Is the US becoming a banana republic?

Great Debates
181

The subject doesn’t deserve a serious answer so I gave it a mocking one.

If you really, really, really want a serious beat-down, though, I’m happy to oblige.

The entire history of language is that of words changing, dropping, and accruing meanings. You could make the argument that every person uses every word with a slightly different connotation than everyone else, and no doubt there’s a book that says exactly that.

That’s both the curse and the wonderfulness of language. Words are so flexible that they can capture the infinite complexity of an ever-changing world yet have a reservoir of core truth that makes them understood by most people most of the time.

And yet words can be abused. Politically correct as a term has no meaning at all these days; it’s devolved into an all-purpose attack on anything anybody doesn’t like, the dirty hippie of our day. Obama is regularly called a Fascist Communist, a ridiculous oxymoron. Creationists and climate deniers misuse the words of science quite deliberately to shore up arguments that have no real basis in fact. It’s not just meaning that gets abused. Illiterate’s place apostrophe’s into plural’s at a furious clip.

Maybe at some point in the future, society will break down sufficiently that plural’s can rightly be spelled with an apostrophe. That’s very unlikely, though. There is too much pushback from good writers to overcome. Good writers, and all those who are concerned about the language and the trend toward appropriating words for propaganda, will continue to push back with all their strength and scorn. Politically correct has been lost but Fascist Communist is still a signal of derangement.

And banana republic as an all-purpose term for the United States being anything other than the number one nation in the world in every conceivable way is still in the latter category. It signals ignorance rather than derangement at this point, but it has potential. The U.S. cannot become a true banana republic under any faintly plausible scenario. It cannot even become a metaphorical banana republic under any faintly plausible scenario. If China were to beat U.S. GDP - likely in the semi-near future - the U.S. would still have four times the per capita GDP of China, making even saying that it is number 2 a stretch. It will not and can not become a banana republic, even if a thousand blog posts call it that. They will merely become an additional thousand on top of the millions of already silly, ignorant, and eminently forgettable blog posts on the net.

And if you quote them approvingly, you will continue to earn the scorn of everybody who truly understands history, economics, politics, and words. Your choice.

182

Too late, the Gap, Inc. invaded the Banana Republic in 1983…

Actually, it was thanks to a coup. :smiley:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-20/coup-lands-banana-republic-in-the-gap.html

183

I agree, under the original definition. All I’m saying is that the definition may have changed.

I fail to see the connection. PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), evaluates education programmes in various countries. What does this have to do with this discussion?

Now we’re getting to the core of the problem. I fully agree and have no argument over your assessment that the US economy is the biggest economy in the world. GDP and Total assets has increased. But this is the conundrum. How can the richest country in the world have people living in extreme poverty? No other economically advanced country has this problem.
“The number of households living on $2 or less in income per person, per day in a given month increased from about 636,000 in 1996 to about 1.46 million households in early 2011, a percentage growth of 130 percent. We estimate that about 2.8 million children lived in extreme poverty at the beginning of 2011. This was roughly 16 percent of all children in poverty.”
Who enjoyed the benefits of the $32 trillion in assets you described? How would you describe a society that systematically removes more and more support for the neediest? Where US veterans receive no support after returning home and a vast number of them end up homeless. Where corporations seem to rule and are awarded bail outs when they fail. Where environment is being polluted and the one organization meant to regulate and protect the environment is powerless to do so and the companies who are responsible are let off with minor penalties if any.
It seems to me writers and journalists have started using the term Banana Republic for a lack of a better term. If the US is actuality ruled by corporations, then there is at least some similarities to the definition of a BR.
Perhaps we need to find a new term to describe this. How about Economic Cannibalism? The Republic of Koch Brothers? National Capitalism?

