Thursday, April 01, 2021
America, the Greatest country in history?
American politicians often claim the
United States is the greatest country on Earth, even the greatest in
history. Most citizens appear to believe
this but statistics tell another story. It is true we are number one in GDP but
7th in GDP/capita. Our economic growth rate is 115th. We are number 1 in healthcare spending at
$11,072/capita (Switzerland is 2nd at $7732/capita) but 27th
in life expectancy and have lower performance than most in a host of treatment
outcomes, including infant mortality. We are 1st in incarcerations
at 655/100,000 with 21% of the world’s prisoners. We are first in total number
of crimes with nearly twice the rate of the U.K. Nearly three times as many of
us are killed by police than in Germany.
We have 1348/100,000 people die while in custody compared to 21 in
Australia. Our gun death rate is 25
times higher than 22 other wealthy counties.
Twelve percent of us are poor and 1 in 6 children live in poverty.
So why do so many of us think we are
the greatest? Maybe what we really mean
is we are the most powerful, being first in nuclear arms and we spend more on
the military than the next seven countries combined. We throw our weight around and interfere in
countries in ways we would never allow them to interfere with us. In spite of
this, our winning record after WWII has been poor with the only clear-cut
“victory’ being G.H.W. Bush’s quicky with Iraq.
Currently the Taliban is declaring victory in Afghanistan. Sort of like healthcare spending, big bucks,
lousy results.
Does it matter that we are deluding
ourselves about our greatness. Yes, it
does. We do not accept advice well. We
do not like to be told what to do. We
did not sign the Paris Agreement, for one example. We have not joined the World Court because we
do not want an international body to have say over anything we do. This type of behavior can only lead to major
blunders and loss of standing in the international community.
The Trump presidency was a glaring
example of how an overblown sense of superiority can undermine the foundations
of our society and political system, even democracy itself. Hundreds of thousands of people died from
Covid-19 that would have lived if Trump had done the right thing early on and
followed it up by promoting mask wearing, social distancing, and hand
washing. How simple and straight forward
could it be? He even resisted
recommending vaccinations until after he lost the presidency. So yes, it is important that as a country we
have an accurate assessment of who we are and how well we are doing if we hope
to improve. Otherwise we will continue to blunder down the same worn path
making the same errors until we lose all credibility and no longer offer the
world an example of a functioning democracy and the freedom it can provide its
people. Autocrats and dictators are
already moving in to fill the void.
4-1-21
