Two Major Differences Between America And The Rest Of The Developed World
Gus Lubin
Business Insider
Apr. 13, 2011, 11:21 AM
The OECD released a massive pack of data on the developed world this week. America performs well on things like household income and tolerance; and badly on things like health and voting rates.
But there are two measures where the U.S. is far and away the worst.
First, the U.S. prison population is 760 prisoners in 100,000. The next closest country is South Africa at 329 prisoners, while the OECD average is 140 prisoners.
Second, U.S. health spending is 16 percent of GDP. The next closest country is France at 11.2 percent of GDP, while the OECD average is 9.0 percent.
This means that Americans cost more to take care of -- even while their benefits are worse.
Social spending is low on pensions, but high on prisons. Health spending is off the charts, but obesity and life expectancy are worse than average.
Read more.
1 comment:
Anytime America builds up a seeming mountain of gold to be mined - be it the military-industrial complex, our bloated health care system, or prisons - corporations will naturally move in to profit. This is not bad at the start. It makes sense that capital would move where money is to be made.
But then those same corporations lobby Congress on a huge scale to increase their industries' share of the take. Suddenly, health care is not about health, but about constant fiscal growth, whether it makes any sense or not. Military spending is not about national defense, but about jobs in a specific congressman's district. Prisons are not about public safety, but about profit.
It's all the distorting effects of power politics, money and lobbying. God help us! I mean that, because I don't know if Washington can.
Ken
Dallas
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