Harper’s Index

Year that a signboard tallying the U.S. national debt was erected near Times Square: 1989¹

Year in which it is expected to run out of digits: 2007²

Percentage change in U.S. discretionary spending during the first five years of George W. Bush's presidency: +35 ³

Percentage change during Lyndon Johnson's and Bill Clinton's first five years, respectively: +25, ‒8⁴

Ratio of the average manufacturing wage in the United States to that in Mexico, before NAFTA took effect in 1994: 6:1⁵

Ratio today: 8:1⁶

Estimated number of illegal Irish immigrants in the United States: 25,000⁷

Percentage change since 1960 in the per-capita U.S. consumption of fresh potatoes: ‒43⁸

Percentage change in per-capita consumption of processed potatoes: +247⁹

Average number of calories of oil that are used to make each calorie of food Americans eat: 7¹⁰

Length, in miles, of a barrier that Saudi Arabia has proposed to build in order to seal its border with Iraq: 560¹¹

Number of electronically controlled gates that would be placed along its length: 135¹²

Minimum number of Iraqis displaced by sectarian violence since February: 65,000¹³

Days after her coronation in April that an Iraqi beauty queen resigned, citing death threats: 4¹⁴

Factor by which the number of Iraqis imprisoned now exceeds the number at the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal: 2¹⁵

Chances that a U.S. federal judge has requested a government-supplied home security system since May 2005: 3 in 4¹⁶

Chances that a U.S. commuter both lives and works in a suburb: 2 in 5¹⁷

Percentage change since 1990 in the number of Americans who describe themselves as “nonreligious”: +106¹⁸

Percentage of U.S. abortions in 1973 and 2002, respectively, that took place in the first trimester: 38, 61¹⁹

Estimated percentage of women in U.S. prisons or jails who are single mothers: 77²⁰

Chance since 2001 that a criminal case in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., has been tried off the docket: 1 in 6²¹

Number of state laws enacted since September 2001 that restrict access to information: 616²²

Number that broaden access: 284²³

Number of CIA employees that the Chicago Tribune was able to identify in March through online databases: 2,653²⁴

Number of CIA workplaces it located: 24²⁵

Estimated number of fake blogs created every day by websites to improve their rankings in search-engine results: 6,750²⁶

Price for which China will rent out Beijing's Great Hall of the People: $12,000²⁷

Percentage of Chinese who say the free market is “the best system on which to base the future of the world”: 74²⁸

Percentage of the French who say this: 36²⁹

Chance that an American says he or she views France as a U.S. ally: 1 in 6³⁰

Chances that an American says he or she uses the word “fuck”: 2 in 3³¹

Percentage of U.S. public-radio stations' funding in 1980 and 2004, respectively, that came from businesses: 8, 18³²

Percentage that came from the federal government: 33, 11³³

Factor by which total U.S. student loans from private lenders last year exceeded the amount in 1995: 10³⁴

Minimum amount that a Massachusetts special-ed teacher received in donations from 2003 to 2005 by faking cancer: $35,000³⁵

Fee for which a Florida middle-school gym teacher allowed students to skip class, before he was fired in January: $1³⁶

Years that his predecessor had operated under the same policy: 1³⁷

Amount a Pennsylvania T-ball coach paid a player last year to hit an autistic teammate with a ball: $25³⁸

Ratio of negative portrayals of teachers on U.S. children's TV shows to positive portrayals: 3:1³⁹

Ratio for portrayals of adults in general: 10:1⁴⁰

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