I'll be one of the first to tell you about the shortcomings of this antiquated learning system here. And as evidenced in many of the world tests, we ain't doing that great as a whole on the mental giant meter. But in spite of all these alarms, did you notice that we still lead in the real important category, results! It is here where all those nationalities can share and excel - together. Not as a monolithic culture, but as an ethnic mixture. Where the good, and sometimes the bad, is allowed to express and achieve pursue the goal. Even with all its flaws, America is still the model that moves the world.
well, that's highly relative... the us has 33 million people living in poverty, 46 million people who are analphabets, both areas where we are far behind many of the other most highly developed nations on a per capita basis. not to forget our infrastructure that is worthy of quite some third world countries. we had a "boom" that was more bluff and disinformation than reality, a large part of the supposed boom was due to statistical fiddling to make things look better than they ever were. basically what was done was that a hedonic price index was utilized, which is sort of like porsche multiplying it's sales with the horse power of a 911 turbo. as far as our children living in poverty go, who will form the future of our country, after all, where we have 20 % of our children living in poverty, there are 20 countries way ahead of us, with a much smaller percentage of their children living in poverty. as far as benefits go, compared to the most highly developed countries in the world, we are one of the very few that don't have medical and pension coverage for all it's citizens. according to juliet schor's "the overworked american" (1992), "if present trends continue, by the end of the century americans will be spending as much time on their jobs as they did back in the nineteen twenties"âbefore the eight-hour day became standard. there are many differences between japan and the usa, but one major difference is that the japanese could spend if they wanted to, as one of the nations with the largest private savings per capita, whereas we couldn't even if we wanted to. Staying poor in America The poor in the United States are less likely than the poor in other countries to leave poverty from one year to the next. On average, about 28.6% of the poor in the United States escape poverty each year. The share of the poor leaving poverty in the other countries ranges from 29.1% in the United Kingdom to 43.7% in the Netherlands. The poor in the United States are also more likely than the poor in other countries to fall back into poverty once they make it out. private debt is high and savings basically non-existent, 8 million are unemployed post bubble, many of those without what in most other highly developed countries is seen as the most basic insurance, health and pension coverage. education, numbers of people graduating, at the very minimum, high school, not to talk about getting a real education at university, is another area we have lots to improve upon. but, what about the others who do have white collar jobs? in the us, again unlike many other highly developed countries where the trend is the other way around, the normal white-collar employee has been working longer hours for the same pay with fewer benefits as compared to 30 years ago. according to the ILO, the international labor organization of the un, workers in the usa are putting in more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world, counter to the trend in other industrialized nations, where the number of hours worked annually fell during the 1990s, and with no monetary reward for increased work in the usa vs many other highly developed nations. in 1973 the average new college grad earned $14.82 an hour, which is actually $1.17 per hour more than you earned 25 years later, while the latter practically have zero job security and much fewer benefits any more. "Nickel and Dimed: With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet. As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to "girl," trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as "Some people work better when they're a little bit high." In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test. So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the "bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?" Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter."
Mr.Alfonso....I agree with you 100%. I was just stating that you dont have to be smart to add value to the economy; for example many small ( not so smart) business owners add jobs and inflow of taxes to the system by building something from nothing through hard work and persistence and being good at what they do, period. As you can see from recent Corporate events being smart sometimes takes from the economy.......peace