Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Our Nation is Dying?

A an uplifting guest post from Hiram.
"As I have said, our nation is dying. And our attitude toward gun violence is just more evidence of that."
Now Hiram has made these cynical comments before and I think it time we discuss the topic:
  • Is our nation dying?
  • What does dying mean to you?
  • How does this differ from the challenges of the last 241 years?
  • What are the symptoms?
  • What are the root causes?
  • What are the cures?
My belief is that people have likely had their doubts regarding our country's long term viability for 250 years...  And yet we have persevered... However in the past:
  • we did not have social media and belief oriented news casts that enable people to continually reinforce their world views while vilifying others. 
  • people paid severely for making bad personal choices, where as today many of them are cushioned by our social programs
  • these are a fiscal drain on the other citizens and the country, and absorbing the pain lessens the motivation of people to make good personal choices.
  • foreign competition was not as intense because global transport and communication costs were much larger and more time consuming. 
Thoughts?

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

One thing I would point to is that the government has ceased functioning, in many crucial areas.

--Hiram

Anonymous said...

How does this differ from the challenges of the last 241 years?

The decline has been steady, and I think in part the result of some inevitable problems with the constitution. I think the two minority presidencies we have had in the 21st century are evidence of this. Interestingly, we have a presidential commission investigating voter fraud which doesn't have as part of it's agenda, the fact that the votes of 2.8 million voters who gave Hillary her plurality have been discarded.

--Hiram

John said...

Hiram,
Please elaborate on "the government has ceased functioning, in many crucial areas."

As for Hillary not winning because she did not have a broad base of support across many regions of the country, I actually think that is a good thing as you know. Please reference what is happening in Spain and Iraq if you do not understand the importance...

Hopefully we don't develop any secession attempts in the future. That would be really messy. Or maybe the cities will try to secede...

Sean said...

"Please elaborate on "the government has ceased functioning, in many crucial areas.""

Here's one example: we're heading into our ninth consecutive year of funding our government via continuing resolutions instead of the standard appropriations process. The structure of most continuing resolutions just mandates funding at the previous year's level plus an across-the-board adjustment. (For some areas -- most notably defense -- in some years, there have been appropriations bills passed, but not consistently.) This makes it harder to fund programs that need an increase or cut programs that need to be cut.

John said...

Good example of how it is functioning differently or not per documented process, not sure if it is crucial. They seem to be finding a way to keep the lights on and spend money.

Crucial defined: involving an extremely important decision or result; decisive; critical

Wiki Continuing Resolution

Laurie said...

To me winning 3 million more votes than her opponent indicates a broader base of support than what president idiot has.

I am working to hard too participate in your blog lately but I might post a link on this topic if I find it.

Laurie said...

Here is a link on a topic I read about recently. I did not find the recent link. This one goes back to spring when the book was released.

Can the Country Survive Without a Strong Middle Class?

Laurie said...

another link on the book (also not the one I recently read)

Our Constitution Wasn’t Built for This

Anonymous said...

One reason to think America is dying is that a presidential spokesman is more concerned about the second amendment rights of a mass murderer than the right of thousands to attend a concert without coming under automatic weapons fire.

--Hiram

John said...

From Laurie's second link.

"Starting more than a century ago, amid the first Gilded Age, Americans confronted rising inequality, rapid industrial change, a communications and transportation revolution and the emergence of monopolies. Populists and progressives responded by pushing for reforms that would tame the great concentrations of wealth and power that were corrupting government.

On the economic side, they invented antitrust laws and public utilities regulation, established an income tax, and fought for minimum wages. On the political side, they passed campaign finance regulations and amended the Constitution so the people would get to elect senators directly. They did these things because they knew that our republican form of government could not survive in an economically unequal society. As Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “There can be no real political democracy unless there is something approaching an economic democracy.”

For all its resilience and longevity, our Constitution doesn’t have structural checks built into it to prevent oligarchy or populist demagogues. It was written on the assumption that America would remain relatively equal economically. Even the father of the Constitution understood this. Toward the end of his life, Madison worried that the number of Americans who had only the “bare necessities of life” would one day increase. When it did, he concluded, the institutions and laws of the country would need to be adapted, and that task would require “all the wisdom of the wisest patriots.”

With economic inequality rising and the middle class collapsing, the deep question we must ask today is whether our generation has wise patriots who, like the progressives a century ago, will adapt the institutions and laws of our country — and save our republic."

