Ranking America
March 8, 2010 – 22:15The United States of America enjoys many riches, inherent capabilities and positive attributes, as well as shortcomings, unresolved issues and a converging set of existential threats.
The challenge is to be aware of the upsides of the United States without becoming defiantly hostile to any discussion of specific shortcomings or ways the U.S. could improve, or, conversely, becoming so immersed and versed in America’s downsides as to become blind to the unique positive capabilities, characteristics and opportunities the U.S. offers.
When you live in the United States, it often seems as if the U.S. is either all bad or all good depending on which political party is in power and which talk radio station, screaming cable channel or hyper-partisan web site or publication you are feeding into your head at the moment.
In addition, the United States has a long cultural history of and peculiar cultural affection for jeremiads, mournful and often bitter lamentations about the state of society and government. If you spend any time exposing yourself to discussion or media concerning public or foreign policy, it won’t be long before you come across one form of jeremiad or another predicting the imminent doom of the country, accompanied by a long list of complaints and depressing statistics. However, as they say about paranoia, just because a jeremiad shouts that the sky is falling doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The challenge is to sort out the real threats from the partisan fueled hyperbole and opponent bashing.
Faced with so much hyper-partisan ideology and agenda-advancing content, it can be difficult to establish and maintain an assessment of where the country actually is relative to the rest of the world, much less where it needs to go.
Here are some objective facts to help achieve that goal.
Tags: airports, cell phone, exports, fixed investment, GDP, GDP per capita, Gini, gross domestic product, household income, imports, infant mortality, innovation, international aid, internet hosts, life expectancy, metric, military spending, mobile phone, movies, oil consumption, oil production, public debt, railways, roadways, telephone lines, top 100 software companies, top 500 businesses, universities, weights and measures




