The State of the United States, In Two Graphics

[elfs]

Jobs:

For the first time in 70 years, an entire decade went by without a significant increase in jobs growth: The Lost Decade of the Economy.

The accompanying article includes these points:

Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 -- and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.

And,

The net worth of American households -- the value of their houses, retirement funds and other assets minus debts -- has also declined when adjusted for inflation, compared with sharp gains in every previous decade since data were initially collected in the 1950s.

Health Care:

From National Geographic, The cost of health care vs. life expectancy. Take a look at the United States. Despite spending nearly twice what the next most expensive country spends per person on health care, we get below-average results. The most impressive country is Japan (which must be a socialist hell-hole, right?), which spends a third of what the US spends, yet has the best life-expectancy in the world.

Why can't we be as good to ourselves as the Japanese?

One of the interesting pieces of information encoded in the graph is the number of doctors visits. Despite having the highest cost, The average US citizen sees a physician less than four times a year. In contrast, the average Japanese citizen, despite spending one-third what we do, sees a physician an average of once a month.

Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Poland all seem to have figured out a health care system that delivers a similar dollar-for-value curve. Maybe we should figure out what they do, and follow their example.

America's intellectual autarky is killing us.

Comments

[tagryn]

* This was an interesting article on how the ever-increasing efficiency of our economy means that we don't need as many workers, hence the lack of job creation:

My argument is two-fold. First, that the Internet is an all-encompassing agent of change for the global economy, allowing efficiencies that bring down prices and increase services, but also cost jobs and lower wages, without replacing them elsewhere. Second, that it does not replace the lost jobs and wages with new equivalents, because so much of the displacement is owed to the burgeoning "culture of free", and that this trend will likely increase over time, not decrease.

* Japan and the Scandinavian countries tend to not be a useful comparison to the USA, since their populations are much more homogeneous than the U.S. Apples and oranges. In any case, until the politicos come up with a plan that defuses the Medicare timebomb, it doesn't matter much what they do since the aging of the Baby Boomers will bankrupt Medicare in 2017. Unfortunately, there's no political will to tackle this problem on either side, since whoever tries it will get severely punished by the senior lobby.