MEME: U.S.A. minimumWAGE is the lowest of 27 countries//Corrosion of U.S.A. in education, healthcar
Raise The Minimum Wage
"The U.S. federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour ranks 26 out of 27 countries, when measured as a percentage of the average wage in each of those countries.
U.S.A. is one up from MEXICO."
Share
1. Highest gun violence in the world: New Orleans and Detroit rival the most violent Latin American countries, where gun violence is highest in the world.
2. Healthcare
In the deep South, life expectancy is lower than in Algeria, Nicaragua or Bangladesh.
The U.S. is the only developed country that does not guarantee health care to its citizens; even after the Affordable Care Act, millions of poor Americans will remain uninsured because governors, mainly Republicans, have refused to expand Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income Americans.
Although the federal government will pay for the expansion, many governors cited cost, even though the expansion would actually save money.
America is unique among developed countries in that tens of thousands of poor Americans die because they lack health insurance, even while we spend more than twice as much of our GDP on healthcare than the average for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a collection of rich world countries.
The U.S. has an infant mortality rate that dwarfs comparable nations, as well as the highest teenage-pregnancy rate in the developed world, largely because of the politically-motivated unavailability of contraception in many areas.
3. Education
The U.S. is among only three nations in the world that does not guarantee paid maternal leave (the other two are Papua New Guinea and Swaziland).
This means many poor American mothers must choose between raising their children and keeping their jobs.
The U.S. education system is plagued with structural racial biases, like the fact that schools are funded at the local, rather than national level. WHY? We have a FEDERAL government.
That means that schools attended by poorpeople of color, get far less funding than the schools attended by wealthier students predominantly white.
The Department of Education has confirmed that schools with high concentrations of poor/of colorstudents have lower levels of funding.
America has one of the highest achievement gaps between high income and low income students, as measured by the OECD. Schools today are actually more racially segregated than they were in the 1970s!!!!
Our higher education system is unique among developed nations in that is funded almost entirely privately, by debt. Students in the average OECD country can expect about 70 percent of their college tuition to be publicly funded or completely FREE; in the United States, only about 40 percent of the cost of education is publicly-funded. That's one reason the U.S. has the highest tuition costs of any OECD country.
4. Inequality
By almost every measure, the U.S. tops out OECD countries in terms of income inequality, largely because America has the stingiest welfare state of any developed country. This inequality has deep and profound effects on American society.
For instance, although the U.S. justifies its rampant inequality on the premise of upward mobility, many parts of the United States have abysmal levels of social mobility, where children born in the poorest quintile have a less than 3 percent chance of reaching the top quintile.
Inequality harms our democracy, because the wealthy exert an outsized political influence. Sheldon Adelson, for instance, spent more to influence the 2012 election than the residents of 12 states combined. Inequality also tears at the social fabric, with a large body of research showing that inequality correlates with low levels of social trust.
In their book The Spirit Level, Richard Pickett and Kate Wilkinson show that a wide variety of social indicators, including
health and well-being are intimately tied to inequality (The stress of inequality creates bad health and a bad feelings about themselves and others).
5. Infrastructure
The United States infrastructure is slowly crumbling apart and is in desperate need for repair.
One study estimates that our infrastructure system needs a $3.6 trillion investment over the next six years. In New York City, the development of Second Avenue subway line was first delayed by the outbreak of World War II; it's still not finished. In South Dakota, Alaska and Pennsylvania, water is still transported via century-old wooden pipes. Some 45 percent of Americans lack access to public transit. Large portions of U.S. wastewater capacity are more than half a century old and in Detroit, some of the sewer lines date back to the mid-19th century. One in nine U.S. bridges (or 66,405 bridges) are considered "structurally deficient," according to the National Bridge Inventory. All of this means that the U.S. has fallen rapidly in international rankings of infrastructure.
The United States is corroded.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/six-ways-america-is-like-a-third-world-country-20140305#ixzz2yXhmy2eF Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
"The U.S. federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour ranks 26 out of 27 countries, when measured as a percentage of the average wage in each of those countries.
U.S.A. is one up from MEXICO."
Share
1. Highest gun violence in the world: New Orleans and Detroit rival the most violent Latin American countries, where gun violence is highest in the world.
2. Healthcare
In the deep South, life expectancy is lower than in Algeria, Nicaragua or Bangladesh.
