America's foam finger problem.

Sometimes I feel as if I'm living inside a giant pep rally for America. Politicians love to tell us how we are the greatest country on the face of the Earth, the "land of opportunity" a "shining city on a hill." We're told that God especially loves America, so much so that there was a painting making the rounds recently in conservative circles showing Jesus delivering the Constitution to our founding fathers.

Maybe we should set aside a day each year when we all wear those giant "We're Number 1" foam fingers and chant "USA, USA" for a full 24 hours just to get it out of our systems.

Now don't get me wrong. I love this country and have no plans to move anywhere else. But, we have some pretty large failings. Tuesday's NY Times Editorial Page Editor's blog references a list of a few of our shortcomings compiled by Gus Speth:

"To our great shame, among the 20 major advanced countries America now has

• the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
• the greatest inequality of incomes;
• the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP on social programs for the disadvantaged;
• the lowest number of paid holiday, annual, and maternity leaves;
• the lowest score on the United Nations’ index of “material well-being of children”;
• the worst score on the United Nations’ gender inequality index;
• the lowest social mobility;
• the highest public and private expenditure on health care as a portion of GDP,

yet accompanied by the highest

• infant mortality rate;
• prevalence of mental health problems;
• obesity rate;
• portion of people going without health care due to cost;
• low-birth-weight children per capita (except for Japan);
• consumption of antidepressants per capita;

along with the shortest life expectancy at birth (except for Denmark and Portugal);

• the highest carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption per capita;
• the lowest score on the World Economic Forum’s environmental performance index (except for Belgium), and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Belgium and Denmark);
• the highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements;
• the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP;
• the highest military spending as a portion of GDP;
• the largest international arms sales;
• the most negative balance of payments (except New Zealand, Spain, and Portugal);
• the lowest scores for student performance in math (except for Portugal and Italy) (and far from the top in both science and reading);
• the highest high school dropout rate (except for Spain);
• the highest homicide rate;
• and the largest prison population per capita."

The author concludes that "...in a 20-country group of America’s peer countries in the OECD, the U.S. is now worst, or almost worst, on nearly 30 leading indicators of social, environmental, and economic well-being."

So what I would like to see is a politician with the courage to say "We can learn some things from our competitors."

Want to run government like a business? Google "learn from your competitors" and you'll find a raft of articles from business journals like one from Business Week saying " The quickest way to learn how to be successful is to check the playbook of your competitors. By taking the time to investigate what has made their businesses work, you’ll be able to learn their best methods and improve upon their model."

That's precisely what our international competitors did to us. We were once number one in education, manufacturing, etc. They studied what we did and improved upon it. Yet we are now too arrogant to admit that we could learn a thing or two from their innovations.

As an example, we mouth platitudes about wanting equality of opportunity for our children. Finland has put that idea into practice in its first-in-the-world education system. Nobody puts their kids into a private school in Finland. Regardless of the wealth of the community, every school has exactly the same resources and draws from the same pool of teachers. If a child does well it's because they had talent and worked hard, not because they got to start the inning by standing on third base.

That's very different from America. Nicholas Kristoff points this out in his NY Times column this morning:

"Point to a group of toddlers in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in America, and it’s a good bet that they will go to college, buy nice houses and enjoy white-collar careers."

"Point to a group of toddlers in a low-income neighborhood, and — especially if they’re boys — they’re much more likely to end up dropping out of school, struggling in dead-end jobs and having trouble with the law."

"Something is profoundly wrong when we can point to 2-year-olds in this country and make a plausible bet about their long-term outcomes — not based on their brains and capabilities, but on their ZIP codes. "

So how about we give the foam fingers a rest, admit that we have some problems and adopt Inc. Magazine's suggestion:" Spend some time studying the guy who wants to eat your lunch. You might learn something."