This post was originally intended to be funny. But the more stuff I added to it, the less funny it looked, and the more like a train wreck. Sadly, like the Roman empire, America’s days appear to be numbered. I hope things turn around, but it needs to be pretty fast, and I figure exposing some of the bollocks might help that.
The Good
As pretty much everything on this page is negative apart from the picture of wonder woman in her hot pants, I’ll kick things off on a more positive note with a few of my favourite American achievements:
Awesome movies like “The Matrix” (1999) and “Flying High” (1980)
Life changing books like “Catch 22” (1953) and “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (1974)
Brilliant albums like “LA Woman” (1971) and “Nevermind” (1991)
Styling cars like the Corvette Stingray (1968) and the Plymouth Hemi Cuda (1971)
Cutting edge bicycles like the Specialized Stumpjumper (1981) and the Merlin Titanium (1993)
I didn’t really start out intending to make this point, but after listing a few of my favourite things, I then added dates and realised they are all from last century…
The Bad
Many other pages on this site contain opinions, hypotheses, and conclusions. This page is just a collection of over 50 American statistics and facts. I leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.
The main bias inherent on this
page, is that these stats were mostly selected because they make America
look bad. As a New Zealander I’m aware that NZ has a lot of bad stats
too. In fact it was while looking into NZ heath stats that I decided to
post this page. NZ has some appalling health stats, and in many cases is
the second worst developed nation, invariably behind America. Developed
countries with good health stats all tend to be in Europe.
The average U.S. citizen drinks more than 200 litres of soft drink each year. American males between the ages of 12-29 average 605 litres a year.
66 percent of all Americans are considered to be overweight.
The United States puts a higher percentage of its population in prison than any other nation on earth does.
One out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.
The U.S. has never gone a decade without war.
Americans watch 4 hours and 42 minutes of television PER DAY on average
In 2011, the US trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was in 1985.
The United States has a teen pregnancy rate of 22 percent – the highest in the world. New Zealand is number two at 14 percent.
There are more unemployed workers in the United States than there are people living in the entire nation of Greece.
Americans purchase, on average, 64 items of clothing per person each year. 98% of this clothing is imported.
More people have been diagnosed with mental disorders in the United States than in any other nation on earth.
There are 313 million people living in the United States. 46 million of them are on food stamps.
There are 19 million new cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia in the United States every single year.
In the middle of the last century, the United States was #1 in the world in GDP per capita. Today, the United States is #13 in GDP per capita.
Approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
The grizzly bear is the official state animal of California. But no grizzly bears have been seen there since 1922.
The United States has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.
Pick any year since 1776 and there is a 91% chance that America was involved in a war during that year.
60 percent of Americans report feeling “angry or irritable”.
Over 20 percent of all U.S. adults are working in jobs that pay poverty-level wages.
Americans spend more time sitting in traffic than anyone else in the world.
70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug. And 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.
Doctors in the United States write more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants each year.
Prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined.
America exports more weapons to other countries than anyone else in the world.
America leads the world in money given to fake charities.
America has the highest percentage of one person households.
There are 747,408 registered sex offenders in the U.S
America has the most lawyers per capita.
Americans spend more money on elections than anyone else does in the world by a wide margin
More is spent on prescription drug advertising in America than anywhere else in the world.
There are more car thefts in the United States than anywhere else in the world by far
There are more school shootings in America than anywhere else in the world.
The United States leads the world in credit card fraud.
Nobody in the world gets more plastic surgery done than Americans do.
The United States leads the world in eating disorder deaths.
The United States has the most laws of any country.
In the UK, an average of about US$3,500 is spent on healthcare per person each year. In the USA, an average of US$8,500 is spent on healthcare per person each year.
America has the highest rate of incarceration. The US locks up 716 out of every 100,000 people. Norway imprisons 71 out of 100,000, Japan jails 54, and Iceland locks up 47 out of 100,000.
Americans account for 19 percent of global energy consumption (with less than 5% of the world’s population). The U.S. is the leader in the amount of energy use per person.
America is the most expensive place on earth to have a baby. On average, a hospital delivery costs US$9,775 – or US$15,041 for a Cesarean
There are more guns in the U.S. than there are people: The rate of private gun ownership in the U.S. was tabulated at 101.05 firearms per 100 individuals.
Number one in mass shootings – there were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870
The U.S. is rated worst in healthcare quality among developed countries, although US care is the most expensive. A coronary bypass in the US costs 50 percent more than it would in Canada, Australia, and France, and 100% more than in Germany.
One in four children in America grow up without learning how to read. 85% of the juveniles who face trial in the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, and more than 60% of all American prison inmates are functionally illiterate
There are only three countries that don’t give new mothers any paid time off work. America of course, and the other two are Oman and Papua New Guinea
One in 68 US children has autism – the highest level of any country, and of all time.
The American government recommends 49 doses of 14 vaccines by the time a child is 6 years of age. And by the age of 18, the CDC recommends that children should have gotten 69 doses of 16 vaccines.
Nearly half of all Americans develop cancer, and over half a million people in America died of cancer in 2012. Cancer is the #1 cause of childhood death in the United States.
By the age of two, if an American child has received all of the recommended vaccines, they have received 2,370 times the “allowable safe limit” for mercury (if there is such a thing as a safe level of poison).
Along with fluoride, American tap water also contains high levels of pesticides and in the 22 states with military contractors, percholate, the explosive component of rocket fuel.
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