I'll take the bait on the three states you mention that are indeed stable democracies following a social-democrat strategy: Greece, Italy and Portugal. I'll drop the Soviet Union and North Korea, which are straw men in your argument, for plainly obvious reasons.
Let's back our conversation with numbers, shall we? Infant mortality rates and percent of population below the poverty line.
Infant mortality rates (deaths by 1000 live births)[1,4]: United States 6.81, Greece 4.65, Italy 3.51, Portugal 4.45, EU 4.49
% of population below poverty line [2,3]: United States 15.1%, Greece 20%, Portugal 18%, Italy 18,2%
So, I think we can close the discussion on infant mortality rates. It'd be a stretch proving that the US is better than Greece with those numbers.
As for the poverty threshold, I could argue that the numbers are within the same order of magnitude, but I don't really have to. Some statistics gimmicks are occurring here: The US poverty line is defined at an annual income of around $11k, for a median national income of around $50k. The EU defines the poverty line at percentile 40% of national income. Easily any of the European countries has one order of magnitude less poor people than the US.
You brought up indicators on innovation and defence spending. As for defence, it's an endless discussion, where I guarantee you, many people in the world would wave away US military intervention outside of its own borders in a heartbeat. Innovation is a more interesting topic, since it's often touted as a bastion of the US. Here, the sheer scale of the US is misleading. Try to compare with aggregates of the same dimension, like the EU: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/files/ius... You'll find that the US/Japan do lead, but nowhere can they be defined as the world providers of R&D, from where other countries benefit.
Let's back our conversation with numbers, shall we? Infant mortality rates and percent of population below the poverty line.
Infant mortality rates (deaths by 1000 live births)[1,4]: United States 6.81, Greece 4.65, Italy 3.51, Portugal 4.45, EU 4.49
% of population below poverty line [2,3]: United States 15.1%, Greece 20%, Portugal 18%, Italy 18,2%
So, I think we can close the discussion on infant mortality rates. It'd be a stretch proving that the US is better than Greece with those numbers.
As for the poverty threshold, I could argue that the numbers are within the same order of magnitude, but I don't really have to. Some statistics gimmicks are occurring here: The US poverty line is defined at an annual income of around $11k, for a median national income of around $50k. The EU defines the poverty line at percentile 40% of national income. Easily any of the European countries has one order of magnitude less poor people than the US.
You brought up indicators on innovation and defence spending. As for defence, it's an endless discussion, where I guarantee you, many people in the world would wave away US military intervention outside of its own borders in a heartbeat. Innovation is a more interesting topic, since it's often touted as a bastion of the US. Here, the sheer scale of the US is misleading. Try to compare with aggregates of the same dimension, like the EU: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/files/ius... You'll find that the US/Japan do lead, but nowhere can they be defined as the world providers of R&D, from where other countries benefit.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mor... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage... [3] http://www.inequalitywatch.eu/spip.php?article99 [4] http://www.indexmundi.com/european_union/infant_mortality_ra...