Why America Failed — The Reasons.
By: Tessa Schlesinger
Tags: Economics, Politics, America, Government, Innovation

Why America Failed — The Reasons.

I immigrated to America in 2003. I was both shocked and puzzled by what I found. Coming from London, I was surprised to find that the States was still utilizing analog and hadn’t converted to broadband yet. In addition, Americans didn’t seem to know what British Sterling was, and when I drove down the west coast, it reminded me of South Africa in the 50s. From all the hype, I expected to be going to a country that was way ahead of other countries. Instead I was faced with the very things I had run away from — neoliberalism, bad labor laws, and ignorance. I left in 2014.

China will overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy before the end of the decade after outperforming its rival during the global Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report. The Centre for Economics and Business Research said that it nowexpected the value of China’s economy when measured in dollars to exceed that of the US by 2028, half a decade sooner than it expected a year ago. Source.

The Ten Reasons America Failed

1. Broken Infrastructure: In order for a country to succeed, it needs to have a solid infrastructure. As Americans voted for corporations and the rich to pay less and less tax, there wasn’t sufficient money to pay for that infrastructure. This impacted on many things — from failing bridges to a lack of government hospitals — they all affected how Americans could live. More importantly than that, it affects how quickly goods and people can move from one place to another, and in times of flooding and disaster, there are no safety nets.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, which is published every four years, US infrastructure gets a D+ grade. It got the same grade in 2013. The ASCE estimates the US needs to spend some $4.5 trillion by 2025 to improve the state of the country’s roads, bridges, dams, airports, schools, and more. Source.

2. Lack of Sufficient Skills: A country consists not only of its wealth, but of its skills. If the people aren’t sufficiently skilled, they cannot produce the products needed for the people to live well. More importantly, the less skilled they become, the less chance there is of inventing and innovating. American business charges astronomical sums for people to become skilled in various software routines, and colleges aren’t affordable for most people without loans. Eventually, the country cannot provide for its own needs. For the record, standardized tests are conducted in all countries. I grew up with them and have an outstanding education as a result. Standardized tests in America only focus on math and English grammar.

The United States faces a global competitiveness crisis that, if not addressed, will put our nation at a strategic disadvantage for decades to come. In just a few years, there will be 1.8 million jobs unfilled in our nation because we don’t have enough individuals trained with the necessary technical skills to fill them. Today, only one in 10 schools across the U.S. offers programming classes. Source.

3. Lack of Education: Education is different to acquiring qualifications. An education generally means a broad knowledge of the world around them. For example, educated people generally speak more than one language, are at ease in many cultures of the world, can pin Timbucktu on a map and know instantly where Oxford Street, Adderley street and Wiltshire Boulevard are. They read a couple of books a week, and can determine whether a statement was based on scientific criteria or religious mumbo jumbo. Americans, sad to say, are not educated. That’s why they never knew what British sterling was when I asked. It’s also why they make damned stupid decisions when it comes to electing their leaders and making legal policy. They have no idea. Eventually, that will destroy a country.

Education makes all the difference in the quality of life of an individual they say, and this is something that needs no certification. We all know that, without education, man is no more than a beast, or at best, someone steeped in ignorance and backwardness. Qualification is a certification that qualifies a person to apply for a job in a particular field or industry. A person’s qualification is enough to covey his competency or level of expertise in a particular subject. Qualifications are necessary in most industries these days though there are still jobs where experience and labor dominate qualifications such as plumbing, electrician, gas welder, air conditioning, painter, carpentry etc. Source.

4. Lack of Welfare for Their People: A country consists of its people — all its people. When people cannot financially support themselves as a result of under-payment for their labor, eventually those people lose their physical health, their mental health, their general knowledge, their skills, and everything that is needed in order to make a country function. When there are limited or no resources to assist those people, and when more and more citizens fall into that trap, those people become angry, frustrated, and violence increases. Civil disorder results. Look at both the UK and the US for that. South Africa was forced to dismantle apartheid because the degree of civic unrest and bankruptsy (from being the richest nation in the world in the 50s and 60s) made the country ungovernable.

5. Culture Based on Fictional Myths: If you think water grows on trees, and you keep planting trees in order to manufacture water, you will eventually die of thirst. In the same way, America has had and does have a lot of myths that are fundamentallly bullarkey, and when millions of people base their decisions on those, both mental illness and bad decision-making result. If you’re consistently told that all it takes to become a billionaire is positive thinking and hard work, and by the time you’re 40, and you’re still on minimum wage, you’re going to crack. And many do. There’s a reason that half of Americans have either been on an anti-depressive or are on anti-depressive medication. America is the only ‘first-word’ nation in the world where there is still a culture of belief in god/s. The first world is generally secular and atheist. America has been depending on thoughts and prayers when functional nations have been depending on science and technology. The obsession with a 230 year old constitution that no longer serves the modern world is an example.

6. America has an Authoritarian Culture: Trump is an authoritarian, and so are millions of Americans.That 72 million people just voted for a fascist demonstrates just how acceptable authoritarianism is in America. Another interesting fact is that the Electoral College is still part of the political system 230 years after it was installed. The Electoral College can elect the president — regardless of what the electorate voted for. America is not a democracy. The Electoral College should have been dissolved a century ago. Authoritarian countries generally do not draw out the innovative and creative abilities of their citizens, and this means that the country does not progress. Take Northern Korea, for instance.

