If you look back thru history, every great society had it’s rise & fall, Greeks, Romans, the sun never (used to) set on the British Empire. Yes, those countries are still there but not nearly what they once were. Sadly, I think the US is on the declining side. It’s easy to be hungry, it’s hard to stay hungry. Students in other countries beat us in test scores. Despite all of our medical advances, we’re not near the top in infant mortality. Our middle class is declining. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Many/most of our politicians are either obstructionist or corrupt by acting in their best interest rather than the interest of the city/county/state/country doing things to ensure they get reelected like not raising taxes/reducing spending now instead of pushing it til after the next election cycle.
There’s a huge crisis coming in maybe 20 years that no one is even talking about yet; the loss of the pension. Most retirees today are living on pension & Social Security yet pension are going away, replaced with the 401(k) or 403(b) which the average person isn’t contributing nearly enough to. Medical advances mean people are living longer. Some people will be forced to retire because of medical/health issues. Others won’t retire because they can’t afford to. In large quantities, they will be taking away jobs from younger generations. Are we that callous enough to throw a significant portion of our elderly out on the streets?
Yes, I’m pessimistic, but not enough to overcome inertia that I know the area, culture/customs (meaning I know most of the euphemisms for ‘bathroom’) & history of where I live to seriously consider moving to another country.
I’m not pessimistic at all. I think this is one of the best times and places to be alive in all of history.
I’m shitscared of all this fracking stuff fucking up our water supply, just as I’m enormously pessimistic about the US’s dumbshitfuck health care system ever getting markedly better (Obamacare - which I hugely support - notwithstanding). Income inequality is such a huge problem in this country, and it’s only getting worse as college tuition rates continue to escalate and more and more young adults find themselves graduating with worthless degrees at tens of thousands of dollars in debt. We’re rapidly becoming the biggest country in the world in terms of haves and have-nots, and that’s not really the type of country I want to live in.
So yeah, I’m not overly optimistic about the future outlook of the US. The only bright spot I can foresee - which has been addressed already ITT - is that the idiot base of the GOP is going to die off over the next couple of decades; today’s youths (my generation) are generally far more liberal than our predecessors, so when the millenials finally come of age and start controlling US government and industry, we’ll hopefully turn everything more towards a European-modeled democratic-socialist system.
Would I leave the US if I could? In a heartbeat. The good news for me is that I’m still young, and hopefully post-college I’ll be able to put myself into a situation wherein I could emigrate to a country like Australia, New Zealand, or Malta (my top three).
The European model is social democratic/social market NOT democratic socialist.
[quote=“Leaper, post:1, topic:666769”]
Reading [u.
If you could pack up and emigrate tomorrow, would you? Or do you think that the U.S. will drag everyone else down with them? Do you think you’ll live to see fascism (however you define that line) as the de facto rule of this country? Or do you think it’s just paranoia? Or somewhere in between (as Slashdot commentary tends to be self-selecting and… non-mainstream — whether that’s good or bad is up to you, of course)?[/QUOTE
The hardest thing about knowing what America once was, is now, and will soon become is accepting the reality that it was “the people” who ultimately failed to preserve and fortify their priceless inheritance of individual liberty by way of this once great democratic republic,
Psst, not my fight, but the millenials have already come of age, and have been around adulthood for a while. Though not old enough yet to held some political positions in the US (like the presidency).
[quote=“msmith537, post:79, topic:666769”]
I find America is actually not that bad a place to live if you turn off the news and Internet message boards. It’s often difficult for me to reconcile my personal experiences traveling around the US with the hate-filled extremist bullshit you see online and in the news.
If only more Americans had your ability to think critically, rather than depend on media and other visual outlets for their education and sense of direction.
How ironic that ‘technology’ seems to have been so instrumental over the past couple of decades in the dumbing down of America.
Using photo ID to get on a plane is pretty common practice everywhere, and has been for as long as I’ve been flying on planes.
Not to mention Europe is less social democratic than it was in the 1980s. If Europe is moving to the right, why would anyone reasonably expect the US to move to the left given our inborn skepticism of that type of system?
Young people have always been more liberal, with the exception of the Reagan years. And Gen-X is just getting started as far as controlling the government and industry. Right now, the people in charge are the Boomers, who were idealistic and liberal and were going to change the world until they got out of college and started working. It won’t be any different for the generation after Gen-x. You don’t see them leaving the military as liberals, do you? They won’t be liberal when they are making their fortunes in the private sector either. Of course, those who don’t get jobs or go work for the government will remain liberal.
On the one hand, my life is turning out better than I could ever have imagined. I always wonder how the next year could possibly top the current one and then it does. Had I not built my career in the US, there’s a strong possibility I wouldn’t be where I am now.
On the other hand, the US scares the besneezus out of me today. The country is dysfunctional and doesn’t seem to know it. Decisions are made and legislation passed to pander to those for whom worshipping a mythical deity is paramount, with a little xenophobia and bigotry on the side. Ignorance is glorified. Intelligence and education are vilified. The world alternately laughs at us and is horrified by us, and we respond by puffing out our chests as though this is something to be proud of; a psychosis if I ever saw one.
You can count me as another who wouldn’t necessarily object to the word terrorism to describe how the Republican party has chosen to achieve its goals, and what terrifies me is they actually win, and can continue to, with this strategy. The Democrats, being simply the lesser of two evils, are no picnic either.
