather large country in its part of the world (although so far that has mostly involved Chinese economic coercion). The Australians are wise to spend as much as they do, especially if they cannot count on the U.S. to the same extent going forward (that remains to be seen, of course).

    Reply
  7. s. wallerstein

    True except for Canada.

    I'd say that inequality tends to produce a more violent culture and privatized health care would tend to increase the Covid death rate, even if vaccination is free. The relation between inequality and high homicide rates is proposed in the book, the Spirit Level.

    The inequality found in the Western Hemisphere is probably partially due to the fact that almost all countries (except Cuba and Venezuela) follow the U.S. model of ultra free market capitalism.

    I live in Chile where during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) that model was deliberately installed by Chilean technocrats who had studied economics with Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. However, I believe a similar process occurred in Brazil, which is on the above list and has a worse GINI than Chile.

    Reply
  8. Mike O'Brien

    I think median income would be a useful stat to include here, I'm curious how it would correlate to per-capita GDP and Gini. I also wonder how credible the Covid death stats are, given the wide discrepancies in data collection and reporting between countries. For example, I wouldn't trust most Republican-led states in the US to even try to gather accurate numbers on Covid infections and fatalities.

    Reply
  9. Brian Leiter

    There may be under-counting on Covid deaths, but most of these countries have pretty good reputations for collecting and reporting health data (I don't know about Brazil, but the others do).

    Reply
  10. Paul D. Van Pelt

    Honestly, I took the phrase, AE, with a grain of sand the first time I ever heard it. Considered it just one more inflationary term for stoking the collective ego of a nation, too full of herself.

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