Fat, Dumb and Happy

It has been a busy couple of three days, so I'm letting my brain have some fun

I happen to be a useless information storehouse.  I love the little trivia tidbits that come along.  I really should go on Jeopardy - but it would be my luck that all of the topics would be on British Royalty or Crocheting Tools and Techniques.  I'd be toast.

They just recently published the latest issue of the Statistical Abstract of The United States.  I first ran into this when I was in college, and had a Library Sciences class to fill in one of the weird graduation requirements.  I found the book, and was mezmerized - I spent hours just reading and absorbing mostly useless, pointless, government-gathered statistics.

From the latest issue:

Fat -

On the other hand, low food prices may contribute to Americans' obesity. In 2006, about 34 percent of U.S. adults were judged obese, triple France's rate (10.5 percent) and four times that of Switzerland (7.7 percent).

Dumb -

In 2007, nearly two-fifths of all U.S. births were to unmarried women, double the share in 1980. Since 1970, the student-teacher ratio in schools has declined dramatically, from 22 to 1 to 15 to 1 in 2007, with little effect on test results.

and Happy -

Being optimistic, Americans commit suicide at fairly low rates, 10.2 for every 100,000 people in 2004, less than the 11.9 average for all industrial countries or Japan's 20.3 and France's 15.1.

Hmm.  Those numbers were taken before the financial melt-down.  Hell, that was right in the middle of the, "I own a house and don't have any income," phase our country went through.  I'm guessing they may have ticked up a bit since then.

If you want to look at the whole book(?), go here and you can search by topic.  Pretty cool.

Oh, one word of warning:  Stay away from the federal government spending pages.  Brain.  Go.  Boom.  I warned ya.
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OK, just  a little taste. (PDF)

In 1990, our federal government spent a total of $1.25 Trillion of our dollars.  In 2009, the number is $3.9978 Trillion (let's call it $4 Trillion, OK?).  Yeah, our federal government's spending has gone up over 3-fold in 19 short years.

Here's the real, "make you crazy" number - The "Payments For Individual" - Social Security payments and Grants to states (gotta pass the pork, dontcha know?) have gone from $585 Billion to $2.09 Trillion.

Class, can I see a show of hands from anyone who can say, "Income Redistribution"?


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