Clearing-The-Desktop Dept.: Life liberty and the pursuit of unhappiness

The Social Progress Index has 12 components, and since 2011 the United States has fallen in the rankings in all of them, said Michael Green, the chief executive of the group that publishes the index each year.

“The U.S. won the Cold War by being an economic superpower and a social progress superpower,” Green told me. “Over the last 30 years, America has simply let go, in terms of social progress.”

The Social Progress Index is just one set of metrics, of course, and one could quibble about this or that score. But it is a useful exercise to employ objective data to weigh quality of life across countries:

In safety, the United States ranks 99th, the index finds, behind Pakistan and Nicaragua.

In K-12 education, America is 47th, behind Vietnam and Kazakhstan.

In health, we rank 45th, behind Argentina and Panama.

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, with its celebration of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In a sense, the Social Progress Index and these other assessment tools evaluate how well we’re doing by our own metrics.

The United States does a fine job generating economic growth [for the already wealthy], but it lags at translating that GDP growth into the things we most care about [like food shelter transportation communication healthcare, all thing we need to be happy feel sheltered protected and free

Western Europe, for all its social gains, has an economic model that suppresses innovation and long-term growth. [No, they don’t, they just don’t push it too ludicrous extremes unnecessarily]

“It’s not about Trump. Obama and Biden did little to reverse the decline, nor did the Bushes or Clinton. It’s a multipresident, bipartisan, long, slow car crash. Yet voters seem to have been anesthetized by a rising stock market and economic growth, until in recent years it’s become clear to people that their living standards have stagnated — and that’s why they’ve turned to the populist promise of MAGA and Trump. Trump is the consequence rather than the cause of America’s progress decline.”

[Start with Trump then work our way through destroying the ability of billionaires to rule over the society. Redistribute the real wealth, not hoarded by the wealthy, back into the hands of those who created it, and let them live their lives, rather than allow the creation of Vaporwealth through fractional reserve banking investments by the already wealthy to coercively live other people’s lives for them]

“Investments in human capital, in children, education and lifting skill levels, from early childhood initiatives to vocational training, from drug treatment to community colleges.

We are not the nation we think we are, and we should shake off this complacency unless we’re comfortable with our patriotic boast becoming, “We’re No. 32!”

— Nicholas Kristof

[In deference, I am not the “we” of whom NK speaks. I’ve never thought (past the age of ten) that, as one country in the world society, we were greater than other countries or better people than people in other parts of the world or deserving of special treatment for our geography. Our true advantage lies in the freedom to say and speech and write and express this opinion without fear of reprisal from fellow “we”s. That greatness and advantage has been denounced diminished degraded and abrogated by a small handful of the “non-we-the-people” persons controlling our economy with undue power. This is not my “we.” My we is We the People]