10 Reasons America Isn't the Greatest Country Anymore | The Odyssey Online
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Politics and Activism

10 Reasons America Isn't the Greatest Country Anymore

Don't kid yourselves.

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10 Reasons America Isn't the Greatest Country Anymore
Hardly Serious

1. Americans are 10 times more likely to be killed by guns than the people in other countries, and yet gun control is still not being sufficiently regulated despite the US gun-related murders rating 25 times higher than all of the high-income countries.

2. America is number 16 in the world's corruption list. 1 being the least corrupt and 100 being the most corrupt. We're beaten by Belgium, Austria, Denmark, and 13 other countries. The fact is that America is corrupted and needs to get things together.

3. America is home to the highest number of overweight and obese people. Americans eat 815 billion calories of food each day - that's roughly 200 billion more than needed - enough to feed 80 million people. Health wise, we're a mess. Also, Americans throw out 200,000 tons of edible food daily. We're not only greedy, but wasteful.

4. America is the top 10 most racist country in the world. Must be the reason why Donald Trump is still in the running for president of the United States.

5. Fact: 34% of billionaires are Americans. Fact: the US poverty level is the highest in the developed world. That gap in social classes is sick. If billionaires would maybe use their money to help people instead of using it for bribery, yachts, and 2.4 million dollar bottles of wine, maybe that gap wouldn't be as noticeable.

6. The US scored 16th in literacy proficiency, 21st in numeracy proficiency, and 14th in problem solving in technology-rich environments in a survey that tested 23 developed countries. That's dangerously low in education. America is not properly educating their children.

7. America makes up 37 percent of the 1.6 trillion dollars spent globally on military expenditures. The US military budget is the largest in the world. It's roughly the size of of the next 7 largest military budgets around the world combined. That's money that could've gone to finding a cure for cancer. Instead of violence, spread love. We certainly can see where American priorities lie.

8. US college students face tuition rates that far outrun inflation rates and more than $1.2 trillion in student debt. Students in Germany, Finland, France, Sweden, Norway, Slovenia, Brazil, Luxembourg, and Iceland, however, are receiving a quality education that's free. Just goes to show why Americans don't meet average intelligence. It's because they can't afford an education.

9. Americans constitute 5% of the world's population but consume 24% of the world's energy. America uses up twice as much energy as Japan, six times more than Mexico, and 13 times more than China. We don't need that much energy. That rate of consumption is wasteful and hurtful to the environment.

10. Even after all of these proven facts, we still think that we're the greatest country in the world.

Sources:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-com...
http://www.bustle.com/articles/138245-heres-exactl...
http://www.everydayhealth.com/news/are-we-fat-thin...
http://listovative.com/top-12-most-racist-countrie...
http://www.povertyprogram.com/usa.php
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-...
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/us-mi...
https://mic.com/articles/106866/the-average-cost-o...
http://public.wsu.edu/~mreed/380American Consump...

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