International polls and statistics reveal that US really is exceptional (but not in a good way)

[DetlefK]

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/americans-are-delusional-prudish-religious-nuts-especially-when-compared-to-the-rest-of-world-study/
(long article)

A Pew survey released last year found that almost 75 percent of Americans across denominations say religion is at least “somewhat” important to them, with 53 percent calling it “very” important. That’s higher than in every European country polled, a list topped by Poland, where just 28 percent—close to half America’s total—answered in kind. France, in what we’ll see is pretty consistent, came in dead last in Europe, while Japan and China, to borrow a conservative phrase, are even more “godless.”

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In a 2013 survey, 30 percent of Americans said sex before marriage is “morally unacceptable.” Pretty much every country that placed a lower importance on religion found premarital sex less of an abomination, although Russia’s in a dead heat with us on this one. France, where just 6 percent held this opinion, tied for last place with Germany.

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a 2006 Guttmacher Institute survey found 95 percent of Americans have had premarital sex. ... while another 2011 study found that even 80 percent of unmarried evangelicals age 18 to 29 had indulged their carnal desires.

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most European countries have teen pregnancy rates at a fraction of our own. (Britain, which sits on the pruder side of the European sex continuum, comes closest to us in teen pregnancy numbers, but still falls far short.) In fact, the U.S. maintains the highest teen pregnancy rate among all wealthy countries.

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More than any European country, Americans, at 57 percent, said they disagreed with the idea that “success in life is pretty much determined by forces outside our control,” though Britons, for shared historical reasons that aren’t hard to guess, came closest, at 55 percent. In general, wealthy nations were more likely to disagree with the statement than poorer countries, with a few notable exceptions.

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73 percent of U.S. denizens polled by Pew in 2014 agreed that “hard work is very important for getting ahead in life,” a statement only 35 percent of Europeans overall agreed with. While no one’s denying that hard work contributes to doing well, the American version of this idea ... is both naive and empirically, factually and statistically wrong. Americans work the longest hours of those who inhabit the richest countries, but for all their diligence, the wealth gap in this country is now the widest it’s ever been and growing.

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Rags-to-riches stories do happen, but they happen less in the U.S. than in many other countries. A 2012 Economic Policy Institute study found there’s far less class mobility in America than in other wealthy European countries, as well as Canada, Japan and Australia.

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And in a country where everyone believes they’ll be rich someday—an opinion many Americans hold despite every contradictory indication—inequality becomes someone else’s problem. The social safety net be damned: nearly 60 percent of Americans told Pew it is “more important that everyone be free to pursue their life’s goals without interference from the state than the state play an active role in society so as to guarantee that nobody is in need.”