America, You’ve Got It Better?

Much depends upon faith. Americans still think they enjoy a special relationship with God, although they surrendered their country and then the entire world to the dictates of the marketplace, clearing every obstacle out of commerce’s way (including the native population, along with a once-healthy natural environment), finally replacing everything with free trade, the premier commandment of capitalism.

Has any other nation had such a disastrous impact on human culture, on people’s lifestyle and hopes? Goethe’s poem “Gentle Reminders” begins:

America, you’ve got it better

Than our old continent. Exult!

You have no decaying castles

And no basalt.

Your heart is not troubled,

In lively pursuits,

By useless old remembrance

And empty disputes.

Now, Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency, itself a part of the system and an issuer of self-fulfilling prophecies, has diagnosed a serious national illness. Clearly, the simple images aren’t deceptive: Just as America’s archenemy since the fall of communism became cholesterol, it has been living far beyond its means. An example: Much-maligned Portugal sits on a mountain of debt that amounts to 90.6 percent of its GDP. In the United States, meanwhile, that gap has been narrowed to 99.5 percent of GDP! The per capita debt burden in the United States is currently at 120 percent of income, and the total public debt is over $15 trillion. The estimation for the year 2030, if the USA still exists as an economic power by then, is that it will still be spending $5 trillion more per year than it takes in.

The Life of an Overweight Consumer on Credit

The predicted deficit of 15 percent, the difference between exports and imports, will be financed overseas, principally by China. The industrial share of America’s economic power has now fallen to just 10 percent.

Just as modern data presentation techniques have hidden the loss of “productive” jobs in America — 42,000 factories have been shuttered, 5.5 million jobs lost, the middle class is extinct, and Detroit lies in ruins — so, too, has the world view of America’s economic power been papered over: Apple and Wall Street still don’t define the United States.

The latest image America has to offer the world is one of consumers whose lives have been fattened by credit, gorging themselves on cheap Asian products. The people who once courageously grabbed hold of the future and boldly created something powerful have now been replaced by the chronically ill and the debt-ridden. That should be impetus enough for European nations to at least develop their own standards. A United States of Europe? A look across the Atlantic doesn’t provide a very good contemporary role model.