The status quo among people living in the developed nations, around 2000 AD

(latest update of this section on or about 2-18-2002)

_________by J.R. Mooneyham_________
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Back to the Signposts Timeline Prologue: 1990 AD-Present

A summary of the past century would include the following major trends in most developed nations: The gap between rich and poor continued to widen; the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. However, as the developed nations typically possessed fairer and generally more democratic political systems, plus more mature economies compared to other states, this has enabled a growing pool of middle-class citizens since 1900. Technological advances made around 1900 or before like AC electricity, the automobile, airplane, electric light, and telephone have all become accessible and/or significant to the average consumer in one way or another. Others made prior to 1950 have also become a part of daily life for most, such as antibiotics, radio, TV, and computers. More recent breakthroughs, such as the internet, have penetrated up to 50% of households in nations like USAmerica by 2000.

In late 1999 USAmerican unemployment was below 5% and low paying jobs were often going unfilled. Those applicants which did show up were often largely unwilling, unskilled, or burdened with a criminal past.

On the flip side of the coin, consumers were beginning to notice inadequate or wholly absent services from some businesses as one consequence of the tight labor market, making for long waiting lines and lots of glitches in daily life.

A lack of basic computer skills marred the employability of many of the poor.

In 1997 95% of USAmericans claimed a belief in God; 46% labeled themselves as "born again"; 76% believed they would go to heaven after death

Over 50% of USAmerican adults were online by late 1999, but usually couldn't find what they were looking for on the net. Of the 50% still off-line, most insist they don't want net access. It appears that the net will not match TVs and telephones in penetration of households until around 2025 at the earliest.

People searching the internet for specific information couldn't find it around 64% of the time. When they did find it however, there's was about a 75% chance the information was correct (more often true and accurate than not).

More specifically, in tests performed with the Alta Vista search engine (http://www.altavista.com), correct answers were delivered in 27% of cases, wrong answers in 9%, and no answer at all in 64% (due to dead links, or irrelevant results).

As a result of their findings the researchers advised users to not limit themselves merely to the internet in their search for information, but to use off-line sources to verify any information taken from the web, where possible. To scrutinize the sources of the information; are they well-established, known quantities, or obscure entities whose existence and veracity cannot be confirmed through readily available channels? Web sites which listed their own references for information, as well as the credentials for those and the person(s) editing the information which appears on-site, are more easily verifiable and so more likely to be trustworthy.

Other sources said net searchers in 1999 found the specific information they sought only 15% of the time.

Our memories and understanding of news events garnered from the internet are usually more accurate than the same items stemming from TV viewing. Although the passive nature of TV means viewers are more easily distracted compared to the net (thus lessening recall and comprehension accuracy that way), it appears that video footage in general makes a greater impact on viewers emotionally, and TV often further sensationalizes events via other methods too, leaving the viewer with an often warped and highly subjective impression as to what actually transpired. By comparison, most news on the net is accessed via less emotionally charged means, such as reading of text (note that video news will become more plentiful on the net over the next ten years due to the wider availability of broadband connections).

In 1999, computer-related problems were costing $100 billion a year in lost productivity in USAmerica alone-- and the toll appeared to be rising

Five percent of desktop PCs bought since 1995 were dead on arrival

22% of all computers fail each year; 25% of notebook computers used in corporations do so

Over 21 million USAmerican professionals were working at home at least part-time in regards to their primary means of employment, in 1999

The increasing physical inactivity of USAmericans is raising their risk of chronic disease and costing the nation $1 trillion a year in the healthcare field

As of 2000 regular physical exercise is virtually the only practical way for many USAmericans to reduce their risk of chronic disease.

20% of children in the USA live in poverty. At least five to ten percent of Americans feel insecure in regards to obtaining enough food for themselves and family

Roughly four million children and teenagers are legally employed in USAmerica, with up to another two million illegally so. A significant number of these are exposed to toxic substances on the job.

Perhaps as much as half of modern humanity is suffering a decline in intelligence due to environmental pollution, malnutrition, social pressures, and other problems. Half of all cancer cases also seem to stem from toxins in the environment. Some 40% of people in the developed nations look likely to be struck by cancer sometime during their lives

Man-made poisons in the environment, as well as the loss of certain critical micro-nutrients in the soils producing the world's food, may be reducing the intelligence of millions (or even billions) around the globe. Worse still, our lack of an integrated research effort into these areas leaves us with almost no means to accurately gauge the damage.

A third of USAmericans are getting insufficient sleep. This is making them more prone to illness, injury, and causing accidents which hurt others as well as themselves. It's lowering their effective daily intelligence and learning capacities (and thereby perhaps even making them more prone to crime, or at least lowering their legal income potential), and shortening their lives. It's costing the nation at least $150 billion a year in lost productivity.

