{"id":5793,"date":"2011-08-22T12:59:58","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T10:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/?p=5793"},"modified":"2012-12-12T15:09:09","modified_gmt":"2012-12-12T14:09:09","slug":"a-better-usa-just-a-few-ifs-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/?p=5793","title":{"rendered":"A better USA just a few &#8220;if&#8217;s&#8221; away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>USA is an amazing country. But it would be way more awesome if:<\/p>\n<p>-it did not <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Comparison_with_other_countries\">spend half<\/a> of what the whole world together spends in the military.<\/p>\n<p>-it did not have lawyers who leech on business with a &#8220;tort tax&#8221; adding unnecessary costs to the economy in medicine, patents and tons of other fields.<\/p>\n<p>-it did not spend twice as much as Europe in health care per person leaving many in precarious conditions and ending up with the average American living <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy#List_by_the_United_Nations_.282005-2010.29\">3 years less <\/a>than the average European.<\/p>\n<p>-it <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership\">regulated guns<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>-it educated more and incarcerated less.<\/p>\n<p>-it reduced the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_countries_by_ecological_footprint\">environmental footprint<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Obesity_in_the_United_States\">calorie <\/a>intake per person.<\/p>\n<p>-Americans learn to live within their means (not from the savings of foreigners).<\/p>\n<div id=\"mainphotoarea\"><\/div><div class=\"theme-buttons\"><div class=\"fb-like\" data-href=\"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/?p=5793\" data-send=\"false\" data-layout=\"box_count\" data-width=\"71\" data-show-faces=\"false\" data-font=\"arial\" data-locale=\"en_US\"><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>USA is an amazing country. But it would be way more awesome if: -it did not spend half of what the whole world together spends in the military. -it did not have lawyers who leech on business with a &#8220;tort tax&#8221; adding unnecessary costs to the economy in medicine, patents and tons of other fields. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2077,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5793"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6424,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5793\/revisions\/6424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}