By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
After elections, many Americans will soon watch a re-run of the 1946 classic It's a Wonderful Life.
What directions will our elected officials take us? On one side we have George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) who gave up his personal dreams in order to manage a “building and loan” to help his community. On the other side, we have the rich and greedy banker Henry Potter who runs most of the town without compassion. To some extent, they reflect the polar positions in the election we just endured. Will the U.S. be seen as having compassion or be a bastion of selfishness?
While we continue to view ourselves as having the most superior economic and governmental model on earth, a series of international studies show that the U.S. is nowhere near the top in nearly any measure of governance, happiness or affluence.
Kathleen Frydl, notes in The Conversation how “The U.S. is becoming a ‘developing country’ on global rankings that measure democracy, inequality.” She points to the United Nations Office of Sustainable Development measure of 17 factors, where the U.S. has dropped from 32nd to 41st worldwide, placing the U.S. next to Bulgaria. Countries that continue to rank at the top are Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austria and Germany. While we still consider ourselves to be a rich and “developed” country, we have now sunk to a level with countries that are considered “developing countries.”
Frydl also notes how The Economist’s Democracy Index 2021 has moved the U.S. down to the level of “flawed democracy.” Again, Norway, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, etc. lead the 21 countries in the full democracy levels. The U.S. is 26th and in the second group of countries facing serious challenges to their governance.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development uses the Gini coefficient, a calculation based on income equality within a nation, with ‘zero’ being equal incomes and ‘one’ reflecting unequal incomes. The U.S. ranks 35th between Lithuania and Bulgaria with a score of 0.49. The U.S. was at 0.43 in 1990, so we have seen an increase in income inequality in the last 30 years. Norway, Finland and Sweden again rank in the top ten for income equality.
Many European students who attend U.S. universities come from countries where everyone gets health care. They are puzzled by our unwillingness to provide health care for all Americans. International college students arrive to find much lower standards of living than they had assumed from world media.
The Alliance of Democracies Foundation commissioned the Latana polling company to conduct a survey of 50,000 individuals from 53 major countries during February through April of 2021. 44 percent of those surveyed viewed the U.S. as a threat to their democracy. Only 38 percent feared Chinese influence and only 28 percent expressed a fear of Russia. When The Guardian newspaper summarized these results, this large percentage who think the U.S. is a bigger threat to democracy in their country took many by surprise. This perception of America as a threat to democracy has been increasing, with the greatest increases seen in Germany and to a lesser extent in China. European democracies are also generally negative about the United States. “The biggest perceived threat to democracy isn’t foreign election interference, Russian influence, or the power of Big Tech—it’s economic inequality.”
When asked about having the right amount of democracy, the citizens of Taiwan, South Korea and China topped the list! To Americans, the Democracy Perception Index 2021 data released was a surprise. South Korea and Taiwan are recognized as having forms of democracy, but mainland Chinese also think that they also have the “right amount” of democracy.
In these last weeks we have seen the rapid turnover in British prime ministers without any election, the Italians install their most far right leader since World War II, and the Israelis hold their fifth election in four years. To many Asian cultures, the constant chaos and redirection of these forms of Western democracy are problematic. They want stability, not continuous change.
So when we again watch the re-run of It’s a Wonderful Life, we might consider whether the future of the U.S. under our newly scrambled leadership will follow (Jimmy Stewart’s) George Bailey. —Or will we eventually move to the slums of Potterville?
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Readers can access The Democracy Perception Index online here.
The Economist’s Democracy Index 2021 is here.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities during 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.