UnitedStates|StandardOfLiving

The nation with the highest living standard in human history.

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.

LarrySanger edited the above two paragraphs, doing his part to try to keep this wiki civil. :-)

Yes, I believe one can look up per capita income in an almanac. - Tim

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?

LarrySanger has a sneakin' suspicion that this dispute has been a SemanticDispute from the beginning.

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

Income is the most commonly used measure of standard of living. An alternative measure is purchasing power, closely related to income but adjusted for taxaxtion.

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'.