Whoa, that's pretty darn far from a fact. The UN has been picking Canada, although its reasons are probably political, and as far as the poor are concerned it's probably some socialist country like Sweden. I don't actually know. I just know that you can't go around making such statements as if they aren't opinions.
- I looked that up recently and report from memory, but the details should be available in any almanac. - Tim
I assume you are referring to the claim about the standard of living in the United States. I would politely take issue with the notion that one can simply look up a "fact" like that in an almanac.
As a counterpoint, it is worth pointing out that Canada has been ranked number one on the United Nations Human Development Index for about six years running. I would not claim that this means that Canada has the highest standard of living in the world, however.
Standard of living is per capita income? I think that's even further from a fact...at least, you would be hard-pressed to defend it. If I was paid well, but had to work 20 hours a day in a poorly ventilated cardboard tube and eat rice-cakes, would I have a high standard of living?
Well, when I say "far from a fact", I don't mean false...just not true. :)
LarrySanger would like to point out that, according to TheLawOfNoncontradiction, if it ain't true, it's false.
That's not the law of non-contradiction, that's TertiumNonDatur. And it doesn't always hold. For instance, the sentence x+3=4 is neither true nor false until we assign a value to x. That's the very essence of semantics.
When you say "that" in "That's not the law of non-contradiction," what are you referring to? See TheLawOfNoncontradiction for text relevant to your second claim; obviously, propositions are required for the law to apply, not propositional functions. -- Oh, I see, you're making the point that TheLawOfNoncontradiction is different from ThePrincipleOfBivalence. Fair play, if you mean to say that Tim's claim isn't, in fact, a proposition. -- There, I've supplied brief entries explaining these terms to the uninitiated. -- LarrySanger
Consumption per capita by nation, 1985, as a percentage of US total:
United States: 100 West Germany: 70 France: 70 Italy: 65 Japan: 65 United Kingdom: 65 Austria: 60 Finland: 60 Soviet Union: 30
Figures are rounded off. Data first pubslihed by A. Bergson, "The USSR Before the Fall: How Poor and Why," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5:4 (Fall 1991), p. 29-44, 31. Reprinted in JulianSimon's 'The State of Humanity'.
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