Yoda, I ask for specifics and you accuse me of evading the question.

I'll ask you - "What is best?"

There is NO objective way to answer the question - it depends on who you are.

Take note of what I said earlier - areas where the United States demonstrated supremacy are now areas where we are no longer in the leader's position by any measure I can find.

Again - define the question. If you are capable of something deeper than sound-bite sloganeering, and I think you are, it shouldn't be that hard to define.

"The World" is not a sports league where games are measured and standings kept in one concise, inch-long article that can be gleaned in a glance.

What's more important to you?

If it's communications connectivity, then countries like South Korea, Iceland, Finland and, quite frankly, most of Europe are eating our lunch. (I could go on for quite a while in how our communications corporations are scraming to avoid the very thing that has made Europe's internet serive so much better than ours - AND WE INVENTED IT!!!)

Is affordable health care most important to you? Then we're pretty much last in the industrialized world. But if it's health-care-at-any-cost, then, yeah, we're the best there is.

What about transportation? One could argue that it's the very artery of commerce. But our ttransportation infrastructure is in pretty dire shape. Still, it's not too late to do something about it. But I can imagine the nightmare that would happen if Mt. Ranier blows it's stack and an ash cloud closes every airport form Seattle to Chicago. We don't have a railroad infrastructure to help get passengers to where they're going. You think Europe was hassled by the Icelandic volcano? Just wait and see if it happens here.

So how do you define "Number One"?

Life expectancy? Infant mortality? Number of gold medals in the Olympics? Military budget?

Financial markets? Not very long ago, London supplanted New York City as the perceived leader.

Maybe it's housing afordability - but even then, what kind of housing?

You're asking a question in a way that has no answer.