We’re #1: Memes are for Morons

This is a lesson in bogus statistics. Both the far left and the radical right love to exaggerate certain “problems.” The right tends to this a moral crisis is every present and the left tends to think the world is declining due to the evils of capitalism—scapegoats are important to political extremists.

Consider the meme to the left, circulated via Bernie Sanders a couple of years ago. It’s claims are frightening, but those that aren’t totally fiction are so grossly exaggerated as to be worthless. And, what has truth to it doesn’t seem important.

First, it doesn’t appear to adjust for population size at all, which skews results. The U.S. is nowhere near #1 for total crimes per 100,000 people. You can’t compare a nation with 319 million people to one with 4 million without adjusting your statistics to show the rate per 100,000 population. Failing to do so is dishonest.

A nation with 319 million people is always going to have more total crimes than a nation with 4 or 40 million. But the bigger nation may be extremely less risky than the smaller ones depending on how likely you are to be a victim of crime.

When it comes to homicides, for instance, the United States is not #1, or #2 or even #10, etc. On Wikipedia the U.S. is listed in 90th place. People love to speak of Greenland as a peaceful, idyllic country but the homicide rate there, compared to the United States, is pretty similar: 5.35 per 100,000 in the U.S., versus 5.31 per 100,000 in non-violent Greenland.

Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Bermuda and even the “socialist paradise” of Cuba are more dangerous than the United States. In Putin’s dictatorship homicide rates are almost double those of the U.S. In the socialist utopia of Venezuela, homicides rates in 2016 were 56.33 per 100,000 or 11 times that of the United States.

The claim on crime is FALSE.

The rape statistics are just as fictitious. Many nations just don’t report rapes to international bodies or anyone else. But for the stats reported for 2010, the latest Wikipedia shows, the U.S. had 27.3 rapes per 100,000 population. In Sweden it was 63.5. South Africa was #1 with 132.4. The U.S. trailed Australia and Belgium and was pretty much on par with New Zealand. A report from a United Nation’s affiliate, The European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, showed rape statistics for selected countties (p.25) and showed higher rape rates in Australia, Canada, Sweden, and New Zealand than in the United States. Of course, many nations with high crime just don’t report the figures.

The claim on rape is FALSE.

Divorce rates do NOT show the U.S. is #1 either. But we should be careful since divorce is regulated by law and you can ban divorces and have a 0% divorce rate, but that’s not better. Nations that oppress women tend to have much lower divorce rates — is that good? World Atlas says the #1 nation for divorce per 1,000 population is Russia followed by Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Cayman Islands. The U.S. has a rate of 3.4 per 1,000 which is on par with Cuba’s 3.2.

Time magazine reported the U.S. divorce rate is at a 40 year low, the U.N. listing is a couple of years out of date but shows the U.S. below Latvia and Cuba and about the same as Denmark, but no where near #1 as this false meme reports.

The claim about divorce rates is FALSE.

The World Bank does keep track of teen fertility rate so we can see if the U.S. is #1 or not. According to the World Bank the U.S. rate for teens is 20.61 per 1,000 females ages 15–19. That’s well below a slew of nations including Slovakia, Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Fiji, India, Liberia, Morocco and dozens of other nations. It’s on par with New Zealand, which is at 20.60 per 1,000.

The claim on teen birth rates is FALSE.

Carbon emissions per person would be another area to check out. The World Bank says the U.S. has an emission rate of 16.49 metric tons per capita. Immediately I see that is below the United Arab Emirates. It is below Trinidad, Saint Maarten, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Luxembourg, and others and close to Australia’s 15.37.

The claim on being #1 in CO2 emissions is FALSE.

Heart attack rates need a bit of thinking which memes are notoriously bad at doing. If you have a high death rate from diseases that plague younger people, you will have a lower heart attack rate. Heart attacks tend to be diseases of aging and if you have high death rates your rate of aging is low.

The death rate from coronary diseases per 100,000 population places the U.S. at #130, not #1. The total number of deaths per 100,000 from heart disease is 86.89 in the U.S. In Ukraine it’s 395.73, in Bulgaria 211.28, Hungary 181.46, Poland 148.09, Bosnia 123.18, Greece, 112.40Finland 86.10, Germany 83.78, as some random examples.

The claim the U.S. is #1 when it comes to heart disease or heart attacks is FALSE.

The claim about the number of McDonalds Restaurants is probably true on a population basis but hardly relevant to anything other than it shows the chain started in the U.S. and is a U.S. brand. If we looked at Nando’s, a chain I’ve used in South Africa, New Zealand and the U.K., we find that there are 31 Nando’s in the U.S. There are probably 31 of them in Johannesburg alone. What that proves is it’s a chain that started in Southern Africa and is now spreading around the world.

The claim is TRUE but hardly of any significance.

Plastic Surgery is another area that seems hardly relevant other than to indicate that spendable income is important. Even if the U.S. were #1 who cares? That would show Americans tend to have more spendable income than many people. Having more computers per capita, more cars, more television sets, more air conditioners, etc., all show the same thing. If anything, when it comes to consumer goods being #1 is a good thing. It shows prosperity, which is not what I suspect the Sander’s crowd wanted to show.

The problem here is there aren’t a lot of statistics to go by, but when it comes total surgical procdures in this are the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery keeps some statistics. They note the United States had 1,562,504 plastic surgery procedures done in 2017, while second place Brazil had 1,466,245 procedures. But, that’s total procedures, not the rate adjusted for population size differences. Brazil has a population of 209.3 million, which is much smaller than the United States at 325.7 million.

A quick use of the calculator shows the U.S. has one plastic surgery procedure per 208 population while Brazil has one procedure per 143. In other words Brazil’s rates for plastic surgery are significantly higher than the U.S.

The claims the U.S. is #1 in plastic surgery is unimportant, but FALSE.

That leaves one more category and one they actually get right as well as being important: prisoners. The U.S. does have the highest incarceration rate in the world. That’s largely do to the war on drugs sending thousands and thousands of people to prison for non-violent offenses.

This claim is TRUE.

Scorecard: Out 9 categories 7 are important, 2 don’t say a lot, especially in the way this meme is trying to indicate. Of the 7 important claims made 6 of them are FALSE. Of the unimportant claims one is FALSE and one is True.

In other words, this meme fails and earns a grade of F. If we rated it on Pinocchios the way Fact Checker does at the Washington Post I think we’d have to give this meme four Pinnochios, which means it’s telling some whoppers.

This meme is false from top to bottom. It has been circulated widely and not just by Sanders and is taken at face value mainly by people who already assume these things. Instead of verifying claims, most people just assume those that confirm their views are true, while those that question their beliefs must be false. Periodically this page will dissect other memes as well. There is a reason you shouldn’t take memes seriously.

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