"America is the greatest country ever!"
"The land of freedom and opportunity!"
"We can do anything we want because It's America!"
Do any of these phrases sound familiar to you? You've probably heard some variation of them at some point in your life and you probably just accepted it. Why shouldn't you? After all, you grew up in America. Why shouldn't you believe that your country is the greatest? If you're a die-hard patriot, I'm afraid I'm going to have to burst your bubble. We aren't the "greatest" or "best" country around and I have the facts to back it up.
1. High Infant Mortality Rate
For a country that is as advance as ours, we should not have a high infant mortality rate. Unfortunately, in comparison to other countries that are advanced like ours, we have an embarrassingly high infant mortality rate. The average rate for our country is 6 infants die per every 1,000 born. While that doesn't seem like an awful lot, individual states have higher mortality rates. That was just the country average. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) southern states like Mississippi, Alabama, and even West Virginia have higher infant mortality rates than the country's average (8.9, 8.7, and 7.3 - order according to states listed).
While the rate has gone down considerably since 1990, a baby born in the United States can be twice or three times as likely to die before the age of one than a baby born in another country like Japan, Spain, Finland, Germany, etc.Why? Well, not surprisingly, it mostly boils down to finances. Babies born to poorer families, tend to have less of a chance for survival than babies born to wealthier families. While all babies that are born in hospitals are taken good care of, once they go home is when their chance for survival starts to drop. Families that don't have access to good healthcare are more likely to see their infants die. This is why government plans like Obamacare are so important. They not only ensure that less-wealthy families have proper health insurance, but they also insure that babies born to these families have a better chance at surviving by providing the necessary post-natal home visits.
2. Less-Than-Average Education
Many Americans would love to think that we have the best education system in the world. If you're one of those Americans, you thought wrong. America only ranks 14th in reading, 25th in math, and 17th in science. We fall short compared to other countries around us. In a country like ours, education should not be a problem. We shouldn't have high drop-out rates but we do. Our country stresses the importance of education to the point where it's hard to find a job if a high school diploma isn't present. If drop-out rates weren't bad enough, college tuition is expensive enough to put parents and students into a hole of debt they can't dig themselves out of. How are our students supposed to graduate and contribute to our country if they can't afford the schooling they need to do so?
3. High Incarceration Numbers
Our country has the most people incarcerated (arrested and put in prison) per capita than other country's combined. Over two million people are in prison in our country right now. Why so many? There are an estimated one million arrests per year due to drug related charges. 34,000 juveniles are also arrested every year for various charges. What's the point? With every person that's thrown in jail, that's more money taken out of the tax payer's pocket to provide "free" housing, food, and healthcare to those that don't even deserve it. However, there are some people that are arrested that don't deserve it. Lock up the people that deserve it. Lock up the rapists, murderers, abusers, because they're the ones that need to be kept away from society. Many people are even arrested because they have undiagnosed mental disorders and they behave "strangely". That's not what jails are supposed to be around for. It's about time we made some changes. We can't boast about being a "free" country if we keep locking up the citizens that don't need to be there. We are locking people up for long periods of time only to release them and lock them up again.
The above issues I mentioned are only a few of many that prove why America isn't great. We aren't the best and anyone who tells you differently is wrong. The only reason why we're so "great" is because that's what the majority of the population says. Just because they say something, that doesn't make it true and apparently that applies to everything including our country of red,white, and blue.
