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Yeah, screw the NYT facts.

If it SUCKS so badly here, WHY OH WHY does EVERYONE keep coming here, even people who profess to HATE it here?

Also, those stats on infant mortality are complete BS. There is no uniformity in the standard by which it is measured. Cuba, which has a vested interest in having a "low" infant mortality rate so it can trumpet how good socialized medicine is. They are accused, accurately I suspect, of fudging their stat, underreporting deaths, etc.

In other parts of the world (probably including Cuba, though I don't have that data at my fingers) they define deaths of "viable" infants differently. Some places only count an infant as viable when they can survive "unassisted" outside the womb. The US counts deaths of live infants who may be born alive very prematurely and would never survive on their own.

It is all complete and unadulterated BS. We can do better in many areas, but I think we are doing pretty darn well regardless. How many people leave here to go elsewhere?

Ultimately, the mindset of being a winner is more important than actually winning in any particular endeavor. I'd rather have a winner's mindset and come in 3rd at a competition, than a loser's mindset and come in 1st.

The winner will consistently handle their results better and seek to improve (if they judge that it is important), while the loser mindset will consistently undermine their top ranking and future performance.

I consider myself a winner, yet there are millions of areas that I am terribly deficient in. That's not problematic, not really, since I don't seek expertise and accomplishment in millions of areas.

I am very comfortable with the fact that many people are much better than I am at a wide variety of things.

I don't doubt that while I can't be meaningfully quantified as '#1' in anything, I do think that sentiment is just a mental shorthand of saying 'I'm the best.'

I think the sentiment shouldn't be taken literally.

The fact that I can't be quantified 'the best' in anything in particular doesn't undermine my ability to be confident, successful, comfortable with my abilities, and have the mindset of a winner.

I win some, I lose some. I can quantify - in a broad sense - that I have a better standard of living than most people I know, have a larger and much nicer home, several nice cars, I make much more money than most people I know, that I work much less than everyone I know because of the way I set up my business, enjoy much more leisure time than they do, I am flexible enough to cultivate more casual interests (golf, history, etc. ) than they do, and date a greater variety of younger & better looking women than they do (or ever have, for that matter, by their own admission).

Now the fact that others might enjoy greater benefits in the areas that I cite here doesn't undermine my mindset that I am a winner, and not a loser.

Also the fact that someone is deficient (when compared to me) in all those areas (compared to me) doesn't necessarily undermine their ability to be happy, successful, and enjoy the mindset of a winner.

We would both think we are the best and we would both be right. Neither of us, seriously, think we rank #1 in anything.

Against that backdrop, the idea of a numerical ranking is silly and immature: it's difficult enough to quantify a ranking in any one area, let alone averaging rankings in several areas.

So to say that Cuba ranks #1 in literacy, for example, is fine - that's not to say the USA is somehow 'illiterate,' and when Cuba's ranking is buttressed by the fact that they are not much of a free country (and there are plenty of books you can't read in Cuba, regardless of the ability of the population to read), when taken as a whole, I don't think a claim of #1 in literacy is particularly notable.

That many people have a sentiment that they are #1, their nation is #1, their sports team is #1, etc. has almost nothing to do with facts but rather in mindset & attitude. It's 'true' to them that they have pride in whatever group they are a part of.

If they dwell on their deficiencies, then they won't have as positive or productive a mindset as someone who focuses on their strengths.

The problem with the article is that it makes a mistake at the outset - the sentiment that 'We're #1' is to be taken as a somehow literal sentiment. The errors then cascade from that initial mistake - it's not a meaningful article in that the slogan is not intended to be taken literally, bur rather reflects a mindset that's productive.

Frankly, by that standard, the whole article is immature. I for one am glad that my mind doesn't focus on demonstrating how I am not colloquially "#1," but rather on my potential, my accomplishments, and my sense of what is possible.