I disagree. America’s labor and innovation problems are all self-inflicted.

America has 350 million people. In this population, you have people from all walks of life. And from all ethnicities that you can choose from. But America squanders this human resource potential. Instead of being inclusive, American culture is all about being exclusive. You can see it everywhere. From elite universities, to selective companies, to instagram whores, to the professional sporting teams of the NBA, NFL, MLB, etc. Even to neighborhoods and cities. Instead of promoting teamwork and unity, the underlying tone of American culture is to produce hate and envy. It’s the “I got mine” attitude, so I’m going to do what I can to prevent you from succeeding.

Ignore all the fake messages of love and unity. That’s just marketing nonsense to disarm you. Instead, look beyond their words, and criticize their actions.

Crony Capitalism has run amok in America, and they are the source of all your problems. And no, I’m not advocating for socialism or communism, or something stupid like that. You need capitalism as an underlying mechanism, but the egregiousness of it, needs to be reigned in.

The problem is your politicians. The business leaders and those with access to capital, have corrupted the system. And the politicians are all compromised and bought out. So they are the roadblocks that prevents anything from happening. They prevent society from moving forward.

And why should they bother to do anything? They are benefiting perfectly from the system. They get a cushy job, with pay in excess of $250,000. And after their public career is over, then they can land an even cushier job with a lobbying firm. It’s the perfect revolving door.

And meanwhile, the society continues to deteriorate. People vote in charlatans that promise them the moon, and delivers a pile of dirt instead.

There are 3 hits that America did to shoot itself in the foot.

1) Education. Corporations required degrees to do mundane things. But yet, when you got that expensive education, the pay didn’t reflect what it costed to attain such education. So young people are now saddled with very expensive student loans. This delays adulthood, and leads to other problems downstream.

2) Housing. After the 2008 housing crisis, corporations with access to cheap credit, bought up houses in huge quantities, and prevented people from buying affordable houses. This drove up costs everywhere else, especially in rent. And prevent people from having a savings in the form of their homes.

How do you buy a house, when some corporation with easy access to liquidity, thanks to the Fed, comes out and outbids you, and pays in cash? You can’t.

3) Healthcare. America refuses to establish a single payer health insurance system, so everyone ends up paying through the nose for expensive health insurance.

In summary, America has the human resources to succeed, and to continually reinvent itself. It needs smarter policy from the Federal and State level, to engage with the population. People can be retrained for advanced careers, without going bankrupt. Houses can be built, to enable everyone to be a homeowner, and share in the prosperity for all. Healthcare can be made cheaper and accessible to everyone to ensure that all Americans are healthy.

The choice is yours America. Do we continue to go down this path of failure, where the economy works only for the wealthy and well connected? Or do we renew the social contract that binds us, and build a new, prosperous, and inclusive future for all Americans.

The ball is now in your court.