55 Things About America You May Not Know |
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Posted: 10 Mar 2014 05:31 PM PDT
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Is America the greatest nation on the planet? Before you answer that question, you might want to check out the statistics that I have shared in this article first. The reality is that the United States is in a deep state of decline, and it is getting harder to deny that fact with each passing day. Mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually and financially we are a train wreck. Many that are “patriotic” attempt to put a happy face on our growing problems, but the truly patriotic thing to do is to admit just how bad things have gotten so that we can start finding solutions. If you truly love this country, then you should know that this nation needs a huge wake up call. We have abandoned the values and the principles that early Americans held so dear, and as a result our society is a giant mess. The following are 55 things about America that you may not know…
#1 We are supposed to have a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, but only 25 percent of all Americans know how long U.S. Senators are elected for (6 years), and only 20 percent of all Americans know how many U.S. senators there are.
#2 Americans spend more on health care per capita than anyone else in the world by far, and yet we only rank 35th in life expectancy.
#3 Only one state in the entire country has an obesity rate of under 20 percent. 11 states have an obesity rate of over 30 percent.
#4 Of all the major industrialized nations, America is the most obese. Mexico is #2.
#5 Back in 1962, only 13 percent of all Americans were obese, but it is being projected that 42 percent of all Americans could be obese by the year 2030.
#6 According to a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 31 percent of all food in the United States gets wasted. In case you were wondering, that amounts to approximately 133 billion pounds of food a year.
#7 America has the highest incarceration rate and the largest total prison population in the entire world by a wide margin.
#8 In America, we even put 81-year-old women in prison for feeding the birds.
#9 According to a Newsweek survey taken a few years ago, 29 percent of all Americans could not even name the vice president.
#10 Americans spend more time sitting in traffic than anyone else in the world.
#11 60 percent of Americans report feeling “angry or irritable”. Two years ago that number was at 50 percent.
#12 36 percent of Americans admit that they have yelled at a customer service agent during the past year.
#13 Only 30 percent of all Americans can tell you in what year the 9/11 attacks happened.
#14 There are more “deaths by reptile” in America than anywhere else in the world.
#15 Right now, 29 percent of all Americans under the age of 35 are living with their parents.
#16 Average SAT scores have been falling for years, and the level of education that our kids are receiving in most of our public schools is a total joke.
#17 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug. An astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.
#18 Americans spend more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs each year.
#19 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, doctors in the United States write more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants each year.
#20 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.
#21 In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined.
#22 America has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.
#23 According to the federal government, the number of heroin addicts in the United States has more than doubled since 2002.
#24 It is hard to believe, but 56 percent of all Americans now have “subprime credit”.
#25 America exports more weapons to other countries than anyone else in the world.
#26 The United States has the most complicated tax system on the entire planet.
#27 Corruption is rampant throughout our society. In fact, America leads the world in money given to fake charities.
#28 America leads the world in soft drink consumption by a wide margin. Today, the average American drinks more than 600 sodas a year.
#29 In 2008, 53 percent of all Americans considered themselves to be “middle class”. In 2014, only 44 percent of all Americans consider themselves to be “middle class”.
#30 70 percent of Americans do not “feel engaged or inspired at their jobs”.
#31 40 percent of all workers in the United States actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968 after you account for inflation.
#32 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6 Americans is on food stamps.
#33 The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low. Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of 6.8 marriages per 1000 people.
#34 In the United States today, more than half of all couples “move in together” before they get married.
#35 America has the highest divorce rate in the world by a good margin.
#36 America has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.
#37 100 years ago, 4.52 were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people.
#38 According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all American adults are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all adults in the United States were married.
#39 For women under the age of 30 in the United States, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.
#40 At this point, approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.
#41 In 1970, the average woman had her first child when she was 21.4 years old. Now the average woman has her first child when she is 25.6 years old.
#42 America has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world by a very wide margin.
#43 Approximately one out of every four teen girls in the United States has at least one sexually transmitted disease.
