Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 July 20

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July 20

Why did Bush and Obama let North Korea get nuclear bombs but not Iran?

Did they have intelligence that the craziness is all bullshit and the Iranians' craziness is real? Did North Korea make too many dumb empty threats? I guess in their favor the Koreans just want to have something intact enough to invade and the Iranians want to commit genocide and country destruction. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:52, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Iran is closer to places that have lots of oil. ;) --Jeffro77 (talk) 01:54, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Tthe U.S. is clearly in less of a position to influence what goes on in North Korea. The Chinese government considers it very much within their sphere of influence, and while they may not like the idea of North Korea having nuclear weapons, they probably like the idea of the U.S. deciding the issue even less. As for the suggestion that Iran wants to engage in 'genocide and country destruction', I very much doubt it - their regional ambitions have much more to do with their rivalry with Saudi Arabia as the local head honcho, and they know full well that any use of nuclear weapons would be suicidal. Don't mistake bellicose rhetoric for military ambition. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:07, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Hitler and Japan should've known that starting WWII that early was suicidal. But no need to copy, if Iran's leaders are rational then they are what they are. They must fantasize though, right? If they had advanced nuclear tech and the rest of the world had none?.. Maybe they'd bomb Saudi Arabia, too? Or maybe the people at the top don't actually believe Allah and just want power? So Israel's not that important then. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:57, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

• I'm not sure it has much to do with let. Iran depends on foreign trade much more than North Korea, thus the regime of Sanctions against Iran are a reasonable tool to use to put pressure on Iran to curtail their nuclear weapons program. North Korea is quite isolationist, and has little in the way of raw materials or finished goods it trades with the outside world anyways, it's hard to hold the sanction of "we'll cut off trade with you" with a country that doesn't trade much with the outside world anyways. --Jayron32 04:28, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

• Yeah... The US did not "let" North Korea get the bomb... The US did everything they could think of (short of going to war) in an effort to stop the Koreans from getting nukes. North Korea developed the bomb despite everything the US tried to do. The UN imposed extremely harsh sanctions on North Korea (even harsher than the ones imposed on Iran). The North Korean government simply ignored these sanctions, and continued on until they had a bomb. The North Korean government was willing to let its people suffer great hardship in order to get the bomb. It is possible that, had the recent talks failed, the Iranian government might have decided to do the same... continue development despite continued sanctions. Whether the Iranian people would have been willing to suffer as much as the Korean people did is another question (and one that we will never know the answer to). Blueboar (talk) 01:54, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Country With The Highest Life Expectancy In 1950

What was the country with the highest life expectancy in 1950? What was its life expectancy?

125.255.167.126 (talk) 05:07, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

According to http://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/datamaps/LifeExpectancyWorldMaps/Life_Expectancy_WorldMap_1950.html it seems Norway topped the list with a life expectancy (at birth) of 71.6 years. Gabbe (talk) 07:46, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

According to the World Bank, the highest life expectancy is Japan. See http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN/countries/1W?page=3&display=default

Both sex

Country Name 1995

1. Japan 79.5
2. Sweden 78.7
3. Hong Kong 78.7
4. Switzerland 78.4
5. Italy 78.2
6. Iceland 78.0
7. Spain 78.0
8. Canada 78.0
9. Australia77.8
10. France 77.8

―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 23:53, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

...but the question was for 1950, not 1995. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:00, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Three out of four digits match, whattaya want for nothing? —Tamfang (talk) 19:09, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

World Infant Mortality Rate

What was the infant mortality rate of the world in 1850, 1900, 1950 and 2000?

Nineguy (talk) 05:12, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

You want the average infant mortality rate for the whole world or the median with upper end and lower end? The answer rests on that knowledge, because there is a disparity in infant mortality rate between wealthier, developed nations and impoverished, undeveloped nations. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 14:34, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

See http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN/countries/1W?page=3&display=default―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 00:20, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Also the very definition of "infant mortality" is nicely inconsistent across the world. Collect (talk) 18:42, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Why did the UK lose economic ground to France, Germany and Italy?

