Letter: Here’s where the U.S. is No. 1. Paul DeMinico (Sunday Monitor Forum, Aug. 2) is correct that the United States is not number one when it comes to many ways of measuring a good life. In fact, the annual Human Development Index put out by the United Nations puts the United States at number 15 in its latest ranking based on factors such as life expectancy and educational attainment. If you’re keeping track, Norway is number one. When it comes to gender equality, we’re number 42 with Switzerland at the top.
Where are we number one? “The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration,” says The Sentencing Project, which says we have 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails – a 500% increase over the last 40 years. Two-thirds of them are people of color in a country that’s about one-third people of color.
We don’t just have the largest number behind bars, we’re also tops in percent behind bars, with 655 people locked up out of every 100,000. El Salvador is next with 618, followed by Rwanda, Russia, Brazil, and Australia.
Where else do we lead? Arms sales! The United States accounts for 36% of exports of major weapons systems, according to the annual report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Russia is number two, with 21% of the market followed by France with about 8%.
Our area of the biggest lead, perhaps, is military spending, where the $732 billion spent in 2019 was more than the next 10 nations combined, and nearly three times that of China, the country in second place.
So we’re tops in incarceration, arms sales, and military spending, but not so good when it comes to health, education, and how we’d probably measure a good life. Think there’s a connection?
ARNIE ALPERT
Canterbury
Source: https://www.concordmonitor.com/