The U.S. is the only developed country that does not guarantee health care to its citizens; even after the Affordable Care Act, millions of poor Americans will remain uninsured because governors, mainly Republicans, have refused to expand Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income Americans.
Although the federal government will pay for the expansion, many governors cited cost, even though the expansion would actually save money.
America is unique among developed countries in that tens of thousands of poor Americans die because they lack health insurance, even while we spend more than twice as much of our GDP on healthcare than the average for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a collection of rich world countries.
The U.S. has an infant mortality rate that dwarfs comparable nations, as well as the highest teenage-pregnancy rate in the developed world, largely because of the politically-motivated unavailability of contraception in many areas.
3. Education
The U.S. is among only three nations in the world that does not guarantee paid maternal leave (the other two are Papua New Guinea and Swaziland).
This means many poor American mothers must choose between raising their children and keeping their jobs.
The U.S. education system is plagued with structural racial biases, like the fact that schools are funded at the local, rather than national level. WHY? We have a FEDERAL government.
That means that schools attended by poorpeople of color, get far less funding than the schools attended by wealthier students predominantly white.
The Department of Education has confirmed that schools with high concentrations of poor/of colorstudents have lower levels of funding.
America has one of the highest achievement gaps between high income and low income students, as measured by the OECD. Schools today are actually more racially segregated than they were in the 1970s!!!!
Our higher education system is unique among developed nations in that is funded almost entirely privately, by debt. Students in the average OECD country can expect about 70 percent of their college tuition to be publicly funded or completely FREE; in the United States, only about 40 percent of the cost of education is publicly-funded. That's one reason the U.S. has the highest tuition costs of any OECD country.
4. Inequality
By almost every measure, the U.S. tops out OECD countries in terms of income inequality, largely because America has the stingiest welfare state of any developed country. This inequality has deep and profound effects on American society.
For instance, although the U.S. justifies its rampant inequality on the premise of upward mobility, many parts of the United States have abysmal levels of social mobility, where children born in the poorest quintile have a less than 3 percent chance of reaching the top quintile.
Inequality harms our democracy, because the wealthy exert an outsized political influence. Sheldon Adelson, for instance, spent more to influence the 2012 election than the residents of 12 states combined. Inequality also tears at the social fabric, with a large body of research showing that inequality correlates with low levels of social trust.
In their book The Spirit Level, Richard Pickett and Kate Wilkinson show that a wide variety of social indicators, including
health and well-being are intimately tied to inequality (The stress of inequality creates bad health and a bad feelings about themselves and others).
5. Infrastructure
The United States infrastructure is slowly crumbling apart and is in desperate need for repair.
One study estimates that our infrastructure system needs a $3.6 trillion investment over the next six years. In New York City, the development of Second Avenue subway line was first delayed by the outbreak of World War II; it's still not finished. In South Dakota, Alaska and Pennsylvania, water is still transported via century-old wooden pipes. Some 45 percent of Americans lack access to public transit. Large portions of U.S. wastewater capacity are more than half a century old and in Detroit, some of the sewer lines date back to the mid-19th century. One in nine U.S. bridges (or 66,405 bridges) are considered "structurally deficient," according to the National Bridge Inventory. All of this means that the U.S. has fallen rapidly in international rankings of infrastructure.
The United States is corroded.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/six-ways-america-is-like-a-third-world-country-20140305#ixzz2yXhmy2eF Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Replies
Yep! We\'re a real hot mess up in here!! xo
Cheer up. If the US keeps going in its present direction...towards greater and greater income inequality, classism, extremes of poverty and disease...there is no question whatsoever that the nation will collapse and something else will take its place. Maybe it will be something better, who knows? How about New China?...has a nice ring to it.
If history is any guide whatsoever, collapse is totally, absolutely inevitable on our present course.
Of course we could change direction. But that would require effort, something this nation of couch potatoes doesn\'t seem to understand. Instead they believe the lying political commercials that play most often on their TV and never, ever fact-check ANYTHING!
Wow, that is really disturbing and good to know.
i think they planned this. i also think its political overthrow from the inside unless we have a revolution. a maximum wage would alter the course. having no money put into elections and public tv as the only place politicians can voice what they plan, we would have different and better leaders as they wouldn\'t owe any corporation ANYTHING.
also TAKING AWAY THE VOTE from companies would help. somehow it was voted in that COMPANIES have a vote. open a million companies and you then have a MILLION votes in an election. how the hell did that go through? its obscene. and WHEN did that go through. it speaks REAMS.