The United States is Falling

This is a must see: How we rank against other countries by the numbers (Video)

Folks, this isn’t funny anymore. Here are a few of the stats:

• 37 Million in Poverty
• 1.5 Million babies born out of wedlock every year
• We’re not even in top 10 in literacy rates
• Over 50% of Blacks and Hispanics won’t graduate from high school
• No longer the most college educated nation
• China graduates roughly 9 times the number of engineers we do
• Washington D.C. has a higher infant mortality rate than many cities in India

This country is becoming a joke; it’s already the laughing stock of much of the world, and if we don’t do something quick we’re going to start seeing a massive migration of the the country’s educated and wealthy to other, more fertile environments.

It’s going to be the opposite of what happened when this nation began to thrive — rather than people coming here full of ambition, those who have it will be moving as fast as they can to Canada, Europe, and other forward-thinking places.

Here’s a big part of the problem: The U.S. Is Attacking Science

It’s utterly sad. It’s not just sad, it’s depressing. What can we do to stop this from happening? Anything? I’m almost of the opinion that there’s too much momentum pulling us in the wrong direction, but I know one thing for sure — I’m getting involved in the next presedential election. I’m not only making sure that everyone I can influence votes, but I’m going to try and help with education on key issues. We have to at least try.

The other (and perhaps even more sinister) issue is that of a lack of performance standards (and/or willingness to enforce them). This applies to everything, but mostly education. We need to run this country like a fortune 500 business, i.e. like an organization focused on succeeding. We need to set standards for being first in literacy, first in Math and Science, etc., etc..

Anyway, I digress. I’ll leave these thoughts to another day in another post.