John said...

I of course think the whole premise is somewhat silly given the extreme leftward change that has occurred during the past century.

I think the liberals are just unwilling to see that many citizens believe we have gone too far left.

John said...

I know I fear the risk posed to our country by a growing "entitlement class" much more than a growing "producer class".

Laurie said...

I think many more people agree with me that extreme and worsening income inequality is the fundamental problem that our govt should be addressing. (not growing entitlements - if you haven't noticed entitlements poll pretty well.)

U.S. inequality keeps getting uglier

Students at my school will be bringing home backpacks full of food tomorrow. I think it would be great if their parents could earn more $.

John said...

If the entitlements pressured the dependent folks to grow and become good independent citizens, that would be less troubling.

However a country will struggle to compete and survive in our global world if it allows a large number of citizens to not pull the wagon.

The world is becoming knowledge based and yet many of our citizens choose ignorance and sloth over success. And the Liberal answer is to put more food in the trough.

John said...

"The wealthy didn't always take such a big share of the proverbial "pie." In the 1970s, a decade generally seen as fairly prosperous, the top 1% of Americans earned just over 10% of all U.S. income (i.e. the "pie").

Over time, the rich became more lucky -- or more greedy. Today the top 1% take home more than 20% of all U.S. income.

As the wealthy earned more, someone else in America had to get less. The bottom 50% went from capturing over 20% of national income for much of the 1970s to earning barely 12% today.

The turning point started around 1980, as seen in the graph below. By the mid-1990s, the fortunes of the top 1% were clearly on the rise and those of the bottom half were declining rapidly."

John said...

The bolded comments above are very misleading. It somehow implies that this wealth is being made in America and we all deserve a cut, whereas we know in reality that American consumers buy from over seas suppliers and that wealthy people invest globally.

The reality is that the foreign workers are earning money that used to be earned in the USA. We consumers chose to reward foreign workers and punish domestic workers.

I wonder what a "National Income" even is? Especially when much of it is global in nature.

Anonymous said...

Lots of people deserve to be richer than they are. Elementary school teachers deserve to be paid more than bankrupt tycoons. NFL football players deserve to be paid more than sleazy politicians who try to manipulate them. We don't pay people on the basis of what they deserve, and I, for one, am not all that uncomfortable with that.

--Hiram

John said...

How exactly would you deem to accomplish your goal?

And by the way, the best football players make far more than the typical sleazy politician. The Trump family made their money building things, hiring people and entertaining people, how much is that worth on the Hiram scale?

And will every Elementary school teacher deserve more no matter their effort and results? How will you measure this?

Sean said...

"And will every Elementary school teacher deserve more no matter their effort and results? How will you measure this?"

If only people applied a fraction of the energy and effort they use on trying to pay teachers less towards improving corporate governance, our society would be a lot better off.

John said...

Sean,
You must be kidding... We have implemented almost no accountability measures and systems into education...

Whereas we have implemented Sarbanes Oxley, Dodd Frank, convicted fraudulent business owners, fined corporations huge amounts for questionable behaviors, etc.

Now imagine how much better off the students would be if we paid that much attention to what was happening in the classroom and at home... And held those adults accountable.

Sean said...

There's a difference between regulation and governance.

John said...

Please explain?

It seems to me regulations are laws that force corporations to govern / operate in certain ways.

Sean said...

It's not regulation that is causing the nonsensical CEO pay packages out there. It's not regulation that stacks boards with cronies and insiders. It's not regulation that prioritizes stock buybacks over giving workers raises.

It's governance -- how companies are choosing to govern themselves. Now, the reaction to problem of chronically poor corporate governance may well prove to be regulation, but corporations could fix it on their own, if they wanted.

John said...

Now I am not saying that US Corporate Boards and Management are above reproach by any means.

However the reality is that companies that are excessively wasteful fail, companies who under compensate their employees fail, companies who do not protect their stock price get taken over, companies who keep poor performers on the payroll fail, etc...

This not the case for the education or governmental systems. Waste, Unproductive comp systems, poor performers, etc just lead to calls for higher taxes. Which of course makes our country less competitive globally, just as our rewarding unproductive citizens with $10's of thousands of tax dollars from other citizens who are driving our economy.

It will be interesting to see what the next century will bring... Will the USA remain the highly competitive global leader or will the Left pull us into the pseudo socialism they so desire?