Americans Have Worst Standard of Living in the Developed World

Yupp, our healthcare sucks...

Americans always come back! We're the Comeback Kid. Eat our dust rest of the world! We're Gene Autry and Audie Murphy, we're Clayton Moore & Jay Silverheels. We're the Righteous Brothers! Sam Cooke, the Blues Brothers => Jake and Elwood. Sci-Fi, if we hadn't made it YOU wouldn't have it! When you were in diapers we had Orson Welles marching Martian giants through New Jersey in 1938 FYI.

We're William Bendix and Madge. We don't take vacations because WE don't want vacations and WE don't need no stinkin' vacations anyway. We get all the vacation time we need watching multiple vacation shows on Cable TV. hahahaha We multitask our vacations.

You imbeciles take one while we sandwich together 5.

Americans take the Olympic Gold in Vacations!

The rest of ya are the LOSERS.

What horseshit

AND! we're still blindly rolling along...

Sung to the tune of, the Star Spangle Banner:
Oh say can you see
Americans are dummies
Middle class they pay
While wealthy laugh all day
Whose bright founders we hail
Unread masses we fail
We think money is king
In constitution no such thing
And the bombast right wing
Depression is there thing
Will bring us to our knees till our daughters bob for pennies
Oh say does this verse seem too hard for you to understa..and
That’s because you are a slave in this corporate enclave

OH how I PITY you sir. I live in Ecuador, a country in South America and it is FAR from what you say is "beautiful" about countries outside of the U.S. In this country, you are LUCKY if the ambulance arrives an hour or so after an accident has happened. The health industry is just a business for most where you get lied to and get told that you are suffering from something so severe that if you don't pay up you will DIE. There are children out on the streets selling candy to on coming vehicles instead of being in school. The police is paid up by others to cover themselves up. Laws are never applied here.
I find your research to truly be superficial because I'm sure that with some $$$ any gringo can feel like they live in paradise in a country outside of the U.S. Try living in these countries without any money or jobs and you will see why there are so many illegal immigrants in the U.S. Next month I am moving back to the U.S. because so far I have been living here for 3 years and I, from TRUE experience, will tell you that all of you who complain about America need a wake up call and try to live in a different country. Sure America has its flaws, but be happy that you get so many more opportunities. If you don't take advantage of them, that's your own fault.

If you want to blame the liberals that are here today. fine, not those of the 50's, 60's, and 70's. Those cats knew what freedom meant and took action. Liberals of today, weak and inoffensive by comparison. Those who follow the ethos of Civil Rights, and Justice, take it to heart and act--- are marginalized as 'radicals' and 'nut jobs'.The college students like Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner would be seen as Nut jobs worthy of derision on MSM even the left these days would not come to there defense- for fear of funding cuts.

I'd say look at our education system. There is zero critical thinking skills being administered within the curriculum in K-12. education. When the kids/my peers for now get to college there is either a disconnect, or a continuation of no critical thinking training. Nixon and Regan, Clinton and Bush took notice and pushed forward with their antithetical practices within education. More testing, less learning. Knowledge comes at a premium these days, understanding is an endangered species, and wisdom is all but extinct.

This 'armchair' you speak of has been here on both sides of the aisle. All to often it is meant to polarize. You, everyone else, and I on this post speak of symptoms and not causes.In deference to the ills that we are experiencing in one form or another, one problem at at time. What is lost is the big picture.

Big Picture: Our country is in decline,

The Prussian Method, where skills to grist the machine of progress are held above thought and critical thinking are the new maxim in education, high or lower learning. By design, lack of funding-whatever. imagine the 18-30 somethings running the country when the 35-60 year old population has entered the 'Golden Years of their/your lives. I am even scared to reconnoiter here. And I am 26.

We are guilty of being tied to the .TV where House and Glee, and Madmen are the sole occupation for many in our country. i love Hugh Laurie's work. Back When he was in Black Adder and Jeeves and Wooster. You want to know why Ask Jeeves is . Watch Jeeves and Wooster...a hint of a bigger problem: Short term memory, which the TV has been documented inducing when you watch TV it bypasses parts of your brain that are responsible for critical thinking and long term memory storage.

TV was a treat for the few or those with paper money to got to the drive in movies. It was an ornament not a centerpiece. Now the internet has become the new bread and circus--both bread and circus. That is what is dangerous about Media, that is what Edward R Murrow was warning was about in the 1950's. What Hunter S. Thompson was getting at in Fear and Loathing. It was not just the drugs-[you know gonzo journalism] it was the outlandish behavior as metaphor for a grimmer subject.

