Surprising Stats (USA Edition)
A three-part belated birthday card
Happy (belated) birthday, USA!
Three surprising stats for last month’s celebration.
I. You’ve come a long way, baby. From Jeremy Horpedahl:
II. You contain multitudes. From Daniel Fetz:
[A]bout 642 million people have lived in the United States since it became independent in 1776.
III. Isn’t it about time you grew up and put away your childish things? From Colin Grabow:
From 2020 to 2025, 16 countries have outbuilt the United States, including the Netherlands, Norway, and Singapore (the last two of which each have populations smaller than the metro Atlanta region). Such numbers underscore the Navy’s fiscal year 2025 shipbuilding plan, as cited by the Government Accountability Office, that US commercial shipbuilding has experienced a “near-total collapse.”
The reason for our dismal performance, of course, is the Jones Act and its unattended consequences of protectionism.