Ayn Rand would be crying right now if she weren't dead and/or a sociopath. The Neoliberal experiment America started in the 1980s has now yielded results, and they are poor.
From Bloomberg View's Hardheaded Socialism Makes Canada Richer Than US:
On July 1, Canada Day, Canadians awoke to a startling, if pleasant, piece of news: For the first time in recent history, the average Canadian is richer than the average American.
According to data from Environics Analytics WealthScapes published in the Globe and Mail, the net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, while the average American household’s net worth was $319,970.
A few days later, Canada and the U.S. both released the latest job figures. Canada’s unemployment rate fell, again, to 7.2 percent, and America’s was a stagnant 8.2 percent. Canada continues to thrive while the U.S. struggles to find its way out of an intractable economic crisis and a political sine curve of hope and despair.
But it gets worse!
Canada's Socialist Healthcare System (and that's actual socialism not Obamacare) has proven superior to America's insurance industry cartel system.
From Reuters:
Canadians live about three years longer and are healthier than Americans, and the lack of universal healthcare in the United States may be a factor...
A healthy 19-year-old Canadian can expect to have 52 more years of perfect health versus 49.3 more years for Americans.
Canadians have a universal healthcare service, which is free at the point of care, whereas Americans' access to health insurance is usually based on employment, income through Medicaid, or age through Medicare, and not universal, according to the study.
If it is any consolation US insurance companies make more money.
But Canadians don't have the American Dream! They don't have the opportunities to work hard and get ahead, to have it better than their parents had it. To move from one socioeconomic position to another...
From Sutton Trust & Carnegie Corporation UK and US much less socially mobile than Australia and Canada:
Children from poorer families in Australia and Canada have a much greater chance of doing well at school, getting into university and earning more in later in life than children in the United States and the United Kingdom...
The latest international research findings, compiled for a two-day summit on social mobility in London organised by the Sutton Trust and Carnegie Corporation of New York, are the first to compare and contrast education and social mobility levels in the four major English-speaking countries. Many of the key findings are based on a new book Parents to Children published to coincide with the summit by the US-based Russell Sage Foundation.
Australia and Canada are around twice as mobile as the UK and US, according to the analysis produced for the summit by Professor Miles Corak from the University of Ottawa, one of the world’s leading experts on mobility.
Hmmmm well, you know America is still awesome and stuff, uh, freedom. Hot Dogs... bedazzle.
From New York Times:
Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.
But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage...
At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints...
In 2006 Professor Corak reviewed more than 50 studies of nine countries. He ranked Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark as the most mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other extreme. Sweden, Germany, and France were scattered across the middle.
Interesting. It is almost like anywhere people let Banksters run amok they have a lot of inequality and social rigidity.
So did Socialism win? Calling Canada socialist is not derogatory especially concerning its healthcare policies. Which begs the question - if socialism leads to better outcomes in wealth, health, and opportunity why shouldn't Americans adopt it? Riddle me that teabaggers.
Now I will engage in one activity America surely leads the world in - preemptive strikes!
Progressives want to improve America not move to Canada (side note: it's really hard to emigrate to Canada) so the point is not to drag America down but adopt policies that can lift it up. If a country is doing better than us in some areas we should understand why and make changes