#44 America has the highest STD infection rate in the entire industrialized world.
#45 According to the latest figures released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, there are 20 million new sexually-transmitted infections in the United States every single year, and Americans in the 15 to 24-year-old age range account for approximately 50 percent of those new sexually-transmitted infections.
#46 As I wrote about recently, there are 747,408 registered sex offenders in the U.S. according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
#47 America produces more pornography than any other nation in the world.
#48 America has the most lawyers per capita in the entire world.
#49 If you choose to be a “Constitutionalist” in America today, you may get labeled as a potential terrorist by the U.S. government.
#50 America has the largest national debt in the history of the world. Back in 1980, the U.S. national debt was less than one trillion dollars. Today, it is over 17 trillion dollars.
#51 According to the Congressional Budget Office, interest payments on the national debt will nearly quadruple over the next ten years.
#52 Americans spend more money on elections than anyone else does in the world by a very wide margin.
#53 65 percent of Americans are dissatisfied “with the U.S. system of government and its effectiveness”. That is the highest level of dissatisfaction that Gallup has ever recorded.
#54 Only 8 percent of Americans believe that Congress is doing a “good” or “excellent” job.
#55 70 percent of Americans do not have confidence that the federal government will “make progress on the important problems and issues facing the country in 2014.”
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#23 According to the federal government, the number of heroin addicts in the United States has more than doubled since 2002.
So the real purpose of waging War in Afghanistan was a resounding success! One of the first things the CIA did there was re-plant the poppy fields & re-start heroin production. The Taliban had largely clamped down on that after the Russian War on Afghanistan.
So.... what's the solution?
It's well known that most of the heroin sold in the USA comes from Afghanistan. Guess who's black budget gets a boost from those sales.
#3 Only one state in the entire country has an obesity rate of under 20 percent. 11 states have an obesity rate of over 30 percent.
#4 Of all the major industrialized nations, America is the most obese. Mexico is #2.
#5 Back in 1962, only 13 percent of all Americans were obese, but it is being projected that 42 percent of all Americans could be obese by the year 2030.
Yet when former NYC Mayor Bloomberg tried to curb the sales of giant soft drinks - which are known to be a huge contributor to obesity - rightwingers went predictably nuts and called him Socialist wanting to run a Nanny State. And Sarah Palin came to some rally or another drinking a gargantuan soft drink and exhorting the dittoheads to to the same.
So, a solution is offered by a politician, but rightwingers run screaming from it shrieking about socialism. What, then, is the rightwing solution to this problem? And it most definitely IS a problem.
"#47 America produces more pornography than any other nation in the world."
Your damn right we do!
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
#25 America exports more weapons to other countries than anyone else in the world.
And so: what's the point? When Obama and other politicians actually say something about imposing very very very light gun controls, the NRA riles up the dittoheads into shrieking mobs ranting and tirading about tyranny and misconceptions about the 2d Amendment.
A lot of politicians are engaged in gun-running in various ways. Just ask Dianne Feinstein's husband and CA state Senator Leland Yee.
What's the solution?
33 The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low. Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of 6.8 marriages per 1000 people.
#34 In the United States today, more than half of all couples “move in together” before they get married.
#35 America has the highest divorce rate in the world by a good margin.
#36 America has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.
#37 100 years ago, 4.52 were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people.
#38 According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all American adults are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all adults in the United States were married.
#39 For women under the age of 30 in the United States, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.
#40 At this point, approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.
#41 In 1970, the average woman had her first child when she was 21.4 years old. Now the average woman has her first child when she is 25.6 years old.
So what? Most of this isn't that problematic, and it would be even less problematic if we had country that provided affordable child care to working parents. But rightwingers would shriek about socialism if we did that.
You can whine all you want about marriage stats, but most of those people go to church. It's not only allegedly amoral dirty nasty horrid LIEbruls or the dastardly lazy mooching minorities who have these marital stats.
