Americans Doing Nearly as Well as North Koreans in 2012 Olympics: Per Capita Rankings

Americans are 3X as likely to have won a medal than the average world citizen, which makes them nearly as athletic as North Koreans. More precisely, Americans are 3.08 times more likely to have a medal, and North Koreans are 3.11 times more likely. As of yesterday, the 25 million North Koreans share 5 medals, and the 314 million Americans share 63.

After Kirani James won his gold medal yesterday in the 400 meter, Grenada is at the top of the list for per capita medal count, with one medal for each of its 105,000 citizens.

Unsurprisingly, India is at the bottom of the list (of countries that have won medals), with one medal for every 403k citizens. While China dominates and may well finish with the most medals, its per capita medal count is below average, putting it between Iran and Ethiopia.

Host Great Britain is, rather fittingly, doing the best of all the big countries. Its citizens are 10X more likely than average to have won a medal.

Jamaica has the world's fastest human beings and seems to dominate Olympic news coverage, but actually finishes fourth place in per capita medal count, behind Grenada, Slovenia, and New Zealand, and just ahead of Denmark.

Here's the table with the per capita medal count ranking through 6 August.

Rank	Country	Medals	Population	Pop. / Medal	Compared to Avg.
1	Grenada	1	105,000	105,000	146.21
2	Slovenia	4	2,057,910	514,478	29.84
3	New Zealand	8	4,434,400	554,300	27.70
4	Jamaica	4	2,705,827	676,457	22.69
5	Denmark	8	5,584,758	698,095	21.99
6	Cyprus	1	838,897	838,897	18.30
7	Australia	22	22,692,531	1,031,479	14.88
8	Belarus	8	9,457,500	1,182,188	12.99
9	Hungary	8	9,962,000	1,245,250	12.33
10	Estonia	1	1,294,236	1,294,236	11.86
11	Trinidad and Tobago	1	1,317,714	1,317,714	11.65
12	Slovakia	4	5,445,324	1,361,331	11.28
13	Mongolia	2	2,844,000	1,422,000	10.80
14	Croatia	3	4,290,612	1,430,204	10.73
15	Great Britain	43	62,262,000	1,447,953	10.60
16	Netherlands	11	16,738,836	1,521,712	10.09
17	Sweden	6	9,495,113	1,582,519	9.70
18	Lithuania	2	3,187,700	1,593,850	9.63
19	Cuba	7	11,247,925	1,606,846	9.55
20	Armenia	2	3,268,500	1,634,250	9.39
21	Qatar	1	1,699,435	1,699,435	9.03
22	Moldova	2	3,559,500	1,779,750	8.63
23	Czech Republic	5	10,504,203	2,100,841	7.31
24	Korea	22	48,580,000	2,208,182	6.95
25	Georgia	2	4,497,600	2,248,800	6.83
26	Romania	8	19,042,936	2,380,367	6.45
27	Kazakhstan	7	16,776,000	2,396,571	6.41
28	France	27	65,350,000	2,420,370	6.34
29	Norway	2	5,027,800	2,513,900	6.11
30	Singapore	2	5,183,700	2,591,850	5.92
31	Azerbaijan	3	9,235,100	3,078,367	4.99
32	Russia	42	143,117,000	3,407,548	4.51
33	Canada	10	34,880,400	3,488,040	4.40
34	Germany	23	81,859,000	3,559,087	4.31
35	Serbia	2	7,120,666	3,560,333	4.31
36	Italy	17	60,820,787	3,577,693	4.29
37	Belgium	3	10,951,266	3,650,422	4.21
38	Puerto Rico	1	3,725,789	3,725,789	4.12
39	Switzerland	2	7,952,600	3,976,300	3.86
40	Japan	28	127,530,000	4,554,643	3.37
41	Dominican Republic	2	9,445,281	4,722,641	3.25
42	Poland	8	38,501,000	4,812,625	3.19
43	DPR Korea	5	24,554,000	4,910,800	3.13
44	US	63	314,059,000	4,985,063	3.08
45	Ukraine	9	45,565,909	5,062,879	3.03
46	Tunisia	2	10,673,800	5,336,900	2.88
47	Greece	2	10,787,690	5,393,845	2.85
48	Finland	1	5,413,830	5,413,830	2.84
49	Hong Kong, China	1	7,103,700	7,103,700	2.16
50	Kenya	5	42,749,000	8,549,800	1.80
51	Spain	5	46,163,116	9,232,623	1.66
52	Colombia	4	46,638,000	11,659,500	1.32
53	South Africa	4	50,586,757	12,646,689	1.21
54	Guatemala	1	14,713,763	14,713,763	1.04
-	total	458	7,031,000,000	15,351,528	1.00
55	Iran	4	75,149,669	18,787,417	0.82
56	China	65	1,347,350,000	20,728,462	0.74
57	Ethiopia	4	84,320,987	21,080,247	0.73
58	Mexico	5	112,336,538	22,467,308	0.68
59	Chinese Taipei	1	23,261,747	23,261,747	0.66
60	Brazil	8	192,376,496	24,047,062	0.64
61	Saudi Arabia	1	27,136,977	27,136,977	0.57
62	Venezuela	1	27,150,095	27,150,095	0.57
63	Malaysia	1	28,334,135	28,334,135	0.54
64	Uzbekistan	1	29,123,400	29,123,400	0.53
65	Argentina	1	40,117,096	40,117,096	0.38
66	Egypt	2	82,473,000	41,236,500	0.37
67	Thailand	1	65,479,453	65,479,453	0.23
68	Turkey	1	74,724,269	74,724,269	0.21
69	Indonesia	2	237,641,326	118,820,663	0.13
70	India	3	1,210,193,422	403,397,807	0.04

