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Parade, the little magazine that comes in the Sunday version of the LA Times, had a cover article titled, “Where America Leads the World (and where we do not)”. Here are some statistics:
| Where Americans are No. 1 in the world | Where Americans lag |
| Billionaires: 371 (worth $1.1 trillion) | Doctors: 43 countries have more physicians per capita than we do |
| Internet Users: 205,327,000 | Infant Deaths: 33 countries have lower rates |
| Nobel Prize Winners: 296 | Unemployment Rate: 38 other nations have a lower rate |
| Military Abroad: 460,000 armed forces in 144 countries | Murders: 15th highest murder rate |
| Energy Production: We use a quarter of the world’s supply, though our population is less than 5% of the world | Prisoners: Highest per capita rate of people in prison |
| Money Spent on military: Equals to the amount spent as all other nations combined | Women in national legislatures: 71 countries do better |
| GDP: $13.3 trillion | Voting: Of eligible citizens who vote, US is 139th of 172 nations |
| Money Spent on health care: $5,700/year | National Debt: We have the largest national debt at $8.6 trillion |
There were a couple things that stood out to me–I knew we had a pretty large military budget, but didn’t realize it was that much. It also should be concerning to all of us that we rank so low when it comes to our voting. How can we export democracy when we ourselves are hardly the example of it?
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