To the next generation a Big #%*@ You..
Fargo ND —”America is being transformed from an industrial colossus to a tired, down-at-the-heels, post-industrial society.”
Americans have been so busy worrying about all their problems that very few noticed that the U.S. is going bankrupt. Ironically, it is those very problems that are driving the nation into bankruptcy. A partial list would include crime, drugs, poverty, a failing education system, a crumbling infrastructure, soaring health care costs, lagging productivity, a huge national debt, a large trade deficit, and an anemic rate of economic growth.
Can’t America just muddle through, the way it always has? Not this time. The problems are so overwhelming that there are no easy solutions. Just take a look around.
Work hard, play by the rules and tomorrow will be better than today. That implicit promise has been at the core of the American Experience through good times and bad.
But now, whipsawed by plummeting home values, $4-a-gallon gas, rising food prices and gyrating financial markets, Americans increasingly fear that the national bargain has unraveled, that their once-steady march toward affluence has derailed.
So is the American Dream dead? Well, it’s at least wounded.
Today’s economic malaise caps a prolonged period during which the typical American lost ground.
From the end of the 2001 recession through last year, median household income fell almost every year even as the economy expanded and individual workers became more productive. The most recent official data indicate that in 2006, half of all families made more than $58,407 and half made less. That compares with an inflation-adjusted peak of $59,398 in 2000.
This financial stall marked the first time since World War II that the typical family was worse off at the end of an economic expansion than at the start, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-of-center think tank in Washington, D.C.
Amid the mayhem in the world’s financial markets, it is becoming clear that capitalism’s most dangerous enemies are capitalists. No one can have watched the subprime mortgage debacle without noticing the absurd contrast between the magnitude of the failure and the lavish rewards heaped on those who presided over it. At Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, large losses on subprime securities cost chief executives their jobs and they left with multimillion-dollar pay packages. Stanley O’Neal, the ex-head of Merrill, received an estimated $161 million. The examples go on an on.
Everyday Americans will conclude (and rightly) that this brand of capitalism is rigged in favor of the privileged few. It will be said in their defense that these packages reflected years of service, often highly successful. So? It’s not as if these CEOs weren’t compensated in all those years. If you leave your company a shambles with losses to be absorbed by lower-level employees, some of whom will be fired, and shareholders do you deserve a gold-plated sendoff? Still, the more serious problem transcends the high pay itself and goes to the wider consequences for the economy and the next generation.
Top 10 Economic Woes left the next generation.
Number One: Government Expenditures and Deficits
Number Two: Social Security
Number Three: Concentration of Wealth
Number Four: Median Family Income
Number Five: The Savings Rate
Number Six: Consumption Binge
Number Seven: No Retirement Funds
Number Eight: High Family Debt
Number Nine: Healthcare
Number Ten: The Current Account Deficit
Are we all complicit in the erosion of economic stability in American life?
Alternative to the Fargo Forum
This will never change until the citizens of every state start recalling and firing the “public officials” that are not doing the peoples business.
This business of party line politics needs to be changed to whats right and whats wrong.