Is this the richest third World Country?

I was shocked to hear in the late 80ies that 20% of Americans were illiterate. Such an industrialized and rich Country couldn’t possibly have that many uninstructed people? The question mark stayed in my mind and from time to time, I realize it was making some sense, yet couldn’t acknowledge the truth.  

Recently, so many facts led me start writing on the dichotomy of the American society, the richest Country in the World and so many people suffering from the lack of decent income; World leading researchers and illiterates; ground braking sciences and some of the most fundamentalist thinking.

Now, armed with internet search engines, I got the confirmation of what I have heard years ago.
About 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level. 
Nearly 50% of adults cannot read a book written for 8th grade kids and do it so poorly they cannot find an information within a short publication.
According to some alarming studies, the USA is ranked 49th of the world in literacy.

If we were limiting our observations to these facts, my title would not stand, although why successive American governments would not have found a solution to this literacy plague? Nevertheless, moving to other pride hurting facts, the hypothesis starts making sense.

The US civil infrastructure is in a past due state of repair with countless unsafe bridges. Actually, there are about 72,500 deficient bridges in the Country in need of assessment for repair, essentially meaning that they need to be repaired but the lack of civil engineer inspectors have prevented to get to an evaluation. These deficient bridges represent 12% of the structures in the US and it would take in the vicinity of $10 billions a year during 20 years to repair and update them, not to build new ones.

Roads are in bad shape and anyone can make a long list of highways, freeways, boulevards and streets that desperately need repair and in many cases would stand complete reconstruction.

It seems that we have been happy to know that China was finally generating more CO2 than us. Nevertheless, we tend to forget mentioning that we have about 4.5 times less people here and our CO2 pollution per capita could still be close to 4.5 times more than in China.

Our life expectancy is now ranked 42nd in the world, as we were11th two decades ago and although political debates continue, Country leaders don’t seem to grasp the emergency to quickly evolve, overlooking the fast evolution of the World around us.

We all know that 47 millions Americans are uninsured, which is not the only alarming statistic to read, as 12.6 millions working adults were discriminately denied coverage. Health insurance premium did increased 95% since 2000, as the average income improved only by 17.5% during the same period.

Only 63% of employers are offering a health insurance plan to their employees, down from 69% in 2000. These statistics are not political statement, only pure reality of a Nation loosing its grasp on reality. It is as if we forgot that the People as named in the Constitution are real people with life, soul, concerns and basic needs that a Nation is supposed to help and protect, besides the elusive territorial invasion.

So much has been said on being the best of this and the best of that, preceding the omnipresent “of the World” qualification, when in most cases the World really means the US World, not the 6.7 Billions people on this planet.

France is unveiling its new superfast train, a step above the TGV that did transformed life, not only in France but in Europe since the 70ies by connecting cities with trains cruising at speeds between 185 to 200 mph, allowing people to live far away from big cities and still work in it.

It took a commitment from the French government, starting in the 60ies, to study, plan and build not only the trains themselves but a new concept of railroad that would be safe with no road crossing and structurally stable to sustain such speeds.

The new train called AGV will have a top speed of 270 mph and cruising at 224 mph, although using 30% less energy compare to the TGV. Various Countries around the world are placing order of these hyper speed trains as they understand the need for fast and easy long distance commutes.

Here, we might have one line, still to be built, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Although this 13 year old project seem to have stalled.

I know, this Country was built on another plan, if plan was, with sprawling cities, using more land per capita and roads representing the connecting dots for everyone, on their own pace, time and directions. Nevertheless, we pay dearly the price of being - by far - the biggest energy consumer, and here we can say of the World.

Nevertheless, even with the type of town and city layout we have, solutions are possible, but we need our population to wake up to our needs, not our habits, our leaders to believe in our great researchers and take action before it would become an emergency to deal with.

Our 4.5% population of the planet is burning 23% of the World energy and our responsibility on the global environmental disaster, as we are slowly waking up to it, is by far the biggest, yet we do not lead the World to safe what there is left for our future generations to live with.

A handful of years ago, we understood that we could produce ethanol to propel our road vehicles with less pollution impact, as well as reducing some of our imported oil. And we went on a mission to convert the production of corn into alcohol, forgetting that the corn was already produced for something else, inducing food cost increase.

We glanced at the Brazilians who are producing 75% of their carburant needs from sugar cane ethanol, overlooking the fact that their government did promoted ethanol in the mid 70ies, not yesterday, and had to close their eyes on massive deforestation to achieve their goal.

Many other subjects are showing our trend of slipping away from the reality of the World, which seem to be evolving faster with more long term planning and investments into new ideas and new concepts of living on an increasingly highly populated planet. 

American politicians are more concerned about their opponents than by their Country and, for some, promote division among their own citizens. I have heard people saying “united we stand”. It must have been a long time ago!