United States and falling life expectancy
Gennaro Carotenuto
According to studies conducted separately by Columbia University and
the World Health Organization, the United States has, in only ten years,
gone from the 24th to the 49th in the world rankings of life expectancy.
That is, to live around 4.5 years less than the long-living Japanese or
2.2 years less than the Italians, located in the twentieth place.
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Hard time ahead for elders in US. Pic. courtesy: Google |
In 1960, US citizens were in fifth place, behind Scandinavian
countries and Holland and Australia. It took 40 years to lose 19 places
and only 10 in fall another 25. Among the causes of the collapse of
their real life expectancy are obesity, smoking, alcoholism, poor
nutrition, improperly treated diseases, violence and other problems
typical of countries that have a much worse index of human development.
Quality of life
And it is no longer taboo, even in major newspapers, including The
New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, to talk openly of the
decline of the country of Barack Obama, who begins the ninth year of the
war in Afghanistan. Even in some cases, the situation is described as
nothing less than “the collapse of American empire.”
Various statistics, similar to those of life expectancy, confirm a
seemingly unstoppable deterioration of the quality of life: at the end
of 2009, the National Centre for Health Statistics placed the country in
the position of 30th in the world in infant mortality, one of the basic
parameters of development. US newborns die for reasons similar to those
of adults, due to an inadequate way of life, ‘poverty.’ The number of
premature born is one of the leading causes of infant mortality and it
is more than twice that of Finland.
But the bad thing is that the United Nations agrees, in general, and
places the US in position 33 or, the estimates of their own Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), relegates the US to the 46th position in any
event, behind Cuba, located around 28th place, and almost on par with
Italy. In addition, all statistics or estimates for 2009 or 2010 were
significantly worse than those of only one or two decades ago and,
despite the global crisis being a factor, no other country has
registered a decline as pronounced in indicators of quality of life.
Child welfare
Even after surviving the first twelve months, children and
adolescents in the US are not safe, according to UNICEF. Among the 20
richest countries America is the second worst in regard to child
welfare. Just above the UK, the last of a league that includes the
Netherlands in the first place and Italy in the eighth. At the schools,
things have also gone from bad to worse:
American students rank as 33rd or 27th or between OECD (Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in terms of results
in the humanities and 22nd for science subjects.
This means that to maintain leadership, there is more to it than just
the prestigious Ivy League universities and the abundance of Nobel
prizes, if the masses have a very poor education.
There are many statistics and reports that speak of a country that is
throwing itself over a cliff quickly and tumbling rapidly in areas
ranging from the low stability of the banking system (according to the
World Economic Forum, it competes with Venezuela at No 100 in the world)
to the drastic reduction public transport.
Various regions
In cities and smaller towns, to cope with the crisis, entire lines of
buses and trains are deleted from their routes. Research suggests a
stratospheric debt that affirms the need (sic) to reduce compulsory
school in some states.
That is also not forgetting the tragedy of over two million people in
prison or the freezing of salaries for soldiers in Army service. Some
observers of the country are now talking openly about the decline of the
empire.
Just take a look to understand that across the Atlantic, something
big is happening with unexpected rapidity. The Wall Street Journal, the
bible of world capitalism, has in an article mentioning the abandonment
of projects to pave thousands of roads in various regions of the United
States because there is no money to do so. John Habermann, a Professor
at Purdue University, concludes that the US is returning to the Stone
Age, referring to the broken stone on which the citizens must lead the
country that invented the culture of the automobile.
If Professor John Habermann, who has recently conducted a workshop
entitled Back to the Stone Age, dedicated precisely to the reappearance
of dirt roads, exaggerates the size of the jump backwards, Glenn
Greenwald, from Salon, and many with him, agree that something is
happening that only ten years ago would have been considered unthinkable
to see in our lifetime: the collapse of USA.
Translated from the
Spanish version by: Lisa Karpova, Pravda.Ru |
