I am tired of people bagging on the US of A, it seems like more and more lately we (meaning us citizens of this country, the media, and politicians) cannot seem to see this countrys major recent achievements. We are caught in a wave of cynicism that if not stopped could cause the damage we believe is already here. This is not going to be some patriotic rant where I glorify an ideological belief that our country is perfect cause it is not, but I feel like many of us have been mislead and I want to set the record straight. First things first we still have the largest and most productive economy in the world. According to the World Bank Database the US GDP (how much product we produce every year) is valued at $16,768,100,000,000 as of 2013 while Chinas GDP is valued at $9,240,270,000,000 (thats trillions of dollars for those of you who dont want to count) a 7 trillion dollar difference!! That is a huge gap and with Chinas economy slowing down it seems unlikely that they will pass us up any time in the near future. According to the US department of commerce the current latest reported GDP is, in the third quarter of 2014, 17.6 trillion dollars. Second, we are not owned by china! According to the december 2014 report by the US treasury the US national government owes $17,847,931,000,000 (again trillions) out of this tremendous number the public (meaning me and you, citizens of the US) owns $12,784,971,000,000 of that debt. That is 71%, held in government bonds and securities in your savings, retirement, and investment accounts. While only $2.986 trillion is owned by foreign entities, not China, ALL foreign entities. Third, our incarceration rate, our incarceration rate is the highest in the world. The reason for this isnt that we have too many criminals in our society, or we are a violent un-civilized nation but the simple fact that many of our laws are simply very strict, for many minor crimes a person can be sent to jail. for example loitering is considered a misdemeanor as it should be, but for a minor misdemeanor you can be charged with a fine of up to $1000 and/or a maximum sentence of 12 months with no mention of community service, volunteer work, or rehabilitation of any kind. Our main competitor in the world today, China, has a much lower incarceration rate; with one problem, they use capitol punishment very liberally, with numbers killed per year unreported but estimated in the thousands of thousands, you can see how they keep space freed up in their jails. Finally, we are still the most innovative country in the world, I can say this because we still lead the world, if not in number of patents or inventions, in useful innovations. In the last decade and into this one we continue to amaze the world with amazing inventions and companies, such as one of the first commercial spaceflight companies, the drone revolution, the introduction of commercial one gigabit internet connections, the first everyday usable electric vehicle, 3D printers, and countless more. We do have our problems, we are arrogant, we dont always follow the rules, we dont always play well with others, wed rather take what we want than compromise. In our own country we have race issues, class division, poverty, a paralyzed federal government, and bankrupt cities and states. But that is alright, the selling point of our entire system that we have set up for ourselves is that when we mess up we can fix it, we can change, we can do better. It may take us awhile for us to realize that we are even messing up and we may fight about how to fix it but in the end we as the american people will fix it, and that is what makes this country great.I am proud to be a part of that.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 03:32:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015