Everybody thinks the US is a first world country. However some things in this country make it less than great. I think that America isn’t really a first world, but somewhere between second and first. We show a lot of the same behavior or characteristics of a country that isn’t first class. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n
We’re way behind a lot of other countries who are not first world; like Cuba. The Affordable Care Act did great things but we’re not there yet. Every citizen isn’t guaranteed healthcare yet. Our life expectancy (#51)<\/a> and infant mortality rates (#50)<\/a> are still higher than a lot of other countries. Even some which we consider worse.<\/p>\n According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the US is 80th in the world in women in parliaments<\/a>. There are only 20 senators who are women and 79 (or 18%) are in the house of representatives. We still haven’t had a female vice president or president. Even the Philippines has had a women president.<\/p>\n We’re number one in prisoners per capita at 716 per 100,000 population; behind Russia at 490 per 100,000 population. We blow Mexico out of the water. They only have 209 per 100,000 population. We’re less than 5% of the population yet we have almost 25% of the prison population of the world<\/a>. First world countries start around 100 on the list, but we’re number one in incarceration rate<\/a>.<\/p>\n We still have a lot of kids in this country which isn’t like a first world country. And it’s really funny too. Other countries have a lot of incentives for their citizens to have kids, but not in the US. We don’t even get paid maternity leave. The only thing guaranteed for us is under Clinton’s FMLA; and that’s unpaid.<\/p>\n We have the highest number of guns per capita (and the highest gun deaths). We have 88 guns per 100 people and 10 gun deaths per 100,000 population<\/a>. Switzerland is behind us with less than half our number (45.7 per 100 people).<\/p>\n We’re not doing well here either. We’re worse than countries like Egypt, Niger, Iraq, Iran. Even India and Ethiopia have better income equality than we do. Our gini coefficient<\/a> is at 40.8<\/a>.<\/p>\n The United States is always high when it comes to military expenditures. We’re number one in defense spending<\/a>. In fact, according to the World Bank, we spend 4.2% of GDP on military<\/a>. We’re in the company of all third world and below nations. The UK, only 2.4%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Everybody thinks the US is a first world country. However some things in this country make it less than great. I think that America isn’t really a first world, but somewhere between second and first. We show a lot of the same behavior or characteristics of a country that isn’t first class. Here are some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,53,28,57,16,6,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-babies","category-guns","category-healthcare","category-income-inequality","category-information","category-politics","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":772,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions\/772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longlivethemonkey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Women In Power<\/h2>\n
Incarceration Rate<\/h2>\n
Birth Rate<\/h2>\n
Guns<\/h2>\n
Income Inequality<\/h2>\n
Military<\/h2>\n