As it turns out, MacWilliams wasn’t the only one to have this realization. Miles away, in an office at Vanderbilt University, a professor named Marc Hetherington was having his own aha moment. He realized that he and a fellow political scientist, the University of North Carolina’s Jonathan Weiler, had essentially predicted Trump’s rise back in 2009, when they discovered something that would turn out to be far more significant than they then realized. That year, Hetherington and Weiler published a book about the effects of authoritarianism on American politics. Through a series of experiments and careful data analysis, they had come to a surprising conclusion: Much of the polarization dividing American politics was fueled not just by gerrymandering or money in politics or the other oft-cited variables, but by an unnoticed but surprisingly large electoral group — authoritarians. Source.

7. Intolerance Leads to Decreasing Innovation: America is neither multi-cultural nor diverse. I kid you not. Having spent a great deal of my time living and working in both Africa and Europe, I know what a diverse and multi-cultural country looks like. Let’s look at my native South Africa, and then I’ll explain London. South Africa has 11 official languages. You can walk down the main street of any major city, and you will see shamans plying their wares, zulu girls dancing for tourists, and advertising executives having meetings with potential clients at a coffee shop. The old mixes with the new. This is multi-culturalism. Walk down Oxford street in London, and I defy you not to hear five different languages in five minutes. The entire temp work force in London comprises people from other countries working there for the two years they are permitted. America has one culture — money and status. This means there is less innovation, less capacity for tolerating differences in others, and it’s part of the reason that Americans still believe in gods. Interact with sufficient cultures, and any belief you have in the supernatural will be gone with the wind. In addition, when the skills of all people’s are accepted, then the country grows.

8. Inequality is Rampant: Inequality is the result of some people being paid substantially less than other people. In the modern world, this is the result of business trying to pay labor as little as possible so that they can maximize profits. In America, a supposed first-world country, the minimum wage if 50% of the living wage. This means that anyone who is earning a living wage is living in poverty. Granted that it’s first world poverty — the kind where you can pick up a TV from the rubbish dumpster, but it still means insufficient money to buy nutritious food, pay for necessary medical, and attend a school that will give you the best skills. No country that has massive inequality ever flourishes. That’s because too many people in the population are burdens rather than contributors. This is 100% the fault of ideology and government.

9. Political Corruption is Legal: In no other country in the world is state capture (lobbying) legal. Lobbyists are able to meet with politicians in order to convince (or bribe) those politicians to write certain laws which will put power and money into the hands of the few — the rich and powerful. There is even an organisation in Washington that writes wannabe-laws for business that hires them, and then lobbyists take them to politicians, and ‘influence’ them to legislate those laws. How is that not corrupt? That corruption has shifted power and money into the hands of an oligarchy and plutocracy. The wants, needs, and desires of we-the-people have been disregarded for a very long time. Gerrymandering hasn’t helped either. Thus, regardless of the fact that most people want universal health care, congress votes against it because they are paid by insurance companies to prevent it.

There is also a third form of corruption, less known but still very pervasive, found often but not exclusively in transition countries: state capture. State capture occurs when the ruling elite and/or powerful businessmen manipulate policy formation and influence the emerging rules of the game (including laws and economic regulations) to their own advantage. The captured economy is trapped in a vicious circle in which the policy and institutional reforms necessary to improve governance are undermined by collusion between powerful firms and state officials who extract substantial private gains from the absence of clear rule of law. Source.

10. Vast Profits Made Through War Has Bankrupted the Country: The fact that America has an authoritarian culture assists with the other fact — that corporations that manufacture military weapons profit through war. America has been invading other countries ever since she discovered how profitable war was during WWII. She has no problem with interfering in the affairs of other countries with the bullshit reasoning that America wants only for their citizens to have freedom — just like Amercians. If that was the real reason, she would have invaded Zimbabwe a long time ago. She didn’t. America invades for profit and power. The result is that she has lost the respect and friendship of the true democracies and first-world. More than that, though. America has bankrupted herself. Just as South Africa bankrupted herself through apartheid, America has bankrupted herself through war. The money for weapons should have been spent on healthcare, welfare, education, infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.), but it went up in smoke, bombs, and gunfire.

Eisenhower warned that “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” had emerged as a hidden force in US politics and that Americans “must not fail to comprehend its grave implications”. The speech may have been Eisenhower’s most courageous and prophetic moment. Fifty years and some later, Americans find themselves in what seems like perpetual war. No sooner do we draw down on operations in Iraq than leaders demand an intervention in Libya or Syria or Iran. While perpetual war constitutes perpetual losses for families, and ever expanding budgets, it also represents perpetual profits for a new and larger complex of business and government interests. Source.

The Solution to American Problems

Americans need to take a long, hard look at their culture and their perception of who and what they are. They are NOT the world’s leader. They do NOT have the moral high ground. And neither are they an example of what is good and right in the world.

So the first step is to recognize just how off-course America is.

The second step is to immediately tax corporations and the mega-rich 90% (as it used to be in the 50s and 60s), and use that money to fix up infrastructure, education, welfare, skills learning, and the medical system.

The third step is to dismantle or decrease their military, and to put an immediate end to the building of more nuclear bombs. As we are going to be facing more and more natural disasters due to climate change, a good idea might be to convert part of the military to an emergency services force.

The last step would be to join the international community in working towards the common good of humanity — preventing climate change, cleaning up the sea and the land, and figuring out a new economic system that will eradicate the excesses of capitalism and provide for all life on earth.