As Americans, we like to tell ourselves that we are the best in
everything we do. The biggest, the fastest, the smartest, etc. And while
that may have been a true statement in the past, in looking at a slew
of recent statistics and numbers from reliable sources, it appears that
our place in the world on some very important measures are not where we
think they are relative to other countries:
- According to the World Economic Forum's Competitiveness Index, the United States is now only the fourth most competitive country in the
world, having been surpassed by Sweden and Singapore and still trailing
Switzerland in the number one position. As recently as the 2008-2009
analysis by the World Economic Forum, the United States was the best in
the world. Not a good trend, first to fourth in just two years.
- In the Heritage Foundation's most recent analysis and computation of
their Index of Economic Freedom, of all the countries in the world, the
United States ranks only seventh, trailing Hong Kong, Singapore,
Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Switzerland, in that order. This
index measures economic freedom which is defined as: "Economic freedom
is the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor
and property." It is measured across ten components and the latest
report shows that:
1) The United States went down in seven of those categories, up in only
two and stayed even in the remaining category. Again, not a good trend
to have.
2) From an overall rating perspective, the United States had the largest rating drop of all of the countries in the top ten.
3) Of the top ten countries, the United States had the ninth worst
rating on the political corruption component, beating out only Chile.
4) On the government spending component, the United States was worse
than the average when calculated for every country in the world, not
just the top ten.
- The Economist magazine operates a group within itself called the
Intelligent Unit which publishes the its Index of Democracy measurement
every year. The latest year for which the index was calculated appears
to be 2008 and shows that the United States ranks a lowly 18th in this
measure of democracy relative to the rest of the countries in the world
with Sweden, Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Denmark being rated
the top five. In civil liberties, the Index ranked the United States as
only the 34th best nation in the world in that category of freedom. Can
you say "Patriot Act?"
- In an August issue of Newsweek magazine, they had a panel of experts
compile and analyze worldwide data to determine what were the best
countries to live in. Their analysis ranked the United States as only
the 11th best nation to live in trailing, (in order from the best):
Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, Luxembourg, Norway, Canada, the
Netherlands, Japan, and Denmark. Two of the measurement components were
Education and Health and unfortunately, the United States ranked only
26th best in both categories, despite probably spending more per capita
than any other country in the world in these two areas.
- According to all measurements of education quality in the world that
assesses the education of our kids with the kids in other countries, we
do not fare well at all. The 2006 Program For International Student
Assessment (PISA) process showed that the United States' students fared
far worse than many, many countries in the world on math and science
tests. Not surprising since these findings are consistent with August
Newsweek findings discussed previously and President Reagan' 1983
special commission on education.
- One final depressing number. In the October 8, 2010 issue of The Week
magazine, an article quoted a recent finding from an ABC News/Yahoo News
poll which found that more than 40% of Americans no longer believe in
the "American Dream."
We are not as free as we once were, we are not as free as we think we
are, nor or we as free as we should be. This includes both political
freedom and economic freedom, i.e. the ability to retain what you work
for and earn. The more economic freedom you have the more free you are
to choose what schools your kids go to, what charities to donate to,
whether or not to start a business, what type of life style to have,
etc. You cannot decouple political freedom from economic freedom. These
numbers from the above sources indicate that we are a nation on decline
at the moment, both competitively, economically, scholastically,
democratically, and life style wise. That is the reality of today, the
numbers do no lie.
Now, in order to solve a problem you first have to identify the root
causes of the problem. Some of the above analyses have done that for us
already:
- Our civil liberties have eroded as the American political class has
gotten stronger and has burdened our freedoms with such things as the
Patriot Act.
- Our political class ignores, encourages, and participates in a wide
range of corruption practices which damage the credibility of government
and wastes hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars a year.
- We get no bang for our buck when it comes to health care and education
expenditures, spending the most and getting for less than quality back
in return.
- Our Federal debt and spending have gotten out of control, burdening
both current Americans and future Americans with untold amounts of
national debt to pay off. You cannot be free when you have to pay off
the onerous debt that the political class has incurred on your behalf.
To improve our performance in these important cateogies of life we need
to take some aggressive political steps including reducing the size of
the Federal government by 10% a year for the next five year and
implementing subject matter driven processes to fix our education system
and health care system without the influence of petty politicians and
lobbyists, and introducing term limits. The most important step starts
with dumping all incumbents in the November election. Both parties got
us into this mess, these trends have been building for years and/or
decades, times when both parties controlled Congress and the White
House. Politicians sitting in both parties today are not able to fix
these trends and get us back to where we think we belong, at the top of
the world as the most free, dynamic and prosperous nation in the world.
They had their chance, change their status from incumbent to
ex-politician in November.
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The United States Vs. The Rest Of The World The Numbers Are In And They Are Not Good
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