Liberals' Nefarious Plan to Kill Off Conservatives (Chick-fil-a Controversy Explained)

This Chick-fil-a furor continues and it may be part of a liberal conspiracy to lessen the impact of the conservative vote.

Conservatives are now driven to prove their alignment with family values by eating fried chicken. Liberals are boycotting the place. One can only speculate that this will exacerbate a trend already seen in the data comparing liberal and conservative states.

States that have higher life expectancy tend to vote more liberal. That's Hawaii in the top right-hand corner, where life expectancy is 81.5  years and Obama got 72% of the vote. The point on the far left is Mississippi, where life expectancy is 74.8 years and only 43% of the population voted for Obama. Conservatives obviously already have a weakness for fried foods. Someone just came up with a way to exploit that.

Given that conservative states have higher birth rates, this matter of lower life expectancy doesn't really help liberals to crowd out conservatives as a percentage of the general population. So, some nefarious liberal obviously came up with a plan to get conservatives to eat more fried chicken. Like fluoride in the water, the Chick-fil-a controversy is really an attempt to subvert American values.

Jobs Numbers - Can the Obama Campaign Absolve Him of Year One?

In July, the American economy created 163,000 jobs. The good news is that after a quarter without a single month over 100,000, we're back into six-figures on job creation. In the last year, the economy has created 2.2 million jobs. The bad news is that the economy has still destroyed more jobs than it has created since Obama was sworn in.

If we look at the economy's performance under Obama's  compared to its performance under Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush, the average rate of monthly job creation looks like this:


avg yrs 1 thru 3+
Clinton      242
Carter       218
Nixon       102
Reagan      89
HW Bush   38
Obama       -8
GW Bush  -23

Here, Obama is stuck down with the Bushes, neither of whom won the popular vote in their re-election.

But if we discount the first year of any presidency as something inherited rather than influenced by the incumbent's policies and subtract that from the total, we get a little different picture. Here, the average job creation of 132,000 jobs puts Obama smack in the middle of the pack of recent presidents.


avg yrs 2 thru 3+
Clinton       247
Carter        175
Reagan      141
Obama      132
Nixon          84
GW Bush    30
HW Bush   -15

In this picture, Obama sets between Nixon and Reagan, two presidents who won re-election by landslides.

