Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

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What's going on, guys? It is Sunday, September 12th, and that means it's time for Long

Reads Sunday. On Wednesday of this week, the New York Times Nicholas Christoph wrote an editorial

called, We're number 28, and dropping.

A measure of social progress finds that the quality of life has dropped in America

over the last decade, even as it has risen almost everywhere else.

Basically, the measure that Christoph is referencing is something called the Social Progress

Index, which finds that out of 163 countries

that were assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil, and Hungary are the only ones in which

people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. What's more, the declines in Brazil and

Hungary were smaller than Americas. Now, before you reject this index, it is basically

inspired by the research of a number of Nobel-winning economists and collects 50 metrics of well-being,

from nutrition to safety, to freedom, to the environment, to health education, and more.

Interestingly, a lot of the problem areas are where we have a really good

something, but not good access to that something. So, for example, the United States ranks

number one in the quality of universities in the world, but only number 91 in access to quality

basic education.

When it comes to medical technology, we are obviously number one as well,

but number 97 in access to quality healthcare.

When I see these numbers, I can't help but think about the newsroom or the first scene from the newsroom,

...