Did you know these facts about the United States of America?

• Four million American children suffer from hunger at some point during the year. [1]
• Forty-four million Americans do not have health insurance. [2]
• Over eight million human beings in Third World countries have died since 1960 as a result of American foreign policy. [3]
• The defense budget for 2004 was 401 billion US dollars. [4]
• The military budget consumes 48% of the federal budget. Only 34% goes to social spending. [5]
• A black baby boy born in Harlem New York City today has less chance of reaching age 65 than a baby born in Bangladesh. [6]
• Over 3.5 million Americans (including 1.35 million children) experienced homelessness at least once during 2000. [7]
• For a list of 20 major traded commodities, the US (with 5% of the world population) takes the greatest share of 11 of them: corn, coffee, copper, lead, zinc, tin, aluminum, rubber, oil seeds, oil and natural gas. [8]
• There are 41 countries with a lower infant mortality rate than the US. [9]
• There are 45 countries with a higher life expectancy than the US. [10]
• Cuba has the same mortality rate for under-fives as the US. [11]
• Scientific American reports, in its October 2001 issue, that more than a third of American high school seniors do not have a basic understanding of mathematics and that nearly a quarter lack rudimentary reading skills. [12]
• The American Society of Civil Engineers has stated that seventy-five percent of American school buildings are inadequate to meet the needs of school children, that one third of the nation's roads are in poor or mediocre condition, costing American drivers an estimated $5.8 billion and contributing to 13,800 fatalities annually, and that as of 1998, 29 percent of the nation's bridges were structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. [13]
• In fiscal year 2000, CPSC announced 288 recalls involving more than 90 million consumer product units that either violated mandatory safety standards or presented a substantial risk of injury to the public. [14]
• Each year, an estimated 5,000 Americans die and another 77 million get sick from disease-producing agents in the food they eat. [15]
• The US sold 11.4 billion dollars' worth of weapons to Third World countries in 1999, over 90 billions dollars worth in 1992-1999. [16]
• The average weekly wage in real terms (adjusted for inflation) for production or nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls in the US was higher in July 1973 ($349) than in July 2005 ($277). [17]
• The number of unemployed in the US has not dropped below 5 million since July 1974.
• The US has signed but not ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects the economic and social rights of children. The only other country not to ratify is Somalia, which has no functioning government. [18]
• The only country that has signed the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women but has not ratified it is the United States of America. [19]
• The US is one of the few countries not to have ratified Protocols III and IV of the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons. [20]
• In 1998, twenty-four corporations got tax rebates. These 24 companies – almost one out of ten of the companies in the study – reported US profits before taxes in 1998 of $12.0 billion, yet received tax rebates totaling $1.3 billion. [21]
• The US foreign aid, in terms of percentage of GDP is already the lowest of any industrialized nation in the world. [22]
• The national debt stands at nearly $9 trillion, more than $29,000 for every American man, woman and child. [23]
• The difference between the top fifth – the richest – and the bottom fifth – the poorest – is almost equal to what it was during the Great Depression. [24]

Notes

1. Hunger in the United States from the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).
2. 44 million Americans lack health insurance by Jerry White, 07 October 1999.
3. Casualties in the Third World. Loss of life caused by American invasions or by US-backed and funded regimes in Third World countries since 1960.
4. Defense Budget 2005 from the Department of Defense [sic].
5. Where your income tax money really goes from the War Resisters League.
6. Inequalities in Health by Michael Marmot Ph.D. from the New England Journal of Medicine.
7.  How Many People Experience Homelessness? from the National Coalition for the Homeless, June 2005.
8.  Population and natural resources from the American Association for the Advancement of Science Atlas of Population and Environment.
9. Infant mortality rates.
10. Life expectancy.
11. Under-five mortality rankings from UNICEF.
12. Can't Read, Can't Count: Up To One Third Of American High School Seniors Aren't Ready For The Real World by Rodger Doyle, October 2001.
13. Report Card for America's Infrastructure from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
14. CPSC (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission).
15. Food Money by Micah L. Sifry,27 December 1999 in The Nation magazine.
16. 1999 Scorecard: U.S. $11.4 Billion, Rest of World $11.3 Billion by David Lochhead and James Morrell form the Center for International Policy.
17. Bureau of Labor statistics. A table showing this and other statistics since 1964 may also be consulted.
18.  UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
19. UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
20. Convention on Conventional Weapons.
21. Twenty-four companies paying less than zero in federal income taxes in 1998.
22. The US and Foreign Aid Assistance by Anup Shah.
23. The national debt clock.
24. Peak America –Is Our Time Up? by Pat Murphy, November 2005.