social progress – TranscendingSquare

Compared to 133 other nations the U.S. ranked fifth for GDP per capita which would make the U.S. one of the richest nations however citizens may not be benefiting from the wealth as much as citizens in some other developed nations.

“Worse, the U.S. joins China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia in a group of countries that significantly underperform on social progress relative to their wealth. The U.S. is the only major industrial nation to significantly underperform in this way. By contrast, countries such as Costa Rica, Nepal, and Malawi have much lower levels of economic and social development than the U.S., but these countries are overperforming. They are doing a good job at turning their GDP into social progress; the U.S. is not.” [“Why Americans are So Angry Despite America’s Strong Economy,” Michael Green, Aug. 2, 2016, hbr.org]

The rankings for the 2016 Social Progress Index are based on the total group of 133 nations so fifth out of 133 for GDP per capita would be equivalent to 3.76 out of 100 or roughly 96% out of 100 which in the U.S. educational system would be graded as an ‘A’.

Other categories, reranked for grades based on percentage of a 100, would place the U.S.:

in the ‘A’ group for “Access to advanced education” (ranked 2/133 or 1.5/100) (2017 1/128) and “Shelter” (7/133 or 5.3/100) (2017 10/128)
and an ‘A-‘ for “Opportunity Total” (13/133 or 9.8/100). (2017 13/128)

The U.S. might get graded:

a ‘B+’ for “Personal Freedom and choice” (16/133 or 12.0/100) (2017 19/128)
and a ‘B’ for “Social Progress Overall” (19/133 or 14.3/100) (2017 18/128) and for “Access to info/communication” (19/133 or 14.3/100) (2017 27/128) and for “Basic Human Needs Total” (21/133 or 15.8/100) (2017 17/128) and for “Tolerance and inclusion” (21/133 or 15.8/100), (2017 23/128)
and a ‘B-‘ for “Personal Rights” (26/133 or 19.5/100). (2017 19/128)

And the U.S. might get graded:

a ‘C+’ for “Water and sanitation” (27/133 or 20.3/100) (2017 27/128) and for “Personal Safety” (27/133 or 20.3/100) (2017 21/128),
and a ‘C’ for “Foundations of Well-Being Total” (32/133 or 24.1/100), (2017 29/128)
and a ‘C-‘ for “Environmental Quality” (36/133 or 27.1/100) (2017 33/128) and for “Nutrition and basic medical care” (37/133 or 27.8/100). (2017 36/128)

And the U.S. might get graded:

a ‘D+’ for “Access to basic knowledge” (40/133 or 30.1/100). (2017 30/128)

And the U.S. might get graded:

an ‘E-‘ for “Health and Wellness” (69/133 or 51.9/100). (20177 34/128)

At some point the U.S.’s failing grade on Health and Wellness will make it difficult for the nation to continue to have enough healthy workers to pay for the care of the sick and disabled citizens let alone provide enough caregivers to continue to be able to take care of all of the people unable to care for themselves. Enforcing the purchase or provision of health insurance doesn’t automatically provide more health care professionals or provide more health care facilities — let alone assure that the care that is being provided is actually effective at resolving the underlying health issues rather than simply managing symptoms with treatments that might be exacerbating the underlying issues.

And what if the problem with the poor showing on “Health and wellness” isn’t just an ineffective or understaffed health care system but is actually a problem with excessive negative chemicals in our food supply and environment? It would be difficult to remain healthy in an environment that provides excessive amounts of toxins and insufficient nutrients to cope with the needs of detoxification adequately.

Or maybe U.S. citizens simply all started eating too much and exercising too little sometime around 1992 and the halving of male fertility is just a fluke (not quite halved – 1.7 children on average in 1992 dropped to 0.9 children on average between 2006-2010) *. Maybe. Coincidences do happen — and more and more often it seems in this modern era. But as I don’t believe in coincidences as much as I believe in evidence based science I’ll continue to avoid the toxins that I’ve become aware of and continue to work on sharing information about the underlying causes of health and wellness (the big secret is that functional bodies are made out of a balanced variety of all of the nutrients, {and a good night’s sleep and regular exercise and clean air and water}, rather than being made out of pharmaceuticals or toxins .)

