http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-states-worst-quality-life-164909712.htmlQuote
“With the exception of Hawaii, none of the American states are in the top 20% for health or for safety across the OECD regions,” Brezzi said. Alabama , for instance, was rated as the second worst state for health, with a mortality rate of 10.6 deaths per 1,000 residents and a life expectancy of 75.4 years. This was not just among the worst in America, but also in the bottom 13% of all OECD regions. Similarly, Louisiana -- which was rated as the least state state in the nation -- was the bottom 10% of OECD regions for safety.
Americans often promulgate the myth that their country is the richest in the world, the most prosperous, the best place to live. When a person travels across the American border from Canada, guards will often do their due diligence so those pesky Canadians won't stay in their much better off country. Most Americans simply believe this. Other, slightly more intelligent Americans will use evidence to back up this myth. They'll point to per capita income, among the highest in the world. But income statistics are simply one of the reason behinds the myth. Income statistics never tell you actually how well off a country is. The US, a prototypical top heavy country skews income statistics at all levels. No income statistic is a truly valid indicator of how well off the American people are. Quality of life statistics are much better measures.
Equality is equally a myth. We may aspire to a Rawlsian sort of equality where the worst off are as best off as they can be, but there is not such thing as systemic equality. We simply are unable to redistribute properties of inequality such as luck, talent, and attitudes as we are raw wealth. So it is not a problem that equality in the United States is so stark, but that it is
not functional inequality. Inequality is just if the inequality is functional; for the good of society inequality is a positive factor. In the United States, non-functional equality causes issues in public safety and public health. Income may be larger, but that is because American's are not paying into functional state institutions providing social or civic goods. American education and healthcare is among the worst in the OECD because the standard of care is poor. America spends more on education, both on a per capita and a gross basis then anywhere else in the world, but has among the most ineffective and least comprehensive education systems in the developed world.
This is because American inequality isn't functional. American inequality with regards to education and healthcare stimulates the self-fulfilling prophecy of those who can afford five star educations and healthcare receive developed world class care, and those who don't, the majority of Americans, will not. This feeds into comparatively poor public safety and health in the United States, as well as poor employment prospects (Spain may have high unemployment, but this is a cause of economic issues. American employment issues are directly related to education, not economic problems). An American state should not possibly have a life expectancy around that of states like Oman, Tunisia, Cape Verde, and Venezuela. Especially of those people with near identical life expectancies believing themselves to be much better of than a citizen of one of those countries.
The American system
is fundamentally flawed. And it is flawed at all levels. It is flawed constitutionally, it is flawed legislatively, it is flawed judicially, it is flawed economically, it is flawed socially. It is a system that while recognizing flaws, perpetuates a myth that it is a country with none. This isn't a conflict of equality versus liberty, the freedom to make as much money as possible, and the freedom to not be responsible for others misfortune. It's about an non-functional inequality that creates cracks in a system.
One that will surely burst as the political system continues to be wrapped in paralysis; unable to respond to systemic issues that have become all the more visible the past decade.