As I understand it, in about 1960, the UK was richer than the other three countries, as measured by GDP per capita. But, over time, these countries overtook the UK. Why did this happen?--Leon (talk) 20:43, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

See Economic history of the United Kingdom. In two words - Harold Wilson. In a few more words - NEDC, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Technology, decimalization, British Leyland... Tevildo (talk) 22:09, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

The basic reason is a case of the common but absurd obsession with foreign currency exchange rates, leading to excessive high interest rates to "protect" an exchange rate and the highly destructive consequences of high interest. The greatest damage was probably under Thatcher. Trying to remember a good paper on this. When George Soros broke the pound later, he made himself a fortune but helped the UK far more by helping it change from a destructively following this traditional obsession. Of course, the UK was helped more recently keeping the pound, not going into the Euro death trap, like those other 3.John Z (talk) 22:25, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

You have probably made a mistake, although the broad principles are correct. The 1967 devaluation (Harold Wilson) was forced by market pressures on sterling; one of Mrs. Thatcher's first acts had been to do away with currency controls - those of us who lived through the '70s can remember the absurdity of trying to go on foreign holiday with limited currency. Mrs. Thatcher actually sorted out the In Place of Strife mess - vide the 1981 budget and the Trade Union legislation (1980, 1982, and 1984). Nigel Lawson, in the late 1980s, adopted a policy of shadowing the Deutschmark, which predictably failed. The main policy failure was not under Thatcher but the hopeless incompetent John Major and Black Wednesday. --95.49.76.116 (talk) 08:50, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure you're right about the details- not British. Thatcher did keep the UK out of the Euro death-trap - every nation in Europe's economy would have been better off if not for this worst designed currency of all time. Cf. Wynne Godley's denunciations & predictions. But high interest and high unemployment under Thatcher was probably the biggest single long-term damage the UK economy saw postwar - but a bit different from the very long term broad trend though. Geoffrey Gardiner, relatively sympathetically, calls her policies a curate's egg. Again, as critical as I am of Thatcher (from a (post-)Keynesian/ Institutional/ MMT perspective) the damage wasn't as bad as entering the Euro would have been.John Z (talk) 23:03, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Again, I am sorry to disagree; there was nothing sensible about continuing to subsidise the production of cars that no-one wanted to buy (and were a byword for mediocrity), and over-priced ships, steel, and coal. It was certainly harsh on the workforces involved that these industries were rapidly restructured; those that were capable survived - British Gas, British Telecom, and even (for a while), British Leyland - and those that weren't closed down, as the British economy was restructured from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. That was undoubtedly the correct course; the high interest rates and high unemployment, which were a feature of Thatcher's first term, arose out of the previous policy failures of the Callaghan government - high inflation and Trade Union enforced subsidy of uneconomic industries - all of which came to a head in the Winter of Discontent. --31.63.162.53 (talk) 15:35, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Germany seems to have done quite well out of that supposed death trap. Also despite (or maybe because?) not being in the Euro, Britain seems to have struggled more than the others in the financial crisis. 86.189.248.177 (talk) 23:15, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

That is because, just as the Euro is overvalued to the Greeks, it is undervalued to the Germans. If we still had the Drachma and the Deutschmark, the Drachma would be worth half as much as the Euro and the Deutschmark twice as much. In other words, the very collapse of the Greek economy (and the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Irish economies) is pulling the value of the Euro down and making it easier for German exporters to sell their goods; if either the Germans or the Greeks were outside the Euro, the price of your Mercedes car would be prohibitively expensive. Not that the Germans see it that way, of course. 95.49.76.116 (talk) 08:56, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

There's also the issue of the productivity of British workers, which is still a problem; see UK productivity gap with developed nations now widest for 20 years (2014) and Average UK workers pose a productivity puzzle (2015). Alansplodge (talk) 10:28, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

20s vs 40s

I;m a 27 year old guy but am pondering whether to propose to a 40 year old. I suspect she will accept but our families probably not, seeing our age difference as weird. I was wondering how uncommon it is for a man to marry a 40 year old woman. Any stats? 78.144.241.217 (talk) 21:11, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

See Age disparity#Statistics. -- ToE 21:19, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

See also Age disparity in sexual relationships. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:20, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Aha, same article. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:20, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

This [1] article from the Chicago Tribune gives some statistics and links to further studies. Relevant to your case - "A 2003 AARP study found 34 percent of women older than 40 were dating younger men, with 8 percent seeing men 10 or more years younger." So your situation is not the most common, but it's not that rare either. (Bad Religion, Lady Gaga and OK Go all agree on the matter - "Do What You Want" [2] [3] [4] :) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:41, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Rita Rudner is about 4 years older than her husband. She said, "The old theory was, marry an older man, they're more mature. The new theory is, men don't mature, so marry a younger one." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:21, 20 July 2015 (UTC)