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United States No Longer Top Nation

EXAMINATION OF FACTS LEADS TO DOUBT, AND DOUBT IS BEGINNING OF WISDOM

By Art Hobson

Posted: June 5, 2011 at 5:15 a.m.

There was once a floating utopia, regarded by her creators as beyond compare, No. 1. Such hubris led to disaster. On her maiden voyage, she carried her proud name to the bottom of the sea: “Titanic.” Since at least the ancient Greeks, humankind has known that excessive pride destroys nations. From Easter Island to the great Mayans to the ancient Romans to Hitler’s Germany, many a proud culture has shunned reality and thus collapsed.

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Opinion, Pages 15 on 06/05/2011

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Thank you, Professor Hobson.

America is sinking in many quality of life indicators, but that's only apparent, or even important, to those who care about evaluating such things.

For others, the anti-intellectual average Joe or Jo, the most important measure of our society might be a devotion to homogeneous ideological purity. The fact of Germany's pre-war focus on this aspect of national cohesion seems not to ring a bell for America's right-of-center rank and file.

This group would directly benefit from national policies which enlarge the popular social contracts, but we've got to be able to call Social Security a program consistent with the tenets of socialism and make that association sound OK.

Another resource for understanding the Borderer culture is "Deer Hunting with Jesus," by Joe Bageant (1946-2011)

Posted by: FrankLloydLeft

June 5, 2011 at 12:38 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

Couple more things Art Hobson didn't mention--we have: the world's highest incarceration rate (70% of them are non-white) and we are the world's biggest arms dealer. Russia is second.

Posted by: Coralie

June 5, 2011 at 4:37 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

Another excellent article from Art, but I did notice one error.

ART: "at $10 trillion, runner-up China is closing the gap.">>

I suspect he looked at a chart and saw China's growth rate, which indeed is right around 10%. But note, GDP is about half of that.

"As of 2010, China's nominal GDP is worth approximately... 5.88 trillion US dollars..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic...

To Art's compilation of unfortunate American stats, I would add one more in which the US is a profound outlier. It is regarding guns, and it is rather astonishing:

“…the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. American children are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die in a firearm accident than children in these other countries.”
--Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related deaths among children in 26 industrialized countries. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 1997; 46 :101 –105

http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrh...

D.

Posted by: fayfreethinker

June 5, 2011 at 5:15 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

Maybe instead of measuring economic success according to GDP, the U.S. might start measuring Gross National Happiness (GNH), which has been around since 1972 and has been adopted by several countries and cities.
Richard Hernberg describes its parameters in his book PEAK EVERYTHING:
Economic Wellness including consumer debt, average income to consumer price index ratio, and income distribution;
Environmental Wellness (pollution, noise, traffic, etc.);
Physical [Health] Wellness;
Mental Wellness (usage of anti-depressants etc.);
Workplace Wellness (jobless claims, job change, workplace complaints and lawsuits);
Social Wellness (discrimination, safety, divorce rates, domestic conflict complaints and family lawsuits, public lawsuits, crime rates); and
Political Wellness (quality of local democracy, individual freedom, foreign conflicts, etc.)

Posted by: Coralie

June 7, 2011 at 1:11 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

Wow!! What a ringing endorsement of the professor's opinion. Let's start with Coralie's leading chin...."we have: the world's highest incarceration rate (70% of them are non-white)". So Coralie.... what is your point. There can only be two. The first is that we are a prejudiced society and we are only incarcerating 'non-whites'. The second is that the 'non-white' part of our society is causing 70% of the problems. Which is it?

The second point is so bogus i just had to weigh-in. "Gross National Happiness (GNH)" vs. "GDP"? You state several countries have adopted this measurement. For what reason? We already have consumer confidence, unemployment, Jobs created, jobs saved by raising their salary, increases in government jobs, increased government job salary rates, and 20 year retirement for most government employees. What more do we need?

Posted by: commonsense96

June 28, 2011 at 1:21 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

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