Really Pissed Off!

Why is America falling behind among the most advanced nations in the world? In Life Expectancy, we are rated 11th, just behind Austria with a rating of 75.0 years. Japan is rated number 1 at 79.1. On Health Coverage, the United States is rated last, after Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. These figures are frightening, if you consider how far behind we have fallen over the past 20 years! In Education, the United States was rated 18th out of the top 24 nations in the world, and Finland was rated Number One! What does that say regarding America’s future? In order to answer this, we have to look at how we got here in the first place.

To possibly answer this, we have to take a look at how the United States developed so quickly, from an isolated agrarian society to great industrial power as it entered the 20th Century. We were not a nation of people. We a nation of peoples and all of us are immigrants, including the DAR! As immigrants, we came to this country to find a better life from wherever we came from and America offered the best opportunity. The idea that we could move here and settle, without interference by a government, played an important role as to who we would become as a nation. The concept of “Rugged Individualism” shaped this nation. It was a perfect Darwinian experience as only the fittest survived. As the nation grew larger, we could leave society if we did not either like it or conform to it and move westward. By the 1850s, we had reached the end of the “Frontier,” which meant that we now had to change the national mindset. In other words, we now had to live with each other! One of the results was the American Civil War!

The Industrial Revolution took root in England and the European Continent during the 1830s, but the United States did not become a player until after our Civil War, which was one of the causes of why we fought; to decide whether we would remain an agrarian society or an industrial society. Once settled, America quickly grew to become one of the largest economic powers in the world, rivaling only Germany by the turn of the 20th Century. We did it with “laissez-faire capitalism” with little or no restrictions by the government or society, and the elite, as well as the entrepreneurs of America became multi millionaires. It became the way of the American dream. Accompanying this was the notion of “Rugged Individualism,” which defined success as the ability to go it alone and succeed. That may have more accurate at the beginning of the 20th Century, but it becomes a roadblock in the 21st Century, as we now must look at the nation as a whole, not just your particular private space.

We are now the only Global Super Power in the world. We should have the highest living standard in the world, but we don’t! Why not?.........because many of us continue to live in the past with the “frontier mindset.” A few years ago, Thomas Frank wrote a book “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” In it, Frank asks why people vote against their own economic interests and how Wall Street has made people believe that they speak for the people. It has worked well. Now that we have entered the 21st Century, we have to put the frontier mentality in the closet and realize that we need each other to survive. This means that we have to deal collectively with the serious problems that threaten the American way of Life. The first is Health Care! We should be first! We’re not! The only way to become first is to come up with some type of universal health care and remove profit from it. We have to place aside old prejudices like “Socialized Medicine” and come up with a plan to offer the best health care to all Americans. That will bring the life expectancy up to what Japan now enjoys. Why? Because that’s what Japan and every other country that has a higher life expectancy has done. It works, but…it costs money and all of us will have to pay for it. That means high taxes, but it will be less that what you are now paying out of your own pocket! As for education, we have to raise our standards, so that children in America will have the same opportunity to enjoy the “good life.” Testing children is only one small part of the solution. Teaching them is how your testing will show improvement. This means that we’ve got to teach languages early in life, raise the level of math and science and bring back history and the arts into the curriculum. The only way to do this is to raise the pay of our teachers. That’s going to cost money, and it will probably result in higher taxes. It is money well spent. Just think of what we COULD have spent the money on that we spent on the War in Iraq! Had we not been fooled by the Bush Administration into a needless war, we could have accomplished this without raising taxes! We may not agree on everything as a nation, but our nation’s health and the future of our children should be a common cause, with a common solution. If we continue, we follow the fall of Rome, and other great nations who allowed their civilization to perish at the expense or empire and neglect!