Why the USA is in a spiral of decline

The USA by any measure is a rich country,  But Americans are not a rich people, compared to citizens of other industrial nations.  Life expectancy in the USA is falling and this is related to broader social problems.  Increasingly, we think of economic decline as normal and inevitable.

A writer named Umair Haque fears the USA is locked into a possibly irreversible spiral of decline

1. People who are made to live right at the edge must battle each other for self-preservation. But such people have nothing left to give one another.  And that way, a society enters a death spiral of poverty — like ours have.
2. People who can’t make ends meet can’t even invest in themselves — let alone anyone else.  Such a society has to eat through whatever public goods and social systems it has, just to survive.  It never develops or expands new ones.
3. The result is that a whole society grows poorer and poorer.  Unable to invest in themselves or one another, people’s only real way out is to fight each other for self-preservation, by taking away their neighbor’s rights, privileges, and opportunities — instead of being able to give any new ones to anyone.  Why give everyone healthcare and education when you can’t even afford your own?  How are you supposed to?
4. Society melts down into a spiral of extremism and fascism, as ever increasing poverty brings hate, violence, fear, and rage with it.  Trust erodes, democracy corrodes, social bonds are torn apart, and the only norms left are Darwinian-fascist ones: the strong survive, and the weak must perish.

Let me spend a second or two on that last point. As they become poorer, people begin to distrust each other — and then hate each other.  Why wouldn’t they?  After all, the grim reality is that they actually are fighting each other for existence, for the basic resources of life, like medicine, money, and food.

Source: Eudaimonia and Co

Our politics and journalism mostly ignore fundamental problems.  I don’t think this is happenstance.  I think the people at the highest levels of government, business and journalism benefit from the status quo, and feel threatened by anyone who challenges it.

The headline issues of today, including the impeachment drama, are wedge issues that keep the American body politick divided and distracted.

Many of us Americans think our neighbor who believes in gun rights or abortion rights is our enemy.  Those issues are important, of course, but we and our liberal or conservative neighbors are not enemies.

We need to realize we have more in common with each other than we do with those who benefit from our indebtedness and economic insecurity.

Added Later.  I think our current politics dates from the Reagan era in the USA and, as the Umair Hague article points out, from the Margaret Thatcher era in the UK.

I thought at the time that Reagan and Thatcher were necessary corrections to the political gridlock of the 1970s.  But they introduced a new kind of politics—a fear of those below you on the social and economic ladder who might take your money rather than indignation at those above you who already were.

Reagan and his successors were good at substituting conflict over social issues for conflict over economic issues.  But that’s partly because Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and their successors were willing to play the game on those terms and concede the economic questions to their supposed opponents.

LINKS

This Is How a Society Dies by Umair Haque for Eudaemonia & Co. on Medium.

Why America Is the World’s First Poor Rich Country by Umair Haque for Eudaemonia & Co. on Medium.  Hat tip to Steve B.

Tags: American Decline