Proud to be an American with Lee Greenwood and 14 Startlingly Sad Facts About Americans

14 Interesting Facts about Americans

Trash Kings - average American generates 4.4 pounds of trash daily

Energy Gluttons - America accounts for 18% of world's total energy use, with only 4.4% of global population

Superstitious - 42 percent believe in ghosts, 26 percent believe in witches, 24 percent believe in reincarnation

Crackpot ideas - 7 percent of adults believe the moon landings were faked

Educationally challenged - US ranked 27 out of 64 countries in science and ranked 35 out of 64 countries in math, for age 15 comparisons, in a 2012 study.

Bad medicine - From a 2014 study, US spends $8,505 per capita on healthcare which is the highest in the world, compared to Switzerland which spends $5,643 as the second highest spending per capita.  But US ranks last, 11 out of 11 on health care outcomes and access, among "first world" countries.

Early death - average life expectancy at birth is 78, ranking 40th out of 200+ countries

Porkers - 71 percent of adult men and 62 percent of adult women are obese

Connected - only 84 percent of Americans have regular access to some form of internet connection

Climate change - 54 percent of American adults believe climate change is largely man made.  This is the low end for a global comparison.  93 percent of Chinese believe climate change is largely man made, which is the high end.

Height - Americans were the tallest in the world for almost 200 years.  But recently they have been overtaken by Northern Europeans.  Average American height is now 5 feet 9 inches for men and 5 feet 4 inches for women

Love those cars - 809 motor vehicles per 1000 people.  This is the highest in the world with exception of three small countries in Central Europe (Lichenstein, Monaco, and San Marino).

Incarceration - 2.2 million Americans are locked up behind bars, which represents 22% of global inmate population, when the US  has just 4.4% of global population.

Doing Bob Seeger's horizontal bop - 57 out of 1000 female teens end up with a teen-age pregnancy, which is the highest in the world.

And despite all the above data, I still view my adopted home as the best country in the world.  I took the pledge of allegiance in 2005 and got my first US passport at that time.

With such a dismal set of facts as above, I'll have to come back tomorrow and provide as a counter-balance a list of all the things that are exceptional and great about the US.  

Please upvote and resteem if you found this post interesting enough to keep reading to this point.

STEEM On!!

DaveB

https://www.livescience.com/51448-startling-facts-about-american-culture.html

Greenwood video from youtube.com