The United States is still the greatest country in the world but we are going in the wrong direction. This is happening because our representatives in government aren’t doing a very good job. Some examples:
There is a total mismatch between how employees and shareholders are benefiting from the increasing productivity of our economy. Total employee compensation has only increased by about 15% since the 1970’s while the value of the stock market has increased by over 600%. The trouble is that about 25% of the stock market is owned by foreigners and about 85% of the remainder is owned by the wealthiest 10% of Americans. Meanwhile, almost half of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. This needs to be put back into balance.
We lack the vocational training to fill the many available jobs for electricians, plumbers, welders, etc. while we bring in people from overseas to fill jobs as doctors, engineers, and computer programmers. Other countries spend much more on vocational training then we do. And even though factory jobs that were sent overseas over the past few decades a slowly returning, this is not happening fast enough.
Compared to other first world countries we pay about twice as much for health care (about $5,000 more per person per year than in other countries) while our healthcare system is ranked worst among all of the countries studied. The best systems in the countries studied use a combination of public and private resources rather than the Medicare-for-all that the far left wants or the do-nothing approach that the far right wants. We deserve so much better.
As of the writing of this post our national debt was $28.9 trillion and growing at a tremendous rate. And there is absolutely no plan in Congress to start reducing this because those who represent primarily the far left and the poor want to keep handing out money and those who represent primarily to rich and the far right don’t want to raise taxes on the wealthy. Unfortunately, raising the debt ceiling is much easier than compromising.
Climate change is out of control. We used to think that this was a problem that our great grandkids would have to worry about but it is here right now. Our country is burning up, drying up, blowing away, or getting flooded out, depending on where you live. And now scientists are saying that a major Antarctic ice shelf could fail within five years flooding our world. But because of ideology, many in government don’t care.
The reason this is happening is the paradigm that only two major political parties are required to run our country because this is the way it has always been. The U.S. is one of only a few countries in the world to have a two-party political system and it is failing us. We have solutions to all of our problems but our government is unwilling to implement them.
According to recent polls, the Democrats represent about 31% of Americans and the Republicans represent only about 25%. They sometimes refer to themselves as conservatives and liberals but these terms have become meaningless for the simple reason that moderates and extremists in each group have little to nothing in common with each other. Independents, most of whom are moderate conservatives and moderate liberals, make up over 40% of Americans but we have no political party and little say in how our country is run.
Based on recent polling data, over 60 percent of Americans and over 70 percent of millennials agree that we need a third major centrist political party. There are several fledgling efforts out there to accomplish this such as the Alliance Party (theallianceparty.com), the Reform Party (reformparty.org), and Represent.Us.
But another option is coming. Hopefully we are not too late.