Do you see hope for the future in America?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Income inequality isn’t an issue unless those at the bottom are too poor to support themselves reasonably well. That kind of poverty is essentially unknown in the US.

I don’t see any indication that the police, overall, are any more militarized than they used to be. Do you have anything beyond anecdotal evidence for this?

Yes, I think claiming a potential of an 80% unemployment rate is overblown, to say the least. I am sure the invention of the wheeled plow and the horse collar convinced someone that there would widespread unemployement because of the reduced demand for farm labor.

This seems to me to be mostly a function of one side saying of the other “They won’t do as they are told!”

Again, most of that is because people try to use government for purposes for which it is not intended, nor which work very well.

Could you show that, overall, the educational system is degrading?

Most people don’t live in rural areas - why would we need a lot of doctors there?

Detroit’s troubles are caused by a downturn in the auto industry, which triggered problems caused by greed and short-sightedness by labor unions. Most Americans are not members of labor unions, so the issues are not directly transferrable.

The public sector unions are due to encounter the same sort of issues, but if they go on strike and we fire enough of them, that will encourage the rest to see reason.

I see no reason for your pessimism. Our major problem in the near term is uncontrolled spending on entitlements. I hope and suspect after the November elections we will be in a better position to deal with that problem. And I have seen no structural changes in the US that suggest that we will not be able to deal with our other issues as they arise.

I am old enough to have learned to discount most of what Chicken Little says.

Regards,
Shodan

22

Considering that a lot of that prosperity was due to Europe and Asia being devastated by WWII maybe we shouldn’t be so self-congratulatory about that. If we can’t achieve that without a world war and the deaths of 50 million people, not to mention the maimed and traumatized, we don’t deserve it.

23

America, today, is much more prosperous than it was in the 50s and 60s.

We’ve been over this so many times on this MB that I can’t believe people are still spreading that ignorance instead of fighting it.

24

This question is too vague to give much of a meaningful answer. All of the things you’ve cited except robotics have been problems plaguing our world for thousands of years.
One excellent example of this is Moris Berman’s book The Twilight of American Culture. He draws some fascinating parallels between our current American society and ancient Rome (both at the peaks and the downfalls).

I’ll try to briefly address some of your points.
Income inequality, leading to gravely divided, and increasing conflicted, economic/social class.
I would argue that while things seem worse than they did “back in the day”, I would challenge you to name a period in human history where we had income equality. And I would argue that the poor have many more protections and rights in this country right now than they have at any point in history. No, I’m not saying we have it better than we ever did and there is no room for improvement. But I don’t think it’s even close to being at its worst. And, well, we’re still here.

Militarized cops.
While corruption, incompetence, and overzealousness are problems that we need to continue to work on, it’s absolutely nothing new, and complaining about “militarized cops” sounds to me like the complaints of a right wing nutbag with a “bug out plan” to hole up in the mountains with 10,000 cans of food and enough weapons to supply a small army (not that I am accusing you of being such a person, just saying it sounds a little extreme to me).

Robotics offering a potential 805 unemployment rate (possibly an overblown risk).
80.5% unemployment?? Where are you getting this from? Society is rapidly changing and becoming more automated and advanced technologically. These changes eliminate jobs, but also create new ones. As an example, how many jobs were there for computer programmers in 1940 vs today? Can robots diagnose and treat health problems? Replace humans in creating any form of entertainment? There are thousands types of jobs that still need human beings, and there always will be.

Wildly polarized politics.
See: pretty much every country on the planet since the dawn of politics. When you get enough people together, there will always be leaders, and there will always be people criticizing those leaders. That is how we progress and keep power in check.

Ineffective government.
Again: nothing new here. We do have the ability to peacefully seek change if enough people are unhappy, which isn’t something that every country has even today. Don’t like your politicians? Vote them out of office, protest, raise your voice, seek change. Don’t sit on your couch and bitch about Obamacare during elections.

A rapidly degrading educational system
People were complaining about this during the Roman Empire (see Morris Berman’s book that I mentioned above). At some point I believe we will have to make changes to strengthen and nourish our educational system, but there is no question that we are facing some serious challenges to do this. I think we can do it though.

I am not dismissing any of your points with “well it’s been worse at some point in the past, so we don’t need to worry about it”. But I don’t think any of the issues you’ve mentioned are signs that our country is falling apart, nor do I think we have no hope right now. To the contrary, we have the ability to communicate globally nearly instantaneously, we have made great advances in every field there is: technology, medicine, health, science, even things like entertainment, and the standard of living is higher now than it has been at any point in the past.

I do think we (the entire world, not just America) will face some serious challenges during the next 50 to 100 years. Destruction of rainforests, mass extinctions, global warming, increasingly scarce fossil fuels, overpopulation, and many other things will need to be overcome. And change is inevitable. Some of the changes will make things better, and some will make things worse, but I think we will survive, and I think at some point in the future we will be better off than we are now.

25

It still sucks to be poor, even if poverty isn’t as life-threatening as in the past. We also recently had a bunch of people go from prosperity to poverty which accounts for a significant slice of the despair and negativity currently in the air.

I also note that complaint among folks who don’t want to follow the law but would rather have complete freedom to steal, piss on the neighbor’s lawn, rape, jaywalk, and commit all sorts of infractions from trivial to deadly serious.

Yes, actually they can. Expert systems have been around for some time now. In some areas they do it better than humans do.

What scares some people is that government actually IS effective in many ways.

26

Overall, yes, there is hope.

There may be some upheaval though. ‘Gonna get worse before it gets better’, as it were.

