Third Place

America is the world’s only super power. We hold the distinction of being the world’s largest economy, largest consumer of petroleum, largest trash producer, and largest user of water per capita of any country. In an amazing turn, our population is going to top the 300 million mark sometime during the month of October. It has been 39 years since we reached the 200 million mark and 91 years since we topped 100 million. For a continent that was virtually empty 400 years ago, that is a pretty good accomplishment. America continues to grow but the same cannot be said for the civilized countries in Europe. Their populations have either remained static or started to shrink. I wonder if socialism has anything to do with that?

With our population swiftly approaching the 300 million mark, we are only in third place. We still lag behind India (2nd place) and China (1st place) in the population competition. Now the US has a land mass of 3,718,691 sq miles and our population is approaching 300,000,000. India has a land mass of 1,269,338 sq miles and a population (as of mid 2006) of 1,095,351,995 (How they can be that precise on the number of people is mind blowing. They must have one great census bureau.). China has a land mass of 3,705,386 sq miles and a population (as of mid 2006) of 1,313,973,713. If you look at population density, it falls like this:

US 80.674 people per square mile
India 862.93 people per square mile
China 354.61 people per square mile

Looked at that way, India appears to be the most crowded with more than 10 times the population density of the US. The media is making such a big deal out of 300,000,000 that you would think we were standing on each other heads. The east and west coast liberals obviously haven’t driven through the heartland recently. There are some pretty lonely stretches between New York and LA but if you live in either town, it all looks crowded to you. If you are always on the red eye, you never see the wide open fruited plains. Oh to be bi-coastal.

So, as America approaches our population milestone, we are comfortable in our third place position. We have not made it a crime to have more than on child or had mass starvation due to drought. We are a nation of curious people who are innovative enough to find solutions when big problems come up. I guess we need alarmists, if for no other reason to show us what might happen if we follow the path they indicate. They try to make each person into a lemming, blindly following their misdirected notions. Last one in the pool….

Icool

Cobb