Portion of the hundred best-paid U.S. CEOs who earn more annually than their companies pay in federal taxes : 1/3
Percentage of Americans and Chinese, respectively, who believe their government is “on the side of average citizens” : 12, 80
Who believe their government is “on the side of corporations” : 73, 17
Percentage of people living in the developing world who have a favorable view of the oil and gas industries : 69
Of people living in the developed world who do : 47
Percentage of electricity consumed in the United States that is generated from renewable sources : 13
Of electricity consumed in Germany : 24
Amount for which a watercolor painting by Adolf Hitler was bought at auction in Germany last November : $160,000
Amount of a tax on each ounce of soda sold in Berkeley, California, passed last year by ballot initiative : $0.01
Amount the beverage industry spent lobbying against the tax for every vote cast against the initiative : $238
Number of homeless people in Tokyo for every 10,000 residents : 1
In New York City : 67
Average annual salary predicted by white Americans for a worker who is described as “black” : $29,420
Who is described as “African-American” : $37,040
Number of days an Iranian woman spent in prison last year for attending a men’s volleyball game : 157
Minimum number of times since 1996 that lawyers in capital cases have accidentally missed the final appeal deadline : 80
Number of people killed by gang and drug violence in Utah since 2010 : 39
By Utah police : 46
Estimated number of U.S. citizens targeted for surveillance by the U.S. Postal Service in the past year : 49,000
Percentage of Americans who do not feel secure sharing private information over social media : 81
Amount for which the owner of happybirthday.com is attempting to sell the domain name : $2,000,000
Amount for which he sold sex.com in 2010 : $13,000,000
Date on which Apple’s market capitalization first exceeded that of the Russian stock market : 8/28/2014
Amount a Russian man was fined last October for delivering a pizza by drone : $1,092
Number of seconds after leaving its carrier plane that Virgin Galactic’s commercial spaceship disintegrated in October : 15
Number of explosives the U.S. Navy plans to detonate in the Pacific between now and 2018 : 260,000
Estimated number of times the explosions will disturb marine mammals : 9,600,000
Number of reported cases in the past decade of an Antarctic fur seal having sex with a king penguin : 4
Then eating it : 1
Chance that an American getting married in 1960 had been married before : 1 in 8
That an American getting married today has been : 1 in 4
Estimated number of U.S. preschoolers who spend part of every night at a day-care facility : 410,640
Amount a Canadian woman owes a Hawaii hospital after giving birth there while on vacation last year : $850,000
Number of women who received tubectomies last November as part of a mass sterilization drive in Bilaspur, India : 137
Number of these women who subsequently died : 16
Number of the procedures performed by a single doctor over a ninety-minute period : 83
Percentage increase in the annual number of polio cases in Pakistan since 2005 : 857
Chances that a Protestant in Brazil claims to have witnessed a divine healing : 7 in 10
Date on which Bob Marley’s estate announced the launch of Marley Natural, a “global cannabis brand” : 11/18/2014
Figures cited are the latest available as of December 2014.
“Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
February Index Sources
1 Center for Effective Government (Washington)
2–5 Burson-Marsteller (N.Y.C.)
6 U.S. Energy Information Administration
7 Global Wind Energy Council (Brussels)
8 Auktionshaus Weidler (Nuremberg, Germany)
9 City Clerk Department (Berkeley, Calif.)
10 ALZA Strategies (Sacramento, Calif.)/Alameda County Registrar of Voters Office (Oakland, Calif.)
11 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Tokyo)
12 N.Y.C. Department of Homeless Services
13,14 Erika Hall, Emory University (Atlanta)
15 Human Rights Watch (N.Y.C.)
16 The Marshall Project (N.Y.C.)
17,18 Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City)
19 Office of the Inspector General, United States Postal Service (Arlington, Va.)
20 Pew Research Center (Washington)
21,22 Domainmarket.com (Potomac, Md.)
23 Bloomberg L.P. (N.Y.C.)
24 Oleg Ponfilenok, Copter Express (Moscow)
25 National Transportation Safety Board (Washington)
26 U.S. Navy (Arlington, Va.)
27 National Resources Defense Council (Washington)
28,29 Marion Island Marine Mammal Programme, University of Pretoria (South Africa)
30,31 Pew Research Center (Washington)
32 U.S. Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.)
33 Jennifer Huculak (Humboldt, Canada)
34–36 Human Rights Watch (N.Y.C.)
37 World Health Organization (Geneva)
38 Pew Research Center (Washington)
39 Privateer Holdings (Seattle).
