Living the (American) Dream

This post was originally made on 4/5/21

Welcome to The Bloch,

Big in the news over the past week has been the controversial voting law that was enacted by Georgia politicians and signed by Governor Brian Kemp on Thursday, March 25th. Since then, there has been mounting backlash and more and more corporate giants have bowed under pressure and started to make moves. On Friday, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred announced that the 2021 all-star game will not be played in Atlanta, stating that the league is “finalizing a new host city and details about these events will be announced shortly.” I am on board with these companies making these changes. In my opinion, access to voting must be expanded, not restricted. Did you know that they already have digital voting in Estonia?

Growing up I used to hear people use the line, “It’s a free country” in response to all different kinds of questions about the limitations of our freedom. The idea here was that since it’s a free country, questions about the limitations on freedom are silly. But the facts say something different. The facts point to the idea that we Americans may not just be quite as free as we imagine ourselves to be. So with all this talk of voter suppression, I started thinking to myself, just how free are we in America? It reminded me of the epic opening monologue of the canceled HBO series The Newsroom (written by Aaron Sorkin and delivered by Jeff Daniels) where he goes off about how America is not the greatest country in the world.

So here are some of the metrics I found:

• Economic Freedom: According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. ranks 20th in economic freedom, well behind countries like Singapore, Switzerland, and New Zealand. The U.S. is on par with Chile, Sweden, and Japan.
• Human Freedom Index: According to the Cato Institute, the U.S. ranks 17th in overall human freedom, tied with the United Kingdom, and behind countries like Hong Kong, Denmark, and Canada.
• Press Freedom: According to Reporters Without Borders, the U.S. ranks 45th in freedom of the press, on par with countries like Taiwan and Senegal, and far behind the leading countries of Norway, Finland, and Denmark.
• According to USNews & World Report, the U.S. was ranked 7th best country overall in 2020, coming in just behind the U.K. and just ahead of Sweden. Switzerland, Canada, and Japan took the top three spots, respectively. Here are some of the individual category metrics that make up our 7th overall ranking:
• Citizenship (defined as): Countries that care about human rights, gender equality, and religious freedom are the nations held up by academics, advocates, and others as examples worth imitating. We ranked 15th on Citizenship.
• On Quality of Life, we also ranked 15th. Quality of life is defined: Beyond the essential ideas of broad access to food and housing, to quality education and health care, to employment that will sustain us, quality of life may also include intangibles such as job security, political stability, individual freedom, and environmental quality.
• On Power, we come in at the number one spot. This is defined as being a leader, economically influential, politically influential, strong international alliances, and a strong military. Russia comes in at number two and China at number three here.
• On Best Country to Raise Kids we come in at number 18. Again the Nordic countries lead the way here.
• On Education: According to the 2018 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranking, the U.S. is the 6th most educated country in the world, with Canada, Japan, and Israel taking the top three spots.
• Finally a report from an organization called FreedomHouse, which gives countries a score out of 100 to represent their level of freedom. Freedom House rates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in 210 countries and territories through its annual Freedom in the World report. Individual freedoms — ranging from the right to vote to freedom of expression and equality before the law — can be affected by state or non-state actors. According to Freedom House, the U.S. scores an 83 out of 100. For comparison, other countries in the low 80s include Ghana, Panama, and Mongolia. There are 17 countries on the Freedom House list that score a 95 or above. Some from this group that I haven’t mentioned yet include Belgium, Portugal, and Ireland.

In conclusion, I would like to draw your attention to my perspective on all of this. Basically what I’m seeing is that out of approximately 200 countries on Earth, the USA is consistently toward the top, but typically not on top. First things first, I’m grateful for our current situation. We could rank toward the bottom instead of toward the top. Second, while we still punch above our weight class on the world stage due to our position of power, it seems like that position will wane over time as other countries do a better job than us on economic freedom, citizenship, education, freedom of the press, and overall quality of life. In my mind at least, these metrics beg some questions: why don’t we rank higher on these lists? What are these other countries doing that we aren’t? How can we be doing better? In my mind, there are lots of ways. I hope you’re thinking of some ways too.

Until next time.

Bloch