World Cup

In my previous post, I mentioned that I had some ideas to write about, well here's one of them.

I've been enjoying following the soccer World Cup this year. I watched the first USA match against the Czech Republic and plan on watching the USA versus Italy tomorrow. I've also been catching some of the games during lunch as at Microsoft they broadcast the games on projection screens in the cafeterias.

If you're not a huge soccer fan and aren't already rooting for a team (and let's face it, the US is pretty bad this year so you might not want to root for them) who do you root for? Well, I stumbled across a website that allows you to "compare" countries and it tells you who to cheer for. It bases its recommendation on 10 criteria: life expectancy, poverty (per capita income), military (size of military as percent of national income), aid (amount of foreign aid donated), climate (carbon tons per captia), inequality, health (health spending as percent of national income), debt, corruption and companies (companies among world's largest 500 multinational's).

Some of those categories as criteria for supporting a country make sense. Military spending is one. Costa Rica spends no money on a military. That would make it more cheerable in my opinion. Some of the other categories are less clear. I mean, should I root for a country because it spends a lot (or a little) on health care? Or is a country cheerable because it has few large multinationals?

Before I go further, I'll note that the website has a big disclaimer regarding the rankings:

‘Who should I cheer for?’ does not in any way represent WDM’s [World Development Movement] official view on the policies pursued by the countries featured, nor should it be taken as an overall ranking of how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ countries are (though the countries who give the most aid should be applauded and those who give the least condemned). It is intended to be a fun and interesting way to think about a serious issue – that of global poverty and inequality between the nations competing in the World Cup. Please take it in that spirit.

There are 32 countries in the tournament, from all six continents, and from the entire list, the US is "the 30th most supportable team in the World Cup". Actually, Togo and Serbia & Montenegro are unranked for lack of data, so really this means the US is the least supportable team in the tournament. Regardless of the disclaimer, or the ranking system, how can the US be the worst country? Is the US really worse, and less cheerable than, say Saudia Arabia (which is 29th, by the way)? The Saudi team was in the news recently because they made it clear that if one of their players got awarded the "player of the game award" they would refuse it because it was sponsored by Budweiser. Is that a team to root for? And is the US really worse than Angola? Angola has been in the news recently regarding it's oil industry, and it's not pretty. You don't really hear anyone ever say, "You know, the world sure would be a better if more countries were like Angola." Or how about the Ivory Coast? Rumors abound about routine child slavery in the chocolate industry there. The United States clearly isn't perfect but still, where would you rather live, the US or the Ivory Coast?

The most cheerable country is Ghana, followed by Sweden, Tunisia, Costa Rica and Ivory Coast. The life expectancy in the Ivory Coast is 46. Is that something to cheer about? I applaud the motives of the site, in getting people to think about global issues, but I can't help but think that these particular categories, and they way they were ranked were chosen specifically because they make the US look bad. It's hard to believe that the US should come out at the very bottom. I really don't think the US is as bad as some make it out to be.