The U.S. Is Lagging Behind Many Rich Countries. These Charts Show Why.

[Zorro]

The United States is different. In nearly every other high-income country, people have both become richer over the last three decades and been able to enjoy substantially longer lifespans.

But not in the United States. Even as average incomes have risen, much of the economic gains have gone to the affluent — and life expectancy has risen only three years since 1990. There is no other developed country that has suffered such a stark slowdown in lifespans.

Why has this happened? There are multiple causes. But one big one is a lack of political power among the bulk of the population.

Government policy and economic forces have combined to make corporations and the wealthy more powerful, and most workers and their families less powerful. These workers receive a smaller share of society’s resources than they once did and often have less control over their lives. Those lives are generally shorter and more likely to be affected by pollution and chronic health problems.

Here, we show you a series of measures — about power, living standards and more — for a variety of countries. Together, they portray the disturbing new version of American exceptionalism.

We’ll start with union membership.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/02/opinion/politics/us-economic-social-inequality.html

[love_katz]

1. This is what happens when the uber wealthy can buy control of our government.

We desperately need to get the influence the big money out of politics!

[Igel]

2. Some see power. Some see health care spending.

Others like the data.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2488300

We have higher rates of homicide, poisonings (which includes drug overdoses and poisonings), and car crashes. Take out those and all the data that we say relate to health care per say tends to say something else. These aren't things where we stop some external or natural force. These are things we individually and personally do to ourselves and each other. Part of the life expectancy rate that's racially and ethnically skewed relates to these. We know this when we look at the important causes of death for groups like young black men and there's a political point to be made from that. We forget that same fact when the political point is different. But it's still the same dead bodies.

Pitch in education levels--higher education means better health. Yet we have a fairly large drop-out rate in spite of spending more per student than almost any other country. We've hacked at that for 50 years. It's down to 5% of students don't get a HS degree by the time they're 24. And the current hidden scandal is just how many kids graduate because of learn-nothing credit recovery.