The Biggest Challenges In America

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As with most countries, the United States of America faces challenges due in part to the diversity of her inhabitants. Cultural, religious, and socio-economic differences, although often at odds, have created the traditional “melting-pot” and have advanced the “American Dream.” Often, however, these differences create challenges where solutions to problems seem insurmountable. Two of the greatest challenges that are tearing down the country are the defense spending problem and the number of incarcerated citizens per capita. America leads in both of these categories. In 2012, the U.S. government spent about $841 billion on security—a figure that includes defense, intelligence, war appropriations, and foreign aid (Callahan, 2013). America has a spending problem in general, as the national debt can reflect on that. The security spending is a big problem in the country, because more money is put towards security than all non-defense discretionary domestic spending. About 80 cents of every dollar collected in traditional federal income taxes went for security (Callahan, 2013). For the United States to lead every other country in defense spending should say something about us. We spend money on…show more content…
America is home to about 2.2 million of the world’s prisoners; this means that America is the only country in the world to imprison its citizens the way it does. As a result of the imprisonment number being so high, it causes the country to spend more money on the correctional facilities. The inmates in correctional facilities are treated better than the elderly in the nursing homes. The inmates get at least three meals a day, a shower a day, and a doctor on-site. On the other hand, the elderly in nursing homes have a certain time for their lights to be off, two showers a week, and cold food. To top it off, the elderly have to pay a certain rent every month, while the inmates are living

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