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Friday, September 11th, 2020

‘We’re No. 28! And Dropping!’

Author:     Nicholas Kristof
Source:     The New York Times
Publication Date:     9 September 2020
 Link: ‘We’re No. 28! And Dropping!’
Stephan:   By almost any social outcome data you care to cite from infant mortality to longevity we are a nation in precipitous decline. Nicholas Kristof lays it out very well. The only thing that is going to change this is we ourselves. Four more years of Trump and we will be a christofascist kleptocratic oligarchy. The choice is yours. You have until November 3rd to decide which side you are on.

This should be a wake-up call: New data suggest that the United States is one of just a few countries worldwide that is slipping backward.

A woman in Pennington Gap, Va., a town that has suffered the ravages of the epidemic of despair. Credit:. Johnathon Kelso/The New York Times

The newest Social Progress Index, shared with me before its official release Thursday morning, finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than America’s.

“The data paint an alarming picture of the state of our nation, and we hope it will be a call to action,” Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor and the chair of the advisory panel for the Social Progress Index, told me. “It’s like we’re a developing country.”

The index, inspired by research of Nobel-winning economists, collects 50 metrics of well-being — nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, health, education and more — to measure […]

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