This excerpt originally appeared at Progressive Book Club. Five Factors Driving American Decline
<Posted by Elena Sytcheva>
The following is adapted from Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country, by William Greider.
These five major elements are driving the deterioration of American prospects:
(1) Globalization’s net negative consequences for the country“The US economic engine is running on empty, borrowing vast sums of capital from abroad to stay afloat. We borrow to pay for the privilege of consuming more than we produce—that is, living beyond our means.”
“The US has accumulated more than $5 trillion in indebtedness to foreign creditors over the last 15 years.”
(2) Militarism and it’s dominance of U.S. foreign policy“America’s military power remains truly awesome and spans the globe, but its uses have been expanded far beyond the original idea of national defense. The military now attempts to direct other nations’ politics by “projecting power”—deploying troops and forward bases to distant places where no obvious enemy exists.”
“The global reach of American deployments and strategies for keeping out new enemies are magnifying the risks for Americans rather than reducing them.”
(3) The triumph of free-market ideology and it’s deconstruction of an equitable society“For the last thirty years, conservative reforms like the deregulation of industries and finance and regressive tax reduction have gradually eviscerated the government’s protective mantle. Families were exposed to the harsh edges of market forces. Businesses and banks were freed to innovate and maximize returns, but also discard their long-standing obligations to workers and society.”
“One million households in the uppermost tier—the top 1 percent—now collectively earn the same amount as the 60 million families who make up the lower two-thirds of the economic ladder.”
(4) The ecological crisis and the coming scarcity of oil“Coping with both of these threats requires a profound industrial transformation—the thorough redesign and retooling of virtually every product and production process.”
“The United States is not alone in facing these challenges, but we are particularly vulnerable, first because our society consumes more than any other nation and is wasteful on a bloated scale, and second because the United States lags far behind other advanced nations in developing ways to cope with the well-understood imperatives. Global warming is the greatest and most obvious danger, but it is compounded by the overall destruction of nature as industrial capitalism steadily encroaches upon and undermines the finite capacities of the land, air, water, and ecosystems needed to support all life on earth. The industrial transformation that is now required must also simultaneously invent a system for producing alternative fuels that can replace hydrocarbons.”
(5) Our decayed democracy and the paralysis of reform“The political factor trumps all the others. Major policy shifts that could begin to address these large wounds are effectively stymied. The same business and financial interests that profit robustly from the status quo stand in the way. Representative democracy has been captured and deformed by these interests, and the voters are distanced from those in power. Both parties collude to insulate themselves from voter retribution.”
This excerpt originally appeared at Progressive Book Club.
