United States An Outlier Among Industrialized Countries

The United States alienates itself from most industrialized countries on a number of important subjects. Most recently, health care and climate change has taken center stage with the House of Representatives passing the American Health Care Act and the U.S. pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Both have potentially devastating effects.

According to the Visual Capitalist, a website focused on business news, Americans spend more money on health care than any other country. And you’d expect the results then of this ultra expensive and purely American health care system to give us outstanding results—it doesn’t. In terms of life expectancy and infant mortality, both show lower rates compared to other industrialized countries who spend millions less.

According to The Washington Post, the U.S. ranks first in infant mortality rates, or how many children under the age of one die every year. According to the charts, a child born in the U.S. is three times more likely to die than in Japan or Finland. More data from the Visual Capitalist shows Americans dying much younger than its developed counterparts.

Besides straying far from other developed countries, the U.S. has made a habit of straying from the global norm as well. Pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement is a prime example of this, making it only one of three countries worldwide to do so.

In an inevitably disastrous decision, President Donald J. Trump decided to pull the U.S. from the agreement. Out of 175 countries that signed, three stayed out, including the U.S, Nicaragua and Syria. According to The New York Times, the United States is the biggest carbon producer in history and its name isn’t on it.

In late 2012, Trump announced on Twitter—in an insane and infamous accusation—his disbelief in global warming. He reaffirmed his belief again and again on the campaign trail, but he made the ultimate show of denial when he hired Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt spent his career battling against climate change advocates and fought to dismantle, ironically, the very organization he was hired to run.

Trump’s disregard for the environment and dissociation from the Paris Climate Agreement take the U.S. out of the global effort to combat severe temperatures, rising sea levels, disappearing ice caps and all the rest of the side effects to climate change.

So who wins? Not us. People will be evacuated from their homes by rising sea levels and  rising temperatures will affect every person on Earth. People die without proper health care. It baffles me that the GOP can simply turn their back.