I see things getting worse in the US in my lifetime before they get better, if they get better. So, yeah, pessimistic, I guess, both in the short term and long term.
I figure I have 20 years before I retire, 15 if I play my cards right. I seriously doubt I will still be in the US by then.
Not really, the first presidential election where millennials can all vote will be in 2020, supposedly they will be 40% of the electorate by then. But even then, the oldest millennials will only be 42. Civic engagement goes up with age, so an 18 year old millennial is not the same as a 31 year old.
They have come of age, a bit, but they are just entering politics. If not for the millennials Obama wouldn’t have won in 2008 or 2012 or he would’ve just barely won (I think of his ~9 million net votes over the GOP, about ~7 million came from millennials with the other ~2 million net votes coming from people born before 1978). So millennials are starting to come of age, but this is just the beginning of what they do. The real question is, what do they do now that it is becoming really obvious that the 2 party system is totally corrupted by monied interests? Do millennials drop out, do they reform one/both parties, or what? I could see millennials supporting a constitutional amendment or public ballot efforts to take money out of politics.
And replace it with government control of political speech? Judging by millennials’ reaction to the NSA story, I doubt they’ll support any such thing once they hear that rather simple counterargument. You can’t take money out of politics, all you can do is restrict who can spend money on political advocacy.
I’m very optimistic about the US’s future. Ironically, I am someone who left America but not out of any hate. I still think it’s the best country. I’m over here because I have stuff to do over here and I’ll live anywhere I want, not out of some weirdo disgust with my homeland. I think sitting back and looking at the country from afar gives an American a unique perspective. I’m not saturated with biased reporting from either side.
Because it is superior.
Actually the Greatest Generation remained Democrats throughout their lives helping keep the House of Representative under Democratic control for forty years.
I don’t see why working in the private sector makes one a “conservative” or else why are so many rich people (not to mention the tens of millions of small business owners, office workers, factory employees, and retail workers) Democrats? And apparently the military doesn’t count as working for the government according to you. :rolleyes:
No ideology has proven itself superior because it depends on your values and the competence of the government. However, most countries have liberalized their markets, including the US, and are figuring out how to pare back their welfare states so that they will still be there with an aging population. Reality has no ideology.
It’s a different mentality. The military holds people accountable and uses people where they are needed. If the military was run like a civilian government agency, we’d be conquered by Haiti over a weekend.
Sure, there are many private sector Democrats. But just as Democrats dominate among public sector employees and people on welfare, Republicans do best among private sector workers, military and ex-military, and people who pay a lot of taxes.
It’s not just that people who pay a lot of taxes want to pay less taxes. It’s that in many places, the Republicans do a better job of spending that money. Not at the federal level, to be sure, but if you look at New York City, they’ve been managed very well financially, and city services improved, by keeping Democrats out for the last 20 years. Some complain that Bloomberg and Giuliani only care about New York’s rich, but the rich in new York are paying very high taxes. what is supposedly “for the rich” is that for the last 20 years their money has been spent on services rather than wasted in graft and fraud. If the Republicans ever make that formula work at the national level they’ll be in business.
Apropos, maybe: Snowden is (generationally) a Millenial. To say you expect the Millenials to improve the US, they’re the ones coming to work right now, changing it now. So either the change (better or worse) is coming sooner than expected, or (generic) you’re waiting for the generation after that to sort things out.
I’m extremely optimistic.
The U.S. is just so exciting. I’ve not spent more than a couple months in any other country I’ve been to, but I just found them to be more dull, in just about every way.
We have so many faults, and yet we do so unbelievably well considering our size and sheer variation. I don’t really care that Sweden, for example, is rated as having a better standard of living by its inhabitants, or that their school or prison systems are “better”. What works for a nation of 9 million people might not work for a nation of 315 million.
So move to a nation with 35 hour work weeks if that’s what works for you. Just don’t tell me on an internet message board that your new home is oh so much more superior to my own home, because you’re wasting your time and energy. I’m happy to be alive. Here, and now…
That’s the attitude that makes America great: We have nothing to learn from any other country! We don’t care about any other countries! Anyone who has a different idea is just lording it over us with their high and mighty superiority!
I’m pretty concerned about America’s future. While we’re making progress in some areas, it seems that year in and year out, under Democratic and Republican control, the moneyed elites in our society increase their control over our institutions, and take an ever-increasing portion of the pie, leaving less for the rest of us.
That’s actually bad on an absolute level for the elites themselves: a nation whose economy is operating well under peak output is a nation where even the elites are less wealthy than they might be.
But what they get in return is control over the workers who might otherwise be in a position to ask for more money. High unemployment is great for keeping everyone in line, and if you already have more money than you can spend on stuff for yourself, being in a position of control might be more important to you than more money, at the margin. And if it is, then it’s working out just fine for the elites.
I don’t know how we get to a point where we start changing this.
I’d say that America was founded on not repeating the mistakes of the old world, and nothing has changed in that regard.
That doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can learn. Comparing health care systems, the Swiss model is vastly superior to the British model. Which might be why our brand new shiny UHC system is based on the Swiss model(although some misguided lefties still pine for the NHS model). But that’s an example of lefties thinking that there’s nothing to learn from other countries’ experience. Theory trumps empiricism with a big slice of the left.