The US Fails Its Working Parents Across the Board – Infographic

We’re # 1 ?  Nah, How about # 18!

Take a careful look at this powerful Infographic  and what it says about  the United States of America’s SUPPORT of WORKING FAMILIES — and Working Women.   Infographic by Alissa Scheller for The Huffington Post.

If the US is the most powerful economy in the world, this embarrassingly pathetic ranking raises disturbing questions on so many levels.  While we’re not at Third World standards, the US hardly qualifies as a true FIRST World nation in its treatment of our Working Families. Sadly,#18 is more like Second World.

I’m reminded of two quotes from the Scientific America article we posted last week on the Guild’s Facebook page  “Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think: The great divide between our beliefs, our ideals, and reality” By Nicholas Fitz.  Salon.com reviewed Fitz’ article in a piece accurately titled: “The American people are clueless: Why income inequality is so much worse than we realize – A wealth of new research confirms the rich and the poor have no idea how good and how bad the other have it.”   

1)  In Fitz’s article, journalist Chrystia Freeland notes that our perceptions of American workers treatment vs. the rest of the world is highly distorted. As she puts it,  “Americans actually live in Russia, although they think they live in Sweden. And they would like to live on a kibbutz.”  As this chart shows, we’re a heck of way off from Sweden or a kibbutz.

2)  A second one-sentence quote from Fitz’ article that rang frighteningly true was that as Americans:”Our unique brand of optimism prevents us from making any real changes.” Optimism is good. Delusion is bad.  American’s epic lack of accurate knowledge and  awareness about just how out-of-whack the exact dollars & cents realities of economic inequality is central their distracted inertia.   And if that doesn’t change somehow, we’re doomed–and we’ll ruin the futures of our youngsters coming up..

WomenWorkforce2 Infographic