*Excerpt from the last post:

Male fertility in 1992 was estimated to be at a rate of 1710 births per 1000 males on average (or 1.7 children per male aged 15-44) and 1960 births per every 1000 females (or 1.9 children per female aged 15-44). https://www.census.gov/population/documentation/twps0014.pdf
However either fertility has decreased or the desire to father children has decreased because the rate of children fathered by men aged 15-44 years in 2002 was at a rate of 1.0 children per male and the rate dropped yet more to 0.9 children per male aged 15-44 years between 2006-2010. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr051.pdf

A different excerpt (that was not included in the last post) suggests that fertility rates for females as well as males born in the U.S. may also have been affected because fertility rates were greater for Hispanic men and women who had moved to the U.S. compared to Hispanic women who were born in the U.S.:

“Looking at nativity, higher percentages of foreign-born Hispanic men and women had a child compared with those born in the United States. For foreign-born Hispanic women, 78% had a biological child compared with 51% of U.S.-born Hispanic women. The percentage of U.S.-born Hispanic women with a biological child is similar to that of white women.” http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr051.pdf

The birth rate for Hispanic women and men was greater than for white women and men:

“Hispanic women are more likely to have had a biological child (65%) than non-Hispanic white women (52%), but there were no differences between Hispanic and non-Hispanic black (62%) women. Meanwhile, a higher percentage of Hispanic men had a biological child (54%) compared with both white (41%) and black (49%) men.” http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr051.pdf

If tradition is important to a person then it might be a good idea to start asking why our traditions are no longer working as they traditionally used to – maybe foreign born people have greater birth rates because their bodies are less full of toxins and less nutritionally depleted.

The primaries are finally over and I haven’t withdrawn from the 2016 presidential race – yet. I was waiting for the primary process before starting to campaign as an Independent candidate – but that was too long to wait. The current system favors the two main parties by spending so much time on the primaries. The timelines for ballot access are closing soon or have closed already in some states. [Utah] Write-in ballot access can be applied for in some areas within a month or two of the election. For a presidential candidate to apply for ballot access as a write-in candidate they need to file with the state and include a list of registered voters in the state who are willing to act as electoral representatives for the candidate and the name of the Vice Presidential candidate has to be given.

Writing in Bernie Sanders name on a ballot if he hasn’t filed with the state is most likely to get the whole ballot added to the ‘don’t count’ pile. Leaving a section blank and voting on other sections may reduce the risk of a ballot being added to the ‘don’t count’ pile.

My Presidential Platform is a plan to turn that “E” from a failing grade into an E for excellence.

Effective Health Care – a preventative healthcare, not-for profit single payer system.
Economy & more Green Jobs.
Environment & more Green Jobs.
End the War on Peace.
End Citizens United & reform campaign finance and voting transparency laws
Education — Repeal or rewrite the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top policies to create a public education system that promotes helping the child to maximize their own potential – whatever it is. — Require all under graduate education providers to teach evolution and a science based curriculum. — Reduce college tuition loan rates and work towards restoring public education subsidies for in state college tuition.

Effective health care and more Green Jobs for the Economy and Environment are all goals that reinforce each other — we can’t be healthy or very productive over the long term if our environment and food supply are too toxic to support health for us or our wildlife and farm animals and crops.

I will add links for more information regarding each of the platform categories.

Here’s the website with the page of 2017 data for the U.S.. Any of the countries can be chosen from a menu and displayed. https://www.socialprogressindex.com/?tab=2&code=USA

More about the organization and the Social Progress Index is available on another website. Collaboration and encouragement to make local level or special interest Indexes is part of the goal and examples of a youth index and regional index are available on the site. http://www.socialprogressimperative.org/about-us-what-we-do/

Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.

The U.S. ranked 68th for the category “Health and Wellness” in a comparison of 133 developed nations. That ranks in the lower half of the group. Economically the U.S. ranks within the top few nations and ranks in the top in many of the other categories that were assessed. However the Health and Wellness ranking or the U.S. is low in comparison not only to other nations but also to the U.S. ranking for many of the other 53 categories that were used to assess a nation’s ‘social progress,’ — suggesting that the healthcare strategies that have already been in use or were recently implemented in the U.S. in an effort to improve the health and wellness of U.S. citizens need to be reviewed and redesigned if we hope to achieve better results.

https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-americans-are-so-angry-despite-americas-strong-economy?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=harvardbiz

We may be able to afford ineffective health care over the short term of a few sickly generations but we can’t afford ineffective health care for ever. Somebody has to remain healthy enough to be able to take care of the increasing numbers of chronically ill people.

