New Zealanders admire our standard of living? That makes no sense to me. The US may be wealthy on paper, but we are more or less a wealthy version of a developing country in the sense that we have a lot of income inequality and financial corruption.
If you are rich it is great living here. If you aren’t then quality education, reliable health care and gainful employment are becoming harder and harder to obtain.
I think the OP about competition was about how to bring business into the US so we don’t lose to competitors in places like China and India.
While our standard of living behind parts of Western Europe, the US is still far and away the most powerful country in the world, and stands to remain so for some time.
The US is known for its optimism and innovation, and I see one major barrier to that- our brightest, most educated young people are unable to take risks because of health care costs and student loans. When student graduate tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and furthermore have the fear of being left without insurance. they have little choice but to take the easiest, safest career route. This could eventually become a problem.
This is actually amisnomer. It’s only true is you select elatively small, affluent areas. Let’s just say it’s easier to Luxembourg than the United STtaes, but the two aren’t comparable directly and fairly at the same time.
I have noticed that everyone’s answers to this question are the things they would like to have anyway. And generally are not true.
Anyway, here’s my list, which is only partly things we ought to do for other reaons.
Reform Sarbanes-Oxley. It has some ludicrously stupid demands (some of it I don’t care about). I won’t go into the messy details, but in short, ever since it passed businesses stopped going public, and started selling to other businesses much mroe often. This hurts competition and often leads to the best and brightest (or luckiest if you think that way) just retiring, since they dont’ want to woprk under other’s management.
Keep corporate taxes, but allow unlimited financial transactions and money flows at little-to-no cost. It’s unprovable speculation, but it seems to me that many companies would have less problem s paying U.S. corporate taxes if they knew that they could move their money around. It’s a global world of investment, and we should stay at the forefront. Allowing easy investment transfers is part of that. Aside from which, all you are doing is encouraging insane transfer schemes. Keep tariffs low.
End the more recent health care mess. It’s not working, it WILL cost vastly mroe than anticipated (because we’ve seen what happens with similar laws multiple times already). For now, end the state-based limitations on insurers. However, force them to offer a minimal plan which focuses almost entirely on regular checkups (but not expensive tests) and emergency/catastrophic coverage. I guarrantee you’ll see the medical cost curve start tipping back.
Cut Social Security, add means-testing and roll the taxes into the egenral fun. Right now, all we’re doing is putting a giant false pretense nobody really believes. Alternative, allow people to opt-out and put their SS money into a retirement account. Cut entitlements across the board.
In contrast to even sven, we should actually reduce student loans. There’s an antire colelge industry of stripping student loan money from kids whoa re not likely to graduate or use their degree useful. There’s no shame in working from a high-school degree. Now, however, we have the strange situation of everyone going to college even if they don’t benefit from it, then being socked with student loan repayments. This is nonsense. On the other hand, I would encourage more people to go into business, science, and engineering courseswith slightly more generous benefits.
Simplify the damn tax code. Then, increase taxes on a broad spectrum of Americans. Then decrease them back down to about 20% of income (I’m fine with a soft progressive curve but not a drastic one. We shoudl be looking at 10%-30%, not 0%-40%). Even I go get help at tax time, and I shouldn’t need tyo. We’d save billions just on H&R block alone.
[Why do this? We’ve spent decades undercuting our tax base, and history shows that this creates a very dangerous siuation, where the state is inctreasingly dependant on less reliable sources of tax money. I’m not saying we’re going down the tubes, but it’s a risk. The state should not, and cannot, depend solely on “the rich”. This isn’t so much a “stay competitive” measure as a “stay stable” measure.]
Was anyone else thinking that “ChiComs” was some sort of play on “dot coms?” I couldn’t figure out why we’d need a large army to combat Chinese internet start ups.
I’m not sure it is more offensive, but they’re both archaic. No matter our personal opinions, word choice does make a difference in how statements and arguments are taken and accepted.
I’d certainly be more skeptical about anything from a poster who discussed Soviet era politics by describing the Soviets as “Reds” or “Russkies”. Or a poster who discussed race relations by describing African Americans or Blacks as “Negroes”.
We may have to embrace some form of techno-feudalism, where the brightest and most educated work off an indenture to the richest and most powerful. This keeps the US in its current power position and eases the burden on the young educated elite - but of course, they’re going to have to mind their betters, which is excellent career preparation for recent graduates.
