U.S. rated 9th most prosperous nation....9th?????

U.S. has been ranked the 9th most prosperous nation behind a dominant performance by Northern Europe as Finland was ranked 1st, Sweden 3rd, Denmark 4th, and Norway 5th.

Now there are typically two reactions to something like this. The first reaction is, with our current economic, political, and health situation, we are lucky to be ranked that high, while others think, what the heck do those countries have that we don't?

In order to completely understand these findings, we must first understand what is the definition of prosperity according to the 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index. "The Index identified nine key factors that drive economic growth and personal well being, which are foundations of prosperity. Each of these nine factors is represented in a sub-index and a country's final Prosperity Index ranking is generated by averaging its scores across all nine sub-indexes, equally weighted," according to prnewswire.com.

One of the major positives that did come out of this ranking was our ranking as the most innovative countries in the world. Even with our struggling economy, "The U.S. ranks 1st in the world in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and 2nd in the world in the strength of Democratic Institutions." (prnewswire.com) we also did well by being ranked 7th globally in Education and Social Capital.

Now your question may be, "If we did so well in that area, what could have possibly brought us down?" The answer to that question is, health care. The U.S. ranked 27th! According to the Index, "Dissatisfaction with their overall health is dragging down Americans' sense of well-being, affecting their determination to get ahead and their faith in their health care system." This is a very big concern. Anytime you hear someone complaining about how the congress is spending so much time on health care, you can show them that statistic. It is a major issue that is holding back our entire well-being.

Other downfalls for the U.S. were as follows:
"Ranking 19th globally, safety and security is another relative weakness of the U.S. Lower
scores are driven by the large number of people in the US who feel they live in unsafe
places, coupled with a high per capita murder rate relative to other developed nations.
The U.S. ranks 16th globally on Governance, indicating that Americans believe that there
is too much corruption in their government and sometimes doubt the honest of elections.
The United States' laws and regulations are generally seen to foster economic growth, but
government's negative effects pull down its citizens' quality of life."

These are definitely issues that our country needs to work on. All citizens of our country should feel safe, and we should all be able to have full confidence in our voting system. There is reason to worry though. The 2000 Presidential Election was probably the largest reason for uncertainty in the voting system. Nobody understood how someone could obtain the most votes yet not win the election. It did not make sense and exposed a large flaw in the voting system.

We are continuously working to become a safer nation, but it is becoming more and more difficult with the advancements in technology. Finally, on the health care issue. One thing that seems to be a commonality between the top nations is a thing called, universal health care. Although some may be against it, it is working in numerous countries throughout the world, and it is about time that the U.S. steps up their game. We all need to learn from this ranking and make the U.S. a more prosperous place to live.