The United States is in fact, the greatest nation in the world.

Though I do not intend to argue that America sucks, it must be addressed that America is by no means the "greatest" nation in the world. Rather, it is a country that is comparable to other developed nations.Indeed, America is a wonderful country to live in for the very fact that one has a great deal of control over their future here, but it has many problems. America is a nation containing the greatest rich-poor disparity ratio, for a developed country, (otherwise known as Gini Coefficient) which could imply a fantastic diversity amongst it's citizens. Using my opponent's guidelines for addressing points to measure America's success, I shall start with industry and technology. America is not the overwhelming champion in either of these categories. America has exported many simple and medium complicated industries to other countries, leaving mostly service and high input industries behind. Now, some may feel this is a good thing, but by sending industries abroad, our country has now eliminated the potential for innovation in them because we no longer deal with them. Those innovations are left to other countries, meaning we have set the stages for training our competitors. Speaking more of industry, America's steel industry has only recently become competitive in the world because of the declining value of our dollar. America's financial industries have job suffered a severe contraction from fraud and under-regulation. America even sends our complicated production to other countries for assembly, creating more ways for our country to lose our competitive edge. Let's talk technology, Yes, America created the internet. Without that innovation, debating you today would not have been possible. Also, access to porno has gotten a lot easier. So, America isn't all bad. But let's talk tech that America was and still is not the leader in. The cell phone is a technology holding some origins in Bell labs in America, but the first devices were produced in Sweden by Ericson. Today, Nokia, a company whose headquarters is in Finland, dominates the market. Worse, the technological infrastructure for cell phones in America is surpassed by nearly every developed country. Because of the size and population densities of the country, America is slow to diffuse these technologies. In cars, America's industry rests on Ford and GM. Their failure to innovate against foreign producers is the reason why both companies are in jeopardy of a potential chapter 11 filing. This reason was precisely why the UAW chose to accept a health care fund payout of less than 70% of the desired coverage for their workers. In the end, cars produced by foreign firms are chosen for having better gas mileage, less required maintenance and lower prices. In investment in alternative technologies, the US has failed in it's mission to move away from coal for cleaner technologies such as nuclear, solar, or wind power. All of these technologies could save lives by reducing the smog and other pollutants from citizens in the surrounding areas, but America has been slow to respond. Japan is beating us in solar investment, and France is all nuclear. America is a step behind in many areas. The only technology that America truly surpasses other countries in is medicine and agricultural productivity. America generates nearly 3/4 of all the revenues spent on research and development in pharmaceuticals primarily because we are the only country that is willing to pay for it. Most other developed nations chose to nationalize their medicine, which placed price caps on the drugs distributed. This forced pharmaceuticals to pass the costs on to the only remaining country who were willing to pay for it (god bless America). That is why Americans pay more for the same medicine than any other country, and it contributes to the pharmaceutical price increases of over 10% a year for the past 20 years. In agricultural productivity, however, it's a much better story, since the Morrill act of 1862, America has invested public funding to research in agricultural productivity and we have received the highest productivity boosts in agricultural of any country since. In this very instance, yes, America is totally the best in agriculture!