I do agree with all that you say here. Especially the examples you have provided, which I’d call “Foxism” as that tends to be the source of the ridiculous use of words and terms they use to describe what they do not advocate.
And you have convinced me that the use of the term banana republic should not be used in this context. However, there are underlying problems in the US which journalists are trying to address and since there is no better term for it, they have been using “banana republic” to shed light on the issue, rightly or wrongly. As I pointed out above, someone needs to come up with a new term to describe the true underlying problem without hi-jacking an old term that describes a different circumstance. Otherwise, you’ll have people so focused on dismissing the description and ignoring what the real issues were. When you read the article in the OP, did any of the actual points made sink in? Or was the misuse of the term “banana republic” more important? If so, you have missed the point entirely.

184

It’s late, but…

“Declining education standards” was one of the items mentioned in the OP’s linked article as evidence of America’s becoming this “banana republic”, and these scores have been referenced intermittently in this discussion. I made the point that America, even in its “golden age of global dominance”, was never a leader in international education assessments and frequently came in last.

And, I agree: for varying definitions of “banana republic”, America is a banana republic just as much as 2+2=5 for varying definitions of 2.

185

A discussion that changed a mind! I’m very impressed.

But did you miss the entire discussion that took place in this thread? I accused the OP - and by implication the writer of the original article - of cherrypicking facts and ignoring history in making this case. America was never a paradise. It towered above the world for a short period when the rest of the world was in total shambles. Anybody who uses this period - the most anomalous in all American history - as their baseline is committing a deliberate fraud. I’d compare it to climate deniers using 1998 as their baseline in the hopes of fooling the credulous and ignorant when in actuality 1998 was a then off-the-charts anomaly in its incredible heat. I’d accuse the article writer of that, but it’s even worse - he never gives any time at all that was before the fall.

Once you look at the totality of history, America’s imagined superiority vanishes. It has been rich and powerful and a world leader in many economic factors since the end of the 19th century but it has always had huge internal inequalities that people have rioted, struck, protested, and railed against absolutely continuously every single day of that time. And rightly so. If you don’t understand how far apart America’s loud self-acclaim and its reality have always been you understand so little history that you forfeit the right to comment on it.

Must changes be made? Of course. Should these inequalities be lessened? Of course. Are we doing the right things to straighten them out? Of course not.

Even so, that article is simply ludicrous propaganda. It’s bad thinking and an embarrassment to the liberal cause. It’s filled with half truths and technical truths - meaning facts that have been so wrenched out of context that they can be made to fit any point the writer wants to make.

You don’t get a pass from me because your heart is in the right place. Get your head into that place as well or suffer the consequences.

186

Under your definition of the term, can you name a handful of countries that are not banana republics?

187

If the above link doesn’t work, go to the map, select “population under poverty line”, and look at the chart underneath the map. Or you can go to the Wiki site, it has largely the same information.

% of people under relative poverty line:

Japan: 16
US: 15
UK: 14

Of course you speak of absolute poverty, the poorest of the poor, the 1.5 million mentioned above, or the .46% of the 320 million in this country. To clarify: that’s not 4.6%, that’s .46%, or just under 1/2 of 1%.

% of people in absolute poverty in the EU (PDF, page 30, table 4.1):

Germany, <$1/day: .5%
Germany, <$2.15/day: .6% (The US: .46%)
Germany, <$4.30/day: .8%

France, <$1/day: .2%
France, <$2.15/day: .2% (The US: .46%)
France, <$4.30/day: .3%

Denmark, <$1/day: .6%
Denmark, <$2.15/day: .7% (The US: .46%)
Denmark, <$4.30/day: 1.1%

UK, <$1/day: .5%
UK, <$2.15/day: .6% (The US: .46%)
UK, <$4.30/day: 1.0%

(For those of you who don’t want to download a PDF, it’s a European Commission study on absolute poverty in Europe. You can find a link to it here.)

My GOD, why the Brits, Danes, and Germans aren’t fleeing their banana republic-esque despots for the sweet, sweet environs of rural France (again!), I’ll never figure out. All of them with absolute poverty rates that EXCEED the hellhole that is even the Banana Republic States of America and its (relatively) paltry rate of .46%.

And, Christ, since we’re bringing up individual states into this discussion, let’s assume that the member states of the EU are analogous to the US States. There’s a country in the EU with 8% of its population earning less than $2.15/day, a rate 20 times that of the US and, I’m sure, greater than that of Mississippi. (Very last page of the EC report.)