The globalization of markets has helped some workers while it may have left other groups less well off than they had been. Globally incomes have improved for groups of people in some areas of the world but have held stable or dropped in other areas. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/this-chart-reveals-the-most-dramatic-change-in-incomes-since-the-first-industrial-revolution?utm_content=bufferd61fe&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

In some categories used to assess social progress the U.S. has been dropping in comparison to other developed nations and we are now on par or worse than some third world nations including the area of ‘Health and Wellness.’ http://usuncut.com/class-war/america-third-world-country/

Male fertility in 1992 was estimated to be at a rate of 1710 births per 1000 males on average (or 1.7 children per male aged 15-44) and 1960 births per every 1000 females (or 1.9 children per female aged 15-44). https://www.census.gov/population/documentation/twps0014.pdf

However either fertility has decreased or the desire to father children has decreased because the rate of children fathered by men aged 15-44 years in 2002 was at a rate of 1.0 children per male and the rate dropped yet more to 0.9 children per male aged 15-44 years between 2006-2010. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr051.pdf

So in 1992 the average 15-44 year old male had 1.7 children while in 2002 the average 15-44 year old male in the U.S. had 1.0 children and between 2006-2010 the average male aged 15-44 years old only had 0.9 children.

It might seem like everything is for sale in a capitalist nation but — you can’t buy health and while you might be able to buy fertility treatments and in vitro fertilization it turns out that nature has ways we are only beginning to discover. In vitro fertilization (egg meets sperm in a test tube) may leave the child with DNA from the male’s mitochondria which wouldn’t be as likely to occur during natural fertilization. Few of the male mitochondria enter the egg during normal fertilization and the egg has ways to destroy any male mitochondria that are able to enter. Normally only the maternal mitochondrial DNA is left in a newly fertilized zygote. (The first new life form is a single celled egg/sperm combo called the zygote.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_mtDNA_transmission

Excess male mitochondria may be involved in some cases of male infertility. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.496.2503&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The markers that help an egg identify male mitochondria for destruction may be species specific according to research performed with lab animals. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC41980/pdf/pnas01486-0478.pdf

We don’t know what we don’t know — until we learn it — and we are learning that we can’t really pollute our environment and food supply with estrogen mimetics and other toxic additives, herbicides and pesticides, if we hope to have “Health and Wellness”. As U.S. citizens we are constitutionally supposed to have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Health and wellness – and the ability to have children naturally – seems like part of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Should ‘corporate people’ have a right to profit off human citizen’s ability (or inability) to procreate or should ‘corporate people’ have a right to profit off a human citizen’s right to decide how they deliver their baby or how they feed their baby? Would it be fair to the non-corporate people (formerly known as humans) if the government ruled that all infants will be conceived in a test tube; and will be delivered by C-section; and will be fed exclusively with formula; or will be fed exclusively by breast milk whether the mother is able to or not?

Part of “health and wellness” might be the freedom to make individual choices based on individual differences. Some regulations protect the corporate ‘right to access to the consumer’ more than they protect the consumer’s right to access safe products and services. Midwives have been harassed for centuries and even burned as witches while medical schools and medical associations are regulated as safe providers of maternal care. History has shown that men didn’t wash their hands even after being told that it was causing increased maternal deaths due to infections. The pioneering doctor that tried to get other doctors to wash their hands was harassed during his own career for his work — but his name lives on in textbooks though, at least, (Ignaz Semmelweis). Midwives knew about sanitation but it took a male doctor ruining his career to get other male doctors to eventually start washing their hands in between attending pregnant women.

Hand washing helped promote improved “Health and Wellness” in the U.S. and elsewhere but it took a while to catch on. What other health practices are needed? We won’t know if we continue to not listen to pioneering scientists. Currently alternative information frequently is being dismissed as “debunked” or “Quack,” but history revealed that Ignaz Semmelweis was not the quack and likely the midwives who were burned as witches didn’t quack either. (A Monty Python reference is hiding there for Monty Python fans.)

So if we want America to continue to be great than we need to review and redesign our nation’s strategies for promoting individual health and wellness because whatever we’re doing hasn’t been very effective while it has been costing us more than other developed nations — and health and wellness includes the ability to have healthy children.