Our collective praying at the Altar of some crooner of today or yesteryear. taking insane delight in the tools of war as both aphrodisiac and play thing-disconnected from the reality of what war is. It is carnage, pain, suffering-pointless. The liberals bought Leary's dream, to the detriment of all.We lost the battle then but the war rages on.

Only the powerful few may profit from war, them and them only. peace through war is an Orwellian concept. Listen to the lyrics of Black Sabbath;s War Pigs-We are living it. Better yet Creams 'Politician' If you have the heart or the time: JFK's commencement speech to American University June 10 1963, eight months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and five months before his assassination.

The Republicans since WWI have been itching for a war that they can be proud of out of the bizarre inferiority complex. They are supposed to be the Party of GUNS and Missiles-Biblical Justice and Whoop ass. Well every engagement in war that a Republican has headed has ended in disaster and in Eisenhower's case: stalemate. they are pissed at Woodrow and Delano the Cripple for out Hoohah-ing them.

I am not saying this for polarity but there are elements on both sides with something to prove and they will with us as their pawns because behind them is old money and powerful families that could give a rats ass about us. What the party does in deference to culture wars and pissing contests is just icing on their cake.

Both Parties are at best Schizophrenic and Borderline at worst. Never trust them.

We are in the Matrix now- where we are disconnected for the reality of our collective actions by not taking them. whether by choice or ignorance.

The moment we all turn off the computer, the TV, the propaganda to do something is the first day of the rest of your life and mine. till then, Where ever you go-there you are

It is truly a sad state of affairs! I believe the 2008 was more about really changing the health care system for the benefit of every one, but all we got was
a bunch of hand fed bird chirping lemmings on the right to cloud the issue and make sure nothing really changed. It looks like a lot of good Americans have moved out of the country because the idiots on the right are fucking up the country so bad, they don't even realize they are being played by the rich. Single payer would have been the best thing to spark the economy, allowing people too start new businesses by venturing out on their own without the worry of not having a corporate insurance plan.

Eh, even a die-hard, blame-America-first, anti-corporate, pro-universal health care, liberal like me thinks this is a load of baloney. All this anti-medical, food-conspiracy, over-drugged nonsense is so full of flaws and half-truths I wouldn't even know where to begin to dissect it.

You at once condemn the U.S. government for under-regulating the food industry and over-regulating the drug industry. Although, you probably don't realize you're condemning the over-regulation of the drug industry because you failed to acknowledge how woefully underrated the drug industries of other countries are.

You criticize the drugs that are available like Ritalin and Lunesta based mostly on a pop culture, stand up comedy analysis of them, but have you provided any actual hard data about these medications? A writer named Judith Warner, who on the outset of writing her book "We've Got Issues" would have agreed with this armchair analysis, ended up doing a complete 180 because, gasp, she actually studied the issue.

It's liberals like these that make cross-the-aisle conversations so difficult. Liberals think conservatives are all Glenn 'herp' Beck and Sarah 'derp' Palin and conservatives think liberals are all this nonsense.

Can we fix this?

Wow... this kinda said a lot of what I've been thinking. I've had friends that have moved to Germany, Mexico and South Korea. All of them say they loved it there and didn't want to come back to the US. My friend who went to Mexico was just saying he hurt his back and was laying there wishing he was in Mexico so he could afford to see a doctor.

I'm "lucky" enough to has some insurance threw my company, but it doesn't cover enough of the huge amounts that can be charged for medical services. I'm constantly worried about a severe injury or illness leading me to financial ruin. Even if I got laid off, the unemployment that I would get would not be enough to pay my bills. I just finished 6 years of math and physics classes to land a planning engineer job for a local aerospace manufacturer, for the grim wage of $12/hr. I recently read an article that said for here in Utah, you have to make $14/hr just to be able to live comfortably and pay your bills (basically just above poverty). I do the process engineering for government aircraft (big money) and have a BS in engineering, yet somehow I'm still being paid at the poverty level??? I have no idea how everyone here manages to make ends meet, $12/hr isn't bad for my town, most jobs are min wage, which only recently went up to $7.25, I think it was $6.15 before that.

