Come on, if that’s the case why does he not say so?

The reality of the situation is that the "mortgage crisis" that you trotted out earlier isn't quite as bad as you want to believe. There is still a tremendous amount of movement in the real estate sector. Yes, some people are being hurt by the crisis while the majority of us are just fine.

It's odd that you trotted out the so-called obesity crisis when there is really no evidence of there being a crisis. As someone else pointed out – the BMI is often the most trotted out number which is, ironically, a bad measurement of obesity. There is no crisis. We aren't dropping like flies here. But thanks for the concern.

The point on pollution is that if our environment were truly that polluted and unfit, we would see a plateau or heavy negating effect on life expectancy. If today's environment is worse than yesterday's, it draws the question on why we are living longer now in a more dangerous and polluted world? Life expectancy has been fairly consistent in terms of progress. Considering economic booms in medical sciences, hygiene, food preparation and industrialization, we're doing pretty darned well.

No, it could also be given by someone who believes the existent pollution dangers, regardless of their extent, are less than they were at some other time or in some other place (given the chart, I'd guess Prof. Roberts is going for the temporal comparison).

Read the post: By suggesting that “Anytime you hear people talking about how dangerous and polluted and horrible life is in the United States” the reasonable response is that Americans live longer. Clearly such a blasé statement can only be given by someone who does not believe there are any real pollution dangers around.

I would like to see body fat measurement statistics for each country, taken with the same methodology. My bet is that the US comes out fatter than average among industrialized nations, but not to an alarming degree. I'd also bet the US has more people in really great shape, due to the popularity of exercise and body building here vs. other nations.

Not sure about Denmark, but Sweden's national debt has been reported to be about 37% of GDP. I'd like to compare that to the U.S. debt, but I'm not sure which U.S. number to use.

Total gross U.S. debt is currently about 66% of GDP. But debt held by the public is only 40% of GDP. The rest is intergovernmental debt, which represents surplus funds collected for one purpose (social security and medicare) but used for other purposes ("defense", ethanol subsidies, etc.)

If part of Sweden's national debt also represents appropriated surpluses from health care funds and pension funds, then Sweden does have less debt to pass on to future generations. But if Sweden did not engage in the same public pension accounting farce as the U.S., then Sweden and the U.S. seem to have equivalent debt levels.

Exactly where does the professor intimate that "there are no pollution dangers…"?

But now, seeing those hundred thousands protesting in South Korea against the import of meat from the US, one is sort of left with a nagging feeling of “do they know something I don’t?” And please do no interpret this as a criticism of the American Way of Life.

Blissful ignorance is great… until you have to wake up! What value does Professor Russell Roberts assign to the bliss of ignorance? I ask because I cannot really see how he can prove based on certain knowledge that there are no pollution dangers in this capitalistic grown thorn-free rose garden of his.

Cheers

This reads like: There is nothing wrong with the good old USA… though there could be a problem with its people who “having the same freedom and wealth to eat the foods we want, and exercise as little we want” do not seem longer to be able to handle that freedom with the same sense of responsibility and that is why there is more obesity. Is this what you mean?

You might be right but then again it might just be a mirage since the way you have been building up public debt means that you have not been presented the bill yet. That you can spend more of your income because you leave it to your children to pay the taxes for you is a proposition that has little to do with freedom…
Cheers

Well, there is something the government could do — adjust the retirement age, with men allowed to retire earlier. Right now, the men get, on average, say 45 working years to 8 retirement years, while women get 45:13. Ergo, men should get to collect full SS benefits at 63 rather than 67 to get the same ratio of working years to retirement years as women do.

Of course, during their working lives, men also spend far more years actually in the workforce, so they should actually get to retire even earlier than that (or, alternately, women should have to work longer).

American capitalism has so reduced the cost of food that even small funding can enable the doubling and tripling of personal assets.

Another factor lowering life expectancy in the US is poor choices. Over eating with a sedentary lifestyle is a bad combination. (as I sit in front of my computer and wish I hadn't had a donut this AM)

You're correct that the US has a big problem with obesity. I suggest, though, that this is a much better problem than one that we used to have — starvation.

It's the degree to which we are free to make our own economic decisions which is important, Per.

Denmark and Sweden have the world's top tax burdens

As an American citizen, I get to decide how I will spend more of the money I earn – the rewards for my labor – than do taxpayers in Sweden and Denmark. I can think of no more important measure of economic freedom than that.

And yet, despite the rising "problem" of obesity life expectancy rates continues to rise! And we STILL have the freedom and wealth to eat the foods we want, and exercise as little as we want. What a country!

This is an empty “mommy look no hands!” statement that leads nowhere. I would like to hear one single example on how John Dewey exercises an economic freedom in the US that he would not be able to exercise much in the same way in a Nordic country.

This reads like an example of a professor who never goes out… like the credit rating agencies who gave AAA ratings to mortgage instruments based on data without observing that with the lowered lending standards, what they actually were rating was a complete different population.

Dear professor let me advice you to take a little stroll down the street and just as the credit rating agencies would thereby much earlier had discovered the real sub-primeness of the mortgages to the subprime sector, you might discover that you have an on going health problem of monstrous proportions in the US, namely obesity.

But I guess that the only things the PhDs are allowed to do by their peer is to look at the past and correlate a future… no matter what the present says.

The life expectancy discussion is not a new one, and I am surprised that anyone hanging out at a blog like this would miss the obvious differences in population mix between countries.

This goes hand in hand with the whole standard of living debate. Some international organization comes out with an index every so often that rates the US abysmally low, and it's always because their index includes such things as national health care, mortality rates, etc without correcting for demographic imbalance.

Really, ideological differences aside, how much intelligence does it require to see the obvious flaws in data such as these?