The data below comes from Michael Hodges, http://mwhodges.home.att.net/
Our economy has not:
- provided for long periods of rapidly rising real median family incomes, especially for one wage-earner families.
- provided for steadily rising rates of savings for families. Savings are less than ever.
- provided for rising living standards with less debt. Household debt ratios explode higher than ever before, much faster than national income.
- made it easier for families to make a choice for one spouse to stay at home. Families several decades ago which could be well supported with one wage-earner, and very few of today's families realize such.
From Michael Hodges' graphs, the assumption to make about American decline is simple -- a complete reliance on other countries for manufacturing, and more recently services. But saying that "we want others to do stuff for us" perhaps because we are lazy is false; everyone wants to work, and the communities that made the stuff we use have been hurt beyond comprehension by the export of their manufacturing abilities. All factories are efficient; the idea that a community's manufacturing contribution to the nation, or any other contribution responsibilities should be taken away and given to others for any reason is simple cruelty.
In the small city that I live in, Torrington, Connecticut, there was in recent years a highly successful bearing factory that was among the best in the world. A foreign competitor was allowed to buy the factory simply to shut it down, to eliminate it as a competitor. This maneuver was legal, thanks to Congress, and was not challenged by the town, who told the citizens that they must work harder to compete in the "global market."
With the end of this important factory, along with the demise of many of this small city's other businesses, there has been a rise in desperation and crime as the really good citizens see themselves driven away often to be replaced by criminal populations annexing regions on behalf of big city gangs. With the rise in crime, and a horrendous local murder rate fueled by crack, this small city is now planning to convert this closed bearing factory into a justice center, complete with both courts and prisons.
This plan seems by design; it seems easier to find employment as part of a prison release program that as a normal job seeking citizen. From the historical perspective, this region is transfiguring itself from a healthy rural community with an effective democracy into slave-state based on prisoners. This is all very recent; I can distinctly remember the bearing factory, and the many other factories here in full, and virtually pollution-free, productivity.
In my honest opinion, things have to change. There has to be a criteria for describing and finding people who facilitate this kind of disastrous change, they have to be found, and they have to be prevented from carrying out this kind of activity. The first part, creating a descriptive criteria, seems easy enough, but the second step, acting to save the community, could be impossible. The criteria will no doubt describe the kinds of persons who facilitated Germany's decline into a slave state, and it took World War II to dislodge and imprison those "facilitators."
These charts showing American decline are by Micheal Hodges. They show very easily that American decline has been a long process, and has been so effective as to appear to be planned. His strongest data implies a shift from self-reliance and global leadership, to a nearly complete reliance on other nations, and local, regional, and national collapse.
The rationale behind such destructive leadership can only fall into two categories: treachery and mental illness. Recent research implies that those two things may be the same, and may fall under the psychological description of malignant narcissism. It may take the US military to dislodge this disorder, as it exists in the highest places and resembles the worst humanity has had to present: Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein.
Related Links:
Rattlesnake Manifesto
Americans kill, so what is the kindest way to kill?
Hyper-DE-flation makes sense
Lies of the Times: Obama needs to fufill his promise
Beginning the American Break-Up: Ending the CIA
Inflation Key to the Recession Cycle
Spiritual Darwinism: Natural and Native Empathy
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