The United States is Falling
By Daniel Miessler on October 28th, 2005: Tagged as Culture | Religion | Science
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.
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The United States is Falling Down…
While perusing Daniel Miessler’s blog this evening, I came across a post he made today titled The United States is Falling. His entry is inspired by a video posted at CNN.com.
The video exposes a number of statistics on how the United States is fa…
Trackback by average admins — 10/29/2005 @ 1:14 am
The next presidential election is three years away. Don’t wait for that. Pay that kind of attention to your local (and congressional) elections between now and then.
It ain’t all up to the President.
Comment by Brian — 11/4/2005 @ 12:58 pm
37,000,000 out of 295,734,134 = 12.5% But you have to wonder what “poverty” means. Here’s a chart to figure that out: 2004 Federal Poverty Guidelines. A family unit of 1 is in “poverty” at $9,309 per year. That means that until Feburary of this year, I was “in poverty”. Even if you live in poverty, you can: 1) own a small house (or rent) 2) own a fairly cheap (or old) car 3) still have a low-paying job (minimum wage, almost 35 hrs/week) 4) take welfare, food staps, medicare/caid to pay for essential services (which doesn’t add to your income) I’m not saying it’s a glorious lifestyle, but most people “in poverty” in the US still have food, shelter, and transportation of some sort.
1.5 million out of 4 million = 37.5% Even worse to think that of the 2.5 million that are married under wedlock, about 50% of them will have to live through their parents’ divorce.
Population Ratio, China:US = 1,306,313,812:295,734,134 or ~ 4.4:1 Thus, nine times as many engineers isn’t quite as bad as you would think. They’re popping out roughly 2 engineers/populace to our 1/populace… Still not good, but not as bad as you make it sound.
Basically, it’s true the state of America isn’t as good as it should be, but it’s the diversity that makes us so great. We started out as tired, poor, huddled masses, and now, even though we still have quite a few huddled masses, we’re considered one of the most powerful nations in the world.
Comment by Tim — 11/12/2005 @ 1:41 pm