Your method of looking at one year for each is viable, but it ignores the inherent difference between 'serving in Afghanistan vs. living in Chicago'. What we are comparing by your method is basically living in Afghanistan vs. living in Chicago, and that was not the comparison presented.
False. We are comparing serving in Afghanistan right now to living in chicago right now. If I was comparing LIVING in Afghanistan, I'd include the thousands of other combat deaths each year
other than those of US troops and have a much higher population number.
To compare the odds of dying on deployment and dying in Chicago, we could look at both over the ~10 year period and include all deployments (including multiples). In this way, the comparison is for a single deployment (per cap) vs. living in Chicago over that ten year period (per cap).
False. You'd have to look at the death rates that occurred WHILE deployed, not overall death rates over the long haul compared to the total number of people deployed. If, at any given time, the death rate stays constant at about 100 people per 100,000 deployed, then that is the rate. Just like the odds of being murdered in Chicago stays constant.
We are trying to compare the odds of dying on deployment (based on number of deaths per deployment) vs. the odds of dying in Chicago (based on the number of deaths per resident). There is no way to reconcile it completely, as we are comparing different things.
There is no way to reconcile it completely, but we CAN apply common sense and come to teh inteligent conclusion that teh bull**** narrative about living in chciago being more dangerous than serving in Afghanistan is retarded nonsense.
But you are looking at, effectively, the same people living in Chicago over ten years.
False. you are assuming a static, unchanging population, which is not the case. That actual individuals involved in the population fluctuate by hundreds of thousands as people move into and out of the city
constantly (hey, it's just like how people get deployed and return home, look at that!) are born, die form other causes, etc etc etc.
You'd have to look at EVERY person who has lived in Chicago at all over the last 10 years, including every single person who has died in Chicago over the last 10 years through means OTEHR than murder (as they would also be included in the total number over that time), Since we're now talking about adding in
millions of people and a number that cannot be reached.
The Chicago number is static, the Afghan number is many waves of people.
That's your false premise right there. It's
not static. Where'd you get the idea it was? No city's population is even close to static. It's constantly shifting and changing. There's a core of peopel who are constant, but there's a significant shift every single day. I personally know at
least 50 different people who have either moved into or out of the city proper over the last five years, including me.
I will agree that taking a straight up yearly pop vs. deaths is a way to compare, but it ignores that over a year in Afghanistan, many more people than the number there serve tours. Throughout the year, deployments end and begin. We might have twice as many deployments in Afghanistan as we have units there, in any given year.
And you ignore that over course of a year the population of Chicago undergoes a large shift as well.
I also gave the number by tripling the total troop number (instead of 68,000, I calculated using 200,000) and
underestimated Chicago's population by a quarter million without taking any of the fluctuation in chicago into account. Serving in Afghanistan was still
significantly more dangerous after I scewed the data in favor of serving in Afghanistan's favor by a wide margin.