By Tom Kando
Let's not go overboard about America's warts. Let's not get carried away.
Political participation? There is no country on earth where people do more volunteer work for politics, more community service, more charity, more philantropy, more civic participation, than the US. De Tocqueville knew it, and it remains true today. America is practically the only country on earth where justice is dispensed by citizen juries (as I am doing right now) rather than by arbitrary and dictatorial judges.
Women and people of color elected to public office? I know of no country on earth where this happens more than here - starting with Obama and Hillary. Nowhere on earth are women closer to men in power and status than in America.
Okay, so there is a handful of (smallish) countries like Holland, New Zealand and Norway where some things are done better, including social legislation. Okay, so France has a better health care system. Every country has its strengths and its weaknesses. But overall, the US is still among the ten best places in the world to live, at least for the 270 million - 85% - majority that belongs to the middle class. A vast majority of Americans live pretty good, happy, comfortable lives.
An annual United Nations quality-of-life survey ranks the world's approximately two hundred countries, as measured by a composite scale that includes such indicators as crime rate, unemployment, income inequality, education, public health, human rights, the environment, traffic congestion, housing affordability, etc. According to this source,year after year, the best place in the world OVERALL has been Canada. Below that, the top ten countries change a bit from year to year, but they invariably include countries like New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Holland, France, Germany AND THE UNITED STATES. Japan is a bit lower, maybe #12 or so, you know why? Because the status of women still lags considerably behind that of men.
"Europe," whatever it is, also includes Portugal, Greece, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and dozens of other countries where things are DISMAL. Go see Naples next time you are in Europe. It's a cesspool worse than Detroit. Italian politics are FAR more corrupt than ours. Vast tracts of that country - Calabria, Sicily - are run by the Mafia. Are things better in Andalusia than in California? It would be absurd to claim that they are. And even in our beloved and oh-so-perfect France, would you want to live in the North Paris casbah?
Like Europe, America is a continent, and it is equally diverse: We have regions the size of France where the crime rate is lower than in Europe (E.g. the Dakotas, the upper Midwest, Minnesota, Iowa), regions the size of Sweden with very little poverty (greater San Diego, Honolulu, Utah).
Let's not even discuss the remaining 80% of the world - dictatorial rule from Russia to every other former Soviet country, from totalitarian China to Venezuela to Cuba, Mysogynistic Islamofascism ruling over a billion Muslims. Poverty starvation and pandemics from India to Africa to Latin America.
Any moderatelly informed person knows that America, imperfect as it is, remains one of the better places in the world. Tony Blair didn't coin the expression, but he quoted it, saying: People vote with their feet. For every American who leaves this country to live somewhere else, five thousand immigrants move TO America. And whereas most of these people now come from Third World countries like Mexico, there are still many Europeans who move here every year as well - certainly far more than Americans moving to Europe. Why is that?leave comment here
1 comment:
Tom,
How up to date is your survey that ranks the U.S. in the top ten? Here are the facts I have (many from nationmaster.com):
1)Health care: America's ranks 37 by the World Health Organization.
2)Infant mortality: 37th place.
3)Poverty: 90 million Americans, nearly 1/3 of us, are classified as poor or low-income. This takes into account 'relative poverty' based on different cost-of-living standards around the world.
4)Education: U.S. ranks 18 out of 36 countries surveyed.
5)Divorce rate: We're #1.
6)Obesity: We are #1.
7)Life expectancy: We're in 47th place, lower than Bosnia.
8) Happiness: 16th at best (per U. Michigan); some other surveys rank us even lower. "The 2007 wave of the surveys also provides a ranking of 97 nations containing 90 percent of the world's population. The results indicate that Denmark is the happiest nation in the world and Zimbabwe the unhappiest. The United States ranks 16th on the list, immediately after New Zealand." (U. Michigan for Social Research)
To respond to your final question about immigration: There are other factors involved. Did you know that our gov't subsidies for mega-farms is a huge reason for immigration? Corn, for example. We pushed the price of corn so low on the world market that farmers south of the border were driven out of business. If they can't feed themselves or their families, what other choice do they have, than to come up here? Do you think they can afford to fly to Europe? Also, there's the issue of perception. Immigrants come here with the hope of getting rich. But that doesn't mean the majority of them DO get rich once they're here. I know you arrived here decades ago, but things were different then. Nearly a third of us these days are very challenged to make ends meet. The facts show that costs have risen dramatically since WWII, but salaries have not kept up. And we have more to pay FOR than most Europeans, due to privitization (of health care, day care, eldercare, college education, etc.).
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