Like millions of you, I spent many hours in the past month watching the World Cup. As usual, I was pulling for Uruguay, a place I\u2019ve never visited but have admired for being the first South American country to legalize same-sex marriage, marijuana, abortion, and to outlaw salt shakers from being placed on restaurant tables in their capital, Montevideo. (<\/span>Salt kills more people<\/a> than <\/span>salmonella<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n Yes, it was humiliating for the U.S. to be eliminated by perhaps the most boring country on Earth, Belgium. If America <\/span>has <\/em>to lose, I want us to be ripped to shreds by Wales or Vietnam or Greenland.<\/span><\/p>\n But here\u2019s the thing I couldn\u2019t stop thinking about while I watched our team walk off that field in defeat.<\/p>\n Sure, the rest of the world has been playing this game for a century or two! Of course they\u2019re better than us! But there\u2019s another competition that never gets a broadcast slot. It has no halftime show, no hydration break, no fake flopping where they pretend to be injured! In this other competition we\u2019re often # 1 in the world \u2014 or we\u2019re the best at being the worst. Either way, we\u2019re the team that sets the bar!<\/p>\n This other game is called \u201cThe World Cup of Democracy\u201d where only <\/span>true <\/em>Democracies can play. A special dispensation had to be granted to the U.S. for us to be included. In order to be declared a real \u201cDemocracy\u201d your nation\u2019s leader has to be elected by its citizens, not an \u201cElectoral College.\u201d Also, voting districts must not be gerrymandered. A \u201cDemocracy\u201d cannot occupy other people\u2019s land, nor can it be a theocracy. <\/span><\/p>\n The World Cup of Democracy allows these countries to compete against each other to discover which are the the best nations on Earth \u2014 the measure of which is determined by how well each one takes care of its own people and how well it treats the rest of the planet. Do mothers control their own reproductive health? Do their kids get enough healthy food to eat? Are their kids given a chance to go to college or learn a trade even if they lack the funds? Or, are they forced to live in a virtual debtor\u2019s prison for simply wanting that education or training? How fair and equitable is your nation? How much do the wealthy call all the shots?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s see how we each stack up in this new World Cup competition where, when it comes to freedom, human rights, equality, and making sure everyone has a seat at the table and a slice of the pie, that nation ranks among the best. <\/p>\n And to keep this fair, we are comparing only <\/span>Democracies <\/em>where people vote, the press prints what it believes to be truth and the government still manages to function, delivering all of life\u2019s necessities.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Ah! The American Dream! The house, the yard, the dog. About 65% of us in the U.S. own our homes. And that puts us at No. 12 among the Democracies playing in this World Cup.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s <\/span>way<\/em> behind Croatia, where roughly 91% of the people own their own homes. When Croatia declared independence after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the government didn\u2019t hand millions of state-owned apartments over to Wall Street or big real estate investors. Instead, it let the people already living in those homes buy them at steep discounts. The result? One of the highest homeownership rates in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n Norway isn\u2019t far behind, with about 80% homeownership. For decades the country\u2019s oil wealth has pumped millions into programs that actually help their citizens buy their own homes and make it actually possible for young first-time buyers to achieve their goal for practically nothing!<\/p>\n Maybe the American Dream isn\u2019t disappearing. It\u2019s just become easier to find it somewhere else.<\/p>\n (Sources: <\/span>OECD country report<\/a>, <\/span>OECD Croatia report<\/a>, <\/span>U.S. Census Bureau Home Ownership Stats<\/a>)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n The <\/span>relative poverty rate in the United States is around 18%<\/a> \u2014 the highest among the democracies competing in the 2026 World Cup.<\/span><\/p>\n More than one in six Americans live in relative poverty.<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s roughly more than <\/span>twice<\/strong> the poverty rate in Belgium, Norway, France and the Netherlands.<\/span><\/p>\n Maybe winning the race to create the most billionaires isn\u2019t worth it if what you\u2019re really doing is trying to win the competition of how many of your neighbors you can leave behind.<\/p>\n Clearly, if the <\/span>U.S. can make Elon Musk the world\u2019s first trillionaire<\/a>, there\u2019s enough money to go around to ensure no American has to endure living in poverty.<\/span><\/p>\n (Sources: <\/span>Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development<\/a> (OECD), <\/span>Confronting Poverty \u201cFacts and Myths About America\u2019s Poor<\/a>,\u201d <\/span>Forbes<\/a>)<\/span> <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n What makes the poverty rate worse for us? ALL of the other Democracies playing in the World Cup have universal or near universal health-care coverage.<\/p>\n But wait, what about the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? Even with the ACA, roughly 26 million Americans remain uninsured. Without it, the uninsured population could potentially swell to nearly 60 million people!<\/p>\n Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared health care to be a human right in 1944. Eighty years later, the country that split the atom and put 12 humans on the moon still can\u2019t manage what Uruguay figured out with three million people and a whole lot of cows.<\/span><\/p>\n (<\/span>Sources: <\/span>Congressional Budget Office<\/a>, <\/span>OECD<\/a>, <\/span>World Health Organization<\/a>, <\/span>U.S. Census Bureau<\/a>, <\/span>Health & Human Services<\/a>, <\/span>Social Security Administration<\/a>, <\/span>Physicians for a National Health Program<\/a>, <\/span>Public Broadcasting Service<\/a><\/em>)<\/span><\/p>\n Average public university tuition in the U.S. runs around $11,000 a year. That\u2019s before room, board, books, and the debt that follows you like <\/span>a bad \u201cTwilight\u201d tattoo<\/span><\/a>. In Norway, Germany and Austria, public college is essentially free. <\/span>Free<\/span><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s give college credit where it\u2019s due. In France, undergraduate tuition is $200 a year or less. In Sweden, Scotland, Croatia, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, post secondary education is essentially free once you pay administrative fees. <\/p>\n How did that happen? These countries looked at higher education and said, \u201cWhat if we just let our young people <\/span>have it<\/span><\/em>?