Rate Thread
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
The 31 happiest, richest, healthiest..............
#1
..and safest countries in the world (according to Business Insider)

http://uk.businessinsider.com/legatum-in...ies-2016-5
"You can be young without money but you can't be old without money"
Maggie the Cat from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." by Tennessee Williams
Reply

#2
I wouldn't consider my own country to be number 11.
The US spends the most money on healthcare in the entire world, as much as 17.1% in GDP on average between 2011 - 2015 *
* http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS
That's compared to those "evil communist countries" (i.e. every single other developed country on Earth) that spend a fraction of that (such as Finland, which spends only 9.7% of its GDP)
Yet millions of Americans are without health insurance, as many as 33 million Americans reported in 2014. Over 33,000 Americans in 2014 died preventable deaths simply because they had no healthcare *
* http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/201...tors-group
Prior to the ACA ("Obamacare") that number was as high as 45,000 Americans dying preventable deaths from lack of healthcare *
* http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/20...-coverage/
That's the number we're probably going to go back to once, God (if you exist) forbid, Trump wins and repeals it. On top of that, the ACA forces millions to buy private insurance plans and fines us if we don't, compared to countries with universal healthcare that simply pay it with taxes, which given the percentage of GDP spent on healthcare, is less in taxes than Americans pay in private.
These numbers aren't the price of freedom, either, as the US has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. The US is home to 5% of the world's population, yet we have 25% of the world's prison population *
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact...r-country/
The US has the strongest military in the world no doubt, yet sadly too many equate that with prosperity.
When I was growing up, I was told countless times the US is the wealthiest, most prosperous country in the world. Yet that doesn't explain why nearly 1 in 5 American children fall below the poverty line *
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worl...nked-34th/
All other Anglo-sphere country, all of western Europe, and Japan, have a much lower child poverty rate.
Millions of Americans are without healthcare, tens of thousands of Americans die preventable deaths because they cannot afford health insurance, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, and a sizable fraction of American children live below poverty.
Londoner, this list you provided uses a very misleading metric. Americans that defend the notion of America being the most prosperous country constantly point to under-developed countries as a comparison, yet remain completely ignorant of how successful other developed countries are. Even conservatives are abandoning the notion of America being the most prosperous, yet Donald Trump is misleading the country into blaming the left and swaying to the right, when every single country that beats us is to the left.
Reply



Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  The richest man in the world is..........? LONDONER 7 1,007 09-11-2016, 01:21 AM
Last Post: Cuddly

Forum Jump:


Recently Browsing
1 Guest(s)

© 2002-2024 GaySpeak.com