News and Views

I recently read a very interesting book, “The Measure of a Nation“. The author compared the United States to thirteen other large, developed democracies (Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Netherlands, Korea, Spain, and the UK) on several factors, including health, wealth, crime, education, equality, freedom and democracy.

There is a general opinion in the US that we are the best in the world in almost every way. It’s certainly true that we have the largest economy and the strongest military, but an objective evaluation shows that we lag behind in other measures.

Health
I often hear that “America has the best healthcare system in the world”. However, US life expectancy is the lowest in the group, infant mortality is the highest, maternal mortality is the highest, and cost per person is roughly double any of the other countries. If we were a corporation the shareholders would complain that the highest cost for the worst results is hardly the “best in the world”. And medical costs here are much more likely to lead to bankruptcy than in the other countries primarily because of lack of adequate insurance.

Crime
The US homicide rate is more than twice any of the other countries. The incarceration rate is more than 4 times any other.

Education
The US ranks 10th on standardized test scores of reading, math and science, beating only Portugal, Italy, Spain and Greece. This compares with the mid-20th century when the US was known for having the best educated workforce.

Wealth and Equality
We like to think of the US as the “land of opportunity”, where anyone can make it if they only work hard enough, that America is a meritocracy. But by several measures the US is very unequal. One measure of income equality, the “Gini Index,” being a rough measure of the ratio between those at the top 10% earning level and those at the bottom 10%, puts the US in 13th place among the 14 countries. And this ratio has been getting worse over the past 2-3 decades.

One could argue that this is only fair — the people at the top have worked hardest and deserve to earn more than the laggards at the bottom. Is the US a “land of opportunity”? One way to measure is to compare a father’s income with his son’s income. If poor fathers have poor sons, that indicates little upward mobility. If there is little correlation between a father’s wealth and son’s wealth, that indicates more socioeconomic mobility. By this measure, the US has far less mobility than any of the other countries. Children of poor parents remain poor. Children of rich parents remain rich. In Canada, for example, a poor son was twice as likely to rise to a higher income level than his father, compared to the US.

Democracy
By some measures the United States invented democracy. Other countries such as ancient Greece approached it, but the US was a real breakthrough that has been emulated by many other countries around the world, including the other countries in the study. The genius of separation of powers, checks and balances, and the Bill of Rights, have remained relatively unchanged over more than two centuries. Despite its brilliance, there have been blemishes over the years, such as slavery, internment camps, election fiascoes and racial inequality. So while other countries emulated us, none of them adopted wholesale our original model, but rather changed it where they thought it could be improved, in particular with the way elections are held, and especially the antiquated Electoral College.

The US model makes it almost impossible for third party candidates to be elected, and in fact voting for Green, Tea, or Libertarian parties is seen as “throwing your vote away”. Some countries use runoff elections, where if no candidate gets a majority of the votes another election is held with only the candidates getting the most votes. Australia has an “instant runoff” system that to me seems like the best approach. When you cast your ballot you rank your candidates in order of preference. Votes are first tallied on first choices. If there is no majority, then that candidate getting the fewest votes is dropped, and his ballots are reallocated by second preference, etc. until one candidate has a majority. So you can vote for your fringe party without any risk that your vote will enhance an opposition party’s chances.

There are many other measures of democracy and freedom discussed in the book, such as voter turnout, rule of law, government stability, the “voice of the people”, government accountability, gerrymandered districts and regulatory quality, all of which put the US somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Conclusions
The book went into much more detail than I can here, explaining the statistics with charts and tables, and with recommendations for improvement. I urge everyone to read it.

The United States of America is a wonderful place to live and better than 90% of the other countries on the planet. But let’s not keep fooling ourselves that it is the best in every way and that there is no room for improvement. Let’s adopt a little humility, face the problems and learn from other countries.