27

I take hope in the knowledge that I will never again see a Republican president and that demographics and social issues like gay marriage are solidly trending in favor of Democrats. There simply won’t be enough old angry white men left to gum up the works in a few years.

28

I have lots of hope. Generally speaking Americans have never had it better and through most of the last 200 years that has been true. Sure there are problems and by a few measurements some things are worse but our history one slow climb up.

I hope we don’t! The prosperity of the 50’s-60’s largely ignored minorities and women.

29

Bosda, you strike me as one of those parents who says “What? Only a 3.6 GPA? What is this B doing in your Advanced Quantum Physics class?! You’ll never amount to anything!”

I mean, seriously, the only thing worse than the future of the US is the alternative. Well, OK, there are perhaps a dozen other countries that I see roughly equal amounts of hope for.

30

There was a time when I thought this was a good idea. But then I noticed something: military dictatorships like to ban all political parties. It makes it hard to organize any kind of resistance when just the simple act of organizing is illegal.

Perhaps it would be nice in theory if we could operate without political parties, but realistically there’s no way we could do that and maintain a free society.

31

This. In my neck of the woods here in the south, it’s only the right and their doomsday support that thinks we’re all headed to hell in a hand basket. We’re no longer badass enough on the world stage, everything is going to shit, too much “socialism” and too few manners / respect / hard workers / you name it and too much PC / multi-culturalism / rights / etc. I’ve never personally encountered anyone on the left who looks at the state of the US nearly as gloomily.

As for myself, I’m cautiously optimistic. I think things are better than ever, as long as we can continue to separate church from state, move toward universal healthcare and continue to work for equality for all. If not, then I doubt I’d be the only who would view going backwards as anything but a disappointment.

32

Things are getting better. There will always be occasional downturns, whether in the economy, standard of living, civil rights, or other, but the trend is generally positive.

33

Hopefully the last gasp of the “The Selfish Generation”. Baby Boomers are now all old and pessimistic, but they still vote, watch traditional media, and have buying power. The evening news is starting to sound like a bunch of sad old men sitting around a nursing home drinking coffee and complaining.

34

Also, the U.S. has political factions that are more closely integrated than many other countries. Liberals and conservatives go to the same restaurants, watch the same movies, buy the same gasoline. You can’t tell one from the other visually.

Another thing we do very well is integration of our military and civilian populations. You can see soldiers, sailors, and marines (should I capitalize Marines?) in shopping malls or on the street, and sit and chat with them at bus stops. They aren’t a separate class, as they are in some countries.

Even our racial segregation, while troubling, is much less than the ethnic segregation in much of Africa and Asia. We’ve come much farther along the path of “E Pluribus Unum” than a lot of the rest of the world, and I think we will continue to forge ahead along this path.

35

If we can get the liberals out of government, we might stand a chance. They’ve got us damn near over the edge into socialism, and socialism is a catastrophe. It works great on paper, but fails once you get more than about 100 people involved.

36

Chance at what? Kicking out all the fags and Mexicans so we can have a God-fearing gut-tootin (toten?) nation of plutocrats?

37

Yes provided the liberal/progressive movement in America builds on its current modest achievements to revive a new nationalistic, postracial New Deal coalition rather than the current social liberal coaltiion that will expand universal health care to something along the lines of either the German system or a single-payer system, shore up Social Security, revive America’s infrastructure through construction of new nuclear power plants and expansion of mass transit, and transitioning the current American-dominated NATO system to a more multinational alliance of democracies. In the long term, the United States ought to be a leader in forming the core of a world government that would be initially an alliance of advanced democracies along with combating global warming, straightening out demographic problems (both declining populations in the developed nations and overcrowding in other parts of the world) and adapting to an increasingly automized society that will drastically reduce the labour force and work times.

38

It also works great in Sweden.

I’m generally in favor of free markets and small government, but just from a practical standpoint you’re denying reality if you don’t see that socialism works just fine in some places. (All depending on how we’re defining our terms, of course, but I imagine you’d call much of Europe socialist.)

39

I think it’s a good thing that american exceptionalism is fading.
It should mean that americans ultimately become more willing to emulate good ideas from elsewhere. For example, I think one reason UHC is off the table is because it would be seen as america copying a good idea from elsewhere, and america leads not follows (dammit!).

But I think america’s problems relative to the rest of the world get overstated here and in the US media. Yeah america has big problems. Probably worse than many first world countries. But it also has a lot to be proud of. I never have seen it as doomed or wrecked or whatever and I can’t see it being in that state for at least another 50 years.

40

I’m assuming you mean “80%” here and your shift key slipped.

Yeah, so? If the economy can tick along with 80% of us working jobs that don’t pay the bills, why is that such a bad thing? We’re going to eventually be forced to accept that if the economy doesn’t need you, you don’t get a job, but you still qualify as a human being. Call it Basic Income, call it End Of Days, call it what you will, but it’s cheaper than trying Luddism and being destroyed by those who embrace technology and it’s economically better than forcing the mostly-unemployed to be completely idle through perverse incentives.

Besides, we already have this, only a backwards half-assed version of it. When full-time (as full as they can get) Walmart employees are still on government benefits, when we have a completely, forcibly idled prison population that’s larger than any other developed nation’s, we are already accepting the fact that the economy doesn’t need some people’s labor, or at least doesn’t need it badly enough it’s capable of letting them live off of it.

So it will be a social and attitudinal change, to where, in a few decades, the hard-nosed individualist self-reliant types will be the most anti-job, because you can’t be self-reliant if you must kowtow to the boss-man for your daily bread.