Maybe I should start looking to travel abroad, but like you said in your post, I'm not even sure how I'm going to afford to move to another state for better work, let alone be able to move out of the country... where would I go anyways?

yeah, um, it sure beats yemen

unless this is a vieled commentary on spam, wich we have more of lol

Im in the military, and i can tell yo ufirst hand that some of these countries that are supposably better in living is an all out lie. Canada??? Are you kidding me. Germany??? Other than the beer and sluts i would never live there full time.

I like my home state of Massachusetts, because of it's history, pride, friends, family, and everything I've experienced there. I love it's geography and seasons and I could pick apart everything good about the state and be jolly for it. That doesn't mean that it's a perfect state, there is a host of things wrong with that state, the Big Dig? is a big sink hole, filled with corruption. I'm not a fan of the forced healthcare there, I found it was cheaper just for me to pay for clinics for check ups and at the onset of an issue then having to pay for insurance, which requires co-pays anyway, and (i'm gonna stop before I get carried away on the money making scheme called healthcare, in my opinion). I was a teacher part time for 8 months, and to my surprise, the school system took out swing-sets?! For real, cause it's a liability apparently. The city I was from had a representative that was caught stealing for years, taxes are high, greedy wealthy people don't want their tax dollars going towards community programs, what was once open after dark (or at least not enforced) like all all highshool tracks are now monitored by rentacops. The thing is, I've also been around the states, because of work I've had in music, and for the past few years I've been in the military. I don't want to be in the current state I'm in right now (New Mexico), cause it's not home for me, but that doesn't mean that this state doesn't have a few things going for it that I'd like to bring back home. The same with other places I've been.

The way I see it, America is supposed to stand for a lot of things amazing, and we haven't been, because of a take it or leave it attitude by the zealots, because of unchecked corruption, and because of the geopolitical corporate take over. If you live here and you once loved or still love America, or if you hate this place, or if you see it like I do and think that America should be amazing, like everywhere on Earth should be amazing, then how is it wrong not to always be identifying issues and correcting them? Without making a comparision as a whole to any other countries, just like in world sports and alcohols, different people have different things they do differently, and sometimes better. If there is a country out there with the best healthcare system economically for it's people, then I want that. If there is a country with a best quality healthcare, then I want to merge both as effectively as possible. I work in a medical career field, I can say first hand that from my experience, this is about medical management for the profit of individuals over the needs of the people. It is not wrong by any means to want to live well, which means one (in our capitalist nation) has to make a profit, but as the gap between the ultra rich and everyone else widens, at what point is our standard of living impacted? Clearly as a margin is increased, there will be two points, one of those points is getting farther from the others point. I don't care if other countries are better on some chart then we are, I care when our citizins stop trying to keep things here from being perfect. What's the point of living if your going to let yourself get obese, and life becomes about whats happening on a TV show. If your religious, all texts say to take care of the Earth and each other in order to get to respective afterlives (let's leave out the strife over different religions for a second, cause assuming there was only one religion still on Earth, at that point we'd still have to do those other things in the texts to get to a positive afterlife, like taking care of other good people and the Earth). If you're not religious, or even atheist, then apparently your time is shorter so you better make things good for you or your offspring anyway. If you just hate life (not ignorant of life, those people can still be changed), if you actually hate life, you probably aren't reading this anyhow, but those people who hate life, or think their life is worth a bunch of mansions and having more property and wealth and power at the expense of others... F. U., die, not too many people like that actually exist comparatively, however those people unfortunately hold a lot of cards.y

I think I got off track. Listen, if something works somewhere else, we should be collaborating to make it work for us as well. I don't hate other countries for doing things better sometimes, I want to adopt anything that works and plagiarize the minor or major successes different countries have. You'd have to be a an effin moron to think that somewhere there isn't a person or country that doesn't do something positive better then we do here in America. Instead of getting all defensive about it, I want to know exactly what it is that made that person, or process, or system work so that us Americans can make America more awesome. But we don't do that here, we compare and pretend that everything is 1 or 0, black or white, yes or no, left or right. That's not constructive at all. I want every country to be part of a global community competing but collaborating amicably to be the most developed, for the sake of humanity. As an American, I hope we get the gold every time. Right now, we're all fighting over crap. As an American, if you believe in something, use the system, vote on issues that matter, and vote with your wallet. Ultimately the people with money win, so make sure the good ones have the money to win the legal battles that make the differences in our lives.

If I were to write a part two to this comment I'd get into all the ideas I have on how and where to spend money so that the right individuals, businesses and agencies have the means to fight the less altruistic ones, but please get curious and start figuring that out for yourself for now.

