Innumerable polls taken over the past seven years are consistent in showing nearly 7 in 10 Americans believing the nation is headed in the wrong direction.
Further, nearly 60% think that the next generation will be worse off than they are. And few have any faith that the economic outlook for the country will improve in the near or distant future.
Beginning in the late 1980’s, the cognoscenti declared that expansive government spending, globalization and free trade, combined with a comprehensive and overarching regulatory regime determined to root out so-called corruption and inequality as well as save the planet from the over blown evils of global warming, would be the course the nation should pursue. The result of this foolhardy and myopic scheme:
In 1988 the national debt of the United States stood at $2.6 Trillion, today it is over $19.0 Trillion-- an increase of 635% (and projected to reach $29.0 Trillion by 2026). On the other hand the debt of all the nations on earth has grown by only 135% since 1988.
Since November of 2008 the working age population has increased by over 18 million. However, the number of those employed has increased just 5.5 million. Meanwhile those unemployed or no longer in the work force has ballooned by 12.4 million to a staggering total of 102 million or 40.4% of the working age population.
Another factor impacting on the economic health of the American people is immigration. In 1988 there were 16 million immigrants (including less than a million illegal aliens) living in the United States. Today that number has skyrocketed to 42.4 million (including an estimated 12 million illegal aliens). This enormous increase (165%) in the immigrant population has not only put pressure on a stagnant job market but it has also been a major factor in the decline of median income in the country.
The upshot of all the above is that since 1988 the income of the top 5% has risen 39.3% (adjusted for inflation) and the income of the bottom 50% has fallen by 1.9%.
Since 2008 the Obama cabal has added over 18,000 pages to the Code of Federal Regulations. It is estimated that complying with federal regulations costs the economy nearly $2 Trillion per year and is, along with taxes and innumerable mandates, one of the principle reasons for the lack of new business start-ups and loss of jobs to other countries.
One of the primary hallmarks of the United States had been that of a classless society wherein economic factors allowed the citizenry to take advantage of the marketplace in order to move up or down based on their efforts and willingness to work. However, this scenario is disappearing as the opportunities for upward mobility cease to exist. In its place a class driven society, similar to all other quasi-socialist nations past and present, is now becoming inevitable as even the Bureau of Labor Statistics admits that the level of Americans working and in the labor force will continue to decrease over the next 8 years.
Another of the primary factors in the decline of the United States is that the nation’s elites, rather than view education as the means for the people to attain success in a competitive world, have recast it into a vehicle for their pet theories and political views. Whether it is the promulgation of faux self-esteem, the obsession with the so-called evils of capitalism and the nation’s past, and the theoretical joys of socialism among other inane curricula, the education establishment has assured that the American people are rapidly becoming among the least well-educated populations in the world.
In 2013 American 15 year olds ranked 32nd among industrialized countries in math, 20th in reading and 24th in science. In 1988 this same age group ranked among the top 5-10 nations in the world in these same categories. Further, recent polls have indicated that as a byproduct of the radicalized education establishment, nearly 7 out of 10 between the ages of 18 and 29 would vote for an avowed socialist. Thus it is clear that the future of the country is on very shaky ground.
As for the issue of freedom: in a recent analysis it was determined that the United States now ranks 12th among the nations of the world in economic freedom (6th in 2008) but a dismal 31st in personal freedom (17th in 2008).
Using the cudgel of the mainstream media, the entertainment complex and the education establishment, the Left and its surrogate, the Democratic Party, have successfully inculcated into a plurality of the American people a belief that there are no moral absolutes and that the state can grant any rights that it so chooses to whomever it chooses. Further, the nation’s founding documents are arcane, racially insensitive, and unsuitable for today. Thus religious liberty, property rights and freedom of speech are under aggressive assault. The Judiciary is now almost under the complete control of these same statists, and with the death of Justice Scalia the last line of defense, the Supreme Court, is in peril.
In the current campaign for the next president, there are candidates attempting to tap into the ire of the citizenry by either promising that a purer form of socialism will magically solve the problems or by claiming that they, by sheer force of their will and personality, will part the seas and save the nation. Unfortunately, due to the ill-education of the populace as well as their angst, far too many seeds of this demagoguery are falling on fertile ground. The election of any of these candidates will only exacerbate and make permanent the nations woes.
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