An Analysis of Freedom and Well-Being In AmericaDave Hodges On the surface, we appear to have a lot to celebrate. Before every sporting event, the National Anthem is played. Before public meetings and before most schools commence their daily instruction,the Pledge of Allegiance is frequently recited. On the surface, Americans appear to have much to be thankful for with regard to the degree of freedom and the amount of opportunities available to us. However, the data tells a much different story. The United States is a nation in severe decline. Anxiety Levels According to a presentation offered at the IFPE Congress in Vienna, Austria on April 18, 2009, on the results of World Health Organizations World Mental Health Survey, 19% of studied Americans experienced a clinical anxiety disorder in the previous twelve-month period, which pushes the United States into a ranking of first place in this category. What do Americans have to be so nervous about? At least part of the answer which explains why Americans have such a high degree of clinical anxiety is contained in the following paragraphs as it is undeniably stressful living in America under the present set of conditions. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index 2011, the United States is tied with Romania for forty-ninth in civil liberties. Several countries such as Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Norway are tied for first. Obama, the Drone Ranger Secretly disappearing people under the NDAA, executing three American citizens with drones, and unbridled Fourth Amendment violating spy activities will put a county on par with Romania with regard to civil liberties. We have also lost Habeus Corpus and we are losing our free speech rights to the United Nations as well as every form of due process that we once cherished under our Constitution. And if you dont like the unfolding criminal enterprise system which suddenly appeared before our collective eyes, the bankers have rolled out a technocratic police state which would make Stalin and Hitler envious. Both the police state and impending martial law are bolstered by the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has purchased 1.6 billion rounds, oops, make that 2.2 billion rounds of high tech bullets engraved with the names of citizens who dare to oppose this tyranny. Can one only imagine how far Americas civil liberties rating would have fallen if Obamacares most dastardly provisions were known to the pollsters? When Obamacare kicks in over the next 9 months, American will soon learn that they have lost their parenting rights. Under Obamacare, thanks to an United Nations document which now constitutes the mainstay guidelines of all 50 state CPS field manuals, parents will soon lose custody of their child if they are a gun owner, have beer in the home, if their child gets a bad grade, if their child gets sick and misses five days of school in any one 30-day period, or if their parents have dangerous ideas. CPS will soon have the right to enter your home without a warrant in order to search for ways to remove your children from your custody. Business Freedom The United States comes in at 13th in business freedom. One has to wonder how much this ranking will slip when Obamacare is instituted complete with the death panel provisions, forced birth control and death-causing, age-related mandatory exclusions which robs every American of free economic choice. Short of any FEMA camp deportations, Obamacare will make America a very undesirable place to live, and provide the best excuse to leave our country! Economic Outlook There are many figures which illustrate why Americans are justified in being so bearish on the American economy. However, when we can point to the fact that the average citizen in India andChina can accurately state that they think that it is a good time to find a job is 40% and 36%, respectively, yet, in the U.S. and U.K., those percentages are, respectively, 26% and 12%, it speaks to the abysmal set of financial conditions in the United States. Of course, when Hank Paulson and Goldman Sachs boys, on behalf of the bankers, are stealing our money in something that as innocuously called the Bailouts, with no end in sight, it is easy to see why Americans are pessimistic. Couple the bailouts with the theft of segregated accounts of MF Global and the fact that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that when you deposit your money into the bank, the bank owns your money. It is easy to understand why Americans are losing faith in their system at the speed of freefall. Freedom of the Press One would think that the First Amendment to the Constitution would protect the freedom of the press. There was a recent time when the United States was previously ranked 20th in the freedom of the press, but the US has fallen 27 places to the 49th place. One of the reasons listed for the decline are the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests. Certainly, the Occupy Wall Street arrests had a lot to do with the slippage. The US is now ranked lower then most western European countries including Finland, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, UK, France, Spain, etc. One of the many things the Occupy Movement has done is help focus more attention on the aggressive militarization of basic law enforcement in the United States. And thats been combined with police efforts to prevent both professional and amateur reporters from covering the story. Amber Lyon, former CNN award winning journalist, left the network because she was disgusted by the fact that the government paid hush money to CNN to not cover stories and also paid money to the compromised network to make up stories. I can remember when in the 1990s many were unhappy that the number of corporations which owned the lions share of the media had shrunk from 150 to 50 due to deregulation under President Bill Clinton. Today, five corporations own 95% percent of our media. One cannot, with any degree of confidence, believe a word coming out of the mouth any newscaster or their network. Can one imagine how far the freedom of the press ratings would have fallen if the murders of Andrew Breitbart and Michael Hastings were taken into a account? Education The Education Policy Institute assessed the affordability of higher education costs and found that the United States ranks 13th in higher education affordability. To those who think your children can borrow their way to a degree, think again. Todays U.S. college loan practices, which serves to underwrite much of the cost of a college education, are the most predatory in the world. As of last year, bankruptcy cannot cancelout a student loan debt, and delinquent college students can now go to jail for nonpayment. In fact, several federal agencies have even SWAT teamed many delinquent student loan defaulters. Nowhere else in the world can we find evidence of these types of predatory practices being used against college students as we do here in the United States. IT Compensation Even if young adults obtain their degree, those