What The Bush Years Brought

Two depressing reminders of what the Bush years have done to the country.  First, a drop in ranking in per capita wealth:

As if we needed more warnings that the US is rapidly losing its position as the world's superpower and wealth aggregator, is the following chart from Credit Suisse, which ranks the top 10 countries in the world in terms of average wealth per adult. While the US was #1 10 years ago, due to an abysmal growth rate of only 23%, by far the lowest of all the ranked countries, the US has now dropped from first to seventh, falling behind such countries as Sweden and France. At the top - such perennially voted "top places to live" as Switzerland and Norway.

Second, our life expectancy ranking has also dropped.

Just to underscore the rapidity of the decline, as recently as 1999, the U.S. was ranked by the World Health Organization as 24th in life expectancy.  It's now 49th.  There are other similarly potent indicators.  In 2009, the National Center for Health Statistics ranked the U.S. in 30th place in global infant mortality rates.  Out of 20 "rich countries" measured by UNICEF, the U.S. ranks 19th in "child well-being."  Out of 33 nations measured by the OECD, the U.S. ranks 27th for student math literacy and 22nd for student science literacy.  In 2009, the World Economic Forum ranked 133 nations in terms of "soundness" of their banks, and the U.S. was ranked in 108th place, just behind Tanzania and just ahead of Venezuela.

Other countries are smarter, healthier, and better equipped to handle the 21st century.  But we do lead the world in two respects still:  number of people in prison (both total and per 100,000 citizens) and number of guns supplied to the world.

On second thought, maybe a country full of stupid, heavily-armed prisoners makes us uniquely qualified for where the 21st century is heading.