Flash News: The qualify of life of the average American sucks ->
"We Americans like to boast, “We’re No. 1,” and we certainly are in our military capacity to invade other countries and abduct odious foreign leaders.
But in the well-being of ordinary citizens? A careful study released Wednesday and based on a measure called the Social Progress Index suggests that in terms of quality of life, the United States ranks 32nd out of 171 countries, behind Poland, Lithuania and Cyprus.
More alarming, the United States has fallen steadily in the rankings over the years, under Republican and Democratic presidents alike — and now seems poised to fall further because of cuts in health care and other services by President Trump.
The Social Progress Index was introduced in the 2010s by a high-powered team of scholars and experts. The United States ranked 18th in 2011, and while that was troubling, we were still ahead of France, Italy and Spain. Now they outrank America.
The Social Progress Index has 12 components, and since 2011 the United States has fallen in the rankings in all of them, said Michael Green, the chief executive of the group that publishes the index each year.
“The quality of life in America is not just worse than in a handful of small Scandinavian countries but also worse than in all of America’s G7 competitors,” Green told me. “We’ve slipped behind former Communist countries like Slovenia, Lithuania and Estonia and behind other relatively new democracies like South Korea.”
“The U.S. won the Cold War by being an economic superpower and a social progress superpower,” Green added. “Over the last 30 years, America has simply let go, in terms of social progress.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/opinion/america-quality-of-life.html?unlocked_article_code=1.EVA.WuJu.byR-ucFOk3Z4&smid=url-share
#USA #QualityOfLife #Progress #Healthcare #Affordability #Inflation