Society Our Own Worst Problem
We live in a society that splits people. We define people by status, race, height, age etc. We do it in everything from classifying students for free and reduced lunch in our public school system, which in turn generates more money for public leaders to utlize in the school system, to implementing affirmative action in everything from job hirings to getting into college to ensure a balance of different races. Some of examples of this includes widely public hiring practices to the United States Supreme Court ruling that the University of Michigan could use race in determining admissions to its law school.
We are told our vote counts in the electoral system, but we are controlled by politicians who have anything but our best interest in mind. There are some 34,750 lobbyist in Washington D.C., according to a June 2005 article in the Washington Post. Do you think President Bush doesn’t release some oof the country’s reserve gas supply to help easer prices because he wants to be a good guy. Politicians are controlled by the bucks. The bucks are represented by the lobbyist who represent the guys that control the politicians.
The following are some of the points I would like to make in my argument about why we lack what it takes in the United States to be a successful society:
*There are 299,321,041 people in the United States as of 5:14 p.m on 7/26/06. The national debt as of 7/27/06 was $8,423,269,319,365.84 and growing. Each person’s responsibility in the United States for paying towards that growing debt is currently $28,154.06. The national debt has been growing by $1.6 billion per day since 9/30/05.
* The high court in Washington State upheld a ban on gay marriage, saying it violated the sanctuary of marriage. But there is no evidence that homosexual couples are any more deviant than hetrosexual couples. My point being is we live in a country that is suppose to promote equality, acceptance, etc, but we don’t allow people who are in love with one another to be together because there are the same sex.
* Healthcare is another issue I have. The Connecticut Coalition for Universal Healthcare points out that the United States is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t guarantee access to healthcare for everyone. The United States already spends 40 percent more per capita on healthcare than any other country with universal healthcare. A single payer system would save between 100-200 billion per year. Insurance companies will not allow this universal system. Healthcare companies spend between 20-30 percent of our premiums on administration and profit. In 2004, there were 45 million people in the United States with no healthcare insurance.
* Childcare is another issue. Based on a study at www.nccp.org, the country’s workforce would be stronger if the government provided childcare subsidies more commonly. It would result in more low-income mothers working fulltime and finishing their education.
* We destroy the earth with global warming. The United States is the leading producer of emissions that effect global warming with its power plants and carbon dioxide emissions from such things as cars and airplanes. Texas A&M University did a study in 1996 that showed drivers in New York and Los Angeles wasted 600 million gallons of gas sitting in traffic, which translated into 7.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
* Nationalhomeless.org said in 2004 that 3.5 million people were homeless in the United States, 1.35 million of whom were children. Contributing factors to homeless include low wages and rising housing cost.
* WWW.Pregnantinfo.net offered the statistic of the growing teen pregnancy problem. In 2000, there were 821,810 teen pregnancies in the United States.
* Everyday, four women die in the United States from domestic violence, according to www.now.org (National Organization for Women). There are a reported 572,000 battery cases with 170,000 resulting in a hospital stay for the victim.
* The United States has the largest prison population in the world with 2 million people behind bars.
* With what is being spent on the war in Iraq currently, the United States government could have offered free health insurance to 179,103,820 children for one year. We could have built 2,693,145 new housing units and hired an additional 5,183,500 teachers.
The issues go on and on. But overall, my point is society and the people that make up society are the greatest problems we face in this country today. We are self destructive people by nature. What we need is what I like to refer to as a Star Trek society, where we start working for the betterment of society instead of just the individual. The end result being that the individual would be better off because of the social advances that society as a whole has addressed. We focus our efforts now on other places so we don’t have to address the issues in the United States like I named above.
We like to believe in such things as free will and that we are the best society in the world. But there is no such thing as “The American Dream.” Try telling a starving, many of whom are right in our own backyard, that there is such a thing as the American Dream.
We need to start focusing people in society on working together to address the issues. Sure, some might say it is a hopeless fight, but I believe it is a worthwhile fight. Afterall, the betterment of society is probably the most nobalest cause I can think of. It benefits us all.
Information Sources
www.census.gov
http://apps.leg.wa.gov
www.UMich.edu
Yakima Herald
http://cthealth.server101.com
www.nccp.org
www.tqnyc.org
http://antiraweb.org
www.nationalhomeless.org
www.enwikipedia.org
