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Saturday, August 20, 2011

AMERICA!

Congratulations to all of us today on this monumentous feat we've achieved:

To our great shame, among the 20 major advanced countries America now has:

-the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
-the greatest inequality of incomes;
-the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP on social programs for the disadvantaged;
-the lowest number of paid holiday, annual, and maternity leaves;
-the lowest score on the United Nations’ index of “material well-being of children”;
-the worst score on the United Nations’ gender inequality index;
-the lowest social mobility;
-the highest public and private expenditure on health care as a portion of GDP,

...Yet accompanied by the highest:

-infant mortality rate;
-prevalence of mental health problems;
-obesity rate;
-portion of people going without health care due to cost;
-low-birth-weight children per capita (except for Japan);
-consumption of antidepressants per capita;

...Along with the shortest life expectancy at birth (except for Denmark and Portugal):

-the highest carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption per capita;
-the lowest score on the World Economic Forum’s environmental performance index (except for Belgium), and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Belgium and Denmark);
-the highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements;
-the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP;
-the highest military spending as a portion of GDP;
-the largest international arms sales;
-the most negative balance of payments (except New Zealand, Spain, and Portugal);
-the lowest scores for student performance in math (except for Portugal and Italy) (and far from the top in both science and reading);
-the highest high school dropout rate (except for Spain);
-the highest homicide rate;
-and the largest prison population per capita.

3 comments:

oifish said...

yup but were not mexico

HammyBiscuits said...

I don't come to Parched to get depressed.

Tim said...

A lot of those say we are the worst (except blah blah), which means we are not the worst