Rating the USA Like a 2K Player: Elite Scorer, Refuses to Defend

What if a country got a player card? This one rates the United States the way a basketball video game rates a player: each attribute is the country’s world percentile on a real metric, rescaled to the familiar 25-99 range where the best country in the world gets a 99.

The archetype writes itself. The offensive ratings are elite: GDP per capita at 95, HDI and labor share at 92. The defensive ratings are not: income equality 36, obesity defense 32, incarceration 26. Overall rating: 64, an offense-only scorer.

Attributes cover 22 metrics with the latest available year for each, ranked against 114 to 213 countries depending on data coverage. The companion chart, what the US should rate given its wealth, asks the follow-up question.