Lastly, here is a paper that compares absolute and relative poverty rates in the US and the EU. This paper shows that in regards to relative poverty (being poor compared to your neighbors), the EU tends to look better than the US, but in terms of absolute poverty (the poorest of the poor: homeless, etc) the EU looks far worse and the gap closes to a statistically insignificant draw at best (page 39.)

188

And in regards to the question of who got the $32 trillion, my father had nothing in 1982 and died with an estate of about $15 million 25 years later. My grandparents and uncle had similar gains in the same period, though you wouldn’t know it to look at my grandfather’s Chevy Vega.

So, despite what people say about the 80’s, it didn’t just go to people who already had money.

189

I for one have always contended that American superiority was imagined and haven’t said otherwise.
To claim that the history of social struggles was uniquely American is ignorant and magnificently arrogant. The social struggles from the 19th through the 20th century were a global phenomenon. It’s due to this that communism was adapted in several countries and why social reform was adapted in others. Do you think millions of Europeans migrated to the US because they were fed up with an easy lifestyle at home? The fact is that US and other industrialized nations had the same struggles at this time and most if not all of these countries followed similar trajectories in bringing around social reform. If anything the US influenced many of these countries to adapt a more democratic political system. And with that came further reforms such as women’s right to vote, free education, social security and of course universal healthcare. That last one was missed by the US, although had Roosevelt survived the war, he had plans to implement it.
The point is, as other economically advanced nations are progressing, somewhere in the last 50 years, the US changed and reversed course and they appear to be dismantling the progress made through their struggles in past generations. The article may have articulated it poorly, (I agree with you there), but the point of the article was to describe the reverse. The examples used may have been inaccurate and vague and the author could have made a better job of this, but there is some kernel of truth in his argument.

In almost every example you pointed to, there was a disclaimer.

In other words, the poverty you have stated for Denmark, for example, is doubtfully the same as that of rural Mississippi.
I should point out that I have not denied there is poverty in Europe. On the other hand you have provided a link that shows Europe has a plan, the objective being to reduce the poverty within the EU.

Hard work and smart investments pay off. I’ve built a nice little nest egg myself, not quite the amount your father accumulated yet, but getting close. A few more years perhaps. I am a capitalist and I enjoy my wealth very much. I didn’t need to make it in the US either. Contrary to belief, you can make a fortune outside the US you know. Not sure what the point is here though. Your father may have made a modest $15 million in his lifetime, but the vast amount of the $32 trillion likely went to corporations who benefit from tax breaks and subsidies.

190

Well, if we’re just going to ignore quality cites and data in order to tortuously redefine words, then we can just say they mean whatever the hell we want them to mean, eh?

So now the definition of “banana republic” apparently means to have poverty rates similar to Europe, education scores similar to Europe, a helluva lot of statistics similar, or greater than (both aggregate and per capita) those you find in Europe… it’s just if this country is the US, it’s a banana republic?

Got it.

191

Shit, hit submit… sorry.

How is

"<$1/day
"<$2.15/day
and “<$4.30/day”

Measured differently in Denmark and the US? Dollar amounts are absolute, not relative. That was the entire point of the EC report, which apparently you missed - it’s about absolute poverty and not relative poverty.

You said that the US has a poverty problem that doesn’t exist in the EU or Japan but ONLY in the US. You literally said they didn’t have these levels of poverty. Since you can’t remember, here, let me quote:

All countries in the world have people living in extreme poverty. All other economically advanced countries have this problem, many of them to a worse degree than the US. But this data is ignored.

Again.