Perhaps more than half of all children and teenagers circa 2000 (especially in the developed nations) are being shaped intellectually and psychologically by a lifelong saturation in a media environment which often gives the same weight to pure opinion as it does to scientific or historic fact, and encourages self-gratification, obsession, addiction, violence, exclusivity, division, greed, paranoia, and acting on impulse.

In developed nations like the USA, many corporations are exploiting the way TV, radio, videos, games, and the internet have become defacto babysitters of many children due to the frequent absence or inattention of parents stemming from both often working and being otherwise time-pressed, to use the latest child psychology information available in state-of-the-art multimedia to seduce children via violence, addictive mental hooks, and gaudy sensuality into shrill harassment of parents for the purchase of various products/services the corporations are pushing. This is leading to more than 50% of parents admittedly buying items for their children which they themselves disapprove of, but feel compelled to buy to avoid disappointing their children.

This ongoing virtual child abuse appears to be desensitizing children to violence and its results in general, perhaps leading to some of them later on inflicting great tragedies upon themselves and others as teens or adults. In short, this corporate abuse of children today may be leading, at worst, to a new 'lost' generation of violent criminals tomorrow. Or, at best, to a future generation of adults who themselves may become poor excuses for individual human beings-- and even worse parents.

The Center for a New American Dream is one group formed to combat this phenomena.

Over a matter of decades USAmerican audiences have become more and more entranced by violence in entertainment media, resulting in the production of ever more violent TV shows, films, and other media, in an ever-reinforcing spiral. This desensitization to violence has also affected children.

Rural 8th-graders in USAmerica are more likely than their urban counterparts to use the drugs listed below (the accompanying percentages show the difference in likelihood for each drug, respectively):

* drugs like amphetamines, 104% more likely

* cocaine, 50% more likely

* crack cocaine, 83% more likely

* marijuana, 34% more likely

* alcohol, 29% more likely

* become drunk via alcohol, 70% more likely

* cigarrettes, 200% more likely

* smokeless tobacco, 500% more likely

In 1996 the pregnancy rate in USAmerica was the lowest in 20 years. Pregnancy among teenagers had declined 15% since 1991.

Still, the teen pregnancy rate in USAmerica is several times higher than most other developed nations, and more like that of Russia and eastern europe.

One estimate is that one million people (including men, women, and children) a year (circa 2000 AD) suffer some form of forced sexual intercourse (or attempts for same)...the article doesn't give the geographical scope of the estimate, but I assume it pertains to the USA alone.

On the other hand, the same children being perhaps so largely shaped by modern media in the developed nations and elsewhere are also often enjoying rising intelligence quotients in certain fields of endeavor. An average rise in IQ of roughly three points every 10 years has taken place in Americans and citizens of other developed nations since the 1920s

It seems that much of the IQ gains in these countries between 1900 and 1950 might be explained via across-the-board improvements in health, nutrition, and education. However, IQ gains after 1950 would seem to come mostly from other factors-- such as television, films, and video games. Supporting evidence for this is that recent IQ gains come mostly in visual challenges and creativity, rather than the math, facts, and vocabulary type subjects covered in schools.

One of the largest recent increases in IQ occured in the early 1970s among children aged 3-5-- about the same time Sesame Street and similar programming first began airing.

Not all scientists agree that the populace as a whole in these nations is getting smarter. Instead, they may only be increasing in general test-preparedness rather than real intelligence. For example, puzzles of various sorts abound in modern society, in places from newspapers to coloring books to place mats at fast food eateries.

Whatever the truth of the matter, it appears that contemporary folk can often cope with more complexity than their peers of decades past-- and more often get the opportunity to exercise that ability than their predecessors did, as well.

10-12% of all grocery items bought by Americans are unneeded, and never used

The death rate in USAmerica hit a record low in 1998, though infant mortality remained about twice as high as that of countries like Sweden and Japan

However, USAmerican infant mortality still ranks almost twice as high as other developed nations like Sweden and Japan.

In 1997 USAmerica suffered about 19,000 murders and 30,000 suicides. Roughly 500,000 attempt suicide annually but fail. White males 65 or older make up 20% of the suicide attempts overall, while twice as many children 10-14 years old are making the attempt annually, compared to 1980.

Workers among USAmerican electric utilities suffer a 50%-100% increased suicide rate compared to other utility employees, possibly due to prolonged exposure to electro-magnetic fields causing hormonal imbalances.

In 1999 5-year survival rates for all cancers among USAmericans hovered around 60%, compared to 51% in the early 80s.

Physically demanding jobs lead to a death rate from all causes twice as high as other employment, among men. The most frequent cause of death here appears to be traffic accidents, or other violent means. It's believed physical fatigue is the cause of the higher accidental death rate.

By contrast, recreational physical exertions reduce the risk of death.

Something under 100,000 elderly in USAmerica die each year simply from breathing too many tiny particles of air pollution. The particles are hazardous to younger and stronger people too.