\u201d Radical concept, right? Never could happen in the U.S.? (Wait for an upcoming Substack. We\u2019ve already done it, starting in Kalamazoo and in more than 300 cities and states across America.)<\/span><\/p>\n (<\/span>Sources: <\/span>OECD<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>U.S. Department of Education\/National Center for Education Statistics<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>College Board: Trends in College Pricing 2025<\/span><\/a><\/em>)<\/span> <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s not just the number, but the <\/span>rate <\/em>at which we put people away. <\/span><\/p>\n We lock up around <\/span>540 of every 100,000 people<\/a>, the highest rate among the democracies that played in this World Cup. That\u2019s five times Canada\u2019s rate, eight times Germany\u2019s and nearly 10 times Norway\u2019s. We call ourselves the land of the free but apparently, some restrictions apply.<\/span><\/p>\n The clear winner in this round? Japan: about 33 out of 100,000 people. We imprison our own people at roughly <\/span>16 times<\/strong> the rate of this fellow democracy. Japan has more than one-third of America\u2019s population squeezed into a country smaller than California, yet somehow they don\u2019t need to lock up their neighbors at anything remotely close to the rate we do.<\/span><\/p>\n We have only about 4% of the world\u2019s population, but around 20% of the world\u2019s incarcerated people. Anyone else want to join me in a chant of USA! USA! USA!<\/span> (<\/span>Sources: <\/span>World Prison Brief<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> Bureau of Justice Statistics<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>OpenCrime.us<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n I want to slow down for the next two, because they\u2019re not statistics to me, and they shouldn\u2019t be to you, either. These are real people. In the 1950s, a dear friend\u2019s mother had a job in Lansing typing up the state\u2019s maternal and infant mortality reports. Number after number, hospital after hospital. She never forgot that each one was a family\u2019s worst day.<\/p>\n This sad statistic measures how many babies, out of every 1,000 born alive, die before their first birthday.<\/p>\n In the United States, that number is around 6.<\/span> Sit with that.<\/p>\n A baby born in this country is roughly three times more likely to die before her first birthday than one born in Oslo or Kyoto.<\/p>\n Unless you\u2019re African American, then it\u2019s double the already dismal national rate, at 11 out of 1,000.<\/p>\n Same species, same century, but wildly different odds, decided by nothing other than where the stork landed.<\/p>\n This is how many mothers out of every 100,000 end up dying from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth, whether it\u2019s while she\u2019s carrying the baby, in the delivery room or up to six weeks after delivery.<\/p>\n In America, that number is 18.<\/span> Read that again.<\/span><\/p>\n This means an American woman is roughly 10 times more likely to die bringing a child into this world than a Norwegian woman. In the richest country in the history of countries.<\/p>\n Then you pull out the rate for African American women in the U.S., and it\u2019s so much worse: 44 to 50, depending on the year and whose numbers you use.<\/p>\n One of the truest measures of a country\u2019s success isn\u2019t in the strength of its stock market or the might of its military, or even whether its team wins the World Cup. It\u2019s whether mothers and children live. In other words: how well does a nation take care of the people who are the most vulnerable?<\/p>\n This is not a talent gap. This is not \u201cthe rest of the world has been playing longer.\u201d This is a choice we keep making, election after election, budget after budget.<\/p>\n (<\/span>Sources for maternal and infant mortality: <\/span>World Health Organization\/UNICEF<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>CDC<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>National Center for Health Statistics<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>OECD<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>NCBI<\/span><\/a><\/em>)<\/span><\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t sad on July 6th because we lost a game in the FIFA World Cup. C\u2019mon, we lost to Belgium, a country with world-class players and, I\u2019ll note, universal healthcare. No disgrace. Our players fought. Tillman\u2019s free kick was a thing of beauty. We\u2019ll be back in 2030.<\/p>\n I was sad because I know what we as Americans are capable of doing for one another. This is the country that built the interstate highways and invented the weekend. When we decide something matters, we know the good we can do.<\/p>\n Every one of the above countries is a democracy, just like us. Which means every one of the results I cited came from ordinary people recognizing what they need and want, demanding it and then voting out the people who wouldn\u2019t give it to them to bring in the people who would.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the good news buried in this dismal scoreboard: in a democracy, the fans get to pick the team.<\/p>\n I watched the final games last weekend. I know the half-time show was controversial but seeing Madonna, the Muppets and a rainbow of children from a local public school sing about love made me think our country becoming competitive in <\/span>these <\/em>stats <\/span>can <\/em>and <\/span>should <\/em>be more than a dream. Let\u2019s start training for the games that decide whether babies live, whether kids graduate free of debt, and a future in which getting sick doesn\u2019t cost you everything.<\/span><\/p>\n Isn\u2019t it time to change that?<\/p>\n Yours in defeat (temporarily),<\/span><\/p>\n Michael<\/span><\/p>\n P.S. I put my film, \u201cSicko,\u201d about the unequal health care system in America on YouTube. Watch it here for free. <\/p>\n![\"aerial](\"https:\/\/images.unsplash.com\/photo-1549861833-372c82ca6c92?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHw1N3x8aG9tZXMlMjBtb2Rlc3QlMjBob3Jpem9udGFsfGVufDB8fHx8MTc4NDI2MjA4Nnww&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080 "\\"aerial")
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Infant mortality<\/strong><\/h5>\n
In both Norway and Japan, it\u2019s less than 2.<\/span><\/p>\nMaternal mortality<\/strong><\/h5>\n
In Norway, it\u2019s 1.5.<\/span><\/p>\n