I want to begin today by introducing you, if you're not already familiar,
with something called the Social Progress Index.
You can find out a great deal more about it, in detail,
by checking it out on the internet. It was founded back in 2011 by a group of
Nobel prize winning economists and has been an attempt, increasingly
interesting, to measure social progress. To not be limited
by just measuring GDP, total output of goods or services,
or average level of wages, but to have a
comprehensive sense of how societies are progressing. So, yes,
it includes all the economic indicators (wealth, income, debts, and stuff like that)
but also social indicators (crime statistics, educational statistics,
health conditions, all of it). And to put it together
to get a sense of how societies as a whole
are doing. How we are living our lives, which is a more important measure to try
to develop than something narrowly focused on only
one or another dimension of our lives. So it began in 2011.
It now measures 133 countries year in, year out, and it just issued
its report. And I want to share a number of items to you because I think
it illuminates what's going on in the United States, in the world,
in a way that lots of talk doesn't quite catch.
Only three countries are worse off in terms of their social progress
from 2011 to the present, so roughly a decade.
The three countries out of 133 that are worse off (here we go):
Hungary, Brazil and the United States of America.
In terms of social progress, the United States ranked
19th in 2011. And in 2020 it ranks 28th.
It dropped. What does this mean? Well, let me give you some
of the specifics. The United States ranks #1 in the quality of its universities but
it ranks #91 in the access to quality basic education. Wow.
Let me continue. The US leads the world in medical technology,
yet we are #97 in access to quality health care.
You begin to get a pattern here. The rich, the well-off,
the well-positioned have access to high-quality social progress.
But the mass of people do not. Their social progress has gone into reverse.
Let me continue. The social progress index finds that Americans have health
statistics similar to those in the following three countries:
Chile, Jordan, and Albania, while kids in the United States
get an education roughly on par with what children get in Uzbekistan
and Mongolia. A majority of countries have lower homicide rates
than the United States and most other advanced countries
have lower traffic fatalities, and better sanitation,
and better internet access. Why am I telling you this?
Partly to shock you, I admit it. But partly to underscore
that what we are going through is not just a terrible pandemic,
and not just another terrible economic crash. Those are true
But we are also going through a long-term economic decline,
and that has to be something we think about, talk about, face up to,
and deal with or else it will continue.