Damn near every point you and Dataguy have brought to this issue has been summarily refuted and shown to be either (a) false, or (b) wrong. And yet y’all persist in this notion…

192

I hoped we didn’t have to go there, but oh well, here it is.
I was once a child in Sweden with a single parent mother supporting two kids.
We lived in a city in southern Sweden, in a neighborhood considered “poor”. We lived in government subsidized housing.
Considering my mother’s low paying job and supporting two kids, we were statistically poor. But, we had a roof over our heads because of government subsidized low rent, food on the table as my mother was granted benefits from the government as a single mother with two children. School lunch was free for all kids, so didn’t need money for that. We had clothes enough for the cold winters. In other words, Swedish statistics would have put us under the poverty line when I was a kid. But did we suffer from it? No. In fact, I had the same opportunities for a decent education as any other child in Sweden.
So, no. Being poor in Sweden or Denmark is not the same as being poor in the US.
I don’t deny it doesn’t exist, I’m saying those governments ensure everyone has basic access to basic needs.

193

Section 8

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

School meal programs in the United States

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Goodwill Industries

Public education in the United States

The U.S. isn’t quite the Dickensian free-for-all you seem to imagine. Literally every program you just named exists here.

194

Thanks, HA. You saved me a lot of work.

So, anecdote does equal data. I did not know that.

195

I would like to note that HA mentioned only the large programs. The state, city, and county programs are still in existence (50 states, 3,144 counties, 30,000 cities and towns), as well as many private charities such as the Salvation Army, various Food Banks, and more.

My wife and daughter, yesterday afternoon, spent 3 hours at the Food Bank putting together meals for children in day care programs for single parents. 2,000 meals a day get made and distributed, and, again, that’s just one of the programs available upon request. This past weekend, we spent an additional 3 hours pulling weeds from the garden and sorting cans. (The SAFB provides over 60,000 meals a week to the needy in San Antonio, btw.)

That is how things work in America. We just don’t leave it up to the government, we pull together ourselves and help the poor and hungry with our bare hands (and, yes, checkbooks. Americans give more in charity, in both absolute and per capita terms, than any other industrialized country.)

196

Very simply, no.

This is not true. The U.S. has not reversed course. It is vastly - vastly - more active in fighting poverty than it was 50 years ago.

I was thirteen 50 years ago so I can attest to the lack of programs in the country. I was what we defined as working class poor. We got nothing at all from government programs.

The War on Poverty did not start until 1965. Most of the programs Human Action listed come from after that time. There may be some noisy voices on the right trying to roll these back but it has not happened yet and there is no public political appetite for them to do so. I don’t know where you live or what news you look at, but when I look at the world I see the same pressures for austerity everywhere in every country. (And with some successes, especially when it comes to workers, hours, and pay.) Nothing about the U.S. is unique, and in fact it is rising from the worldwide recession better and faster than most other western countries.

There is virtually nothing about today’s society that is not vastly superior to that of 50 years ago. Politically, economically, or technologically, in matters of health, consumer goods, food, education, or basic freedoms, in the condition of cities or farms or housing. And while there continue to be economic ups and downs, and individual people are being hurt, and nothing is perfect, and all that will continue to be true in the future - THE U.S. IS NOT IN DECLINE.

And I say this as a cynical curmudgeon. It is a plain matter of fact. I can - and do - look at the past, at every decade in the past, and compare it to today. They pale before the reality. If the U.S. ever goes into absolute decline in my lifetime I will be out there shouting about it. In the meantime, I say its Creationism and I say the hell with it.

197

I think people who go around saying the US is becoming a banana republic have never visited an actual banana republic.

198

If the definition of a Banana Republic is a sequential, greedy, remorseless, sociopathic, semi-homicidal leadership with a staggeringly ignorant, uneducated population, including a rapid percentage rise of destitution, then yes, the U.S. is becoming a Banana Republic.

199

I do say so and I have been to many such places.

200

I’ll take your word for that, but it does not disprove the insinuation that the U.S. is becoming a “Banana Republic” - or perhaps one should say that it is lagging behind a growing number of nations that are soaring upwards, making the U.S. a default Banana Republic by the fact that progressive nations are leaving the U.S. far behind and former Banana Republics are passing it by.

The population of the U.S. has less rights, less freedom, less democratic principles than it had before. It is well down the International Democracy Index in every category that make up quality of life and the more it falters the closer it resembles a Third World nation - a Banana Republic.