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| English: Tax rates for the highest (red) and lowest (blue) income brackets since 1913 with the United States public debt (green) in the background. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Is America no longer the greatest country in the world?
Some observations:
"Consider this, you are the only people in the developed world without a single-payer health system. Everyone in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand has a single-payer system. If they get sick, they can devote all their energies to getting well. If you get sick, you have to battle two things at once, your illness and the fear of financial ruin. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills, and tens of thousands die each year because they have no insurance or insufficient insurance. And don’t believe for a second that rot about America having the world’s best medical care or the shortest waiting lists: I’ve been to hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore, and Thailand, and every one was better than the “good” hospital I used to go to back home. The waits were shorter, the facilities more comfortable, and the doctors just as good."
"America has the highest debt rate in the world. This is because an enormous percentage of American tax dollars go towards supporting the military. Each United States citizen would need to contribute about $45,000 to get rid of that debt. This compares to about $21,000 per capita for Canadians. However, although European countries have a lower overall debt, because they have fewer people, the per capita rate is much higher. For instance, In the UK, the per capita rate is $150,000.
While the Wikimedia list is outdated, it does show that while the US debt is the highest in the world, the per capita repayment lies in the medium range. Countries in eastern Europe have very little debt.
- U.S. National Debt Clock
The estimated population of the United States is 312,181,896 so each citizen's share of this debt is $49,170.19.
- List of countries by external debt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
America is the highest. The total United States public debt is numerically very similar to United States external debt, but only about a third of United States public debt is external."
"We are technically not all the 1%. United Nations researchers Davies et al. calculated in 2008 that the cutoff for the wealthiest 50% of the global income distribution was $2,138; for the top 10% and 1% the cutoffs were $61,000 and $510,000, all measured in 2000 U.S. dollars. Global wealth remains concentrated in a few hands in New York, London, Shanghai, and Dubai. But as Branco Milanovic shows in The Haves and the Have-Nots, the bottom 10% of the U.S. income distribution falls in the upper 30% of the global income distribution. When considered from this perspective, the prospects of the 99% are drastically improved.
"According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the poverty line for an individual in the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., was $10,830 in 2010. Compared to global measures of GDP per capita for 2010, an individual at the poverty line in the United States has an income in between the average for Lithuania and Seychelles, ranked 49th and 50th. This may sound less than ideal for those of us accustomed to the lifestyle and conveniences of the first world. But put differently, someone at the poverty line in the United States is in the top 14% of the global income distribution."
"How does this compare with other countries? In 2008, the U.S. high school graduation rate was lower than the rates of the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Finland and Denmark. That same year, the U.S. was the only developed nation where a higher percent of 55- to 64-year-olds than 25- to 34-year-olds had graduated from high school.
"What about college? The U.S. once led the world in college graduates. As an example of this, Americans age 55-to-64 still lead their peers in other nations in the portion with college degrees (41 percent). But this number has flat-lined for Americans. In 2008, the same percentage of Americans age 25-to-34 and age 55-to-64 were college graduates."
- By the time our students are ready to leave high school - ready to enter higher education and the labor force - they are doing so badly with science they are significantly weaker than their peers in other countries.
- Our idea of "advanced" is clearly below international standards.
- There appears to be a consistent weakness in our teaching performance in physical sciences that becomes magnified over the years."
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