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'We the people'...
There's a lot of talk about returning power to the people and away from the lobbyists and special interests, as if this is what will cure us. Unfortunately, the reality is that the American people (the bottom 80% of private citizens) have even less power and substance than an increasingly feeble government. Unfortunately for our stock markets and our currency, the world is starting to figure it out as well.
Simply put, 'We the people' can't handle being 'we the people' - we fall short of the constitutional hero language. 'We the people' have neglected to maintain our government and are paying the price. After years of neglecting our responsibilities; neither our government, nor businesses and citizens, compare well with the rest of the world. Consider the the changes in America...
...in terms of pure literacy, or simply being able to read, America is #18 in the world, with countries such as Kazahkstan, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Hungary, and Guyana ahead of the US.
...nationally, 1 in 4 Americans are 'functionally illiterate', which means they are unable to understand a tax or insurance form, read a newspaper article, or carry out the written emergency instructions on a kitchen cleaning lye bottle. 44 milllion cannot fill out a written job application.
...health care is 38th in the world (and emergency room waits now average 56 minutes)
...median real incomes have declined over 3% since 2000. While the top 20% has seen real incomes rise by 1%, the bottom 80% has seen declines.
...the top 20% of Americans control 85% of the nation's wealth - meaning only some have the capital to make way in a capitalist society
...the average taxpayers portion of the national debt ($84,615) is more than the average 401k balance ($66,650)
...class mobility and individual opportunity is decreasing. Children from the lowest income group have only a 1% chance of reaching the top 5% income bracket while children of the rich have a 22x better chance. In the middle class, adults for the first time in history now have equal chances of being poorer than their parents as they do of being richer.
...'the land of the free' now imprisons more of it's population than any other country and still has amongst the highest levels of violent crime of every sort in the industrialized world (perhaps that's because of all the other points?)
Behind all this is a bleak energy story....
...cars have less performance than in Europe and are less efficient than even China
...the average building in America uses 1/3 more energy than in Europe
Why is this?
After Reagan introduced deficit spending and spoke against 'progressives', the American people were treated to increases in standard of living without having to build up our ability to deliver a better lifestyle. Cheap energy and foreign money were used to create a country that lived on the institutions, infrastructure and credit established by past generations. In place of healthy criticism and progressive ideas, certain political leaders substituted a pseudo-patriotism in which criticism of the country was deemed to be wrong, and a generic yesterday was deemed to be better than tomorrow could ever be.
It is my opinion (reinforced by the above facts), that the Republican party has done more to cause the decline of America than any other factor - more than globalism, energy crunches, or natural disasters. By constructing policies that benefited the top of society, Republicans and their henchmen in the Democratic party ensured that the bottom portion of society would be unable to assume a more productive role in society. Their cronyism hid behind a philosophy which held that concentrated capital would bring more power to this country than distributed wealth. Republicans wanted cheap dumb workers that were too mired in debt to quit, and they got them.
Here's food for thought: The closest neighbor to the US in the international surveys of negative categories (crime, functional illiteracy, class immobility, etc) is always the UK - the only country the Republican party seems to like.
If it can't be genetics, geography, or natural resources that causes the US and UK to do so poorly against other countries, what is it? Could a progressive government and society really help people 'progress', just as the name implies?
Sources:
Emergency room wait times http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
Buildings energy consumption http://www.nytimes.com/...
401k info http://www.401khelpcenter.com/...
national debt http://zfacts.com/...
US real incomes http://74.125.45.104/...
US wealth & capital control http://sociology.ucsc.edu/...
Class mobility http://www.americanprogress.org/...