who are degreed and/or skilled in fields such as engineering or information technology skills, are really wasting their time working in the United States. Eight of the worlds ten highest-paying countries for information technology (IT) managers are in Western Europe, according to a new survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. The survey found that Swiss managers are paid the most, followed by those in Germany and Denmark. In fact, IT management is another field where U.S. workers fail to crack the top ten in income, the United States ranks 14th in IT management compensation. Even debt-ridden Spain, Italy and Greece pay their IT managers more than what Americans earn on average. Salary Compensation America was once thought of as the land of opportunity. The truth is that America should be labeled the land of declining opportunity. First and foremost, Americans no longer live in the highest salary paying country in the world. In fact, the United States does not even crack the top ten list of the highest salary paying countries on the planet in which Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Japan, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom round out the top ten and pay their workers more than workers in the United States. In fact, the United States only ranks 20th in terms of overall gross pay! One would be very naive to call America the land of opportunity. Instead, America is the land of predatory corporations and banks which have hijacked our government for their own benefit at the expense of the American people. Health Care Our education is substandard, our earning power is substandard, our tax rates are exorbitant and we increasingly live in a rapidly emerging police state. But at least we have our health. Unfortunately, that is not quite true, as the United States spends more than the next 12 nations for health care. However, it seems as if we are spending more and enjoying it less as, despite our exorbitant spending on health care, the United States ranks 51st in the world in life expectancy. Cuba, Puerto Rico and Spain have higher life expectancies than the United States. Americans live in the only country in the world where its citizens cannot bargain shop for its medicines in foreign countries because the pharmaceuticals have convinced Congress to establish apharmaceutical monopoly over U.S. citizens. Voiceover talent, Jonathan Lockwood is in the process of relocating to San Miguel, Mexico. Mr. Lockwood will be able to purchase INTERNATIONAL health insurance for $150 per month. In the United States, international health care insurance is not permitted by the criminal government who is maintaining a mafia-type protection racket for the managed health care companies. Perhaps Lockwood would be fortunate enough to not experience death by doctor that has increased to 225,000 patients deaths per year due to gross negligence. And with Obamacare death panels looming on the near horizon, things can only get worse. You Cant Run and You Cant Hide When you have decided you have had enough and try and leave America, your will be assessed a 15% exit fee by governmental mafia. Yes, that is correct, you are penalized for exercising the privilege to leave the country. Do you remember as children that we were taught to make fun of the Soviet Union for building fences to keep their citizens in? By the way, Russia has a flat 13% tax rate. And of course, if you relocate, you must now pay taxes to your new country as well as the United States, thus making the citizens of the United States the only people in the world that have to pay income tax to more than one country. The new immigration bill contains Iron Curtain provisions in it, in which it is exceedingly difficult for American to emigrate. This fact is easy to understand when we finally comprehend the fact that the bankers running this country desire to turn all of us into their own personal slaves similar to how they treat Walmart slave laborers in China and Reeboks exploitation of child laborers in which they work for pennies per hour under horrible conditions. America Happiness Levels The United States is a nation in decline. Last year the US came in 10th place in the annual rankings of Worlds Happiest Countries. This year the America has has fallen to 12th. And this is in a country which historically believed that the next generation would do better than their parents. That is certainly no longer the case. This marks the first time in the history of the Legatum Institutes Prosperity Index that America has not placed in the top ten. In the period from 1968 to 2008, thesuicide rate in America rose 308% for people aged 15 to 24. It is clear that our children do not want to live in the New World Order. No Mr. Bush, the world does not hate us because we have freedom. The world hates America because our government is murdering millions of innocent people and depriving millions more of their freedom much in the same manner as are depriving freedom of American citizens in our own country. The moral depravity of our leaders knows no bounds and this is why the world hates America. America has been conquered by the central bankers. Our country is being carved up and distributed among these bankers before the coming planned collapse. Only the most ardent Kool-Aid drinkers could believe that this country has very much worth saving. Even if the bankers could all be rounded up and neutralized, America is beyond saving because it has become so morally bankrupt. The American people have given all they have left to give. We are a defeated nation, as the central bankers have destroyed the will of the majority to fight for their lives. There are spiritual solutions which might serve to head off the coming holocaust, but very few people want to hear about that. Instead, too many of us keep looking for that magic bullet physical solution and it does not exist. There is a price to pay for a nation that has aborted over 50 million babies, practices mass murder in countries that we illegally occupy and has turned its back on God in such a dramatic fashion. There are indeed spiritual solutions that we could enact which could turn this country around, but very few of Americans want to read about this prescription for national health. Therefore, we will continue to be a nation under judgment as we continue to pay the price for our bad decisions. Dave is an award winning psychology, statistics and research professor, a college basketball coach, a mental health counselor, a political activist and writer who has published dozens of editorials and articles in several publications such as Freedoms Phoenix, News With Viewsand The Arizona Republic. The Common Sense Show features a wide variety of important topics that range from the loss of constitutional liberties, to the subsequent implementation of a police state under world governance, to exploring the limits of human potential. The primary purpose of The Common Sense Show is to provide Americans with the tools necessary to reclaim both our individual and national sovereignty. 