A lament for a great nation

By Best In Moderation.

I don't often fall into bouts of pessimism, at least I didn't use to. But lately it has seemed to me that we have gone far too far to really get back up, a skill that I love and that I've always loved the USa for having.

I'm just not sure I believe we can come back from this anymore. And this author on Medium managed to summarize why, so I figured I'd feature it here and maybe we can come up with a good solution together.

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It’s Not that I’m Negative, America Really is Screwed"

Excerpt from https://eand.co/im-not-that-i-m-negative-america-really-is-screwed-13b47653e4ed

A few years ago, I wrote a post called “Why We’re Underestimating American Collapse.” Sadly, I think my predictions have proven to be true — though I suppose you can judge that for yourself. 90,000 dead and counting. A president who calls the death toll a “badge of honor.” A paralysed Congress. 40 million unemployed. Today, I often get the question, “Why are you negative, Umair?” or, “What can be done to fix all this?” These are really the same question, and my answer, which you probably won’t like, goes like this: we’re still underestimating American collapse.

The economics of American collapse say that it’s probably too late to fix America. It’s probable that this is the new normal. Chaos, decline, incompetence, malice, poverty, hopelessness, despair.

Let me explain, as clearly as I can.

You can see, right about now, that America is what political scientists call a failed state.
 A President who tells people to drink bleach during a pandemic. 90,000 dead, of which 90% are needless. A society that’s not able to provide basics for it’s citizens anymore. A nation in which income, savings, life expectancy, happiness, trust are all in free-fall. This is the stuff of epic social collapse.

Now, the reason that America collapsed is straightforward. Americans never invested in building expansive social systems, unlike Europe. Systems to provide healthcare, retirement, childcare, finance, and so forth.

The result has been twofold. One, the average American now goes without these things. That’s because they’re largely unavailable. For example, the fresh food that I can get on any block in Europe is simply absent in huge chunks of the States. You buy processed food, or you don’t get food. The same is true of many, many things, like, say, education, or income. You don’t have a job with guarantees and protections like in Canada or Europe. You have a lower quality — not just quantity — of income.

Two, the the average American pays prices that the rest of the world considers absolutely absurd — because they are — for the very same things. Having a child? That’ll be $50K, thank you. An operation? That’ll be more than a house. Want to educate a kid? There go your life savings. Want a few fresh apples? That’ll be ten times the price Canadians or Europeans pay. These things — the basics of life — are eminently affordable in the rest of the rich world. In America, though, they cost more than the average person can afford.

How do I know that? Because the average American now dies in debt. Their whole life is one long sequence of unpayable debts now. First, there’s “lunch debt” which becomes “student debt” which becomes a mortgage and credit card debt which becomes “medical debt.” The forms of debt in quotes don’t even exist in most other rich countries. In America, though, they define life — precisely because the average American is now a poor person, in the sense that they can’t make ends meet when it comes to paying for the basics of life.

Sure, they might have a big car and big house and a big gun. But the economic truth is this: all those things are had on debt, and the average American now lives like an impoverished person. No savings, no assets, no liquidity. 80% — eighty percent — of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, struggle to pay basic bills, and can’t raise say $500 for an emergency. Those are the statistics of a nation having descended into poverty.

Now. I don’t write all that to make some theoretical point, so let’s come back to the question. Can America save itself from collapse? If you really understand the numbers, then the answer above — sadly — is: probably not. The economics say that America has more or less almost certainly reached a point of no return now, and collapse is nearly inevitable.

To stop collapse, America would have to start investing — massively, suddenly, historically — in functioning systems. To stop longevity and health cratering, it needs a healthcare system. To stop happiness and trust cratering, it needs affordable education and retirement. To stop incomes and savings plummeting, it needs retirement systems and protections for workers. And so forth. Every single facet of American collapse requires massive, large-scale, sustained public investment to be turned around, that goes on for a decade or more.

Many Americans even support that much. They get, by now, that without a new social contract, America is finished. Sure, the American Idiot — Trump and his army of bleach-drinking morons — don’t. But maybe the average American does — sure, let’s allow that much. The tragic wrinkle is that it makes no difference. Even if the majority of Americans want a better America — is it too late to actually build one? Probably.

Why? Well, who’s going to pay for it? Remember those dismal statistics above? The average American lives like a poor person now? So who exactly is going to pay for all these expansive new systems? The average person simply can’t afford the very improvements to society that they need anymore. Bang! What happens then? The answer is: nothing does. More of this does: a slow, shocking collapse and descent. Because there’s no other option, choice, alternative. Nobody much has the money for one. You see, if I say to the average American — “let’s fix America. All you have to do is pay ten percent more in taxes, and you’ll have world-class healthcare, retirement, childcare, and so on” — they might even support it, whole-heartedly. They might genuinely want it.

But the economic truth is that they cannot afford it. That ten percent is now crucial income. That’s what “the average American dies in debt” tells us. The average person can’t give up that ten percent. He or she needs it — usually desperately — to pay off simple everyday bills. They have no real savings to speak of. So where is the money to fund this wonderful new social contract going to come from? The bitter truth is this: Americans are now too poor to afford a better social contract. Even if Americans support a Canadian or European style social contract, the hard economic truth is that are probably now too poor to ever have one. Americans are now so poor they can barely afford to support themselves and their own —80% live at the edge — so how can they afford to support anyone else, let alone everyone else?

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READ MORE at https://eand.co/im-not-that-i-m-negative-america-really-is-screwed-13b47653e4ed