The world looks up to us, a tremendous responsibility we should take seriously.
We enforce that admiration with the muscle we can flex as arguably the most powerful nation on earth, monetarily and militarily. We support many countries in the world with the implied promise they clean up their act, get rid of their autocracies, and follow us into the catacombs of democracy.
They should not.
Rodents of Renewal
With the implied promise human wants, tallied by democracy, lead to the excellence of human needs, our government acts like a laissez-faire parent, allowing its children to eat cake daily. Their wants are destroying their long-term wellness and renewal—a big governance mistake.
We are already the second most obese country in the world, providing clear evidence of how the unbridled freedom of wants and opinions deflates the strength of human renewal as graded by nature. Must I remind you not humanity but nature defines the gameplay of renewal that promulgates the excellence of human existence and evolution? This is a subject hard to grasp by 63% of Americans who do not believe in evolution.
A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
— THOMAS JEFFERSON
With a caveat, let me share a few statistics, the rodents in our viscera, to demonstrate how the strength of American renewal and that of the countries following in our footsteps is sliding down a slippery slope. The caveat is that statistics are mere data, a consequence, not inferring a cause. The cause is that America is a country without a theory, akin to a business without a business plan.
And it shows (updated numbers with *):
Living
- 70% of Americans don’t like their job
- 40% of Americans quit their job every year
- 66% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck
- 29% of Americans are considered lower-class
- 41% spend more than half their income on rent
- Less than half of 335M people participate in the workforce
- A little over one-third are taxpayers
- 51% of US households bet on the stock market
- 55% of Americans have credit card debt
- 33% of people in the United States have debt in collections
- 57% of Americans cannot afford $500 expense
- 40% of Americans have no way to cover an unexpected $400 expense
- 36% of Americans have more credit card debt than savings
- 83% of families make less than $125K per year
- 60% are enslaved to a job that pays no more than $40K
- 15.8% of Americans are considered extremely poor
- 25% of children in public school system are on food support
- 48M people live on food stamps
- Poverty puts 500,000 people in foster care
- Childhood poverty costs $1.03T per year
- 25% of kids below 5 in poverty
- 63% labor force participation rate, the same as El Salvador
- 580,000 people are homeless, an increase of 49%. 170,000 in CA
- 1% of people have 50% of the money
- 2M kids are homeschooled*
- 2/3rd of Americans are financially illiterate*
Health
- Americans are the second-most obese people in the world, 69% are overweight
- 40,000 Americans die of obesity every month(!)
- 60,000 Americans die every year of having no money to pay for doctor
- 48 million people get sick from foodborne illness each year
- Americans have accumulated $140B in healthcare debt
- 70% of Americans are chronically dependent on prescription drugs; the majority are on antidepressants
- 25% of Americans have more than one chronic disease
- 86% of healthcare cost is devoted to chronic diseases
- 6% of kids had allergies in 1980, which increased to 11% allergies now
- 5% of people have reduced immune system because of organ transplant
- 40% of Americans are prediabetic
- 70,000 people died from opioids (2020), up 30%
- 57% of kids will be obese by 35 years old
- 75% of applicants to the army today are considered unfit
- Only 50M of some 400M live a health-conscious life
- $250B is spent on anti-aging products
- Americans alone spend some $3 billion a year on homeopathic medicines
- 18% of GDP is spent on healthcare, with poor delivery
- American healthcare is twice as expensive as other Western civilizations
- $24B in healthcare marketing to doctors, $4B to consumers
- Health insurance is $138B business
- 30M uninsured*
Education
- 30% of Americans are functionally illiterate
- $1.5T in student debt
- 44% of unemployment among recent post-college graduates
- 32% of Americans graduate from college
- The college completion rate is 59%
- Only 6% of students are in technical and vocational training, Germany 59%
- 48% of public schools underperform
- 6,000 kids drop out of school every day
Crime
- America spends $80B per year on imprisonment, harboring 2.4M criminals
- 5% of the world’s population produces 25% of the world’s prisoners
- 97% of pleas are settled out of court, and only 3% of people charged with a crime go to trial
- 5% illegal immigrant workers
Evolution
- We produce 15% of the world’s emissions
- 63% of Americans do not believe in evolution, 66% of Republican representatives, 17% of Democratic representatives
- 40% of Americans take the Bible literally
Economics
- The national debt is $33T, 138% of GDP
- $17.1 trillion in household debt
- $12.0 trillion in mortgages, more than double the 2006 peak
- $1.6 trillion in auto loans
- $1.6 trillion in student loans
- $1.0 trillion in credit card debt
- The daily US interest expense is set to exceed $1T/ year
- Debt per taxpayer is $259K
- We rank 120th worldwide in voting participation rate
- 70% of US economy is consumer spending
- Lower labor force participation rate than other developed countries*
- Lower mobility than other developed countries*
Worldwide
The power of our example produces already this worldwide:
- 2.6 Billion people are overweight, and in 2035, 51% of people worldwide will be overweight
- 400M people with type 2 diabetes
Anew
Of course, not everyone in society will flourish to the best of their ability. But in a company without a well-established and communicated vision and business plan, the road to success becomes narrow and runs into an evolutionary incompatible direction.
We must establish a theory for humanity in line with how nature evaluates our performance to determine, in the words of Albert Einstein, what humanity in actuality could discover.
Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
— Voltaire
You are out of your mind when you believe American excellence is at an all-time high and worthy of replication. The data published here from reputable sources demonstrate the renewal of America is in severe and present danger, despite the comfortably numb pandemonium produced by the evolutionary ignoramuses among us.
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
— THOMAS PAINE
We are a beautiful country with great people, but only because we have it in our power to reinvent ourselves anew. We must get on with applying the concept of innovation to ourselves.
Updated numbers appear with an asterisk: *
