A question for Americans and supporters of the USA's policies & practices? Do you find these stats frightening?

Here is a sample of factlets from surveys and studies conducted in the past twenty years.

Seventy percent of Americans believe in the existence of angels.

Fifty percent believe that the earth has been visited by UFOs; and oddly 70 percent believed that the U.S. government is covering up the presence of space aliens on earth.

Forty percent did not know whom the U.S. fought in World War II.

Forty percent could not locate Japan on a world map.

Fifteen percent could not locate the United States on a world map.

Sixty percent of Americans have not read a book since leaving school.

Only 6 percent now read even one book a year.

The average American’s day includes six minutes playing sports, five minutes reading books, one minute making music, 30 seconds attending a play or concert, 25 seconds making or viewing art, and four hours watching television.

Among high-school seniors surveyed in the late 1990s:

* Fifty percent had not heard of the Cold War.

* Sixty percent could not say how the United States came into existence.

* Fifty percent did not know in which century the Civil War occurred.

* Sixty percent could name each of the Three Stooges but not the three branches of the U.S. government. * Sixty percent could not comprehend an editorial in a national or local newspaper.

It may be germane to note that those students would now all be of voting age. The first lot of stats quoted were the results of surveys taken by people over 18.

Of the 20 advanced democracies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. has

the highest poverty rate, for both adults and children;

the lowest rate of social mobility;

* the lowest score on UN indexes of child welfare and gender inequality;

* the highest ratio of health care expenditure to GDP, combined with the lowest life expectancy and the highest rates of infant mortality, mental illness, obesity, inability to afford health care, and personal bankruptcy resulting from medical expenses;

* the highest homicide rate; and the highest incarceration rate.

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/how-bad-is-it/

BQ: Does a nation which boasts stats like this have any real moral authority to be telling other countries that they ought to re-organise their social, political and economic policies to fall into line with what the USA practices at home?