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America leads the world when it comes to access to higher education. But when it comes to health, environmental protection, and fighting discrimination, it trails many other developed countries, according to the Social Progress Imperative, a U.S.-based nonprofit.
The results of the group's annual survey, which ranks nations based on 50 metrics, call to mind other reviews of national well-being, such as the World Happiness Report released in March, which was led by Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, or September's Lancet study on sustainable development. In that one, Iceland, Singapore, Sweden, and the U.S. took spots 1, 2, 3, and 28—respectively.
The Social Progress Index released this week is compiled from social and environmental data that come as close as possible to revealing how people live. "We want to measure a country's health and wellness achieved, not how much effort is expended, nor how much the country spends on healthcare," the report states. Scandinavia walked away with the top four of 128 slots. Denmark scored the highest. America came in at 18.
The Social Progress Index gives the US poor marks. America may, however, still lead the world in funny cat videos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 23 2017, @09:00AM
There is also massive barriers just to basic business services in the US. For instance if you want to file a patent - god is that a nightmare. Costs run from the hundreds to the tens of thousands of dollars per fee. And it's really fun too because just because you do manage to get a patent on something doesn't mean that invention is patented. You can pay the patent office to do a search for you (because that's not included in the default costs because reasons) but if they turn up no conflicting inventions, that doesn't mean there aren't.
In other words you can file a patent for 'just' low thousands of dollars plus legal fees but that patent may not even be worth the paper it's written on. If you want something rock solid to protect your invention... well you better hope you're an Apple or Microsoft. And if you end up in a situation where there is a legal conflict over your patent then costs skyrocket even higher. It's all quite absurd just to have the basic guarantee of 'What I invent cannot be stolen.' Oh even more fun stuff, if you mention an idea in a public outlet - and somebody implements it, THEY can then patent that idea and claim it their own. Prior art, public domain, etc are all legalese and not at all what you'd think. You can't take somebody else's idea and patent as your own is a common sense notion, but never let common sense get in the way of legal systems geared towards pandering to corporations.