Lastly, one of the things that I've noticed about some foreigners who come here; is that they see how complacent and lazy... or just ignorant (cause there are some very hard working, but totally clueless) people here can be, and of course their gonna love it. We take all kinds of things for granted, a bunch of these people come here and start living well real fast cause they see how easy it is to do better then us by putting in effort. In many developed countries, sure, you can live okay, but not like a king because the competition is high. Here, come here and just climb on past the competition like nothing. Even within the service there is a program I'm in all likely-hood gonna get just for meeting the minimum requirements because people have been too lazy to strive towards the goal. In years past according to the data I read there was a board that reviewed everyone's submissions because so many people attempted to get into this program. Now, as long as I meet the basic requirements, due to hardly anyone trying, I'm almost guaranteed my slot by that same, probably pretty bored board. There is a lack of trying in this country, a lot of people wanting things for nothing. Knowledge & effort are what made Americans great, now we're being taken over by savy power hoarding freaks, and it's just getting easier for them to take down our quality of life for their own gains. I refuse to believe that we can't always be striving to be collectively, humanely the best. That's the sport I play, it's the only game I enjoy.

The general gist is true. Some things, like the meds is a bit over the top. I agree with the writer on vacations, med care and unhealthy diet. I was in the US military for 26 years, lived overseas for 24 of them. We retired to the US and it sucked soooo bad. We bailed out after 5 years and moved back to Thailand (wife is Thai, but is a naturalized citizen).

Everything in the US is rush rush, hurry here, do this, do that. I teach English a few hours a day, take the bus or walk. I dropped 30 pounds, cholestrol down from 200+, blood pressure down to slighly lower than normal. And I don't pay an arm and leg for "diet" foods, pay extra because it's low fat/cholesterol/trans fatty whatever. I eat for about $5 a day and eat well. I walk into the hospital when I want and I don't wait. The care is actually better because the doctor's aren't overloaded and booked in 15 minute blocks. America is my home always will be, but it was killing me....

This person seems to be writing the article as if he is the only person to ever have left the United States. Some pretty big assumptions are made here.

I notice a few flaws in his logic.

1) The single payer statement is patently false. Yes most countries do have it. Yes it works a lot better by every measure possible to make, but it's not everywhere. The new Obama model that is probably going to be taken down by the republicans was based on the Swiss system. Which is in Western Europe if not actually part of the EU. Other developed countries one might look at include Korea and Japan. IIRC they're not single payer either.

2) the phrase "standard of living" is a technical term which is derived from income, and has nothing to do with how many vacation days one gets in a year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living
One could just as easily randomly talk about living space square footage, and what percentage of people own their own homes. In most of Europe owning one's own home is a rarity.

This reads much more like a rant than a news article. The dude really needs to check his facts.

The US is pretty messed up, no arguments here, but at the same time I can't really take too much bitching, you people should travel more, it could be much, much worse. I'm all for constructive criticism, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for people in the United States when there's people in other countries that have it so much worse and are much more optimistic than we are. I mean c'mon now, you still have free schools, you probably eat more than one or two meals a day, you can go to college with student loans, you can afford a car and there are roads to drive it on, we have a strong currency, not every small town here is run by gangsters, we have freedom of speech, we can vote, you all have the internet and a computer, there is also social security, you can pay rent even with a minimum wage job. Let's stick to the constructive talk and keep off the whining.

Isn't Canada in North America?

I cannot believe the censorship here. The best part of the article you have to press: 'Read Article Here'. Twice.

Incidentally its about getting the heck out of Babylon,...I mean America.

The Plutocrats, I mean Neoclassical economists, I mean Neoliberal fiends have finally got what they want, and its a modern version of the Aristocratic hegemony on the backs of serfs, slaves, and choirboys.

They have a saying in my grandmothers old neighborhood/barrio: Sal Si Puedes mis amigos/as, Sal Si Puedes!

If you have the money and credentials,..I think you can fill in the blank.

i tell my friend that everyday... he lives in michigan i live in ottawa... he feels bad. i offered him a room here, but thats goin no where...

Let's take a moment to consider that the EUROPEAN UNION is Bankrupt. The countries aligned with that New World Order nonsense are falling like dominos.
This story is rediculas, the posters mommy and daddy no doubt pay his way through life with a trust fund and he is a devout "Liberal".