From the Gadflyer:
Among wealthy countries, we have the highest infant mortality rate, the highest homicide rate, the highest teen birth rate, the highest child poverty rate, the highest child abuse rate, the highest child injury death rate and the greatest in-country gaps in mortality rates. Of the 25 wealthiest countries, according to the United Nation's Human Development Index, only two have an average lower life expectancy and the United States has the highest probability at birth of not surviving to age 60. Finally, the United States ranks last according to the UN's human poverty index among 17 select OECD countries.
What's endlessly dumbfounding is the fact that we can spend $198 million per day on the war in Iraq - a war rationalized by the threat of (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction - while these real life tragedies - whose existence is not in doubt - receive consistently insufficient support from the federal budget. If we can come up with the money to topple a hostile government in a pinch, why can't we come up with the funds to address our nation's most pressing health and social issues?
It's a matter of priorities. I fear ours are terribly misguided.
Posted by sarah at January 13, 2005 10:54 AM | TrackBack