In fact, most of the teen pregnancies happen to WHITE teens in Southern states where the families go to Christian mega-churches and don't permit their kids to have access to birth control education.
So what's the solution?? Because, clearly, going to church and being self-righteously pious ain't working.
How about trying to support people who end up as single heads of households rather than trying to vilify them and make it harder to get by?
#50 America has the largest national debt in the history of the world. Back in 1980, the U.S. national debt was less than one trillion dollars. Today, it is over 17 trillion dollars.
#51 According to the Congressional Budget Office, interest payments on the national debt will nearly quadruple over the next ten years.
This is mostly not the problem it's made out to be. But what's the rightwing solution??
Since Reagan, all that's happened is cutting, cutting, cutting taxes to the super wealthy & corporations, while waging incessant expensive WARs based on lies & obfuscation. Rightwingers seem to love these purported solutions, but look where it's led us? When are rightwingers going to connect the frickin' dots????
Yet in just the prior RWF, there's whining about how the USA is cutting the Pentagon's budget and how *horrid* that is (with no real explanation as to why it's "bad").
Cutting taxes on the extremely wealthy and corporations has NOT resulted the promised "job creation," but it has resulted in less money to fund things for the common good, such as infrastructure maintenance.
Yet rightwingers insist that the 1% should enjoy ever lower taxes.
What IS the solution?
#2 Americans spend more on health care per capita than anyone else in the world by far, and yet we only rank 35th in life expectancy.
Yep and who's fault is that? When Obama was elected, the leftwing wanted a Single Payer health care system, somewhat akin to Canada or Western Europe.
Rightwingers permitted themselves to be astroturfed by the 1% Kochs into being Tea Party. Went to Town Halls and literally shrieked and screamed and threw temper tantrums about a single payer health care system and ranted and tiraded about socialism.
There was a very good thing in ACA for Medicare to fund doctors in discussing end of life procedures with the elderly. Sarah Palin picked up on this and went nuts about it calling it "death panels." This was the most venal perniciious and outrageous lie from this whore-shill, but that was removed from ACA bc of Palin's LIES about it.
Now we have a crap piece of health insurance plan which was developed by the rightwing Heritage Foundation and initially promoted by Bob Dole.
Rightwingers shriek and scream about it bc the N-word gets the "blame" for it. I don't like ACA, but who's responsible for it being implemented? And if you think ACA is going to improve health CARE, guess again.
We're stuck with this crap, but all rightwingers want to do, per usual, is vertch, whine, moan and victimize themselves to the N-word.
Leftwingers offered a viable solution in terms of Single Payer, but that was shot down. Now finally, it's being admitted how shitty our health care is in this country. It's not "world class," unless you're in the 1% and can pay big bucks for what you need.
So what are the real rightwing solutions??????
#53 65 percent of Americans are dissatisfied “with the U.S. system of government and its effectiveness”. That is the highest level of dissatisfaction that Gallup has ever recorded.
#54 Only 8 percent of Americans believe that Congress is doing a “good” or “excellent” job.
#55 70 percent of Americans do not have confidence that the federal government will “make progress on the important problems and issues facing the country in 2014.”
So what's the solution? Clearly voting for the same old same old bogus "two" parties had brought us to this point.
Attempting to fix a problem over and over using the same methodologies is a definition of insanity.
Yet USians cling & grasp to the notion of having only a 2 party system and vote based on Lesser of 2 Evils. Where has that gotten us except to the point where ALL pols are bought off hacks working for the 1%.
Everything that happens in the District of Criminals inures soley to the benefit of the 1%. Leftwingers can be just as authoritarian and blind as rightwingers, but as we see here at RWDad, rightwingers permit themselves to be bamboozled over and over and over by the same tired old bogus lies and victimizing stances that bring about no real solutions.
Unless and until USians in the 99s cop to the fact that we're being divided and conquerd by the 1s to be pit against one another, the beat down will go on.
Wake up sheeples.
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