From this, it would seem that Obama's re-election prospects depend on how deftly his campaign can absolve him of the first year of his presidency, when the global economy was in meltdown. One step towards that narrative is in this graph from the Obama campaign, reporting "Good news: As of July, the economy has added private-sector jobs for 29 straight months—for a total of 4.5 million jobs during that period." 

Tempest in a Buttered Bun - Would You Like Fries With Your Demise?

Chik-fil-a's CEO doesn't like the idea of same-sex marriage. So now, the conservatives who love fast food are flocking to Chik-fil-a and the liberals who don't eat fast food are boycotting it. It's hard to imagine an outcome that makes less difference to the course of history.

Meanwhile, here in California, pre-school programs now require a fee. Or as they call it in post-school, tuition. 

When they're writing America's obituary, it's hard to believe that someone won't mention, "And in their latter days, they showed more passion for fried chicken than education."

Dump the Debt on the Grandchildren - Per Capita Income of $1 Million by 2100?

Assuming growth rates of 3.3%, per capita world GDP will be $200,000. American per capita GDP will be one million. (See Alex Tabarrok's optimistic video here.)

So often, politicians talk about saddling our grandkids with debt as if they'll have to find jobs when they still can't find their shoes. They'll grow up, become smart, and perhaps wildly productive. They may well be making an average of one million per year.

With numbers like that, I think that the grandkids can service trillions of dollars in debt.

Gore Vidal - History's Brilliant and Outrageous Gossip Columnist

Gore Vidal dined with Eleanor Roosevelt, was friends with Jack Kennedy, wrote screenplays (you might have heard of Ben-Hur), novels, and biographies. He wasn't afraid to offer fascinating, if tenuous, theories that made gossip seem like history and history seem like gossip.

For instance, George Washington traveled to the West Indies about the time that Alexander Hamilton was conceived by a beautiful woman between marriages. When Hamilton came to the colonies, General Washington "adopted" him, making him his personal aid. Later, Washington appointed the tall young man with reddish hair to serve in his cabinet in one of only four positions. Could Hamilton have been the son Washington never had or the son he actually had? Vidal was unafraid to provoke the thought that the father of our country might have fathered one of the great minds behind the Federalist Papers and the country's first Central Bank. Gossip or history? That was not a distinction Vidal made.

Vidal seemed increasingly contemptuous of politics as he aged. He dismissed Republicans and Democrats as two flavors of vanilla. But in his prime, he was one of the country's more interesting pundits. The always interesting blogger Robert Stein tells this story:

In 1968, Vidal was a network commentator paired with his conservative doppelganger, the elegant editor and novelist William F. Buckley. They escalated a dispute on some minor point into calling one another "a pro crypto Nazi" and "a queer." Buckley won the argument by warning Vidal, "Stop calling me a crypto Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddam face..."

Vidal seemed to take his own advice. Perhaps his most famous quote is "I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."  He claims to have had 1,000 sexual encounters with both men and women by the time he was 25. That might be outrageous but if integrity is alignment between what a man says and what he does, then Vidal certainly had integrity.

Perhaps he was best admired, though, for not letting the famous escape behind  flawless, air-brushed facades. He had made a prediction about Ted Kennedy and the Kennedy clan's legacy that, in typical fashion, showed the pettiness of our judgments and the foibles of the famous:

By 1976, Camelot will not only be forgot but unrestorable, if for no other reason than that Arthur’s heir will by then be – cruelest fate of all – unmistakably fat.”

 Confronted by this quote, his simple response was "I should think that’s rather well observed." 


And that was Vidal. He didn't apologize. He merely observed aloud, as seemingly unselfconscious as a small child but far more - wickedly more - informed.