Understood. And yes, New Zealanders do envy Americans. New Zealand has political and diplomatic clout far above its size but economically we are tiny and vulnerable to all global events. From outside, your nation appears very rich.
Consider “Married With Children”. The Bundy family are supposed to be lower class strugglers yet they live in a two-storey comfortable home. Most of the world’s population could never aspire to that.
Granted TV gives false images and The Wire is a strong antidote.
Personally I like America and Americans but am not jealous of you. New Zealand is home, has a wonderful natural environment, and Western standards of health education and law.
Instead of competing with each other in a cut throat way I’d rather each nation embraced its own strengths and traded accordingly. Give up the US auto industry, the Japanese do it better. But you have clever innovators and free thinkers.
The Bundys were fictional, you can’t raise a family of 4 on a minimum wage job in a suburb of a metro area like Chicago. Al Bundy earned minimum wage, which is currently about $7.25/hr in the US but about $13/hr in New Zealand (it was about $3-4/hr when the show was made). Also in New Zealand his family would get decent health care. In the US his job as a shoe salesman wouldn’t provide health insurance. We have more wealth in the US, but for the majority of the population life is harder than it would be in any other wealthy nation.
I remember watching SiCKO where Michael Moore went to France and was talking to US expats. One said she got benefits from being a French citizen that her parents couldn’t obtain by working hard their whole lives in the US. Great health care, paid vacations, affordable college, affordable day care, a strong social safety net, a secure retirement, etc. In many other OECD nations you get those for being born. In the US you get those if you are in the top 20% economically, everyone else is pretty much SOL.
So I guess I’m saying it is a grass is greener thing. But a person earning minimum wage in New Zealand, in many ways, lives better than a middle class person in the US. However our wealthy have it far better, but most of us will never be wealthy.
I don’t agree about car manufacturing though. I think US cars have made some massive quality improvements over the last two decades. But I understand what you are saying about certain nations having certain strengths. I’ve heard other people promote the idea that the US should be more involved in high end/high value manufacturing, or more innovative R&D/manufacturing due to our national skills and college educational system.
The figures for median household income are $52,029 for the US and $23,122 for NZ. So the average household in the US is more than twice as wealthy as the average household in New Zealand.
It will be difficult because higher education is pricing itself out of the reach of a lot of people. Grants and aid is being cut. Again we balance the budget by eviscerating the poor.
We have cities populated with gangs of people with no hope for a happy future. It will spread. We have tent cities for the people who have had homes foreclosed. The trend is not to make us more competitive. It is to move good jobs abroad where labor is cheaper and afraid to stand up to corporations.
Rebuilding our infrastructure is the best hope for jobs in America, but we don’t want to have a tax rate that will allow that to happen. We are screwed by the upper class who have no concept of patriotism. America is just another market with overpriced labor to them.
Note: Wesley Clark here has somr rather strong opinions, which may not exactly be correct. Also, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about in terms of wages or who gets insurance, either.
Half of Americans are going to college. I think a problem may be too many people are going to college (which will be useless for them) instead of getting a useful occupation.
You can raise a family of 4 with a wife who is a compulsive shopper on $3.20 an hour (which is what Al Bundy said he earned) in a suburb of Chicago in the 1980s.
Also the minimum wage in New Zealand is not $13/hr. And the minimum wage in the US wasn’t $3-4/hr in the 1980s.
Also shoe salesmen get great health insurance in the United States
Also the programs to help people obtain health care, education, day care, etc are all better in the US than in other wealthy nations and the poor and middle class in the US enjoy more security and social mobility than they would in other wealthy nations.
Consider my ignorance fought.
The two areas where America gets much less for its money than other nations are the military, and health care. It’ll take 10 years easily to sort either of those two problems out.
Its been 20 years since I was in the USA. I do have a scientist friend living in Indianapolis so have some perspective on American lives.
The obvious question is why the USA does not have universal healthcare? Hawaii has it. Yes it costs taxation. Other wealthy nations live with that. It works.
Beyond that I’m perplexed as to what we can do to help people and protect our democratic societies for our children. Maybe the Chicago School’s time has passed. Government intervention and control is necessary.
Maybe we have to accept a redistribution of wealth every second generation. Capital gain taxes, death taxes, high income taxes. This goes entirely against what I’ve believed all of my life…but circumstances change.