Only somewhere between 1% and 3% of people in medical distress who receive CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) ever recover sufficiently to walk or perform many other normal activities again. By far the majority die

5% of USAmerican adults are dependent on alcohol and/or abuse it. Another 20% are prone to at least occasional abuse of alcohol, and thus pose various risks to themselves and others by way of accidents

[The article cited below did not clearly state the regional scope involved in some of their statistics; however, based on various indirect clues I am assuming the information given above does indeed relate specifically to the American population.]

Other studies cited indicate that developed countries which allowed the broadcast of media ads for alcohol between 1970 and 1983 also saw a 16% rise in consumption of alcohol, and 10% rise in automotive fatalities.

In 1995 throughout most of America it was not illegal to divulge someone else's medical records at will. In 1999 Americans couldn't sue their HMOs or other health insurance company over injuries the organizations might have inflicted upon them. In 2000 the medical records of Americans were being routinely accessed and used without their permission to deny them insurance and employment.

A 1993 survey revealed millions of Americans felt their own medical records had been improperly accessed or exposed by others in the past, and such acts had injured or humiliated them.

15 percent said insurance companies had been responsible for the violations.

In 2000 the medical records of USA citizens are being routinely accessed and used without their permission to deny them insurance and employment when such records contain information such institutions don't like.

Medical records are also being used to target consumers for telemarketing and junk mail of many sorts, and against witnesses in court cases. Records of psychological treatments are especially in demand from many quarters. Doctor-patient confidentiality largely does not exist in this state of affairs-- but the fault mostly lies in the lack of proper legislation and regulation regarding the use of databases by insurance companies and others, rather than with hospital staff themselves.

Current insurance claim forms include the requirement that the insuree agree to give up any and all rights of personal privacy wherever such rights might interfere with the insuror learning whatever they wish about the insuree and their entire family. The agreement also extends to include any other person or organization the insuror might wish to give the information to. The agreement is also forever in scope-- lasting into perpetuity. Patients have little choice but to agree to these onerous conditions under current US law, if they wish to have functional health insurance.

The Medical Information Bureau is a clearinghouse for medical information nationwide which helps insurors closely track everything a patient has ever submitted on an insurance application or (apparently) claim form anywhere. MIB's stated purpose is essentially to be a 'total recall' of everything known about a patient, so as to prevent some patients from trying to get lower insurance rates by omitting some of their past history in a new policy application. MIB records also contain life-style codes relating to the relative risk involved with how a particular individual lives their life. Some privacy advocates claim MIB codes also include judgements of sexual preference and appearance, though these cannot be verified.

Basically the MIB helps guarantee that if one insurance company refuses to cover someone, they all will.

Citizens of only 23 states enjoy the legal right to see their own medical records. But even in these they must often use subterfuge to do so.

The vast majority of citizens is unaware of these facts.

Apparently the drinking water of most developed nations has been laced with excreted drugs for decades; the net health effect on the populations remains unknown, but as in most other similar circumstances potentially affecting health, the elderly and children may be the most at risk

Human wastes seem to be the most plausible source of the drugs in the environment. Often somewhere between 50 and 90% of a drug will still be biologically active when it leaves the body. And of the 10 to 50% that's not, chemical reactions with the environment itself may re-activate some.

Virtually all types of drugs in common usage are now present in public drinking water in Europe, in varying concentrations. Water treatment plants are not designed to remove such chemicals, and present government policies do not yet deal with such matters directly. In tests in Europe scientists detected up to six times the concentrations that the USAmerican FDA has said would warrant concern, investigation, and analysis in similar American cases.

As of early 1998, no one had tested American water for these contaminants-- though the acting director of the FDA said he wouldn't be surprised to find similar levels of the drugs in American water.

As this is such a new development, even the infrastructure required to begin testing water for excreted drugs is not yet in place. For instance, scientists cannot easily obtain comparative samples of the drugs such as is done in regards to testing for pesticides.

It would seem the diluted drugs in the water supplies pose some risks for at least some portions of the human population (such as children and the elderly), as well as contribute to the development of widescale resistance to current anti-biotics. However, no specific studies regarding the subject have been performed anywhere in the world as of early 1998.

No other nation on Earth is known to have more people in prison in 1999 than the USA; USAmerica is spending $39 billion a year to maintain its prison population

50% of the prison population is black, although blacks make up only about 13% of the total American population.

In 1999 the USA is jailing its population at a rate only matched or exceeded by states which used to be a part of the Soviet Union (Russia is jailing faster than the US, while Belarus and Ukraine trail the US). Singapore is the next fastest after the Ukraine (however, the number of prisoners and rate of incarceration in places like China is unknown).

The world's healthiest people are the Japanese, while France appears to possess the best health care system overall. The United States spends more per person on health care every year than any of the other 190 countries in the study, yet ranks only 37th in terms of health care quality, and 24th in the World Health Organization's Disability Adjusted Life Expectancy.

Back to the Signposts Timeline Prologue: 1990 AD-Present

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