A Country in Steep Decline
Twenty-five years of authoritarian right wing “free lunch” policies have taken their toll. The US is now the world's most powerful Third World Country.
USA infant mortality is #36 just ahead of Croatia
Life expectancy # 37
Literacy, #62
Aids/HIV infection 65th highest out of 166 countries (1)
On the Gini index of inequality the USA is # 92, just above Guinea Bissau (2)
Prison Population - per 100,000
USA - 686
Canada 102
Venezuela 68
Denmark 59
Norway 59
Sweden 68
France 85
Holland 93 (3)
Over 40 percent of US inmates are jailed on nonviolent drug related crimes. (4)
Homicide Rate, per 100,000, (year 2000)
USA 6.1
Sweden 1.97
France 1.79
Canada 1.76
Holland 1.42
Japan 1.10
Norway, 1.09
Denmark 1.09
Austria 0.96
Persons killed on the job
USA = 14,000 (5)
Canada – 900 (6)
France 780 (7)
1. http://www.geographyiq.com/index.htm
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
3. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds
4.http://www.michaelparenti.org/HiddenHolocaust.html
5. ibid
6.http://www.iapa.on.ca/about_iapa/2006_apr19_press.asp
7. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jul2000/ital-j18.shtml
posted by Larry Gambone at
11:26 PM
4 Comments:
Really good post, Larry. The national murder rate in the United States is about 50 percent higher than in Regina (and Saskatchewan) alone, which is usually the worst in Canada. Apparently the twelve states which do not have capital punishment have an average homicide rate lower than the other thirty-six ... despite such "safe havens" as Detroit. Check the Amnesty International site at http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/deterrence.html. It's funny but some of those twelve states were among the earliest to abolish executions. Michigan did this in 1846. On the other hand in Washington D.C. the rate is 46/100,000. What a strange place ...
As someone living in the USA, I find this absolutely frightening. I knew it was bad, but not this bad. Obviously, years of increasing Republican Party intervention in our lives hasn't done anyone any good.
Thanks for pointing this out.
You are welcome. I started looking for information in an attempt to compare the US and Europe, since the right is forever bad-mouthing the Europeans. I was shocked too, so much so that I decided to post this information. But it is worse than shocking - it is a major tragedy. I remember the days when the USA was not like this at all, when we all used to look up to America. We critics of US foreign policy are forever slandered as "Anti-American", but I find nothing but sorrow in these statistics.
In just my lifetime, it has been amazing to watch both the rise of the US to Empire superpower status, out its own anti-imperialist revolutionary beginning, to assert itself and replace the longstanding British Empire on the world stage, AND the Soviet Empire as it mutated out of the failed Bolshevik Revolution, and now, in this really relatively short time, to witness its decline.
And as it unravels out of the disaster that is Iraq, which did not even occur in the aftermath of Vietnam, it is destined to take down with it not only Israel, but likely destined to have a profound impact on even ourselves here in Canada. Of which this latter I think is likely destined, in the end, to be a positive-, forcing this country to finally deal with its own incomplete, always to here dependent, national development.
In the fullness of time hoping that we do not ourselves eventually follow down that well traversed, corpse and war materiale littered trail of imperialist ambition ourselves. Which, so long as there is capitalism at least left standing in this country, will remain a clear and present danger.
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