It would seem a truism that every single nation wants to espouse itself as being great, and no nation wants to consider itself as falling far short of such. So then, when it comes to greatness in a nation, all sorts of nations play the same sort of game, in which, they are able to cite certain statistics that support their contention that they are great, or simply profess that they are great, without providing any real proof that such is demonstratively true. Certainly, it is true that there is a wealth of criteria that could be used to demonstrate how great a nation is, such as home ownership, assets, general satisfaction with one’s lot, charitable acts, and the like, though it has to be admitted, that looking at poverty, incarceration, and educational rates provides a very good measure of how a nation is actually performing.
To live in a nation that has a high incarceration rate, that is significantly greater than other similar subject nations, does not reflect well upon that nation, because incarceration, by definition, means the taking away of freedom from someone through their committing of some sort of criminal act thus warranting that imprisonment, along with the corresponding expense of thereby keeping not only that person incarcerated, but also the recognition, that those that have been convicted, are the very same, who are in all probability, going to also be impoverished and will continue as such. Indeed, when we look at the type of person most likely to be locked up, those people often suffer from being penurious as well as being ill-educated, which thereby indicates that high poverty rates in conjunction with poor educational achievements, are the mark of people that are not trending to becoming upstanding citizens of society.
All of the above would seem to stipulate that any nation that has a significant degree of poverty, imprisonment, and educational shortfalls is a country that within its structure has not done those necessary things to ameliorate that which would be the hallmarks of a nation’s greatness. Indeed, it is fair and appropriate, to measure a nation, by how it treats its most vulnerable and exposed citizens, and when it cannot seem to come up with policies that will eliminate or ameliorate poverty, it will thereby suffer the ill effects of having failed their citizenry, which is not the mark of greatness, whatsoever.
Those then who have nothing and do not have the educational foundation to become something, are going to be prone to behaving in a way and manner, in which, they do what they feel they need to do, to survive and to thereby build some sort of self-respect, which is why great nations, make it their point, to see that as few as possible are left behind, and further to the point, that each citizen of the state, are provided with the proper accouterments to get them a good education and to have the fair opportunity for good employment, of which, those educational achievements serve to provide them with the requirements to be productive members of society, which is subsequently reflected in low poverty and incarceration rates. So then, for a nation to be great, it must do what needs to be done, to provide the foundational structure for its citizens’ success.